Japan: Apple Must Lift Browser Engine Ban by December(open-web-advocacy.org) |
Japan: Apple Must Lift Browser Engine Ban by December(open-web-advocacy.org) |
I don't just block ads, I block elements on sites I don't care about with :has-text RegEx rules. You can't do that on Chrome even on desktop anymore.
I'm this close to swapping to the Android as my primary device-- it's iMessage that has me chained. It's just too dang nice to respond to chats from my Mac during work so I don't need to pick up my phone.
Everything else is better on the Android. Don't get me started about the iOS keyboard or Siri.
Have you considered messages.google.com? I think you need to use Google's messages app (not the Samsung messager or equivalent) but it does as you describe and supports RCS.
If you are on another locale, search “ublock origin lite” with double quotes.
The iOS 26 keyboard (public beta) is the biggest regression I've ever seen Apple make, and they're a company infamous for regressions. It for me has been the tipping point.
I think uBO is not disabling PPA, does it?
- June 2024. Mozilla acquires Anonym, an ad metrics firm.
- July 2024. Mozilla adds Privacy-Preserving Attribution (PPA), feature is enabled by default. Developed in cooperation with Meta (Facebook).
- Feb 2025. Mozilla updates its Privacy FAQ and TOS. "does not sell data about you." becomes "... in the way that most people think about it".
I've been doing this on Signal for years.
No Apple hardware or software/service (when it comes to Apple software/services they deserve a LOL) has me chained.
It's just how disgusting Google has kept Android for anyone who wants privacy, safety (both usage and data safety in case of loss etc), and reliable updates that people stay in Apple ecosystem even though software/services wise technically they are miles ahead.
If someone ever even proceeds to tell me that "something in apple's stable is technically comparable/better than Google's.." I might rudely ask them to get their head examined.
I just can't reconcile with the fact that Google would track me every milisecond and then use my data for ads and I can't do anything about it. The good news is very soon Apple will start doing the same, if they have not, because they are already an ad company now.
As far as ditching iMessage is concerned - the last time I ditched WhatsApp in my country, I ditched it and after I didn't feel a thing. And WhatsApp in my country is not only instant messaging - it's literal-bllody-ly everything. Everything!
PS. Signal should launch a "Import from iMessage and WhatsApp" :D (Oh, but then how would they prioritise crypto ;-))
I'm using AdGuard for blocking ads in Safari. Works fine.
I do have a GrapheneOS pixel 7a as well but I'd rather not let Google near my shit.
I also have an iPhone as well as a GrapheneOS phone. They are different but I'm quite happy with those alternatives to the apps you mentioned:
Etar as a calendar frontend app. DAVx5 for syncing CalDAV and CardDAV (so calendar data, contacts and optionally also tasks). I manage tasks within my notes, so I do not really use a todo/reminder app at all but there are different options. tasks.org plugs into DAVx5, for example.
Depending on your server-side setup and your willingness to compromise on open source, are also other options. For example, if you work with an Exchange server, there is the "Nine - Email & Calendar" app which is a very powerful all-in-one-client similar to traditional Outlook on the desktop.
For photos, there are quite a few solid options, depending on what you want. I use the Fossify Gallery with only my Camera folder visible for day-to-day stuff and also have Aves Libre installed for a more advanced interface to my pictures and videos.
There are few things in life people like more than their iPhones.
+4500 upvoots
(I always thought it was suspicious that the anti-apple headline had +30k upvoots on reddit, but the top comment was pro-apple with significantly less. Its almost like they paid an external marketing team/troll farm to do reputation management)
BrowserEngineKit is a thin wrapper over XPC and iOS' extension system. The system would be so much better to develop for if XPC was an open API, and JIT for isolated sub-processes was permitted without Apple's blessing.
* Messengers could have separate sub-processes for preprocessing untrusted inputs -- iMessage already does this, third-party messengers are single-process and cannot.
* Applications could isolate unstable components for better user experience and crash recovery.
* Emulators, e.g. for retro systems, would benefit from speedy emulation.
* WASM would become useful in iOS.
* Browser could use XPC without special-purpose API wrappers such as BrowserEngineKit.
But alas, all of this would make it easier to load code that runs at native speed into an iOS app after a store review happened, and as we all know that'll be the end of the world.
If you interpret that very liberally, doing a region-locked "you can release alternate browser engines but only regionlocked to japanese apple accounts" could be seen as intentionally preventing alternative browsers from existing.
Why would mozilla port firefox when it can only target a tiny fraction of its users?
I know it's not super realistic, but maybe there's a path to global browser choice in there.
Those are 3 large jurisdictions, I wonder if that's now a market big enough for Chrome and Firefox to invest into iOS versions of their browser that use Blink and Gecko under the hood. From what I heard this was one of the main reasons they haven't done it yet.
This is all narrowing the scope of what advantages native apps have (they do still have advantages), but it's hard to argue they simply aren't moving gatekeeping to other areas.
Even now in Japan, mobile payments are anything but a monopoly. When Apple is forced to compete, they do things like add Suica with Express Transit. PayPay, a made-in-Japan QR code payments app is more prevalent than credit card payments here.
Every Google Pixel has FeliCa its just turned off on non-Japan phones due to said licensing, though people have rooted the phone to turn it on.
Presumably they would have invested more resources into it and been done by now, if there was a viable path to release, which there isn't yet due to Apple's EU geofencing, and because there were a number of bugs and limitations in Apple's BrowserEngineKit which browsers are forced to use.
