As far as I can tell this basically means that all apps must be approved by Apple to follow their “platform policies for security and privacy” even if publishing on a third party app store. They will also disable updating apps from third party app stores if you stay outside the EU for too long (even if you are a citizen of an EU country, with an Apple account set to the EU region).
The idea that preventing app updates is in line with their claims of protecting security is utterly absurd. “Never attibute to malice what can be explained with stupidity,” but Apple isn’t stupid.
The DMA was written in good faith. Apple is acting in bad faith. And yes, their customers are too simple minded to think for themselves, which is exactly why Apple can say stuff like “DMA bad” and have millions of people agree after sabotaging the implementation. It’s not a surprise the EU wants to curtail that (we’ll see if that still stays the case after the elections, when the Apple voters show up at the urns).
CC BY-NC-SA 4.0