Meta has spent 9 months urgent Apple to speak in confidence to rivals the best way it pairs gadgets like AirPods, and will not take Apple’s excuses for a solution.
Fb proprietor Meta has beforehand been attempting to make use of European Union rules to get it entry to iPhone consumer knowledge that it can’t presumably have a professional use for. However now it has been revealed that the corporate has additionally pressed for doubtlessly extra cheap assistance on pairing its gadgets.
“We want to have the ability to pair a Meta machine with an iPhone or iPad,” writes the corporate in its formal EU interoperability request, “and have it mechanically obtainable and paired on different iPhones and iPads related to that consumer by coordination through Meta’s personal cloud providers.”
It is particularly for Fb’s Ray-Ban Meta glasses and Meta Quest headsets. It might imply that after such a tool has been paired to a consumer’s iPhone, it’s mechanically paired to their iPad.
Towards Apple’s objections, the EU introduced in 2024 that it should share its expertise, with the primary such interoperability request being filed on Might 8, 2025.
Within the entry for Meta’s pairing request, initially dated October 31, 2025, there’s a sequence of formal exchanges between Meta and Apple. Behind the skilled politeness, although, there may be Apple wanting to shut the case and Meta refusing to permit it.
- October 31, 2025: Meta requests cloud pairing
- November 3, 2025: Apple says it’s reviewing the request
- November 28, 2025: Apple says the request has handed the primary stage, however cautions it could nonetheless not be doable to do
- February 4, 2026: Apple reveals it plans an API that may supply companies precisely this entry, so Meta must anticipate that
- February 11, 2026: Meta says Apple is limiting this entry to the EU by utilizing sure APIs that aren’t worldwide
- February 18, 2026: Apple says different companies have used these APIs outdoors of the EU
- March 18, 2026: Meta says it wants extra
That is the place the revealed correspondence ends up to now. These final factors from Apple are successfully telling Meta that you just requested for X and you have got it, it is your downside that you just actually wished Y. Then it is Meta saying that Apple ought to know everybody wants Y.
The dialogue activates the usage of Apple’s AccessorySetupKit (ASK) as a substitute of the Core Bluetooth scanning APIs that Meta already makes use of. Consequently, Meta says that “counting on ASK outdoors the EU would considerably undermine our world pairing logic and the high-quality consumer expertise we search to supply.”
In different phrases, it might value Meta money and time to alter its programs. Apple is already committing “important engineering effort” to this ASK requirement, which it says needs to be prepared by spring 2027.
That is all one other instance of how EU legal guidelines seem cheap on the floor, however in use are impractical. The EU is demanding that Apple hand over its expertise to its rivals totally free, and isn’t making that demand of some other firm.
So there is not going to be an EU intervention that sees it telling Meta to make this funding in ASK. However there might but be an EU demand that Apple re-engineer its programs.
As soon as once more, Apple does appear to be trying on the letter of the legislation, because it presently stands, somewhat than the spirit of it. And for as soon as Meta’s request does appear to be in an effort to make its gadgets extra handy for customers.
