I have really mixed feelings about this. From an open source and general fairness perspective, I would really like to have a true Firefox on iOS but I'm also cognizant of the fact that iOS' browser restriction is basically the only reason why “web” is not a synonym for “whatever the Google Chrome team chooses to ship”.
It feels like this would be best if paired with some regulatory pressure banning cross-promotion of Chrome on Google properties and requiring Google to actually do QA rather than accidentally breaking YouTube, Gmail, Google Cloud, etc. for users other browsers. For all of the “Safari is the new IE6” memes posted, I have far more frequently encountered cases where a Google web application is doing something which only works in Chrome but there is no technical why it could not work just as well in any other modern browser engine.
> I would really like to have a true Firefox on iOS but I'm also cognizant of the fact that iOS' browser restriction is basically the only reason why “web” is not a synonym for “whatever the Google Chrome team chooses to ship”.
I feel like Firefox might actually regain marketshare if it can ship on iOS. Firefox on Android has a decent claim to be being better than Chrome at this point (largely because you can't run extensions on Chrome).
> I feel like Firefox might actually regain marketshare if it can ship on iOS. Firefox on Android has a decent claim to be being better than Chrome at this point (largely because you can't run extensions on Chrome).
Firefox is better than Chrome on Android, but it doesn't have the market share to match.
I know this probably won't be a popular opinion, but I have to disagree with this. I use Firefox on all my "general purpose" computing devices, but I only use Firefox on Android for recalling the passwords I have saved on my Firefox/Mozilla account.
For any day-to-day browsing, I use Brave with the cryptocurrency bits turned off. I used the "Fennec" version of Firefox for Android for years, since my first smartphone in college, but by the time the GeckoView-based rewrite was released, I just got tired of the poor performance and reduced battery life compared to Chromium. Only one anecdote, but Firefox felt more jittery and made my phone much hotter than Chromium did.
After the UI overhaul, where (IMO) they tried to copy a Chromium-style interface, I ran out of any non-ideological reasons to use it over Chromium-with-an-ad-blocker-built-in.
Unfortunately I have a similar experience with FF on Android. A more jittery experience and a bigger batter drain than Chrome, even without any extensions installed.
I'll plug my main mobile browser which is now Samsung's internet. I gave it a hesitant try after being disappointed by FF and I'm positively surprised. The UI customization options are even better than Firefox.
Note that the Samsung Internet privacy policy is awful. They collect:
“The information we obtain in this manner may include, identifiers associated with your devices, types of devices, web browser characteristics, device and operating system type and characteristics, language preferences, clickstream data, your interactions with Samsung Internet (such as the web pages you visit, links you click and features you use), dates and times of your use of Samsung Internet, and other information about your use of Samsung Internet.”
Samsung's internet has a misguided "feature" where it will change some colors but not others when night/dark mode is active.
Do not use it if you rely on accurate color reproduction. Expect a decease in usability (dark text on dark backgrounds, light on light) on reading some sites.
"Pull to refresh" has been in Firefox for Android for years. See Settings > Customise > Gestures.
About not having the full extension catalog available out of the box: it's pitiful, but if you're determined to install non pre-allowed extensions, you can do so using Nightly and with a custom add-on collection.
See https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2020/09/29/expanded-extensio....
Huh, I don't have Pull to Refresh under Settings > Customise > Gestures. I wish I did.
I only have "Scroll to hide toolbar" and "Swipe toolbar sideways to switch tabs"
This is in Firefox 108.1.0 which is the latest.
I know you can mess with Nightly to allow other addons but I don't really like using nightly to be honest. This feature should really be in the mainline too.
I would advise against storing passwords in a browser vendor sync service. Bitwarden, 1Password, etc.. are the tools for that specific job and function across all major browsers and even some native GUI shells.
How would you explain the benefits to the average person? This doubles the number of parties they need to trust and usually means adding a subscription service so it seems like a tough sell.
> I feel like Firefox might actually regain marketshare if it can ship on iOS.