> Checking out and building Chromium for iOS
> Building Blink for iOS
> The iOS build supports compiling the blink web platform. To compile blink set a gn arg in your .setup-gn file. Note the blink web platform is experimental code and should only be used for analysis.
> [gn_args] > use_blink = true > ios_content_shell_bundle_identifier="REPLACE_YOUR_BUNDLE_IDENTIFIER_HERE" > ios_chromium_bundle_id="REPLACE_YOUR_BUNDLE_IDENTIFIER_HERE"
> Note that only certain targets support blink. content_shell and chrome being the most useful.
https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/main/docs/i...
https://9to5google.com/2023/02/06/google-chrome-blink-ios-we...
To my eyes, the regulators hit the nail on the head here. It's not about other browsers, it's about keeping the iPhone browser crummy so the app store and the 30% Apple Tax stays humming along.
Not that you really should, but Safari has a limit of 500 tabs. Why? It's arbitrary. Safari doesn't support WebRequest in blocking mode, so you can't have real adblockers (just MV3 style content blockers, like uBOL). There are all sorts of edge cases too, like if you want cross-browser sync and extensions. Sure, you can totally run Safari with extension support, but extensions in e.g., Orion are shaky at best.
The biggest claim that Apple made about this whole thing was that web browsers offered an attack surface increase as a result of giving JIT to other browsers, and they could be owned. Frankly, though, I would take a browser without JIT if I had a real adblocker.
So I think this is great news, maybe we get rid of nonsense like that.
However, I'll bet apple will make this japan specific just like eu laws don't affect their behavior in the US.
For example, a japanese iphone will always make a sound when you take a picture. If you leave the country, that will go away, unless you're in airplane mode and then it will start making sounds for every picture again. country-specific behavior.
I don't see why apple wouldn't do the same thing -- firefox works in japan, but not outside japan.
Hope you guys like Chromium!
> 43. Developers cannot avoid Apple’s control of app distribution and app creation by making web apps—apps created using standard programming languages for web-based content and available over the internet—as an alternative to native apps. Many iPhone users do not look for or know how to find web apps, causing web apps to constitute only a small fraction of app usage. Apple recognizes that web apps are not a good alternative to native apps for developers. As one Apple executive acknowledged, “[d]evelopers can’t make much money on the web.” Regardless, Apple can still control the functionality of web apps because Apple requires all web browsers on the iPhone to use WebKit, Apple’s browser engine—the key software components that third-party browsers use to display web content.
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.njd.544... (p22)
I'll enjoy seeing all the accounts on MacRumors clawing their eyes out when that happens.
It would be naive to think that Apple isn't funding sites and narratives on the internet to serve their economic interests.
One of the most outlandish one being that freedom to use your phone however you want would necessarily compromise security and privacy for everyone. It's such a bizarre and indefencible take, and yet it's repeated over and over again on those Apple-worship platforms.
For a large enough definition of "everyone", it would. "Everyone" has a Meta app installed. We've seen them pull evil tricks over and over to suck up data 24/7 - most recently running a local server on Android that their websites could talk to to bypass anonymization - and the moment a crack appears in the walled garden Meta will say "go install the FB/Instagram app from our app store with no privacy policy reviews" and a large enough definition of everybody will be much the worse for it.
I suppose in a round-a-bout way, it could, more specifically around iMessage, which is Apple's baby in the US and a big part of their lock in effect for US users.
Right now, you can reasonably assume that using iMessage with another iPhone user that both ends are reasonably secure and private. Break open the walls of the garden and now you could say that you can't trust that the other end you are communicating with hasn't installed some random crapware or malware that's scraping their messages, or recording the screen during a facetime call, thereby compromising your own privacy by interacting with a bad devices.
In that instance, Apple is correct - but what Apple doesn't tell people is that all other forms of digital communication are open to the same risks so they aren't special.
I want to use my phone locked down hard and apps reviewed by Apple. I sleep better with things as they are. I suspect 99% of normal users are in the same boat.
Now with 'troll farms'/'reputation management' being so ubiquitous, we'd call Apple irresponsible to not be doing this.
Google's Project Zero uncovered quite a few 0 days in Apple's "perfect" operating system. They're not magical wizard cult gods over there, they're just a buncha developers same as 'em all. And given the quality of what's been coming out of Apple _and_ Google recently sometimes I wonder if someone's dug a pit under their supposedly high bars they held in the 2010s. Even just Youtube is a disgustingly buggy app nowadays.
Now I have to worry about the inevitable phone call from ‘Apple Technical Support
To be clear I support letting people run whatever apps they want, but let’s not pretend that this won’t make the median iPhone more prone to have a malware infection (like Android). There are reasons other than anticompetitive greed that Apple does things this way (although I am sure greed is the primary motivator).
That's one of the things Apple has been doing with EU
The japanese law's phrasing is apparently better, but I kinda expect apple to still ignore it and then drag whatever comes through court as long as possible
Not having JIT is a showstopper on the modern web where most sites take more javascript than all of windows 3.1 and word perfect combined.
Mozilla is used to only a tiny fraction of users anyway. Why would this be any different? It could also be a chance to release a version for QA by the users before the rest of the market opens up.
"Why wouldn't apple make an iphone mini even though it only targets a tiny fraction of people? They already only target a tiny fraction of the living animals on earth because they don't make iphones for fish"
The reality is that japan is less than 5% of iphones, and mozilla has to focus it's limited resources.
Also, if mozilla's, mostly US based, developers can't run firefox on ios, they can't even build it in the first place
But the bigger the market they can reach, the bigger the reward, and so at some point it may justify investing resources to work around those roadblocks and accept the drawbacks.
