A remark by EU competition chief Margrethe Vestager suggests that Apple could be required to allow iPhone owners to delete the Photos app.
While this possibility wasn’t previously mentioned, Vestager mentioned in a short speech that it was one of the things Apple failed to do in its DMA response — and would apparently include massive change how iOS works…
Daring fireballs John Gruber noted the remarks Vestager made last week.
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 does not appear to meet the objectives of this commitment […]
Apple also failed to disable the installation of several apps (one of which would be Photos).
As Gruber notes, this would involve a massive rewrite of iOS to support alternative default photo management apps.
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.
Some commentators – Gruber among them – have made the unlikely suggestion that the scope of the EU’s demands could result in Apple ceasing to sell iPhones within member states. The logic put forward is that it could be a cheaper option, with possible fines of up to 10% of global revenue, with EU sales accounting for roughly 7% of that.
EU Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton rejected that possibility.
A market of 450 million customers is simply unimaginable for someone not to be there.
Where the digital giants could pay fines of several billion dollars without blinking an eye — by the way, when they had to pay them, after long years of procedures, which were not systematic, far from it — today none of them can afford not to be on our the market.
9to5Mac’s Take
As with the DOJ antitrust lawsuit in the US, the way the DMA is interpreted in some areas seems to push the boundaries of what would be reasonable and practical, and this is certainly one of them.
Photos are arguably the most sensitive form of personal data, and Apple goes to great lengths to ensure they are properly protected. If a third-party app wants to access our photos (that is, it wants to access Apple’s Photos app), it must ask for the user’s permission. Apple allows us to grant permissions for only specific photos or for all photos. iOS also proactively reminds us from time to time that certain apps still have access to our photos and checks if we want that permission to remain in place.
Letting a third-party app take over the photos role would be too risky for me.
As for Apple leaving the EU market, I agree with Breton that this is not a realistic prospect. But I would argue the same with Apple being fined 10% of global turnover: it’s a terrifying prospect intended to shock companies into compliance. The EU has had the power to impose similar percentage-based fines, such as 4% of global turnover for GDPR privacy violations, for years, but none of the fines issued have ever come close to the maximum.
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