Firefox is currently superior to Chrome on Android, yet the market share is abysmal and irrelevant. I don't see why swapping the browser engine would grow market share, other than wishful thinking.
You have to consider that Chrome is the default on most Android distributions. A more apt analog would be FF's similarly poor market share on Windows or macOS.
Firefox has supported extensions on Android for several years now. The current state of support is a rather significant step down from where it used to be.
Surprisingly, that's not enough to be competitive with the browser that's already installed on people's phones.
I just tried installing an add-on on my android and the "Add to Firefox" button is still grayed out. Searching for "compatible" extensions yields only 15 results.
So no, Firefox still doesn't support extensions on android and hasn't since they disabled them years ago.
THIS is why people like me don't use firefox on android and use chromium-based browsers instead. At least, they let me install the add-ons I want.
>Searching for "compatible" extensions yields only 15 results.
That's the complete list, yeah. It's utterly ridiculous and insulting.
You can get around it by making an online collection of extensions with a Mozilla/whatever account, but you can't install from files.
I largely agree, it doesn't meet my bar for "supports extensions" :/ hence at the very least "significant step down" - that much is at least not contentious.
The old version of Firefox on Android was awful. The UI was laggy, and the scrolling was so slow it could actually take over a minute to scroll up long pages.
Never forget that concurrent with the decision to move to a native Android UI for the non-Web parts of the mobile Firefox app (whereas previously it was using Gecko for the browser interface itself, just like on desktop), the powers that be were announcing/hyping Firefox OS—an entire mobile operating system that would "boot to Gecko", and where all apps would be required to implement the same type of UIs, a strategy that Mozilla knew had substantial downsides, since they were actively abandoning it themselves.
Left hand, meet right hand.
To this day, swathes of people who were involved in this effort (some of them very prominent) are utterly convinced that it wasn't the demonstrably bad idea that it really was, but more like a case of just plain bad luck in the marketplace. Meanwhile, they sat by ineptly as ChromeOS became much more successful for the laptop form factor than FirefoxOS ever was on any device and Electron started charting its ascendancy with more and more non-mobile apps jumping aboard over time.
So congrats to the corporate geniuses who pissed away the head start that Mozilla as a project already had and then proceeded to do absolutely nothing even when it became clear that there, in fact, was tons of interest in a cross-platform framework for desktop/WIMP apps, contrary to management's insistence otherwise. It's a masterclass of incompetence that doesn't get nearly as much attention as it should.
B2G and Firefox OS did some legitimately cool things - they still have a better blended app+web experience than anything mainstream that I've touched. Android's crappy instant apps are laughable in comparison. There's plenty to learn from that experiment(?).
The rest of it, yeah. Absolutely agreed. Electron not having a Firefox equivalent in particular strikes me as a major, multi-year... not oversight, that's far too polite. Self-ostriching? I'm continually astounded beyond words. The market is massive, and nauseatingly ripe for competitors.
So you can't innovate on that, at least meaningfully. If you want the browser with best website support, then you'd go with Chrome. If you wanted your bookmarks from your desktop to be in sync with mobile bookmarks, then most likely you are going to install Chrome, because most likely you had Chrome on your desktop (as it is the most common desktop browser).
Also, an apple policy change to lifts the restrictions for non-apple apps to not be extendable, is a different beast entirely from allowing custom web rendering engines.
They have to come from the app store, which greatly reduces the number of plugins available compared to FF, and subjects them to the same strict policies as their apps.
You can barely run extensions on Android Firefox. The stable version only allows "recommended" extensions, of which there are 18 and no guaranteed path to joining that club for a developer. My perception is that there was an almost-successful internal movement to kill extensions on Android entirely.
> I feel like Firefox might actually regain marketshare if it can ship on iOS. Firefox on Android has a decent claim to be being better than Chrome at this point (largely because you can't run extensions on Chrome).
Let's start with the facts. Firefox market share has been chronically flat with little to no change for years, as the global mobile browser market share [0] has shown even with Android having browser choice for the user.