How is switching to Blink, a Google-controlled engine, supposed to help creating an "alternative engine"?
Because of the way the App Store works, browser engines segregated by region need to be two different apps. That means maintaining two source trees (EU+UK+JP vs worldwide) and two releases with two reviews.
I expect niche browsers to have a go at porting to iOS at some point (I'd love to see a project like Ladybird be the first non-Safari browser on the app store!) but for the major companies it seems like too much of a hassle at the moment.
Now the question is what's the threshold for this market to be big enough? Maybe Japan's joining in pushes it past that point.
Using market forces to encourage more consolidation into a single engine is *bad*.
Where Apple is doing everything they can to make that “market” work in their interests instead of as it is supposed to from a user perspective. And when you don't have a choice, it's not really a market either.
I'm sure Safari sucks to support for web developers and is missing a lot of cool apis, but I'm willing to take those tradeoffs for the increased privacy I get as a result.
That being said, I do think Apple should allow third party browser engines.
On the one hand Apple must be made to open up iOS more.
On the other hand it just leads to Chrome monopoly.
If a browser engine continues to exist not on its merits but because its users are locked in, there is zero value in it. If 100% of people switch to chromium based browsers (an open source project) while they have free choice that's how it is. There's nothing inherently wrong with this.
We don't need browser engine DEI. Even the term monopoly is spurious in the world of open source software. Say if in 30 years we have 100% linux market share because open source won, do we need to protect Microsoft so they can lock people into Windows, like some sort of endangered animal program for proprietary software?
There's an inherent contradiction to apply the competitive logic of proprietary platforms to fundamental OSS infrastructure. They'll tend to be natural "monopolies" just by virtue of how resource intensive they are and the desire to standardize.
There's also the fact that websites themselves need to be mindful of multiple browser engines existing because of Safari. Once users are able to install Chrome on iPhones, developers will just abandon every other engine wholesale.
Microsoft got into trouble for pushing Netscape users over to Internet Explorer, but what they did isn't half as evil as the dark patterns Google is using to get Chrome and other Google apps onto the few devices left which don't have them.
It's IE6 all over again. But worse.
(oh, and gecko is a joke, especially on mobile - no need to even bring it up)
Lots and lots of Web development projects target Chrome, then make sure it works on Safari. In that second step, they accidentally fix a lot of bugs that'd show up on Firefox, too.
Not a lot of them are bothering to check Firefox directly these days. Hell, a decade ago it wasn't making the test list in tons of cases.
Soon as this happens, Chrome is the web. The OWA knows this, it's their goal, it's an astroturf outfit.
But if you're using Google's web tools, they make it (too) easy to download their apps and push you in that direction in a million little ways. For example, GMail's native iOS app will either open a link in a WKWebView or Chrome (if it's not installed, it'll prompt you to install it), but you have to jump through some hoops if you want to open a link in the system's default browser. Similarly, if you're searching for something via google.com, they'll put up a prompt to download their search app, with the default "Continue" option taking you to the store rather than continuing with your current task (and then click-jack the back button).
But what's for-sure is that Apple is hugely profitable. And that browser control is a relatively important part of that profitability. Plain old greed will give Apple ample motive to keep Safari going.
I do appreciate these being open-source. But there must not be an illusion that these large projects being open source means that "just forking" works. A culture is much more than a repository.
So Brave, Arc, Dia, Edge, et al., all add their own sauce on top of Chromium, but none of them can make changes like back-porting Manifest V2 back into their Chromium.
Oh, it's closed source ios/macos only? Yeah, no thanks.
I also kinda doubt it's compatible with most firefox addons, addons can and do rely on details of firefox that ios does not provide the ability to emulate.
It already is littered with outright scams, apps pretending to be other apps etc.
It doesn't catch them all, especially more niche sites that do more custom stuff to prevent you using the site until you interact with the notice. e.g. screen overlay, prevent scrolling using css rules.
The West's Internet is just Cloudflare's proxy.
Basically it's not an argument at all against forcing Apple to remove that ban.
What is the issue with gecko? I am using it every day on my smartphone.
Less battery life is something I'm willing to live with if it means I can run a browser that does what I want.
TBH I'm fine with that. Applications, browsers or not, should use the operating system's components and APIs for things for a unified experience across all apps and interactions. On the desktop side of things, I hate when an application breaks convention for the OS it's deployed on. If I'm using macOS, for example, I want every app on my mac to look and behave like any other, consistent with the rest of the OS.
The market they'd otherwise lose access to would be roughly 2 million people. The Japanese population is over 60 times that. I don't think they want to risk losing that.
It depends on the cost.
Translating the OS to Slovene really just costs whatever a translation service costs, plus review & a bit of ongoing maintenance. Even on the high end, I doubt it would push 8 figures up front, and probably 6 in yearly maintenance.
If compliance with the Japanese law means every iOS build in every region must support alternate browser engines, what's the cost to Apple? They clearly must believe it's high (otherwise they would have done so already). Brand risk? Maybe, and hard to price that, but at Apple's valuations and revenues that could be 9+ figures depending on severity. Loss of revenue from Google (if they still pay to be the default search engine in Safari)? That could be a large number too.
It all comes down to the numbers. How much will Apple lose by pulling out of Japan (possibly betting on such a move being temporary, hoping Japan changes their mind, and also hoping that their reputation worldwide doesn't suffer) vs allowing alternate browser engines worldwide?
It's not necessary to root every device you own. You can use one to do your banking and web browsing and have entirely separate devices for hacking.
I have no issues with GrapheneOS just stock android.
