this post was submitted on 25 Jan 2024
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Yet again, we lack the only detail anyone actually cares about: how does Apple plan on actually limiting this functionality to the EU?
It’s difficult for me to imagine how they can comply with this but only for EU customers in a manner which can’t be easily circumvented. It kind of bothers me that journalists just parrot “these changes will not be coming to jurisdictions outside of the EU” uncritically, seemingly just completely taking for granted the idea that there’s not going to be any way to benefit from this if you don’t live in the EU.
Devices are very strictly controlled on a hardware level for the market they are designed to operate in. It's a requirement to obtain licensing for management of radio spectrum.
It's trivial for iOS to check the internal hardware of any phone, see that it is an EU export model with all of thr Apple DRM active so you can't fake it, and adjust accordingly.
Sure but they're also sold secondhand. Also people can be born in one country, but move to live in another one... bringing their devices with them. Apple's DRM can't be tied to hardware.
Also - what if a user doesn't have an account with Apple at all? How can Apple know what country they're from? Signing up for an Apple ID is optional when you setup an iPhone - you only really need one to access the App Store and there are now alternative methods available to install apps in the EU.
There are different antennas on different devices, but all of them generally work everywhere in the world - it worst your bandwidth might be a bit lower.
Why not? What happens in the examples you gave? The EU won't forbid such devices entering the EU or they'd have to confiscate them off tourists. How many Americans do you know who have EU devices and vice versa? That issue may be negligible.
If a non European citizen goes to the EU, the law should force Apple to apply this freedom to their devices too, at least while they're there.