Reading Apple’s Fine Print on Europe Changes

In the classic Akira Kurosawa movie “Rashomon,” four witnesses to a murder describe the event in four conflicting ways. Watching that movie would have been good preparation for the contradictory narratives that greeted Apple’s seemingly momentous news today about changes to its app policies in Europe.   

Apple outlined those changes in a news release and a long set of posts for developers. It will make the shifts in March to comply with the EU’s Digital Markets Act. The biggest of them will enable sideloading of apps in the EU through alternative app marketplaces for the iPhone, which will in theory shatter Apple’s stranglehold over the distribution of software on its smartphones and other devices. Apple also slashed developer fees in its own EU App Store to a 17% cut of transactions for digital goods and services (plus a 3% payment processing fee), from their current level of 30%.