I've been doing the dual-driving iPhones and Android devices for a long time and times were definitely worse, in my opinion. The last thing I remember really annoying me on the regular was the lack of AirDrop but with alternatives like LocalSend and KDE connect, that's fixed as well.
(I have offline backups of everything of course)
I'd disagree, given that many people have iCloud Backup enabled, which (at least without "Advanced Data Protection") uses encryption keys available to Apple and includes all iMessage and SMS messages.
“These memes will be leaked to the feds if my friend causes Apple to be subpoenaed” is much more palatable than “every text I send my girlfriend is being used to train an LLM by iPhoneFolderCleanerLLCAssociates”
I know iCloud backups are not perfectly secure. I like the privacy aspect of iMessage as it stands, even if it’s not quite Cone of Silence. _Definitely_ we could have more freedom on iOS! Just without worrying about adware scrapers somehow… without worrying about grandma increasing my tech support burden when a scammer calls her… (shrug)
Can you give an example of what your concern is?
Practically speaking I can’t even tell the difference, apart from text messages sometimes failing to send, and getting the option to retry as SMS.
If I want something private / secure, I use Signal.
I use Signal but it leaves much to be desired relative to iMessage for a lot of uses.
And it feels a little better, personally, sending an innocuous iMessage—even though I won't get in trouble if a stingray happens to pick up “gm” “Happy birthday!” “Kevin forgot the biscuits again!” over SMS.
Self-destructing Signal for the most personal messages for sure. But SMS just feels dirty. Too exposed even if I’d shout the same message contents in a public square.
Apple doesn't review apps the way people think it does.
The real goal of the review process is to maintain control over the UX, not prevent malware. If you want to see a review process that stops malware read a Linux distribution mailing list.
Chromium is controlled and developed by Google. And it's dangerous to have fundamental infrastructure in the hands of one company. Here's a reminder what they did with Android: https://www.androidauthority.com/google-android-development-...
To literally take Chromium as an example. Look at Google's manifest v3 changes. Brave and all the other chromium based browsers just put their own ad blocking shim on top and they're fine.
Yes, yes, billions of people will work on the fork.
> To literally take Chromium as an example. Look at Google's manifest v3 changes.
That literally changed nothing in Chrome dominance.
> Brave and all the other chromium based browsers just put their own ad blocking shim on top and they're fine.
You mean: they literally just slap a skin on top of a Google-developed project, do no actual browser development of their own (do they even participate in web standards?), have vanishingly few users and are likely hemorrhaging money?
So what would Firefox (or anyone) gain by Firefox ditching their engine and helping Google?
Safari is only available on Apple devices, Chrome is available everywhere. Let's not pretend that laziness is the only reason why Chrome has the largest marketshare.
> The point of the web is that it's an open standard. Expecting everyone to use the bleeding edge version of the most aggressively feature-laden browser isn't just unreasonable, it's counter to the spirit of the platform.
I don't expect Safari to be the bleeding edge. I just expect the features to work. Lets take for example: IndexedDB
- IndexedDB was first brought up in two propsals in 2009/2010 - IndexedDB was available for pubilc testing in early 2012 by Firefox and Chrome and was released for both browsers unprefixed in late 2012. - IndexedDB was "released" for Safari in late 2014. However:
1. The released version was so bad and buggy that it basically didn't work at all.
2. It essentially broke all the websites/web-apps that were using it, and there was no easy alternative to use. The affected websites/webapps had to essentially be rearchitected and remade or just plain shut down.
3. Apple had no interest in fixing it which essentially poisoned the feature for all developers. It was so egregious it was actually used in the lawsuits against Apple their monopolistic app store practices, which eventually led to the EU to create their new sweeping anti-trust regulation changes for app stores and browsers.
- IndexedDB didn't have a working release on Safari until mid-2016 and didn't have the industry standard "last two major version" support until late 2017.
That means we had developers affected by IndexedDB's poisoning for about 5 years.
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So by my earlier request of "I don't expect Safari to be the bleeding edge. I just expect the features to work.", Safari completely and utterly shit the bed. They shit the bed so bad it helped lead the EU to create new anti-trust regulations.
And that was just Apple trying to meet a standard feature.
And if you thought the IndexedDB debacle was over, they broke it again. See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27509206
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Let's not even get into Safari breaking other features. I'd rather not type all this out: https://webventures.rejh.nl/blog/2024/history-of-safari-show...
Chrome has plenty of problems but nobody cares because when Chrome doesn’t support something properly, no one uses it.
I agree that Safari is not perfect either. But let’s assume for a moment that nothing is going to make Apple invest more into WebKit than they are already. Which of the following worlds would I prefer?
1. WebKit remains the exclusive browser on iOS devices. The bleeding edge of the web doesn’t advance quite as quickly. A tiny number of developers who don’t already have access to an Apple device have to spend literally tens of dollars buying or inheriting 5+ year-old devices in order to test on a diversity of platforms.
2. Blink becomes available on iOS and Google continues use dark patterns to trick users into installing their browser. A small but non-trivial number of developers start assuming that everyone uses Blink/Chromium, and end users no longer have a choice of browser.
I’m sorry, I forget, isn’t the whole point about giving people a choice of browser? Because some people on Hacker News have some fairly dystopian blinders on and don’t actually care about user choice, they’re just lazy arseholes who don’t want to deal with an open web and resent having to test in more than one web browser.
Between these two alternative futures, I’ll pick number one every time, no hesitation. The open web is far more important to me than developer convenience.
