The Digital Market Act (DMA) had major implications for the functioning of Apple products in the EU. For example, Apple was forced to give iPhone owners in the EU the ability to install and use third-party marketplaces on the platform. A recent remark by the head of the European Commission, Margrethe Vestager, could now fundamentally change the way iOS processes photos.
The European Commission recently published the remarks of two of its leaders, Margrethe Vestager and Thierry Breton, regarding non-compliance with the DMA. Spotted Daring fireballs John Gruber, Vestager says that Apple failed to fully comply with the regulation.
Vestager states in his remark:
According to article 6 paragraph 3 of the DMA, gatekeepers have an obligation to enable easy uninstallation of applications and easy change of default settings. They must also display a selection screen. Apple’s compliance model doesn’t seem to meet the goals of this commitment… Apple also failed to disable the installation of several apps (one of which would be Photos) and prevents end users from changing their default status (for example Cloud), as required by the DMA.
The remark suggests that Apple should make any app on its platform uninstallable. And a passing mention of the Photos app suggests that Vestager believes this app should be uninstalled as well.
As Gruber points out, that wouldn’t be an easy task for the company because the Photos app is system-level software. This would require Apple to do a massive rewrite of the operating system. According to Gruber:
Photos isn’t just an app on iOS; it’s a system-level interface for captured photos. This is integrated throughout the iOS system, with per-app permission prompts to grant different levels of access to your photos.
Vestager says that in order to be DMA compliant, Apple must allow third-party apps to serve as system-level image libraries and camera footage. That’s a huge request, and I honestly don’t even know how such a request could be reconciled with system-wide photo access permissions.
Although Vestager mentions the Photos app, it is not known whether the European Commission will force Apple to make this particular change. If it is, it wouldn’t be surprising if Apple starts to reconsider whether or not it should stay in the EU.