Apple's hardware since the 2021 iPad Pro (with M1) has had the ability to do this. The iPads have the RAM (16gb on higher storage models), appropriate keyboard and trackpads, the works. Great hardware being held back by Apple's vision people weren't allowed to deviate from.

A straightforward reading of the DMA suggests that Apple is not allowed to restrict apps from using hardware features. Let's hope that means Parallels/VMware style VMs are possible without too much of a fight.

I was skeptical about getting a Linux tablet because of the worse battery life and less polished overall experience, but having a desktop Firefox with all add-ons, my text editor of choice, and the ability to open a terminal and run whatever I want really more than makes up for it (Plus GNOME is a pretty good tablet experience out of the box these days as long as you broadly stick to their 'official' apps).

Felt the goal was to overtake Mac during the 2015-2019 era, all the real engineering focus was on iPad, the Macs were underpowered and not really fit for purpose.

Why would Apple choose a platform where they don't get 30% of every Creative Cloud sub when they could have had that.

Only reason they backtracked was because Mac sales didn't fall off and the iPad just isn't that good to do real work on.

Everything in Apple is designed to silo off the two product groups.

An "iPad with MacOS" would just shift revenue from the MacOS division to the iPad division, losing a MacOS customer and probably NOT gaining a iPad customer (as he would have purchased an iPad anyway).

Just as much as developing an MacBook convertible is not an issue of user experience but an issue of unnecessary cannibalization of iPad sales...

From mid-to-late 90s onwards a mobile phone was basically an essential item.

I was never tempted to buy an iPod, but combine the phone and iPod and give me internet access to boot... sold.

Before the iPhone there were already phones which could play music and access the web. I even remember some Motorolas which interacted directly with iTunes. The iPhone didn’t succeed just by smooshing those together.

Either way, that’s neither here nor there, the point is precisely that Apple didn’t shy away from cannibalising their own product.

The point is that TODAY the PC line and the iPad line of Apple are quite notable silo'ed to very specific usage-patterns.

There is no technical reason for that, but the distinct commercial reason that there is nothing to gain in terms of revenue or profit by combining the two products into one.

They both sell fine and at great margin separately, there is little to gain by building an iPad Pro that is 2000 USD and supports the use-cases of both a 600 USD iPad and a 1600 USD MacBook respectively.

Quite bluntly: You want the iPad to be convenient in a workflow as far as possible, and then SUCK really bad in a way only a fully synchronized Macbook can fix.

The iPhone was an iPod combined with an iTunes store, allowing the user to buy content without being in front of a PC, and only buy from Apple.

It was an iPod and a Browser that could be sold in huge volumes via a carrier.

Ah yeah. And a Phone.

Apple is building the hardware, and they decide that the Pencil use-case a iPhone user may have shall not be covered by buying an Apple Pencil, but by buying an iPad (and a Apple Pencil)

They also decided for a while that all their premium iPhones shall have "Force Touch", an entirely unique display technology only for iPhones to sense pressure without the potential of additional accessory sales.

These are all valid decisions. They are not a charity, they operate to maximize the profit they can gain from each customer.

The iPad has the big "issue" of barely needing to be replaced with new models, as most use-cases are consumption-oriented and there are no real disrupting sales-driving requirements for iPad media consumption.

So the Pencil was created to drive the proposition towards Media CREATION, because people would buy a new, more-expensive iPad then and requirements for that segment are constantly increasing (better pencils, lower latency, more-demanding apps).

Also in the past year: iPhone increases focus on Media recording with more-complex video features, iPad is tagging along with demanding Media processing use-cases

Do not think it's possible. Traditional Mac computers can win in so many ways

Apple isn’t afraid to cannibalise its own products. They did exactly that with the iPhone in regard to the iPod. If someone is going to displace one of your most successful products, it better be yourself with something even more outstanding.

It would have been in Apple’s best (financial) interest to have the iPad cannibalise the Mac because they’d have more control and earn more money from app sales.

Tantalizingly close to perfection with one glaring flaw is extremely frustrating!

https://imgur.com/svSZzYD

Obviously not for full time use, but as something you can plug in if you're traveling, it's amazing

https://blink.sh/

see also https://docs.blink.sh/advanced/code

After installing https://ish.app for Alpine Linux emulation on iPad, one immediately comes up with use cases, even though it's excruciatingly slow.