The difference between Chrome and Safari not supporting features is that Safari is developed by one company (Apple) whereas Chrome is developed by two (Directly by Google and indirectly by Microsoft). So Apple can have an incentive not to add a feature and end up harming the entire industry. But if Google has an incentive not to add something, Microsoft can still add that thing anyway (and vice versa), we only need one actor to act good for their not to be harm caused.
> 1. [...] A tiny number of developers who don’t already have access to an Apple device have to spend literally tens of dollars buying or inheriting 5+ year-old devices in order to test on a diversity of platforms.
This is flat out wrong.
One Safari is not equal to another.
You need to buy one of each device because Safari will change how it works across different devices.
Example 1: Safari adds depth touch to some devices which adds weird box overlays around parts of the website while the user is trying to use it, which blocks the content and interferes with which elements are supposed to be interactable unless you add special webkit-prefixed rules (e.g. -webkit-touch-callout, -webkit-tap-highlight-color, etc...) to different parts of your pages.
Example 2: Safari adds different buffer areas around their browser which you need to test with (using the env() css function) on each device with a different screen to make sure content isn't flowing off the screen or elements are being cut off at incorrect spots when they're supposed to flow past the edge.
And so on...
Apple keeps adding device specific ways of breaking websites.
Furthermore, each device can only run one version of Safari. Every time a new version comes out, you need to upgrade your OS to get the new version of Safari. And you also can't downgrade your OS to get the older version. And because some users can't upgrade and others won't, you need multiple of each device running each one on a different version of the OS to test correctly.
We have to spend 1000s of dollars each year on new devices just because Apple keeps inventing new ways of breaking things.
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Side question: But what about just buying a mac and running the iOS Simulator to test different versions of Safari on different devices?
It's no good, the iOS Simulator is a simulator, not an emulator. So the bugs that are on the device are not the same as the ones in the simulator.
-----
So out of your two options, what will happen is:
Some users will switch to Blink/Chromium and find that things start working better. That will start to build up a reputation of Chrome/Edge/etc... working better than Safari.
Meaning Apple will need to invest more money and effort into improving Safari.
Meaning Safari will be improved.
So either users start migrating to a better browser, or Safari improves to the point that it isn't a problem anymore.
The main issue is that it's so mainstream, it strongarms standardization bodies making them ineffective.
Chromium is so mainstream that developers think developing for other browsers is irrelevant, even putting notices of deprecation for Safari and Firefox.
W3C is on the brink of irrelevancy, because if it works on Chromium, why bother with the others? if W3C cannot enforce the standard.
EDIT: Typo
Hugging Face's spaces does this, throwing banners saying it only supports Chrome. Makes me throw up a little bit every time I have to switch over.
if safari dies, firefox won't be far behind, and by then there's no way a fork of chromium will be able to "keep up" when google starts pushing chrome-only features, killing ad-blockers etc etc etc
(not sure if any of this matters, though. will there even be any real people left on the web in a 5 years?)
I was told they were breaking adblockers, using ublock lite which complies with the changes I don't notice a difference. And even this change I could have switched browsers it didn't break the web.
There's some pwa features only they support, and that's a feature I think could actually benefit me.
Ideally, Google will be broken up and forced to divest Chrome (this is in progress, but at the speed of the US federal government, so could be a decade if it succeeds), and then we can require Apple to remove their browser ban. Doing this out of order will destroy the web as we know it.
If Safari were more competitive, more people would use it.
[1] https://magmatranslation.com/stats/en/mobile-usage-trends-in...
The notion that American tech companies are invincible is really only a view held by Americans. The overwhelming majority of people I speak to internationally don't care that much about computer brand loyalty.
They were never forced to compete in the sense that no one is forced to be first class citizen anywhere. Apple just wanted to be by its own free will. That's technically correct.
Your analysis is flawed at the core because you persist in making the same logical error which mid-tier web developers always make. Only web developers choose/change browsers because another one is "better". Ninety-nine percent of everyone else doesn't choose/change browsers, or if they do, it's because they were unwittingly exposed to an external influence, e.g.
1. Dark patterns (e.g. as employed by Microsoft in the 1990s, or Google in the 2020s);
2. Herd mentality ("my Son told me to use Chrome instead");
3. Because a website is broken (because the developer stubbornly refuses to believe that any web browser exists other than the bleeding edge release of Chromium)
And sorry but I just laughed when you said you need to spend "1000s of dollars each year on new devices". The only people who might need to do that are large corporations which already spend 1,000,000s of USD each year on developer salaries. A one-man team needs, at most, one desktop Mac made in the past 8 years ($200–1000 every 3–6 years) and one iOS device made in the past 5 years ($100–500 every 2–4 years). And that's assuming they don't already have either or both of these. And that's assuming that you're trying to do very complicated things. Most web developers shouldn't be doing anything that would break on a 10-year-old version of any major web browser (with the exception of TLS root certificates).
As an independent web developer with a Mac and iPhone, I begrudgingly buy and maintain a Windows computer and an Android phone, but you don't see me bitching and moaning about that, even though it's exactly the same thing.
No, it's not different because you're "forced" to acquire a new or used Apple product. As a developer, you are "forced" to acquire a reasonable spectrum of products based on what your audience is using. You are "forced" to test in Chrome. You are "forced" to pay taxes on income. You can wish the world was different, but wishes don't change practical realities.
This overpowers the governing body (W3C), where they have to accept it and pretend they remain relevant.
A bit of history: When Internet Explorer was the dominant browser of the Internet, other browsers existed and their usage was in healthy proportion, among each other. People could choose whatever browser they wanted and be sure its browser engine was independent.
