> This change is a result of the DMA’s requirements, and means that EU users will be confronted with a list of default browsers before they have the opportunity to understand the options available to them. The screen also interrupts EU users’ experience the first time they open Safari intending to navigate to a webpage.
How will users be able to understand the options in front of them unless they are presented with it in the first place?
It makes Apple look bad overall to me; what's worse for Apple is that I'm a dev: they're supposed to be making themselves look good to people like me so that I'm attracted to their platform, but their churlishness is putting me off.
My micro-ISV stopped shipping an iOS app a few years ago when Safari's support for PWAs made it viable to reimplement our app as a PWA so that we no-longer needed to deal with App Store hassle (faffing around with a Mac Mini we'd only use a few times a year, confusing certificates/entitlements/etc, not to mention the capriciously enforced store app review policies).
...but I'm probably just being nostalgic for the early days of indie iOS apps. Those times are long gone, perhaps Apple actually isn't interested in attracting small devs to their platform anymore?
There are literally thousands of options for configuring your device in the Preferences app. Should we put all of them in front of the user's face the first time they set up their phone? How would they know those options exist otherwise?
Knowing that you can configure your phone's behavior should be a basic point of technology literacy. I know that it isn't at 100% today, but what percent of users are now going to have yet another forced decision to make before using their phone for the first time, just so a minority of technology illiterate users can be "educated".
Apple themselves don't seem to have a problem with displaying a red notification dot/badge on the "Settings" app to anyone who doesn't set up any card in Apple Pay on their new devices, at least.
> There are literally thousands of options for configuring your device in the Preferences app. Should we put all of them in front of the user's face the first time they set up their phone?
This is an absurd comparison. The choice of picking the default web browser, a complex pieces of critical software on everyone's mobile device, is categorically different than almost every single one of the other preferences on the device. You'd have to be completely insane to claim that e.g. the preference of whether a double-tapping space on the soft keyboard should insert a period is remotely comparable to choosing the default web browser.
It would've been so nice if the EU had required there be an automated way to choose Accept All and Only Necessary options. They could've even reused the existing DNT header!
A Berlin court ruled that DNT counts as an opt out. Linkedin was the defendant that lost, but it is a precedent. There are also talks of outright banning targeted advertising in its entirety and only allowing other forms such as contextual ads.
How will users be able to understand the options in front of them unless they are presented with it in the first place?