Hopefully Apple opens up the imminent M3 iPad Pros to allow macOS and Linux VMs, even if the feature is initially price segmented to devices with extra RAM. The iPad 4:3 high-resolution screen offers unmatched vertical real estate for text editing.

They are well-aware of this, visible from the fact that they never bothered to add a touch panel or Pen-support to any MacBook, or make the Watch a standalone device: Customers wanting this either buy the devices individually anyway, or wouldn't be willing to hand over the sum of all combined devices for a single "superset" device.

Just imagine that Apple's view of the "iPad Pro with MacOS" demographic are customers who purchased a 1600 USD MacBook and a 1000 USD iPad. Is the "iPad with MacOS" able to replace either of those? Would they be able to charge 2600 USD for that device and sell comparable volumes?

"iPad with MacOS VM" is technically adjacent to "iPad with Linux VM", since both make use of hardware nested virtualization support that is present on Apple M* processors. Good performance/watt Linux on Arm will launch in a month on Microsoft/HP/Dell/Lenovo/etc laptops and tablets with Qualcomm-Nuvia (ex-Apple) Snapdragon Elite X.

If Apple opens up Linux VMs on iPad (as a side effect of opening MacOS VMs), they can keep some users entirely within the Apple walled garden, similar to Microsoft's introduction of WSL on Windows. If they allow defections to Nuvia hardware, it can expand to Macbooks Pros, given the Qualcomm roadmap for AI silicon on laptops, co-funded by billions of automotive pipeline.

Those who already purchased two Apple devices have already given their money to Apple. They won't do it again, since iPads are already overpowered for the artificially constrained use cases. If new iPads with extra memory/storage allow VMs, that's net new revenue above the $1500 price point. We'll find out next week.

Unless, of course, you’re suggesting that it be made available for Android users as well.

It's amazing when you shut down the telemetry-battery-draining functionality of devices. And to add some more insult, I am using an Android phone, which ofc don't even try to connect to my watch :) I believe -and Gemini just confirmed- that they don't work together.

> it depends on a larger device for configuration

yes, the architecture was purposfully made, so that the Watch only collects your bio-metrics, with limited own/independent functionality. They (Apple) does want everyone in the 'garden', so why open it up?

> I see the Watch the same as a late 90s Palm device.

Yes, but the LTE-variant is more along the lines of a Palm Treo.

Apple could probably make it link to a MacBook with very little effort, and to all other platforms with just a little more.

It's just a direction not worth for Apple to explore, because in their view those are just customers who have "not yet bought an iPhone", so why try to win them with the Watch if it just prolongs their journey to the iPhone

Actually I’d love to run a Linux VM on my iPhone too!

Like not having reliable internet access everywhere. In a lot of areas mobile internet is spotty. Or you're in roaming so it's insanely expensive.

Plus we already have these powerful devices in out pocket, more powerful than PC's were 10 years ago, sitting idly doing nothing most of the time, why not put them to use when in need instead of paying for some extra remote cloud compute on top of that.

Also, VMs don't just mean Linux for web development, it could be a VM for retro gaming or running things in VM for security sandboxing etc. That would be really neat to always have with me instead of having to ssh all the time.

But It will run down the battery only for me, not for you. Why do you care about how I want use my battery life? You don't have to do what I do, with your own phone. You can just keep using like a regular phone if that's all you want. Me having more freedom with my own device, does not reduce your freedoms you have with your own device.

I paid for the device and I own it so why shouldn't I be allowed to use it how I like even if it runs the battery in 2 hours? That's why I have portable power banks and GAN chargers. They can even throw in a disclaimer about waving your rights to warranty for devices used like that.

Otherwise what's the point of all that technological progress of M* chips if all that we're allowed to wo with them is browse Instagram but now even faster, and play Candy Crush but now with ray tracing.

I was just pointing at an aspect of how these devices are engineered. In fact, I jailbroke my first iPhone and spent years running with a rooted and modded Android device. So, be my guest...

> Otherwise what's the point of all that technological progress of M* chips

Showing that ARM is a viable computation platform? I'm not particularly enamored of the Apple ecosystem. It's great for what I use them for and awful for anything else. Reverse-engineering is an option, but I prefer focusing my efforts on more hackable platforms for my tinkering. Unless the law mandates openness, I'm not seeing Apple's stance changing.