When Chromium/Chrome came in 2008, it changed the game to what we have today: 85% Chromium-based browsers, 8%-10% Safari/WebKit and 2%-3% Gecko-based browsers (Firefox)
Whatever Chromium does, others have to follow suit. The bulk of the userbase is there (unfortunately). No real choice exists for a governing body to effectively apply standards.
Google also plays "fire and motion" with Web standards. They have a tendency to use non-standard(-yet) features on their websites. This gives them a perfect excuse to make other browsers look technically inferior (when the features are missing or the browser is blocked) or slow (when the features are implemented using inefficient polyfills). The unfairness is the one-sided choice of using whatever cutting-edge or Google-specific feature Chrome has, while they'd never do this in other direction. If Firefox implemented a new feature first, Google would never tell Chrome users that Chrome sucks and they need to upgrade to Firefox.
This is the thing that is most concerning. We’ve seen this happen before. We ended up with an Internet Explorer monoculture that paralysed front-end development for over a decade. Huge numbers of developers were happily writing Internet Explorer-only websites and didn’t care about any other browser at all. There’s a real danger that this ends the open web and turns it into a Chrome platform controlled by Google.
Firefox used to have a 25-30% share before Mozilla shat the bed by neglecting it while treating Firefox like a money-piñata to fund a series of dead-end, copy-cat projects in their big-tech cosplay era.
Blaming Chrome for Firefox and Safari being shit (as reflected by the percentage of users who voluntarily use the respective browsers) removes their culpability. Chrome had to grow their share from 0%.
One of three major factors involved actually being good, and I'd bet the other two factors overwhelm that one.
> One of three major factors involved actually being good, and I'd bet the other two factors overwhelm that one
Counterpoint: Microsoft Edge on Windows has the same 2 factors going for it, but failing to replicate Chrome's ascendancy. Edge and Windows pleading with you to not install Chrome is kinda sad.
People keep saying this, but how do you explain the years and years of Meta/Facebook operating on Android without ever doing this?
They HAVE been finding every loophole, crack in the Play Store policies, or Android bug they can exploit to steal data.
This didn't happen even on Android. Why would it happen on iOS?
In the case of the web, it’s also bad for any single company to have as much influence as Google has on web standards development. There’s simply too much conflict of interest at play. As a web engine developer they should have some amount of sway but if any party is to have disproportionate power it’d be better if it were an org like Mozilla that’s more likely to give issues like privacy and potential for abuse greater consideration.
It was just funny reading an American suggesting that a monopoly in the browser space would be bad ;)
Also, as a European, I can also say that a monopoly in the social media space would be bad but there is always TikTok or are they French?!? /s
My new phone is full of many more libre apps than my old phone.
Safari is missing many performance and device-related features that would allow you to create a compelling web application and bypass the App store.
I tried once, you run into the most unexpected roadblocks and come to the conclusion "I have to release this as an App." Well... guess why.
That said, about half the list appears to be stuff I don't care about one way or the other. At least not without spending way more time researching those CSS elements than I care to invest.
And I'd be totally fine with an "Allow Alternate Browser Features: Y/N" setting or similar, as long as it defaulted to the current behavior (locked down Safari only).
Yeah, looks like a nice checklist of things to turn off to me…
Safari is often the hold-out on implementing features[1] that would be useful to users - presumably because it would make web apps viable on iOS, and compete with App store apps where Apple takes a 30% cut
> Using market forces to encourage more consolidation into a single engine is bad.
Competition on a level playing-field is not bad, even if you dislike the superior product (as determined by the free hand of the market.)
1. If memory serves: various APIs useful for PWAs were delayed or kneecapped on Safari
It doesn't support Ublock Origin.
How does helping Google maintain their dominance help Mozilla?
Google's dominance is due to Chrome's market share. Using their browser engine doesn't affect their dominance.
Chrome doesn't support iOS either
> Google's dominance is due to Chrome's market share. Using their browser engine doesn't affect their dominance.
"Using a competitor's browser engine and thereby further cementing that browser's dominance doesn't affect dominance"
I'm not a Mac user, but I wish I had Safari on desktop as an option today.
Webkit browsers do exist on other platforms. They're far and away the best-performing sorts of actually-usable (in terms of supported Web features and ability to render real pages in the wild—sure, lynx works, but...) browsers on low-end machines, should you have to use one, to the point that they may be viable on a machine that's otherwise basically incapable of using the modern Web at all (which confirms for me that there's some fundamental, deep-down plumbing reasons behind why Safari's so much better on battery life than Firefox or Chrome-based browsers)
None of them are Safari and I can't vouch for how they are as daily drivers long-term, but it's nice to have one semi-up-to-date engine around that still kinda works on bad hardware (and by "bad" I mean still several times stronger than my workhorse many-tabs-browsing multi-tasking machine circa 2003—you'd be amazed how strong a machine has to be these days before trying to use the Web at-all normally in Chrome or Firefox is anything but terribly painful).
The OS should anyway sandbox everything, and be as isolated as possible from any app running on top of it. That's the real security, everything else is mostly privacy - as in it's not really a security issue that the FB app siphons all the data I allowed it to access.
How is it that the answer to an American megacorp trying to hoover all of your personal data is to try to get another American megacorp to add universal barricades to your device?
Apple depriving you of that choice may not inconvenience you, but you are still being deprived of that freedom in the first place. I suspect 100% of iPhone users are in the same boat.
You got this backwards. I chose Apple because of the choices they made and it suited me.
Likewise, having voted for a corporation that takes away freedoms does not make your opinion relevant: you are still not the one in control, and neither is anyone else who bought in.
I don't know what it is with this recent redefining of freedom to mean "the freedom to restrict others freedoms".
