from Hacker News

Apple announces App Store changes in the EU

by saubeidl on 6/26/25, 7:54 PM with 111 comments

• by fxtentacle on 6/26/25, 8:31 PM

  "The European Commission is requiring Apple to make a series of additional changes to the App Store. We disagree with this outcome and plan to appeal."

  Reading that made me very happy. It clearly shows that EU bureaucrats - despite their bad reputation - still have teeth when it comes to reigning in overly greedy US companies. Back in '98, the EU versions of Windows were very desirable, as they were free of bloatware. Soon, history might repeat with US consumers pretending to be in the EU to free their hardware.

• by rcarmo on 6/26/25, 8:44 PM

  Still waiting for the ability to compile and deploy my own apps on the hardware I own without having to re-sign and reload every week or so. If you don't intend to distribute an app, I don't see why you should be unduly penalized for it.

• by rekoil on 6/26/25, 8:11 PM

      Developers who opt for tier one will get access to a limited set of mandatory App Store services, including:
      * App distribution and delivery
      * Trust and safety features
      * App management
      [...]
      Developers who opt for tier two will get access to all services provided by the App Store today.
  

  Am I wrong or does it seem like apps in "tier 1" won't even have access to app notification delivery? That's wild...

• by martinald on 6/26/25, 8:45 PM

  No automatic updates surely makes tier one a non starter, unless this can be automatically triggered by the app? For regular users it will mean horrendous version fragmentation that will just get worse and worse over the months/years. Or significantly increases churn by forcing users to manually go into the app store to update before accessing the app?

• by lofaszvanitt on 6/26/25, 8:22 PM

  Apple is already a big, festering, malignant growth. The EU needs to jump in with both feet to let all that pus out.