A company making an integrated experience would inevitably provide a better experience/performance than a company asked to build for 100s of devices with different spec. That Apple did not want to open it up is a separate discussion.

My contention is this: expecting a third party provider to be able to provide the same experience as the first party is an impractical goal. Even pushing companies towards that means a lot of second order effects where everyone ends up like Intel or Windows for that matter. We already have android on that level.

You can have a reasonable requirement where Apple should not be able to block other companies from providing similar services based on an iphone. But clearly the directive here is that Apple's competing products should not be better based on better integration, which can only go in one direction. Apple degrades its own products to comply. Yes, competition wins, but consumers lose. In this case specifically - consumers who would want to choose Apple, better experiences would not be able to simply because Apple cannot ensure the level of software/hardware alignment as it works today if the same software is written with modular hardware in mind.

> You can have a reasonable requirement where Apple should not be able to block other companies from providing similar services based on an iphone.

This is what the requirement is. The EU isn’t demanding that Apple provide the same experience for 3rd Party and 1st Party products. It only requires that Apple allow 3rd Parties access to the same capabilities as 1st Party products, so 3rd Parties could build 1st Party quality experiences.

Nobody is asking Apple to degrade their own products. They’re just demanding that Apple don’t artificially degrade other people’s products.

> That Apple did not want to open it up is a separate discussion.

This is the only point of discussion here. Because all the EU requires is that Apple open up their internal protocols so others can implement them.

> A company making an integrated experience would inevitably provide a better experience/performance than a company asked to build for 100s of devices with different spec

This isn't given. For example the company that makes smart light switches doesn't provide a code entry pad and the company that makes the alarm doesn't provide a light switch. If they were interoperable I'd have a better system. Futhermore they'd both sell more widgets, as I'm holding off on further units in case I find a better third option and end up disposing of my current ones.

> We already have android on that level.

You're missing the point. Apple isn't in trouble beacuse of user's choice between iPhone and Android. They're in trouble because of 20-50 headphone makers who Apple prevents from truely competing Apple for 2 billion iPhone users.

It's the same with all of these issues Apple (and Google) are running into. It's not about the user's choice to buy iPhone or Android. It's about 100s of thousands of businesses ability to reach those billions of users without a gatekeeper.

> A company making an integrated experience would inevitably provide a better experience/performance than a company asked to build for 100s of devices with different spec. That Apple did not want to open it up is a separate discussion.

I disagree, this is not a given. Usually the opposite is true.

Meaning, properly designed APIs and protocols for public use are more robust than one-off private protocols. Because there are expectations.

Apple could be malicious and make the API stupid, but if they were genuine then they wouldn't. They would make a good API, which is much more likely, I think, when the API is public versus some secret private API.