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Innovation vs. Policy | Apple vs. the EU: Can Policymakers Keep Up?
When Fish and Cheese Explain Apple vs. the EU
1. What’s going on?
2. A simple explanation of what’s going on and why.
1. What’s going on
On September 25, 2025, Apple urged the European Commission to repeal or significantly overhaul the EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA), criticizing it for slowing feature rollouts and forcing “privacy/security trade‑offs.”
The Commission, however, quickly dismissed the idea: it says it has “absolutely no intention” of scrapping the DMA.
Apple’s core arguments
- The DMA forces it to make new features work across non‑Apple hardware before rolling them out. That extra engineering overhead, Apple says, causes delays.
- Apple names AirPods Live Translation, iPhone Mirroring to Mac, and features in Maps (Visited Places / Preferred Routes) as examples of things held back in the EU.
- It warns that allowing third‑party app stores, sideloading, and alternate payment systems (as required by DMA) raises exposure to malware, scams, and less consistent review standards.
- Apple claims it proposed privacy safeguards, but regulators rejected them. It says under current interpretation of the DMA, it would face fines or be banned from selling in the EU if it shipped features early.
EU’s stance & counterpoints
- The European Commission insists the DMA is about promoting competition and consumer choice, not undermining privacy or innovation.
- Officials argue that the DMA does not force any party to lower their privacy or security standards —they claim companies can differentiate how they comply, as long as they meet regulatory requirements.
- Apple already was fined €500 million earlier in 2025 under the DMA for “anti‑steering” violations.
2. A simple explanation of what’s going on and why.
The EU recently asked for feedback to Apple on the DMA (Digital Marketing Act) and Apple complained that it was detrimental to customers. Allegedly, it slows down AI and features rollouts and potentially forces innovators to never roll out innovations.
But policymaking is necessarily slower than innovation. Regulators have to consider all possible scenarios and choose the right legal arsenal to cover them. Let’s look at two of them:
- Rules address specific use cases: X cannot do Y.
- Legal standards are flexible rules that leave room for unforeseen scenarios by baking-in: X cannot do Y if not is reasonable.
To simplify, the advantage of a legal standard is that it is vague enough to allow courts to determine whether a behavior met the rule, after the rule has been allegedly broken (if you ignore case law or Regulations recitals… different topics for another day).
Essentially, legal standards are catch-all fishnets for any behavior that passes through the cracks of rules.
The problem is, the more complex a technology is, the more the applicable law is. And in the end, the more difficult it is for innovators to comply with it.
Let’s visualize: here is what a bunch of rules look like:
Each slice of cheese is a rule. Most businesses will end up hitting a slice of cheese. Even within one company (say, Apple), one product’s features may pass through some of the rules but hit a wall (of cheese) for other features. Therefore, complying with the the entire line-up of sliced cheese becomes increasingly complex.
Yet, giants like Apple, Microsoft, or Meta often find a way to be the arrow that makes it through the three layers of slices (i.e., they are the “Bad Man” in Justice’s Holmes “Bad-Man Theory”).
Standards aim to remedy the Swiss Cheese Model by adding a fishnet at the end of the circuit. The arrow will go through the net, but here is the difference: at (almost) anyone’s behest, a court can fish out the arrow and determine whether it had the right to pass through the Swiss cheese. If not, the court can stop it or fine it.
Now, sure. After a while, companies get used to the fishnet and can traverse it equally well as they did the cheese. That’s where case law or recitals become relevant.
Or, they might simply adopt an altogether different model: decide to avoid the headache and just not ship features in countries with two many slices of cheeses and two many fishnets (yes, there can be multiple fishnets).
Presently, BigAI, Apple and co. seem to prefer this approach. Each country gets its own version of their product.
Now imagine: each arrow represents tech features or a product. One arrow could be Apple’s Writing Tools (available in Europe). It made it through the regulatory cheese. Another arrow, however, represents AirPods Live Translation (not available in Europe). It crashed on a regulatory wall.
Well, today’s Big Tech Companies’ philosophy seems to be: “if you put up the cheese and the fishnets and it blocks a feature or product, then fine. Your country will only get as many features / products as your cheese allows. If one doesn’t make it, we simply don’t roll it over.”
Simpler compliance for companies, yes. Happy Regulators, perhaps. Good regulation? Maybe. But: not so happy consumers.
But that’s the simplified story. The real story is that companies will try to get approval nonetheless, including by lobbying regulators (directly or indirectly through the media and influencing public opinion). And regulators will try to collaborate (unless companies make the same mistake as Meta a few years ago and threaten to leave to market, which prompted a “yes, please do!” from the EU).
The point being: reality is never as simple as it appears, especially if you hear it from the stakeholders.
And that the purpose of this article: making you aware that reality is often disappointing. Not because the EU is unreasonable. Not because Apple is, either. But because the world is a complex system of interwoven rules and stakeholders. Navigating it is complex —for everyone.
View illustration: picture of Thanos with overlaid text: “reality. is often disappointing!”
So that brand new ChatGPT or Apple Intelligence feature you were expecting? Well, the reason you’re not getting it is not that anyone is acting in bad faith. It’s only because the system is complex.
Think of it this way: you really wanted to get to your grandma’s 80th birthday on time. But a tree fell down and blocked the road in the middle of nowhere. It’s even difficult to access to whomever is tending to the road. So now you’re late. Your family blames you for being always late. But trees often fall on inconvenient portions of the road, and there isn’t much anyone can do to prevent that.
P.S.: Granted, this is an oversimplification of how the law and regulations work. The smart reader will understand the purpose: showing complexity where none is assumed.
Interesting sources
https://apnews.com/article/7a90787f54b407c888999969a014e700?utm_source=chatgpt.com
Apple calls for changes to anti-monopoly laws and says it may stop shipping to the EU
Want to know more about the author, Lorenzo Colombani, and his work in AI? Check out his website: https://www.lorenzocolombani.com