There are 2 potential outcomes: either the sky really does fall, and there's a meaningful uptick in bad things happening to iPhone users, in which Apple can easily point the finger at the EC and say "they made us do this". Apple looks like the good guys who put up a good fight for their users, but ultimately their hands were tied, and they'll probably get the revisions to EU law they're so desperately fighting for.
The other possibility is that the sky does not fall, and Apple looks both silly and malicious at the same time for ever having suggested that it would, which was clearly in bad faith.
Clearly, Apple cannot afford scenario #2, so I think they will probably never give their users the actual freedom that the MDA requires them to. They will just exit Europe entirely before allowing that to happen.
I think the most likely outcome is between these two extremes. My personal data ends up sold to shady companies who use it to target ever more invasive advertising at me in places I wouldn't expect/. Like a boiling frog, I won't really notice the difference and my life will gradually become a little shittier.
For the people who want a bit of freedom though, their lives will suddenly get a lot better.
Which Facebook and instagram will present as “tee hee updated terms of service” in the first 15 seconds, and people will tick it, because they’re not interested in reading T&C’s, just want to message their friend about dinner, and aren’t suddenly expected be deceived like that.
That's how it should be done. And that would be the responsible way to comply with the DMA.
I'd prefer they focus on safeguarding my data instead of playing a ridiculous game of brinksmanship with regulators to make a point.
I don't think that is what will happen. People, and the media, will blame Apple: it is them after all giving that data over because they hold it. No that doesn't make logical sense, but that has never mattered before why would it matter now.
Once Apple loses that trust re. data privacy, its gone forever. I get why they're being particular about it.
Apple has very well-funded PR. They will make sure that the EC is blamed.
Then, they get to be the heroes once the law is changed to allow them to come to everyone's rescue by banishing all third-party app access forever. They would ultimately be the saviours.
It's not extreme interpretation, it's the intent.
Just say it would break your vendor lock-in.
EU has great intentions, and of course, feature parity should be offered so that competition can exist, but I don't find it crazy that it is more complicated on a product like that. As tech people things are very obvious to us but we need to remember that we are talking about a product used by everyone.
As an Apple user I feel more patronized than empowered here.
Those are allowed via contextual consent prompts, several of which are for specific contacts, specific photos you wish to share, and so on.
Examples of the level of access an AI agent has include:
1. To read all indexed personal data from every app installed on the device
2. To perform actions in every supporting app on the device on the user's behalf
3. To read the current displayed apps for additional context as well as sensor data like current location
If you were regulated such that you had to allow any organization this level of access, and if you were hand-tied in how much you could convey the seriousness of accepting that consent prompt to an ordinary end user, and felt that it would be you, not any legal authority, who would ultimately suffer the reputational and legal consequences for the results - what would your yes/no decision be on shipping the feature in that jurisdiction?
One can imagine contextual prompts for all of the examples that you give, like which data sources and which apps the AI provider is given access to — similar to how you can choose for a Safari extension which websites it has access to — and for how long.
That all seams reasonably implementable. You could even use multiple AI providers in parallel with different subsets of data and apps, which would allow you to compartementalize access by different providers in a way that isn't possible with Apple's AI.
Such integration interfaces are necessary in the long run if we don't want to lock in our whole life to a singular combination of hardware, OS, and AI provider.
The situation is that Apple won't even allow users to grant elevated permissions to any 3rd party app, even if the user wants to.
App permissions.
Beside you don't have to install any third party app, I only have Google assistant installed on my Android.
I heard the same kind of talk when the eu forced apple to switch to USB C...
There is a real, strong, monopolistic issue with some American companies that their government refuse to deal with because it's so corrupt. It would be fine if it didn't impact us in Europe, but it does.
The AI provider would still be YOUR choice. You could stick with Apple's if you don't trust the other ones.
- Apple has powerful capabilities in iOS to enable Siri AI.
- EU's DMA requires them to allow users to install third-party AI backends.
- Apple doesn't think parties other than themselves should be trusted with those iOS permissions.
I guess it'd be like if Apple allowed a first-party screen reader for iOS, so they refused to allow third-party screen readers.
Run by Apple where? Do they really have enough hardware to run it in-house?
See also https://security.apple.com/blog/private-cloud-compute/
I think we have ample evidence that regardless of whether Apple in particular is to be trusted, tech companies by default are certainly not.
Opening up access to users’ private data requires not just any given app to be trustworthy, but all of them.
But why can Tesla ship Grok to their cars in the EU without any problems? Why aren't they required to let me choose between Grok, OpenAI etc or even a custom endpoint?
Simply because they are too small in user count. EU DMA, DSA etc. only apply at certain thresholds. Twitter for example falls under the scope, but Tesla is a distinct entity from Twitter and even if they were merged together, they would still be distinct services in the eye of the law.
It's the user's data. Not Apple's. And it should be the user's right to send it to whoever for whatever results, imo
For example, if I’m maintaining a secure chat app, I think I’d be more likely to adopt the APIs to share the chat messages with the system AI due to Apple’s promises that the data will either be processed On Device, or in their Private Compute Cloud.
