I'm not a technician, nor a programmer, and I don't know any programming languages. However, I do know what APIs are while I maintain a deep, obsessive passion for all things tech.

Not to mention music streaming services. Over the past 10 years, I think I've tried them all, you name it, and I've likely spent more than a week on it.

I've used both Apple Music (for more than 4 years), and currently, I'm happily using Spotify, despite the much-anticipated Hi-Fi still being absent. Also, I'm a heavy Apple user.

Among the various reasons I currently prefer Spotify over Apple Music (maybe I'll do a dedicated post for all the others), there's definitely the Spotify Connect feature. It allows you to control Spotify from any device, regardless of where the streaming was initiated. Practical example? If I start music on my phone in the bathroom and then leave it on the sink? No problem, I can control it from my computer in the bedroom and decide to stop playback.

Until September 3rd, for those using iOS, Spotify Connect allowed controlling the playback volume through the physical buttons on their iPhone. This is no longer allowed by Apple due to the discontinuation of the necessary APIs which Spotify heavily relied on to let Connect work properly.

In the tech world, as in video gaming (where I've hung out for decades), the line between being a product fan or a fanboy is very thin, especially when it comes to championing a brand, where one can easily fall into blind perseverance, ignoring all elements at play.

Reading this post by Gruber on the topic, I felt that line was crossed once again:

It remains unclear to me exactly what is going on here. I think what happened is that what Spotify was doing to enable users to use the hardware volume buttons on their iPhones to control the volume of playback on other devices via Spotify Connect was making use of private or undocumented APIs, and Apple shut those APIs down in iOS 17.6. In short, that it was a hack that stopped working or just stopped working reliably.

If it's not clear what's happening, how can the use of an API be labeled a hack? Especially when this hack is associated with Sonos in the linked Mastodon post?

Simply put, after 15 years, Apple decided to modify the APIs without an apparent reason, once again asserting its control over its devices. This isn't necessarily bad, especially when talking about privacy and security, but I'd like to know what sensible reason there could be to degrade the experience for millions of users who've enjoyed both the streaming service and iOS for decades?

And John Gruber:

Who should get to decide the rules for how the hardware volume buttons work on iPhones and iPads? Apple, or the European Commission?

This easy irony about the EU's decision-making power isn't about showing who's got the bigger stick but about having a logical sense for the end user.

But I understand it might not be easily comprehensible for someone who's probably using Apple Music from day one and decided to often denigrate what isn't Apple.