[interactivecode]

From what I know, the current rules don't say anything about region locking features like apple is doing. The EU regulations might be slow in reaction time but they are not playing around. You can be sure that they will continually close loopholes and avoidance strategies until Apple (and others) aren't a gatekeeper anymore.

The way Apple and others misuse their market position to get away with anything is ridiculous. At a certain size or influence you shouldn't be both a platform for other companies and products and a participant in that platform while giving yourself all sorts of advantages.

Airpods are decent but they have most of their market share due to the massive integration gap from competitors. So shit it's impossible for anyone to compete.

[johncolanduoni]

I’m not sure I’d call this a loophole per se. I don’t think governments should be refusing to let you take your ball and go home if you don’t want to sell things that create more compliance work/risk. I was just curious if this kind of jurisdictional edge case matters.

Do the relevant provider-agnostic Bluetooth audio standards (in USB they’d be class devices, not sure on Bluetooth terminology) have equivalent features that Apple is refusing to just implement? I think it’s reasonable to ask Apple to support interoperability standards once the industry settles on them, but it seems weird to incentivize them to create bespoke standards that they control in an effort to reduce their market power.