If I instead believe that sharing the chat messages with the system AI would cause those messages to be sent to unknown-to-me other entities, I think I’d be less likely to participate in the new API.
This user might be okay with their data going to this other provider, but what about the people they’re messaging? I have a responsibility and a commitment to _all_ of my users to protect their data.
I might not be able to control what any specific user does with the data, but proactively writing the code that sends the chat messages to this other system is something that I have control over.
That's nice of you but your users are going to just copy-paste data to and from ChatGPT anyway.
It's clearly just Apple not wanting to further open up their platform to competition.
- “instagram is better with MetaAi: yes/ask-me-later”.
- updated ToS which bundles a “we’ll use our own ai, and do whatever we waaaaant”
Lying, gaslighting and underhanded “growth hacking” tricks are their bread-and-butter, and you can be sure that whatever they’d have you install would blindly slurp up as much as they possibly can with zero regard for user privacy.
Yeah, that's the whole fucking point.
Since it's the user's device, not Apple's, EU correctly "interprets" this as the user has the right to do whatever they please, including installing third-party chat apps.
Apple are just bulshitters when it comes to actual users, and not their corporate definition of a user.
BTW, did you know that in Japan, and in Japan only, you can change the Siri shortcut button to start other voice assistants? https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/11/18/ios-26-2-third-party-voic...
Or that they wouldn't let you set default maps app outside of the EU: https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/03/14/dma-compliance-default-ma...
They were mandated to create a scheme in isolation on a deadline, without having input either from navigation apps or from consumers, and without any requirement that web browsers or other operating systems would need to support the same scheme.
As another comment pointed out - it doesn't work. Websites and apps still integrate with a navigation product directly, rather than use this scheme. And why wouldn't they? Even if it was launched worldwide on iOS, it still is just a defined subset of any particular navigation product functionality. It also is just yet another navigation option to integrate into your platform, since the feature still wouldn't be available on desktops/Android.
Until everyone is sitting at the table wanting to work towards interoperability, the feature simply can't work. So why perpetuate a broken chooser into other markets?
Self-imposed isolation and deadline.
> without having input either from navigation apps or from consumers
Because Apple never asked either navigation app developers or consumers since "Apple knows best" and spent several years fighting DMA instead of implementing these features.
> Websites and apps still integrate with a navigation product directly, rather than use this scheme.
Because there was no scheme to begin with, and when Apple finally relented and made it, it only made it available in the EU.
> Until everyone is sitting at the table wanting to work towards interoperability, the feature simply can't work.
Yes, Apple doesn't want to sit at the table to work towards interoperability.
Apple Maps was made default on iOS in 2012. They literally only implemented the "scheme" last year, 13 years later.
DMA entered force in 2022. Apple had known about it coming for at least two years before that.
And even without DMA that would be a proper thing to do to begin with which they had to be forced to do by government action.
It’s paternalistic, but I agree with Apple that free for all access to this kind of data is not a great idea. Ironically, before this could work we’d actually need much more EU style data regulation, and more consistently enforced.
Ultimately I think it's important for the EU to regulate companies like apple to ensure competition. But in this instance, it doesn't seem like we have all the other pieces in place that would be necessary for a sensible rollout of that.
Funny how the word user never enters these conversations. As in user device that the user has paid for and where the user should have a choice of what the user wants to do.
And we know why. E.g. Apple literally argues that giving users more choice forces Apple to give users less choice: https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2025/09/the-digital-markets-a...
Apple uses "privacy and security" as a cudgel to prevent anyone from breaking into the vendor lock in. To the point that EU actually had to explicitly tell Apple what to do [1], as Apple delayed features, made them extremely hard or convoluted for third-parties to use, and pulled every trick out of the malicious compliance manual.
This whole virtual assistants thing will drag on for another several years.
Edit: I mean they show their models accessing and changing a password on the user's bank site at the same time as accessing and changing passwords on another random site. Which is one prompt away from exfiltrating user data. So spare me the "Apple knows best about privacy and security so they should keep any access to their platforms locked down"
[1] https://digital-markets-act.ec.europa.eu/developer-portal/in...
Apples incentives are not, currently, as strongly misaligned with their user interests as many other tech firms (meta, google, random startups, etc). Going slowly might not be a bad idea for most people here.
That said, I hadn't seen the demo you mention. If they do do that (bank passwords etc) they are stupider than I thought they would be.
Unless Apple proves otherwise I'm more inclined to believe they're either 1. Using this to try and shape the DMA in their own interest (definitely not their users' interest) or 2. Doing something with the data that would not be allowed in the EU (also not in their users' interest at all) or both.
https://www.macworld.com/article/3156959/apple-to-use-google...
People have to stop thinking Apple is somehow different.
> Apple’s going to try to run as much of the new Siri as possible on-device
Anthropic and OpenAI don't have edge models.