And you pointed at the wrong thing. Apple isn't preventing you from running VMs on their M* iPhones to stop you from draining your battery too fast. Come on, don't act this naive.

>Showing that ARM is a viable computation platform?

If their motives were that charitable, and cared so much about the ARM platform, they would open up their M* platform to others to run whatever OS they want on it and provide OSS drivers, no keep it as locked as possible.

Apple silicon?

First, in the major European city where I live mobile internet is not super reliable and flat data packs are relatively expensive - I have one because I develop a lot on trains, but most of my friends don't.

Second: it's a waste of hardware and money. If I can already run the thing on my device, renting twice as much hardware for the same result is hard to justify.

And finally, it keeps my data under my power. Some of the work I do has strict requirements on what I can do with the data, and "upload it to a cheap cloud provider" is not on that list.

At some point i had multiple older iPads with perfectly great screens, and i wanted to use them as "hubs" for a home setup to control various things, another option was using them as secondary screens, or maybe just give them to a kid.

You couldn't, they were simply to old for the new IOS update, and almost all apps including browsers requires the newer IOS and update automatically without asking - essentially bricking them on purpose.

Anyway i ended up giving them to a "safe e-waste center" but i'm sceptical they'll actually be recycled.

I think locking down a device should be illegal especially e-waste considered, and if there's some reason not to, then it should at least be opened the day official support ends so the device can be used to watch videos/games for kids/whatever.

I have a Sony Xperia phone from 2017. It has stopped receiving OS updates after Android 8, and I don't use it any more other than occasionally as a backup phone. A while ago, I discovered that people on xda are putting LineageOS (a custom ROM based on AOSP) with Android 14 on it, tried that myself, and it works! As slow as the phone is, it can run apps without any problem. This is truly amazing.

So yeah, i'm sceptical. There's a reason it's called reduce, re-use, recycle as a very distant third as far as i've seen.

...but nothing on the iPad can _really_ use it.

I can buy a 15" screen right now for under $75. It's the ultimate super-thin laptop if you remove the compute and keep the brick in your purse/backpack/holster.

For extra points, connect two compute bricks for more muscle.

It's just a lot less information dense than macOS, and making it the same scale will make using it as a touch device harder.

But part of it was reconditioning myself; the “proper tablet experience” largely comes from limitations of what they let you do with it. And with more features comes some complexity. For me it’s worth the tradeoff.

No, it wouldn't be. You're probably thinking about gaming consoles who's HW is sold at a loss or at very thin profit margins and subsidized by the more expensive game purchases, but Apple hardware already has the highest profit margins of any HW manufacturer out there, and at their 200 USD per 8GB of commodity RAM and NAND chips, you better believe it.

So no, they don't need the walled garden SW money to fund HW. Their HW alone brings in plenty of cash.

In the current situation Apple has to consider that a marginal price rise in hardware will lose marginal revenue in software, thereby shifting the equilibrium price of hardware lower.

To build intuition on this, it helps to think about the extreme cases: If the marginal cost of production is zero, you can sell the product for close to zero to pick up pennies from almost every human on earth. So the revenue-maximizing and profit-maximizing prices depend on demand elasticity, but are both low.

If the marginal cost of production is a million dollars, selling for anything less than that will result in negative unit economics. You can still maximize revenue with low prices, but that incurs negative per-unit profit. In fact, the price must be more than one million dollars per unit to make any profit. That might imply that the profit-maximizing condition is one unit sold for $1m+1.

For certain demand curves, that might even imply the profit-maximizing condition is to tell zero units! A real-world example of this is Rivian. They have negative unit economics, and would be more profitable if they simply stopped production.

I think what confuses some people is that all these things can be (and are) true at once:

1. The price where Apple achieves maximum profit under the new rules is higher than before.

2. After raising prices, that profit will be less than what they earned before.

3. Units sold will be less than before.

4. Apple won't reduce prices in response to the lower profit because the new higher prices, lower quantity and lower profit are profit-maximal under the new market conditions.

What we will observe in practice is not higher MSRPs in Europe, but fewer discounts (it is an open secret that you should never buy an Apple product without at least a 10% discount).

I see a lot of people claiming (I believe disingenuously) that the changes forced by the EU will convince them to consider buying Apple's products in the future. If you believe those people, that's yet another reason to think Apple hardware prices will rise in Europe: Both the supply and demand curves are moving in directions that imply higher prices.

