Now, let me understand: the European Union claims that Apple Renda Airdrop (the function that allows you to share a photo or file simply by approaching one Apple device to another) compatible with external devices, that is Android and the like. It is the same story of the sockets for the chargers.
Consequence: Apple could decide to remove it from the iPhones sold in Europe, and of course all scandalized, indignant, as if the fault was of Apple, as if Airdrop was a denied human right, but it does not work like this. An invented technology, developed and integrated by a private company is not a public good to redistribute by law (and should not even become by bureaucratic decree, just because it works too well).
Apple, you know, has always built its closed (and winning) ecosystem on this principle: you buy everything Apple, and everything works well. If, on the other hand, you want to mix the worlds, if you want to send a file from a Samsung to an iPhone via Airdrop, then no, that’s not the right place, and it has never been, and it is not a problem, nobody forced you to buy an iPhone. Except that Europe has decided that, since Airdrop works too well, then it must be shared with everyone, as if a restaurant that cooks better than the others was forced to pass its recipes to the competition, for “interoperability”.
It is as if the EU wants to hack airdrop from above, against the Apple fisulia (which is based on safety, and that the EU, fixed with safety and privacy, wants to impose this to Apple is paradoxical). Apple said no, and if it loses the appeal it will do very well to remove the function in Europe (better to remove it than to open it, better a coherent and castrated iPhone than an ideologically contaminated iPhone).
This story does not concern only AIRDRPR, it concerns the very idea of Apple, which has never been that of the opening to everyone, but of the exclusive integration, of the closed experience, of the totalizing ecosystem (and this is why Apple works, this is what distinguishes it), it is precisely for this reason I continue to buy iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, because they are designed to work with each other, and not with the rest of the world (despite the rest of the world (despite the rest of the world ( pissed off, of which I wrote here.
It is not new, Steve Jobs also said it at the birth of Apple, with the first Macs and then the iPhones and iPads, when the choice of a closed system defended by explaining that only in this way could a truly controlled user experience be guaranteed. He also said that it was a risk (because a closed system, if it does not work, dies), but if it works dominates, and in fact it has worked, it has worked so well that Europe now wants to open it to hammers.
The EU wants a world of devices all compatible, all exchangeable, all the same, all miserably standardized, they call it competition, for me it is only a leveling downwards, where those who have built something that works must go down to the level of those who have never succeeded with the noble alibi of consumer protection, as always).
There is the question of privacy: Apple rightly claims that opening AIRDRPS would put users’ security at risk, and here the critics are hurrying to laugh, instead it is true: Apple does not even share the data with itself, let alone if it can share them with Xiaomi. And no, it is not “closure”, it is design, it is the only real difference between those who build a coherent system and those who mount random pieces hoping that they work.
If you agree to open AIRDRrop, later it will also be up to open iMassage, Facetime, AirPods, and then Siri will also have to respond on Alexa, then maybe the iPhone will have to be compatible with the plastic covers of the markets (because it is not right), and and that point is no longer an iPhone, it is a faded copy of itself, mutilated by a bureaucratic vision of technology.
So yes, if Europe will force Apple to change, I hope Apple withdraws Airdrop from the European iPhones, not for revenge, for consistency, because a closed system that works should not be opened to make content those that have never succeeded, and if this means having less functions in Europe, worse for Europe, not for Apple, and not even for me, which I prefer an iPhone with a function less but an extra identity
rather than a castrated device by law and universally compatible with nothing, that is, with Android, with Windows, with politics, with mediocrity, with social envy, with everything except with intelligence.