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Throwing infinite money at engineering problems doesn't move deadlines arbitrarily.

But Apple's position here is actually really wild: Apple claims to protect user privacy all the time. But they can't offer a product in a major jurisdiction that has actually meaningful privacy laws? Didn't they consider that while designing the product?

This is quite the contradiction.

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The exemption Apple wanted was not from a privacy law, but from the DMA. They never claimed to have an issue meeting their privacy laws when using their own product, it was other people's products that they said they couldn't guarantee the privacy of.

Here's their argument in their own words: https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2026/06/due-to-dma-siri-ai-de...

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That's even worse, then. They are not responsible for other companies' products. So this is just another piece of anti-DMA propaganda then. They have been fighting it loudly and with toddler-level arguments since they became subject to it.
A huge part of Apple’s marketing, whether you believe them or not, is that they try to protect your privacy.

The smartphone is probably the most sensitive device most people own. It knows your location always. It has your banking apps. Your password manager. Your instant messages, and social media chats, it knows whether you’re walking, or driving, or talking on the phone, and to whom.

Once Apple allows any other vendor to vacuum all of that intensively private information out of an iPhone, Apple becomes indirectly responsible for potentially massive privacy breaches.

All of that happens only if the user chooses to do it though. Anybody is free to stay in the caged Apple garden. The EU just wants them to leave the door unlocked.
A door with a lock is different from a wall with no door. Same argument that gets made with government-keyed or government-breakable encryption schemes: it's better for everyone to not have the backdoor at all.
It's not a backdoor. It's a front door that can only be opened from the inside when done correctly.
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No, this isn't the claim.

EU wants Apple to open 'Siri AI', with access to a personal context, open to other model/AI providers.

Apple says "We can't do this in a privacy preserving way".

You can definitely question what their true motivations are, but it seems pretty plausible that there is a moral case for this system to not be opened up to other providers who may do a worse job at privacy than Apple (especially when you are Apple and you trust yourself).

I think there is a place in these sorts of ecosystems for privileged players. If you buy an iPhone you implicitly must trust Apple to some degree.

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> Apple claims to protect user privacy all the time. But they can't offer a product in a major jurisdiction that has actually meaningful privacy laws?

The DMA and the GDPR are laws that at their core make each other more difficult. the stated outcome of the DMA - allowing any vendor/user full access to your device - is not easily supported when solving for privacy.

A popup that's like "do you want to give app XY access to this data?" is really not that hard to build... It's a lazy excuse, nothing more.
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Protecting user privacy and reducing surface area for litigation against the business can happen simultaneously. Not that it is, but just saying, politics and difficult to define thresholds muddy the waters.
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