My reasoning was this: If Apple can get away with a higher price without demand dropping off, why would they not charge this higher price in the first place?

But the idea is flawed. Apple could ultimately make more money selling fewer more expensive devices at higher margins than selling more devices at lower margins. So you're absolutely right.

Of course they could also make less profit by protecting their margins. We don't know.

Do I believe indie devs will be worse off? Unfortunately, also yes.

If you are a solo app developer, you will now have to keep presence on all app stores out there, since if you don’t publish on one then a copycat will. Every store would have its own review processes, fee structures, billing and tax procedures. Since you would need to follow a dozen of those, as an indie operation realistically you will either go under or pay middleman companies a chunk for this—so, in the end, you’ll lose the same cut or more and we’re back to the starting point.

Furthermore, I believe you will have much less protection against plain piracy, which was a big thing in the days of yore until it was spectacularly dealt with by Apple within its mobile ecosystem.

This is why I suspect the primary interests side-loading and alt app stores on Apple devices would satisfy is large enterprises and a few opportunistic middlemen. Entities like Epic, Netflix, who will be able to generate more profit; governments, perhaps; a few publishing companies (think CDBaby for apps) will win small time; some users who don’t want to pay and want to get things for free might be able to get their way; indie devs will be worse off.

2) How did this play out on every other platform. Sure - piracy exists, but most don't and it's pretty non-impactful AFAICT.

Took all summer to port those games and I made maybe five bucks for the effort. Never again.

In some way, the success of the App Store towards indie/solo developers is because there was a way to sell things without the piracy easily steal your sales.

Yes, I know that "it's not stealing", "it's not theft", etc. Beside the ethical/moral conundrum of piracy, the fact is that it destroys the market for small developers.

So depending on product category it might be a large drop (EU study finds -38% displacement rate for books) but it might also be a boost (EU study finds +24% for video games), and it is hard to say in general, since even a 90% piracy rate might only mean a maximum of 5%-10% lost sales (from the wolfire blog post). Either way it isn't at the level of "impossible to succeed".

If we are talking about app stores specifically, I bet a much bigger factor in (lack of) success is discoverability, both because your app is literally hard to find and because app store owners allow a flow of cheap clones to compete with your genuine app.

Yes, Adobe, Microsoft or makers of viral AAA games absolutely benefit from piracy (that’s why they have actually tolerated it for decades): it helps their software penetrate the market and get more users hooked up on their ecosystem. However, to John Doe’s lifestyle business of a couple small niche or utility apps each lost sale is bread off the table.

In addition, piracy on iOS is great for major providers who do subscription services (a device where you can pirate means a device with more users, and more users means more monthly revenue).

Again, the people hit the most are the above-mentioned small time John Does.

I would argue almost the opposite way. Users are now conditioned to expect the software to be free with ads of 99 cents. Both greatly lowering the cap on what people can charge for software due to expectations. Instead we've seen the rise of subscription services apps that have no business needing one.

Apple created a new reality where you pay 99 cents and buy to own. It made so very compelling, through general ease of payment flow that just works worldwide and through a large ecosystem of compelling hardware.

Then, subscription behemoths like Epic started crying how it’s all unfair. Of course, it is to them, but there is no way kowtowing to them is beneficial to small app developers.

Disregarding this statement's general silliness, it is also downvoted. Now we're in a paradox. Downvotes mean you're wrong, so the statement that downvotes mean you're wrong..is wrong?

Secondly, the Android ecosystem seems to be doing well even with the situation you describe. There are not that many competing stores (mostly from sellers of devices, like huawei, samsung, amazon, which is something will not happen with Apple devices), and piracy, while present is not as commons as with desktops.

Android apps are notoriously pirated through and through. For a smaller company in developed market anything Android is a second thought because monetization is much harder

I pirated virtually everything I consumed as a kid/teen and now that I have money I pay for it. The companies I pirated off of lost nothing because I had no means to purchase it anyways.

> If you are a solo app developer, you will now have to keep presence on all app stores out there, since if you don’t publish on one then a copycat will.

This doesn't make much sense. The App Store will still be where 90%+ apps are installed from, and I'm willing to bet money on that. Where are all the Google Play devs pushing their apps on the Amazon store or on 3rd party app stores?

> Furthermore, I believe you will have much less protection against plain piracy, which was a big thing in the days of yore until it was spectacularly dealt with by Apple within its mobile ecosystem.

