The EU is making it harder for Apple to protect its customers, it has claimed in an escalation of the fight between European politicians and the iPhone maker.
The ongoing dispute also means that Apple will remove a key iPhone feature for users in Europe in its upcoming update.
Apple has long been critical of European regulation, particularly the Digital Markets Act, which went into force in 2022. The EU says that the rules are intended to encourage competition, but Apple has said that they have weakened protections for users and made the iPhone less safe.
In the years since, Apple has continued to attack the legislation. It has also delayed a number of key features for the iPhone and other products, as well as suggesting that it could be forced to stop selling certain some of them entirely.
Now, Apple has accused the European Commission of using the DMA to “continually undercut Apple’s ability to protect its users”. It came in response to accusations from Europe that Apple was not doing enough to protect its users from financial scams through the App Store.
“We are concerned that these new inquiries are cynical attempts to distract from the core problems caused by the Commission’s misguided DMA enforcement efforts,” Apple said in response to those new accusations. “"The Commission has made the App Store less safe for users: It introduced new vulnerabilities and undermined the protections Apple has long put in place to protect users of the App Store,” the letter, signed by Apple vice president of legal Kyle Andeer, reads.
At the same time, Apple will remove a key feature from the iPhone that allows it to share passwords with the Apple Watch. The tool means that once a users has logged in to a WiFi network with their phone, that same network will be shared with the Watch, so that users do not have to log in again.
That feature is being removed because of fears that it might not comply with the DMA, reports suggest. Those rules require that Apple open up WiFi access to third-party accessories by the end of the year, in an attempt to make other wearables better compete with the Apple Watch.
It is just the latest feature to be delayed or removed from Apple products in response to the DMA, and Apple has repeatedly suggested that the rules will mean that more features are removed or do not arrive. European users do not have access to the iPhone mirroring feature that lets people connect to their phones from their computers, for instance.
