Digital rights advocacy organizations are alleging that Apple is not fulfilling its interoperability obligations under the EU's Digital Markets Act (DMA). They argue that Apple's practices related to iOS connectivity features like AirDrop and its handling of developer requests for interoperability are deficient and hinder competition. The groups are calling on the European Commission to take action against Apple, including prohibiting the use of non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) at Apple's discretion, implementing a standardized interoperability request form, and mandating improvements to Apple's bug reporting system.
Digital rights advocacy organizations contend that Apple has failed to comply with its interoperability obligations under the EU's Digital Markets Act .Article 6 matters because it requires companies designated as gatekeepers – Alphabet, Amazon, Apple , ByteDance, Meta, and Microsoft – to provide non-discriminatory access to, or interoperation with, designated software and hardware, to promote competition.
"We maintain that Apple should not be permitted to rely on security by obscurity, even though it is presently practiced in iOS," the letter says."On the contrary, the developer should be allowed to claim that the implementation of an interoperability solution is in place based on Open Standards and publicly available documentation, the burden would fall on Apple to prove otherwise.
What's more, they contend, tracking interoperability requests is made harder by the lack of a public bug tracking system – a sore point in the Apple developer community since at least 2011 when Tim Burks and Chris Verwymeren set up Open Radar, an unofficial bug-report-sharing site for third-party Apple developers.
The letter goes on to claim that Apple, through its app notarization process,"can leverage multiple channels under the current request-driven approach as a means to block interoperability."of an interoperability request to make its just-in-time compilation APIs available to iSH, a Linux shell for iOS, the advocacy groups argue that the commission should reconsider how DMA obligations relate to one another lest Apple be allowed to continue strategically blocking interoperability.
APPLE EU DIGITAL MARKETS ACT INTEROPERABILITY COMPETITION DEVELOPERS
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