Depending on your familiarity you already had lots of such websites (I'm not going to mention any names but it's easily googleable if anyone wants to verify). Yes keeping the app for >7 days was a pain as they expire but a 3rd party altserver helps with that.

> This is why I suspect the primary interests side-loading and alt app stores on Apple devices would satisfy is large enterprises and a few opportunistic middlemen.

Have you taken a look at any of the privacy forums/subreddits? Places where they use say GrapheneOS? Do you know what's their favorite app store? It's this thing called F-droid. And it only contains open source apps. Such a move would be amazing for open source devs. Hell, it would be great for beginner/hobbyist devs too. I (ages ago) had tried my hand at android dev. And unlike iOS, you don't need to pay $99 to appease the Apple gods for that. Free publishing is great for indie and small devs who may never hit $99/yr revenue.

Btw, afaik you already needed to pay a higher price for youtube premium if subscribing through the app. And apple's draconian/benevolent-and-super-nice policies (/s) meant that you couldn't even tell your users to get it for cheaper from elsewhere. Would you like paying 30% of your income regardless of choice?

Worse off than having 15% to 30% of their entire revenue stream taken? Doubt it.

(Have the top games even changed since then? some variant of Clash of Credit Cards dominating?)

Maybe give it some time to see how things shake out, before tying yourself to strong "beliefs" up front?

Not really a common approach with the people I know.

People can make educated guesses ahead of facts. That's pretty standard.

But having strong "beliefs" without evidence just means there's no real basis for the "belief". And that makes it just an irrational feeling or wish-for-it-to-be-true for whatever reason.

If a copycat is using your brand, you’ll have zero issue removing them from any App Store. If a copycat is just copying your app, well, that’s called a competitor.

Also, web is very open ecosystem and phishing is a problem but for users and corporate, not for small devs

If that's what happens then I see no way for this to be bad for indie devs - the ones who want to write a paid app and can afford the upfront capital to publish can still do so on the store with 99% of users, while those who don't have the capital or don't want to publish paid apps now have the option of going with AltStore.

This is what I hope happens at least, as I am a big fan of Apple hardware but absolutely despise how its software treats me like a baby. If Android can allow for more freedom without compromising security by hiding advanced features behind several scary menus and parental controls then I don't see why Apple can't have the same.

Nobody has to do anything. If you don't want the trouble of publishing on an alt-store to serve your customers, what's the problem of letting others do so?

This is such a lazyness argument, to be honest...

Sideload as Apple implemented, yes. Sideload as what sideload always meant, no.

Apple is trying to distract and mislead the public by redefining what "sideload" means. If I can't install whatever open source shit I build myself on NON-APPLE HARDWARE to an iPhone then it's not sideload. I hope EU figure this out soon and retroactively fine Apple for this dishonest move.

There's a high number of indie devs which just gave up with the cumbersome appstore process. The ones you see on the appstore are the ones who made past this filter already.

I personally advise single devs against making an app unless you are really sure to have the motivation to go through all all of this.

The mobile stores are particularly bad and unsuited for hobbyists or single devs at the moment.

Just compare that to a website where you deploy and you are done.

I really wouldn't worry about it. Those of us who care about this kind of thing are the small minority. I'm incredibly happy to have this in the EU, but am under no illusions that it means the average Joe is going to care enough to jump through the hoops necessary to install (yes, install!) an alternative app store.

i underdstand your worries but at least in my main line of work, i've seen a lot of innovation over the 20 years i've been doing this. fret not. i guess that's a guitar pun.

On the pc, you could create applications entirely out of the control of microsoft (formerly ibm) and the world was better for it.

When ios came out with the app store, apple immediately prevented large swaths of useful applications from seeing the light of day. The debacle with privacy would be of less consequence if Little Snitch had been ported from macos to ios.

oh and a way to do all this without paying rent money to apple...

https://forums.developer.apple.com/forums/thread/91519

https://atlc.apple.com/downloads/AppleDeveloperProgram_FeeWa...

The EU adjust doesn’t get that, and probably never will, because the bureaucrats are more worried about impact to their industry lobbyists than to their citizens.

And yes, I think not being able to put an app on a device that I paid for is dystopian. I also think not being allowed to repair my own devices is dystopian, too.

If no device had ever prevented a user from installing their own home-made apps, "side-loading" would never have become a thing.

