To comply with the EU legislation, Apple pushes changes to its software, allowing for example side-loading of applicatons in iOS 17.4 and later. But, this change is only applied to iPhones resided in EU.
To comply with another legislation from the same EU, Apple has changed iPhone 15’s charger port to USB-C. But this one, they do on global scale. EVERY iPhone 15 has USB-C, EVERY iPhone from now on will have USB-C port.
Why does it worth the hassle to ship different software in different parts of the world, but not worth it to do the same with hardware?
In: Technology
Apple will want to sell accessories. Having different iPhones with different ports going forward will mean they need to duplicate all accessories forever. This way they can transition to all USB-C accessories.
It’s perhaps something they wanted to do as well, given many ipads use USB-C, their laptops use USB-C charging etc. This way they can blame the mean old EU so customers don’t think they did it just so they could sell everyone new USB-C accessories and chargers.
Let’s say that the old iPhone chargers were better. Apple was making them at a cost, selling them with the phones for a profit. They now have to handle two different chargers, that creates complexity and costs in making the phones and will remove some of the profit on the chargers, because you’ll be able to buy USB-C chargers from other vendors… So basically higher costs, lower profits, they must have run the numbers and figured that the benefits of keeping some proprietary chargers was not profitable enough to justify the split.
On the other hand, when it comes to side loading applications, the cost of having two versions is fairly low, compared to the overall cost of making an OS. The code is made of conditions and exceptions just like this one so it’s not that big of a deal. On the other hand, it allows them to still control where apps are coming from in a big part of their markets, and lose that control in places where they are not allowed to anymore… The cost of the two options is fairly low, and they still profit from the apps coming from their stores.
As far as I am aware Apple has wanted to switch to USB-C for a while. They already started doing it on MacBooks and iPads well before the EU legislation went into effect.
However, last time they changed the phone connector (from the old 30-pin dock connector to Lightning) everyone complained about how they needed to buy all new cables in response to the change. Apple committed to keeping Lightning for a minimum of 10 years and not change frequently. Guess when those 10-ish years were up? The EU rules just happened to go into effect at the same time Apple would have been looking to change anyway.
On the other side, they have no interest in opening the App Store, so they are going to comply, but only to the absolute minimum extent they can get away with.
Apple has evolved into an App Store company that also designs phones and has several hobbies including TV and a small line of computers. Allowing side-loading attacks their core business and they will do it only if and where legally required to.
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