Vivaldi’s statement on the new EU ruling on Apple’s iPad OS
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EU designates Apple’s iPad OS As DMA ‘Gatekeeper’. Here’s what the Vivaldi browser has to say about this designation.
Click here to see the full blog post
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Absolutely the iPad is part of the same ecosystem as the iPhone. Just because Apple changed the name on the iPad to iPadOS, doesn't make it separate.
Anyway, good response!
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Ars Technica also put this very well, imo:
Apple technically split the iPad's operating system from the iPhone's in 2019 when it began calling its tablet operating system "iPadOS" instead of iOS. But practically speaking, little separates the two operating systems under the hood. Both iOS and iPadOS share the same software build numbers, they're updated in lockstep (with rare exceptions), and most importantly for DMA compliance purposes, they pull software from the same locked-down App Store with the same Apple-imposed restrictions in place.
While I'm glad that iPadOS has finally been designated as a gatekeeper platform (like it should have been from the start, imo), my biggest disappointment from the EU's designation is that they made no remarks on any of that in their ruling or their investigation report.
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I don't understand this ruling. What is "gatekeeping" about the iPad other than having to use the App Store, that has already been covered under the DMA?
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@wintercoast: I don't understand what you don't understand about this ruling. iPad OS is fundamentally the same as iOS and they should be treated equally in the light of the EU law.
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@nikkehtine That's my point! It's implicitly covered by the earlier ruling! Why is something iPad-specific required?
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@wintercoast because originally the iPad wasn't included in the EU ruling because Apple tried to convince the EU it wasn't related.
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@wintercoast It's not implicitly covered. Apple treat iPadOS as a totally separate thing. Therefore earlier iPadOS didn't qualify for the DMA because the number of users didn't reach the threshold required to classify it as a gatekeeper. Then the EU added some additional ruling to let them classify more platforms as gatekeepers, including iPadOS.
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@nikkehtine @RiveDroite Ah, OK. Strange that the EU was taken in by that.
