Apple's vice president of products & regulatory law Kyle Andeer lashed out at the European Union's Digital Markets Act, repeating the refrains that unfair targeting and requirement that it must share tech with rivals will put users worldwide at risk.
Two years after the Digital Market Act went into effect, Apple is still vehemently opposed to the European Union telling it what to do.
It's hardly a new stance. Apple has been beating the same drum since the Digital Markets Act (DMA) was first proposed.
However, Apple's vice president of products & regulatory law, Kyle Andeer, is ready to talk about how frustrated Apple is with the whole situation.
In late April, the European Commission gave its first review of the DMA. And, according to the review, the Commission believes it's made a positive impact overall.
But Apple isn't on board. In a new interview with Handelsblatt, Andeer says that the company had hoped for a different outcome.
"We had hoped that the review would give the EU a reason for sober reflection," he said, adding that a "a kind of self-therapy defense came out."
Andeer isn't surprised, though. He argues that, of course, the Commission thought the results were positive, as it was reviewing its own work.
In the interview, Andeer does point out that the DMA hasn't had a negative impact on Apple's sales, yet. But that doesn't seem to be what the company is concerned with, either.
For Apple's part, the company believes the DMA continues to put user data at risk while stifling innovation on Apple's end. Andeer points out that forced interoperability could allow a company, like Meta, to access an iOS user's Wi-Fi login history. This would allow the social media company to build profiles on user habits, frequent shopping locations, and so forth, without being given permission by the user.
"This is a concern for us and it is a vulnerability that threatens privacy," he says. The company provided EU with examples of such issues, and that "they seem to be ignoring it."
When it comes to the third-party App Store issue, something Apple has long railed against, Andeer makes a moral argument. The company is worried that alternative app stores could introduce pornography and gambling to Apple devices.
While Apple has a hard stance on pornography, it does allow gambling apps on its platform.
Apple also takes issue with the idea of sharing its innovations, claiming that it's the only one that is being asked to do so.
Specifically, Andeer references the AirPods translation feature, which saw delayed release in Europe. Apple would not be allowed to bring the feature to the region until it made it available on other companies' products.
The EU isn't the only ground Apple's fighting a battle on, either. In late April, the company's massive lobbying effort saved it from new App Store rules.
Apple, along with Google, managed to defeat a California bill that would have forced them to stop favoring their own apps in digital storefronts like the App Store. The bill was defeated less than a month after it was proposed.