For gaming consoles, I was vaguely uneased by it at first, but quickly got over it because it had always been that way. I never had a chance to put my own game on a game console.

But with general-use computers, including mobile phones, the whole idea really bothers me. I PDAs and brick phones had never allowed people to write their own apps, I might be less bothered by it. But (thankfully!) they did. That cat's out of the bag, and long ago.

Even Google's attempts to prevent "sideloading" bother me at this point. Any warning that applies to side-loaded apps should also apply to store-installed apps because they have shown they aren't foolproof.

Last year I got myself an M series iPad "Pro" thinking things would have changed. Well, VS Code was the only product that allowed me to run a tiny VM to edit and deploy my apps online. It worked really well to its credit despite a little bit of hacks (have to save it as a Safari shortcut) but still, a far cry from replacing my MacBook Pro.

I have the same M series Mac mini back home that I do insane multi-tasking on and something I would claim is easily the best god damn computer ever made for IT devs like myself. That's when I realized, the limitation is in the OS and not the hardware. The iPad "Pro" is really powerful for a lot of other stuff. Photo editing, music creation and what not.

Ironically, I saw someone on YouTube get annoyed with the same problem and use a Raspberry Pi attached with the iPad as a MacBook Pro replacement (it draws power from the iPad itself, so it's a single cable solution). I was amazed and sad at the same time that Apple had to push their neglected audience so far to the point of even bundling our own DIY hardware to make it usable to call it a "Pro". The iPad's "Pro" is such a misnomer.

I am still waiting for the day when I can throw away my MacBook Pro and work from a small factor without carrying a brick to charge a 14", almost 3Kg device in my office bag every day.

Hopefully this changes things.

Most people don't need MacBook Pro. Those extra cores just sit idle most of the time if not utilised for heavy computation.

"work from a small factor without carrying a brick to charge a 14", almost 3Kg device"

13" M2 Air - 15 Hours of battery life and 1.24kg. An iPad + Keyboard case is likely going to weight more than a MacBook Air anyways.

These days, my work is almost mostly AI related, so I am on Google Colab most of the time too. So, the use case for a proper laptop without a touchscreen is diminishing with each day (for me).

I want to be able to take notes with a pen but also use a full browser. If I want a keyboard to type something, I’ll attach one.

Basically a surface pro, but using an iPad.

Thin, light, Apple ecosystem for sharing things.

But I want Firefox with extensions, a good editor, etc.

I would also love to run a Linux VM on my iPad Pro, but if we could get third-party app sideloading to work without alternative app stores and other idiocy UTM would fix that for me.

Install Wayland (easy install now). Enjoy Linux Dev & Android Apps

Apple enabled this for iOS 14+, but killed it again with iOS 17. It's basically the reason why we currently don't have full speed VM's on iOS / iPadOS devices.

While Sideloading / Altstore / Sidestore allows you to install any IPA, this still doesn't enable JIT for these apps. There are currently some workarounds that involve running certain software on your local network (search SideJITServer on Github).

> but killed it again with iOS 17

Aah, this explains why UTM (iirc) allowed VMs on iOS 16 on M1 macs but not on 17.

> There are currently some workarounds that involve running certain software on your local network (search SideJITServer on Github).

If I understand right this requires another computer to run some code, right?

I think this might honestly make iPad more appealing, and serve Apple more than they might think. The room for improvement on iPadOS seems greater than iOS due to iPadOS underutilizing the device.

More discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40196573

I feel like the thinking is that there must be an entity — somebody running an app store — who could be held legally responsible for any damage caused by malware distributed via their channels. Regular non-tech-savvy users cannot be trusted with such delicate software as apps running on their personal phones.

The only difference is Apple has the $$ and incentives to remove it as soon as it's brought to their attention (assuming it's actual malware that may cause large financial loss not just copyright infringement).

Alt-stores will be ridden with malware and nobody is going to be legally responsible for it. We can just hope the alt-stores that end up existing have incentives to keep them "clean".

If so, one would think that unless Apple gets to dictate terms strongly to the App stores, that this would only be a matter of time.

This is essentially the same on MacOS now if you distribute, things built without signature at all only open on the machine they were built, you need to provide even a self signature to get it to open with a warning on another machine.

But I really like this change.