Hence that, it also suggests that even if Apple did the same thing, it would just further cement Chrome's dominance on iOS. Firefox on mobile is shrinking into irrelevancy.
I choose it every single day. I have chrome, Firefox, edge and safari at my disposal. Safari is my day to day for most regular usage. For tech/dev work, Firefox and Chrome are usually in flight at the same time.
EDIT: "Safari doesn't help the web be diverse"
Not sure what you mean by that. Safari existing is diversity, but like FF/mozilla was an antidote to the IE years on Windows.
Keychain is a big one for me. In the past, Chrome used to support Keychain for their passwords, which meant I could sync all my secrets on any browser on any of my devices.
Why did Chrome stop supporting it? Seeing that they support more obscure keychain apps like whatever ships with KDE and Gnome, I suspect that it was not due to a lack in resources.
I don't really use Safari (for the sole reason called uBlock Origin), but something really nice is that Look Up displays a scrollable preview of pages/links.
I really miss that since it greatly reduced the amount of tabs I opened.
I choose Safari because it's the default, and as a user I can no longer really tell the difference between the major browsers. Gone are the days when I'd even think about downloading a different browser when I set up a computer. On Macs I use Safari, on Windows I use Edge. I don't see the benefit of going out of my way to install a different browser.
I'm actually continually shocked at Chrome's market share. Is there any PC or laptop platform, besides Chromebooks, that ships Chrome as the default browser? Why is it that so many people took time out of their day to go download a different browser in 2022?
Google is promoting Chrome left and right, and most users use at least Google Search, so are constantly exposed to the marketing.
And most computer-savvy people who support less computer-savvy people “helpfully” install Chrome for them, because “everyone knows” it’s the best browser.
On Windows, it also doesn’t help that Edge has the negative image of being associated with Microsoft telemetry, while Google still benefits from its former “don’t be evil” image.
mostly what others said already. for most day to day stuff, iCloud sync and whatnot is decent and works across devices. safari dev tools are... horrid imo, so chrome/ff for dev work, but general browsing, it's great.
Multiple implementations help the web be diverse, and there is a long history of features becoming easier to use, more capable, or secure based on feedback from one of the browser teams other than the first to propose something.
It’s also not the case that any current browser is so bad that the web is better off without it. Anyone with web development experience has run into problems or limitations with every browser and depending on what you do you will have different assessments of which one is best at a given time. For example, on the Interop 2022 effort all three browser teams have been coordinating currently Safari is in the lead and that will continue to shift over time.
> When is the last time you said "I will choose to use safari" or seen apple pushing the bounds of what the web can do?
Firefox and Safari are both noticeably faster and use less memory. If you care about that, or work on battery that’s enough right there.
Firefox and Safari don’t have conflicts of interest preventing privacy improvements or ad blocking.
I haven’t used Chrome as my default browser since Firefox took the performance crown ~5 years ago but I’ve used all of them plenty as a web developer. The idea that Chrome is so far ahead that we should give up on the web having multiple implementations and just let Google run it is completely the opposite of my experience.
> It’s also not the case that any current browser is so bad that the web is better off without it.
But it is. Safari on IOS is either missing or badly implements every system that lets web apps compete with system apps.
It's totally impossible to use something other than safari on IOS as well, which basically means apple is able to force a very significant amount of web traffic into their browser and basically lock out any feature the choose.
That is bad for the web.
Additionally, I think you're mistaken on the performance crown. Firefox made big gains years ago but chrome has always managed to perform better at most tasks despite those gains.
Maybe if you were running really low on ram Firefox is the faster option? That's not your typical use case though.
I use Firefox regardless. I way value their not crippling AdBlock over chrome and would encourage everyone to use it despite speed issues.
Can you be specific about what exact features you think are so critical that the web would be better off without Safari? For example, if you've already retracted the claim down to “letting iOS users use PWAs which use more app-like features” it's clearly not true because most people do not use PWAs at all, even on Android, and there are many PWAs which work just fine.
> Additionally, I think you're mistaken on the performance crown. Firefox made big gains years ago but chrome has always managed to perform better at most tasks despite those gains.
