EU orders Apple to open up iOS connectivity features

With the Digital Markets Act adopted in 2022, the European Union has identified Apple’s iOS (as well as other companies’ products) as “Gatekeepers” that have such a stranglehold on the market that they should be required to comply with certain rules about interoperability and openness to competing software and services.

Users in Europe have already seen some results of this. Compared to iPhones in the rest of the world, iOS in Europe offers unique capabilities: EU users can sideload apps and use alternative app stores, access different payment processors with Apple Pay, use apps Apple doesn’t allow elsewhere such as BitTorrent clients and clipboard managers, and can set default applications for a variety of common phone tasks.

Apple has always insisted that these changes will compromise their user’s privacy and security, harm the user experience, and hinder Apple’s ability to make great products. So far, the changes don’t appear to have had such a deleterious effect, but the EU says Apple is not fully in compliance with the Digital Markets Act and ordered Apple to make new specific changes to comply with its interoperability directives.

There are two new directives (case DMA.100203 and DMA.100204). One specifies ways in which Apple must create better interoperability with third-party apps, services, and devices. The other details how Apple must communicate and administer its interoperability functions to developers.

Here is how the European Commission has described the feature changes Apple must make to enhance interoperability:

• iOS notifications: Allows connected devices, such as smartwatches, to show and react to iOS notifications.
• Background execution: Executes certain actions with respect to connected physical devices “in the background,” i.e. without the user looking directly at the app. For example, the iPhone can fetch the latest weather information and synchronize it to a smartwatch, without the need for active user interaction.
• Automatic audio switching:  Allows users to switch between two devices, for example between a smartphone and a computer, when listening to audio with supported headphones.
• High-bandwidth peer-to-peer Wi-Fi connections: Establishes a high-bandwidth Wi-Fi connection between an iOS device and connected physical devices. This high-speed connection can be used to share large files between two devices, or to cast on an iPhone what can be seen on virtual reality glasses.
• Close-range wireless file transfers: Allows devices to access the same iOS-controlled features as Apple’s services in third-party file-sharing apps, creating, for example, alternatives to AirDrop.
• Media casting: Allows developers to develop an alternative media casting solution to AirPlay by granting them access to required software features in a non-discriminatory way to AirPlay.
• NFC controllers: Allows apps on an iPhone to communicate with connected devices, such as rings or bracelets, to provide them with information such as a user’s payment card details. The end user can then use the ring or bracelet in a shop to perform payment transactions like with a payment card without the presence of the iPhone. Moreover, physical smart cards can easily be read for instance to activate or secure mobile banking.
• Proximity-triggered pairing: Allows connected physical devices to pair with an iOS device through a simplified procedure. For example, when the user brings a new headset near the iPhone it should be able to pair immediately through a simple and streamlined procedure, independently of whether the headset is an Apple product or a third-party brand. 
• Automatic Wi-Fi connection: Allows devices to access information about local Wi-Fi networks saved on the iPhone and connected physical devices to seamlessly join these networks. 

In other words, third-party headphones have to be able to provide the same easy proximity-pairing and automatic audio switching as AirPods do. Non-Apple devices have to be able to show and react to notifications the way Apple products do (this is a big one for third-party watches, such as the new Pebble). Developers have to be allowed to develop and publish alternatives to AirDrop and AirPlay that aren’t hamstrung compared to Apple’s solutions. And Apple has to fully open up its NFC implementation.

The EU further specifies that Apple has to enable interoperability features through complete, free, and well-documented APIs, that they have to be equally effective as the solutions Apple uses (no more “Apple can use functions nobody else can” stuff), and Apple has to make new functionality within these interoperability categories available to third parties at the same time they are available to Apple.

If you’re excited about the prospect of third-party hardware that works better with your iPhone, you should know that these features are only required on iPhones sold within the European Union. Already, iOS has access and openness within the EU that it doesn’t in other locations. Apple may make some of these changes globally, but thus far its DMA compliance measures have been exclusive to iOS users within the EU.

Apple’s response

Naturally, Apple isn’t happy about this. Whenever a court or government tells Apple what it has to do, the company pushes back hard, claiming that compliance will cause irreparable harm to users. In a statement to several media sites, Apple said:

“Today’s decisions wrap us in red tape, slowing down Apple’s ability to innovate for users in Europe and forcing us to give away our new features for free to companies who don’t have to play by the same rules. It’s bad for our products and for our European users. We will continue to work with the European Commission to help them understand our concerns on behalf of our users.“