I smell a ten-figure fine cooking in the kitchen of the EU.

Governments are going about this the wrong way. The problem isn’t with app stores. The problem is that you can’t install a different OS on your phone (or current Mac, or iPad).

RtJ called it out years ago:

1. Lie
2. Cheat
3. Steal
4. Kill
5. Win
   (everybody's doin' it)

Apple is a piece of shit company standing in the shadow of its past self.

The problem is that the stock OS is a walled garden. No common user will flash their phone.

I'm waiting for the EU to eventually say "Ok nevermind, this is clearly a company that isn't going to be compliant. If not compliant by X date this company will no longer be allowed to operate here"

Or a hella massive fine for blatant waste of regulators time plus non-compliance.

I’ve been saying for the past two years that Apple should stop doing business in the EU, but every time that I bring that up someone points out the manufacturer of the chip making machine is based in the EU therefore no one can pull out.

Gross.

On machines where it's trivial to do so (such as pcs), how many real life users (as opposed to forum haunting online geeks) will install another os?

Exactly what I was thinking.

Around 5%

EU is also the second largest economy after the US in the world. Vacating the region would cost way more than compliance.

How many real life users are going to install software from somewhere other than the built in app store on their phone?

Why not both?

Just let people sideload without a time limit, for fuck’s sake…

It's not so trivial, different BIOS'es have different hotkeys to enter setup, different functionality, and device drivers are usually provided certainly only for the main OS.

Perhaps legal obligation to provide proper datasheets (easy to do, ye-es? they already certainly have those, ye-es, otherwise how did they make that Windblows\MockOS driver?) for device manufacturers and sellers (cause I the customer shouldn't care to look for them, everything should be in the box in paper form ; just like all other schematics, if in 1970s you'd tell someone that a complex expensive machine is sold to customers without schematics, people wouldn't believe you, they'd say you're nuts, they'd ask where the regulators are sleeping, and they'd wonder how it's possible to operate a device without schematics), and obligation to not employ various technologies to prevent replacement of onboard devices and loading of unsigned drivers, should exist.

The best part about all this is that such a law could be written so that it equally well applies to a 1970s machine, a today's machine and whatever they'll come up with in year 2066.

No one should have to have an IT degree just to have the software they want installed on their devices.

They have been this way from day 1. They called it "end to end control".