> I think you misunderstood what the "single market" in that article means

I can see your point, and when as I was reading I was definitely finding myself understand better the EU's POV, however at the end, when I tried to apply the same example given in the article to the present circumstances, I had a hard time seeing how DMA furthered those goals. But to see what I mean, let's look at an example:

> The single market means unifying the different national European markets.

This is the general thrust of it, and I agree with it and it makes sense to me. The article even went to great lengths to say that the EU would do this even at the expense of their own industries, because the outcomes would ultimately be better for everyone. The example given was roaming, and I think that makes a lot of sense. Another example given was standardizing on 230v AC, while still allowing each country to maintain their regional outlet shapes.

Ok, so far I think we should be in agreement and I haven't said anything that doesn't come directly from the article. In summary the single market means unifying the national markets, and this is done by making one set of rules, even if it's at the expense of their own industries. So nothing thus far should be controversial.

Now in the case of Apple, the question is what being regulated. They're not requiring iOS and android apps to be cross platform, as that would be intractable and is akin to the example in the article of requiring countries to change their plugs. It's basically "infrastructure" at the point, and the cost doesn't justify the benefits. So in this case, the "what" means iOS apps.

To that end, what remains is defining a set of rules that applies to all iOS apps so they can be some uniformity of regulations, similar to the example of standardizing on voltage or charger format. So what are these things in particular? That would be where apps can be found, how they're downloaded, how people pay for stuff, how they cancel subscriptions, etc...

Ok, so now we've reached the point. All of these things actually were already standardized in a single, predictable way, just that they were done by apple. This was done even at the "expense of industry", which in the case would be the developers. I'm sure developers, like cell phone carriers would love to do bad stuff to their users if it makes them more money, but it's ultimately better for the industry as a whole to forbid it. This only works when your competition can't do the bad stuff either.

There are legitimate complaints that I believe can and should be guided towards apple's stewardship of the App Store, but I don't think requiring multiple app stores was the solution. My point is I think the ethos of what the EU is doing is correct, and I wholly support the effort, as I indicated in my ancestral comment. However, I just don't agree that they chose the right unit of abstraction. They should be forcing apple and Google as app stores to abide by a single set of guidelines, but the implementation therein should be left to those companies. Google allows multiple app stores, great. Apple doesn't want to. That should also be fine.

So if you disagree with me, or if I still don't understand the article, can you explain to me better how? As I see it there are multiple levels they could have chosen to enforce the one market principle. I just don't agree with where they chose it. By the same token, forcing iOS and android to be cross platform would also be incorrect.

Ok, and finally I say this mostly from the pserpsective of an iOS user. I like the platform and I feel like I can trust it, however it really only works if developers don't have alternatives where they can do bad stuff. So if there's another App Store where they're free to do shady stuff then it puts all the developers distributing their apps through the apple App Store at a disadvantage.

On the other hand, if the EU wants to manage and regulate all the app stores with a consistent set of guidelines, then I don't understand what are even the points of other app stores. So help me understand, because to me it just seems like what the EU wants we already had when apple was curating the App Store, and it wasn't even really that bad for anyone besides developers, which the EU seemed to be fine with if it was for the good of the industry.