What applications are necessary to call it a general purpose computer? A web browser? A self-hosted development environment? I don't think there's a bright line between what applications a Playstation or Xbox has versus what a phone has.

And it's not like the iPhone is the only phone you can get. If Apple is restricting such a core component of our lives, you can simply buy non-Apple products.

On my smartphone I have:

- an app that's used by pharmacies to handle prescriptions from the public health system;

- an app I can legally show a police officer so they can determine that I have a valid driver's license;

- an app I can use to pay my taxes;

- an app I can use to pay parking meters to the local authorities;

- apps used to register consumption (kWh, m3, etc) with the local utilities.

Some of these are published by the government itself, others by public companies. A smartphone is not a Playstation or an Xbox. We have Androids and iPhones, that's it. And significant portions of our lives are tied to having Androids and iPhones.

PS: I also remember having an app that used an API purportedly developed with amazing good will to help public health systems trace COVID exposure. Remember that one? How everyone having a smartphone was going to help get us back to the subway safely?

So your argument for why we don’t need to open up game consoles is because they are not already open? Isn’t that circular reasoning?

My argument is we regulate these companies and not others because these are important to society, yes. Same as we regulate phone companies or the internet.

We can't allow two global multinationals to gatekeep this much of our modern lives and simply do nothing about it. Or we could, but we don't want to.

Apple and Google can leave the market if they don't like the rules.

Doesn't that argument prove too much? I can think of several things that are much more important to society but regulated less. For example, books are important to society. Should the government dictate what books publishers are allowed to publish? After all, certain ideas are extremely corrosive to society and should be discouraged. (I can think of a few religious texts that might fall under that umbrella.) Or what about the opposite? Amazon doesn't sell certain books on its Kindle platform. Just like Apple and the iPhone, shouldn't Amazon be forced to support third party stores for the Kindle?

Apple's app store isn't nearly as important to society as books, but the EU regulates it much more. That makes me think that the driving factor behind these particular regulations is not importance to society.

The government isn't dictating which books are allowed to be published, it's arguing (amongst other things) that self publishing books should be possible, which it is.

Being a successful smartphone manufacturer (or a smartphone OS manufacturer), shouldn't give you a monopoly on software distribution, that's the entire point.

And even the Kindle, which doesn't have the market relevance of iOS, isn't as locked down as iOS: the Kindle does support reading ebooks from other sources, they just don't support DRM from other stores.

It's not about how you might use the device. it's about how people actually use them. Maybe a dozen ppl have ever used the browser on a PlayStation. When you lose your phone, on the other hand, it literally feels weird to go about your day without one.

Right now you have a "Hobson's choice", but if you could ditch the iPhone while still keeping access to iMessage and iCloud, wouldn't you?

I don't really care about iMessage or iCloud. Yes the blue text looks nicer and the quality of images in messages is a little better, but it's not a deal breaker if I'm messaging an Android user. I have less than a gigabyte of stuff in iCloud and I don't know how it got there.

I use iPhones because they're smaller than Android phones. Would I like it if Apple still made phones in the form factor of the iPhone 4 or 5? Absolutely. Should the government force Apple to do that? Probably not.

It's really a lot more simple than you're making it out to be. The word 'purpose' refers to intent, not capability. Xbox is a gaming console because that's what it was meant to be. The iPhone is intended to run many different categories of applications, because that's what it was designed to do.

In that case, why is the EU forcing Apple to support alternative app stores for watchOS and tvOS, not just iOS and iPadOS? The Apple Watch and Apple TV aren't designed to be general purpose.

Because they don't have the numbers to matter, that's why. I know it can be hard to keep several distinct conditions in the head at once, but it's important to remember that just because one can satisfy a single condition does not mean a law which requires several conditions to be true will necessarily apply.

I think you misread my comment. The EU is forcing Apple to support alternative app stores for watchOS and tvOS. These are not general purpose devices and they have comparable or lower sales than game consoles.

I also misread your point. Is watchOs and tvOS targeted by this ? I thought they were exempt, the same way macOS is exempt.

As I read it they're subject to the anti steering and alternative PSP ruling, but not app downloads nor alternative app stores.

That's two limitations the other platforms don't have.

Because they're interconnected enough that the EU lumps them in with the rest of the ecosystem for anticompetitive purposes? I wasn't necessarily agreeing with the rationale above, just commenting on what a 'special purpose computer' is.

But Microsoft has a single store for both Windows and Xbox apps. So why isn't the EU forcing Microsoft to open up the Xbox?

Probably because the Windows store is the furthest thing from an anticompetitive marketplace? I don't even know anyone who uses it.

That is a great question which is answered by the Digital Markets Act.

> I don't think there's a bright line

Well there is one. The bright line would be the services that the DMA applies to or doesn't. That is a bright line.

Games consoles are designed, marketed and used to play games and for similar entertainment purposes.

You are not going to do your online banking on an Xbox, or write a letter on a PlayStation, even if the hardware is theoretically capable of that, it’s just not what it’s for.

That's what people said about phones at first too. The Nintendo Switch has the same capabilities with its touchscreen. Its more than capable of taking the place of an iPad.

That's what people said about phones and cell phones, not about smartphones and there's a meaningful difference. "Phones" include analog devices that send voltage over copper wires to make sound at each end and they were never nor will ever be capable of use as a general purpose computer, so care with product categories must be taken. The thing my grandfather used first as a child to call across town to his uncle is not the same thing our children are carrying in their pockets to watch TikToks, and any more than a carrier pigeon is a 747.