On the contrary, mostly the iPad and iPad OS was the testbed for VisionOS UI management for years, ensuring that iPad apps (and app devs) had to implement support for arbitrary window shapes and layering, using the same affordances (more or less) as VisionOS, unlike iPhone apps that are stuck in portrait or landscape.

There's a lot of truth to AVP is an iPad strapped to your face, and if you have worked on iPad as professional daily driver for 5+ years and now own an AVP, you can remember aspects of VisionPro getting tested in the field over this time period.

And so is Kagi Orion+ browser with Firefox and Chrome extensions like uBlock Origin.

Don't drink the "you can'd do that on iPad" koolaid without asking someone unbiased quietly using these things already.

https://twitter.com/mysk_co/status/1683256902484992004

(probably unrelated) https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/12/apple-admits-to-...

No I didn’t “hack” the device or anything, the last thing I want to do is tinker with my single most important computing device, I need it to work all the time and work well. It’s been possible for years, officially.

You've kind of answered this for yourself; iPadOS _is_ iOS.

Apple has, in any case, presumably more or less known this was coming for a year or so; they kind of had to make the argument that iPadOS and iOS were not the same thing, I suppose, but it was always a bit far-fetched that the EC would buy that.

They don't need to expand the criteria. DMA empowers the commission to investigate, and even declare as gatekeepers, products that do not meet the quantitative thresholds on the basis of qualitative assessment.

EU Commissioner Thierry Breton said: “We continue monitoring market developments and will not hesitate to open new investigations should other services below the thresholds present characteristics to be considered important gateways for business users,”. per the commission iPad passes the threshold for business users elevenfold.

That's why the deadlines usually tend to be on the shorter side to put actual pressure on companies needing to implement them. However, the companies always have a way to say "look, we've tried our best, it's just we just need more time". No one is going to fine them for not meeting those deadlines if the companies are actually working on implementing the changes in good faith.

Will I ever install something side loaded? No.

Should your position impose any limitation on what people can do with their own devices? Also no.

Software similarity and market positioning don't really come into consideration once the role of gatekeeper has been established.

Sony/Nintendo/Microsoft's markets 2 orders of magnitude smaller and effect 3-4 orders of magnitude less companies.

I'd like to know if there's another explanation.

The only complaints tend to come from gamers - DRM, "console exclusive" titles and lootboxes, mostly, but of these three the only realistic field where the EU can/will/should intervene is the lootbox crap.

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Yes, it does that. And then some.

iPad is so versatile, it’s more than up to any task. Whether you’re working on a project, expressing your creativity, or playing an immersive game, iPad is a fun and powerful way to get it done. Here are just a few of the countless things you can do with iPad.

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And it has historically been "it's like a computer, but in tablet form".

Here's how Apple introduced iPad Pro just a year after it introduced iPad as a product: https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2015/09/09Apple-Introduces-iP...

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The new iPad Pro will enable a new generation of advanced apps for everything from productivity, design, illustration, engineering and medical, to education, gaming and entertainment.

The innovative Apple Pencil and new Smart Keyboard enable users ... making iPad Pro ideal for everything from professional productivity to advanced 3D design.

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Or in 2016 here's Apple announcing how it will transform businesses with Deloitte: https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2016/09/apple-and-deloitte-te...

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Deloitte is creating a first-of-its-kind Apple practice with over 5,000 strategic advisors who are solely focused on helping businesses change the way they work across their entire enterprise, from customer-facing functions such as retail, field services and recruiting, to R&D, inventory management and back-office systems.

The new offering will help customers discover the highest impact possibilities within their industries and quickly develop custom solutions through rapid prototyping.

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etc. etc.

- Size criteria:

    Have an annual turnover in the European Economic Area (EEA) of at least €7.5 billion in each of the last three financial years, or

    Have a market capitalization of at least €75 billion, and

    Provide the same core platform service in at least three EU countries.

    Provide a core platform service which is an important gateway for business users to reach end users.

    Enjoy an entrenched and durable position on the market, operationalized by having had at least 45 million monthly active end users and 10,000 yearly business users of the same core platform service in the EEA in the last three years.

Don't get me wrong, I'm _very_ happy about this, but you asked ;)

Following this decision EU Commissioner Thierry Breton said: “We continue monitoring market developments and will not hesitate to open new investigations should other services below the thresholds present characteristics to be considered important gateways for business users,”.

per the commission iPad passes the threshold for business users elevenfold.