Even if 99.9999% of users want to only use safari, ever, you don't need to only allow safari. There's no gun to your head making you download Firefox.
Want to use a locked down browser? That's totally fine, that's always been allowed.
The reality is that both had significant advantages over their competition when launched, but the company also used anticompetitive tactics to ensure dominance once those gaps closed.
If Safari were even remotely close to being "the best mainstream browser" as you claimed, it would manifest itself in Safari capturing a dominant market share i.e. people would naturally gravitate towards Safari without Apple forcing it upon users. Apple would also invest much more into Web technology, but they don't have any interest in doing that since it would threaten their App Store business model.
"Pushing back on features" translates directly to "preventing web apps from becoming a viable threat" and none of this is about UX, which is just one of the convenient pretexts to make Apple's devious and self-serving behavior more palatable. No matter how often Apple shills try to rephrase and euphemize it, anyone who has recognized Apple's conflict of interest in this regard will see through it.
For now, they're my AnCap-approved optional private enforcement regime against a bunch of the antisocial and market-capturing behavior of the rest of tech, since public regulators are asleep at the wheel. I'd much prefer real, very aggressive (by modern standards, if not historical) enforcement of meaningful consumer protection, standards mandates, and trust-busting across the board, but this is the only option I've got (aside from "just use less tech, and far less-usefully")
All hurting them now does is hand more control of the tech ecosystem to Google.
Meanwhile: yes they in fact have the best mainstream browser, and it's not even close.
You have lost all credibility. I mean, you had very little to begin with using a 5-day old Apple-shill account, but now you have zero.
Safari is the absolute worst browser, by far, approaching Internet Explorer levels of wtf. On iOS it implements touch gestures completely differently than other browsers, because Apple does what Apple wants - forcing developers to buy a real iPhone just to debug their shitty browser. Their lack of webAPIs is absolutely to push developers to their App store - and I know this first hand because I have a web app that works on every other browser but Safari due to its lack of APIs. So if I want to support apple, I have to pay them for the privilege to develop said app, as well as pay them to buy their hardware to develop and test the app. Fuck all of that. I don't have to do that for any other browser or platform.
1) Here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44813704 you regurgitate the classic Apple propaganda of "web apps are akshually not 'real' apps" - what makes apps 'real' for Apple propagandists is clearly when everybody is forced to pay Apple 30% tax.
2) The hallmark of the irrational Apple shill is also how increasingly bizarre and contradictory the apologia in defense of the trillion dollar company's anti-competitive business practices becomes, as you've just proven: "private enforcement regime against a bunch of the antisocial and market-capturing behavior of the rest of tech" - what kind of absurd logic is that?
Apple should be allowed to break the law according to you, so they can pretend to oppose something they are also guilty of themselves!? Then you disingenuously claim that "I'd much prefer real, very aggressive enforcement of meaningful consumer protection, standards mandates, and trust-busting across the board, but this is the only option I've got", but that's clearly not the "only option you've got" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Google_LLC_(2... ) since you are literally opposing the other option by fighting regulators through spreading of disingenuous talking points in defense of Apple's unlawful business practices.
Well what you personally want is irrelevant to the law and what regulators judge to be unlawful, so that's the real good thing.
>If they're not viable, it forces developers to make real apps or else just make a web page instead of whatever awful-UX nonsense they were planning.
They are perfectly viable and it has nothing to do with UX, but you have already exposed your bias and made clear that you are arguing in bad faith by spreading misinformation in your other comments.
Nowadays, I think the trend is more toward putting a battery-saver or data-saver mode inside an existing app, rather than creating an entirely new app, and I don't see any reason why Apple couldn't do something like this in Safari if they wanted to.
E.g., For support, the Progressive Web Apps will still need to be built on WebKit, with all that entails.
Because only Apple has the power to stop Chrome from being the only browser (like IE) or to stop Meta from insisting you give up all privacy. A government may be able to do it within their own borders for a period of time, but Meta, Google and Apple are all larger and more powerful than the majority of countries out there.
Part of the problem is the governments are proving they aren’t interested in doing it. Aside from the fact that law enforcement agencies are happy to have easily legally compelled data like this, the governments are actively fighting e2e encryption and strong on device encryption. And then on top of that, if they really were interested in solving that problem, you’d think they’d be spending legislative power on solving that before solving forcing the 2nd place market competitor to open their OS up.
That Microsoft abandoned Trident for a Chromium fork speaks volumes on the amount of innovation and engineering effort Google poured into Chrome/Chromium - I don't understand how it can be controversial to suggest that Chromium wins on its merits. The gaggle of browsers opted to fork Chromium rather than WebKit or Gecko because Chromium is best-in-class.
I can't say the same about the Trident based Edge though, it just wasn't as nice to use.
> The gaggle of browsers opted to fork Chromium rather than WebKit or Gecko because Chromium is best-in-class.
If I was making the decision to make browser, and finances were on the line, I'd pick Chromium just because other people have already done it. If I was doing it for fun, I'd rather just contribute to Ladybird.
The iPhone being banned in Japan because of some policy dispute with the government is going to go over like a bag of wet cement. People may not care that it's "Apple", but they do care the "Best" is being banned for reasons the population doesn't care about.
Maybe I'm not a person, but I almost always pick one of the cheaper if not cheapest option. Rarely, if ever, do I care enough to get the best of anything...
Reminds me that I still don't know why Samsung is chained so hard to docomo. It can't just be a marketing thing.
How many iPhone users, outside of a small group of "techies" are even aware there are other mobile browsers?
Think about your parents or grandparents - not you, someone who has vastly more knowledge in this area. How many "normals" really care... I'd wager near zero.
I fear you've been overly influenced by Apple's marketing. They are in no way the best product, but they certainly have the best advertisements!
https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2021/03/11/why-facebook-is-so-upset...
I have not heard similar tantrum from FB over Android. Makes sense as it is made by an Ad company.
You:
>Then Facebook will grant its app all permission entitlements, and will direct all users to opt-out lockdown for the app to work.
input_sh:
> Are they doing that on Android right now?
So is Facebook granting its app all permission entitlements, and directing all users to opt-out lockdown for the app to work on Android?
Personally I’d rather see Mozilla working on Gecko or maybe consider switching to Servo or something instead.
> 1) Here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44813704 you regurgitate the classic Apple propaganda of "web apps are akshually not 'real' apps" - what makes apps 'real' for Apple propagandists is clearly when everybody is forced to pay Apple 30% tax.
Yeah, that's my opinion on every platform, including back when I used Android. It's my opinion on Void Linux. It's my opinion everywhere, whether or not Apple's getting a cut (why would I possibly care that they make more money? Hell I'd love for them to have actual competition in their specific niches, to put downward pressure on their profitability, as far as their actual products they sell go). I've come to it through extensive engagement with the Web and various native ecosystems over decades, as both a user and developer. Webtech is a steaming pile of ass. It's so bad it makes the prior standard-setters for "steaming pile of ass" in its field look good. If I were somehow made Dictator of Technology for the World by a wish-granting genie, I would ban web apps, flat out (and do a lot of other things that would make market-distorting massive tech companies, including Apple, very sad)
> Then you disingenuously claim
Frankly, fuck off. You're being a dick for absolutely no reason. That's the flat-out truth. I could wrap that in HN-friendly passive-aggression, but screw that, you need to chill the fuck out, to be blunt.
You are talking about a "serious bias" after spamming the same debunked Apple propaganda, with a 5 days old account? lol.
>> 1) Here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44813704 you regurgitate the classic Apple propaganda of "web apps are akshually not 'real' apps" - what makes apps 'real' for Apple propagandists is clearly when everybody is forced to pay Apple 30% tax.
>Yeah, that's my opinion on every platform, including back when I used Android. It's my opinion on Void Linux. It's my opinion everywhere, whether or not Apple's getting a cut (why would I possibly care that they make more money? Hell I'd love for them to have actual competition in their specific niches, to put downward pressure on their profitability, as far as their actual products they sell go). I've come to it through extensive engagement with the Web and various native ecosystems over decades, as both a user and developer. Webtech is a steaming pile of ass. It's so bad it makes the prior standard-setters for "steaming pile of ass" in its field look good.
Well your opinion is biased nonsense and conveniently regurgitates propaganda designed to defend anti-competitive business practices. Web Apps do an excellent job despite being actively sabotaged and you clearly have no idea what you're talking about since your rhetoric is drenched in misinformation.
>Frankly, fuck off. You're being a dick for absolutely no reason. That's the flat-out truth. I could wrap that in HN-friendly passive-aggression, but screw that, you need to chill the fuck out, to be blunt.
I get that you're not used to getting called out on your dishonest and manipulative rhetoric, but you should have anticipated that before spamming the same debunked Apple propaganda for the 1000th time with a fresh account, because you know that it's bullshit propaganda.
Why wouldn't they? Japan has no codified Apple-specific lock-in. Their citizens won't miss a criminally illegal iPhone any more than they demand to import the gold Escobar phone, Huawei handsets or the FBI's ANOM. It would be effortless from a legislation perspective and harm Apple far more than it harms Japanese people.
Japan isn't part of FIVE-EYES, their government doesn't rely on Apple for surveillance purposes. There's no real potential for political blowback unless America's politicians take it personally. Japanese citizens would just buy different phones, no different from what China has already done (without any pushback). If America demands that they give Apple market access, they can embargo the iPhone under security pretenses instead.
The market for sideloading apps is anyway much smaller than the whole mobile market because most people can’t be bothered to do it. The ones determined to install that shady flashlight app they downloaded from the internet will just as well give their banking credentials to any app that asks for them.
I’m not as supportive of this ability for computers, but the market is so broad and large for mobile devices that I feel it’s a bit of a different creature.
And yes, I agree that for sideloaded apps all bets are off. That’s why I mentioned Apple having a kill switch only on automated distribution, e.g. through app stores (first party or otherwise). So for example if it turns out that Facebook has been making constant use of exploits for a while, jumping from one to the next as they’re fixed — in this situation Apple can stop it from being installed or updated from any app store (even one run by Meta), meaning the only way to install or update it is through fully manual side loading until they clean their act up.
Some apps are de-facto unavoidable, like Facebook, Whatsapp and X.
I use Twitter everyday because of my politics interest but it isn’t that popular any more (I know the supposed numbers say otherwise)
Whatsapp is probably the hardest to avoid for most people in parts of the world where it's dominant. The number of people who need to use Facebook or Twitter is likely much smaller, and very few of those need to install a native app instead of using the website.
If I got off WhatsApp which I use for like 10 minutes a week, I’d have a harder time communicating with a handful of people outside the US
Whatever technical tricks Meta is using today pass Apple’s review and implicit endorsement. Whatever tricks they use in the future to escape the sandbox and access (hack) the OS with the sideloaded app are unilateral. Could open up a legal can of worms.
I’d be more concerned about the shady flashlight app downloaded from some corner of the internet. Or the Fakebook app, the all-in-one social media aggregator, the fake banking apps.