This always comes down to which specific things you benchmark. All I can say is that I use Chrome, Edge, Firefox, and Safari on macOS, iOS, and Windows and it's exceedingly uncommon for Chrome/Edge to feel faster but I do notice their memory impact on the rest of the system. For battery life, Safari is hands down the winner followed by Firefox and then, distantly, the Chromium browsers.
So which specific features are that critical — for example, do you think most app developers can't work without the battery status API (or that users don't have a vested privacy concern)? I ask because when you drill into things like that there are a lot of numbers which look big until you realize that there are something like 57 tests for a non-standard API which is not broadly used even on the browsers which do support it.
Every feature has the potential to jump out and be critical, even ones that don't appear to be.
Every time I try to use Safari to create something that goes beyond "display text" it's a new adventure in bugs and unsupported features that work in the other browsers.
It's not one of those things you can sit and name, it's a 90/10 issue, and the margins are critical even though they appear small.
Bugs surrounding drag and drop is what lead me to abandon all hope of supporting the browser some months ago.
> Every time I try to use Safari to create something that goes beyond "display text" it's a new adventure in bugs and unsupported features that work in the other browsers.
Do you have any examples which aren't so vague? The only times I've encountered this problem with other developers has been when they were using lots of Chrome-only features and put off testing in other browsers; when starting development in Firefox or Safari the most common case since around the early 2000s has been that everything works in the other two browsers with minimal effort.
> Every time I try to use Safari to create something that goes beyond "display text" it's a new adventure in bugs and unsupported features that work in the other browsers.
Being hyperbolic doesn't help your case; it just looks like you're bashing WebKit because it's from Apple. And while you may have had a bad experience back in the day or don't like that Apple chooses not to implement esoteric or Chrome-only features, that doesn't mean that Safari sucks now.
As I pointed out earlier in the thread [1], Apple has done a great job lately implementing features that they, Google, Mozilla and Microsoft have agreed should be implemented and interoperable and have W3C/WHATWG specifications.
Every browser has bugs; the bug trackers for WebKit, Mozilla and Google are public, so we can actually see what they are.
Like the other browser makers, Apple publishes its bug fixes when a new version of WebKit is released.
I'm not being hyperbolic, I'm being quite literal. I tried two or three times to support Safari. I gave up on it and I'm never going back.
Not bashing web kit because it's from Apple, I'm bashing web kit because I had a website, I wanted to make that website support safari, and it was an absolute pain to the degree that I gave up on it.
The only other browser I've had experiences like this in has been Firefox mobile. I have similar feelings about Firefox mobile.
On the desktop, technically maybe Safari is fine on the desktop because I don't own a Mac so I can't test it, but chrome and Firefox are perfectly easy to make work together on the web with no issues. I do it everyday, safari is not normal in this.
The reason you’re getting negative reactions is because you made these huge sweeping generalizations which are untrue for most web developers but despite being so vehement they’re also entirely unverifiable. It’s certainly possible there’s some feature you hit which was buggy but despite hundreds of words we still have no idea where the alleged problem was – JavaScript, DOM, CSS, audio/video, Unicode support or text rendering, who knows?
> I'm not being hyperbolic, I'm being quite literal. I tried two or three times to support Safari. I gave up on it and I'm never going back.
There's nothing special that has to be done to "support Safari" other than writing normal CSS, HTML and JavaScript just like for any other browser.
Even if you used something experimental or Chrome-only, there are polyfills for most features. This only makes sense for a public facing website (e-commerce, for example), since Safari is on over a billion devices and some of those potential customers might want to use your site.
> maybe Safari is fine on the desktop because I don't own a Mac so I can't test it
Other than some minor differences, the latest version of WebKit is essentially the same on iOS, macOS and iPadOS.
It's pretty common to use something like CodePen [1] to demonstrate CSS and HTML features publicly.
iOS Safari locking out features is not inherently good or bad.
Yes, it holds back further adoption of cutting edge features that some developers would like but that the average person doesn't care about.
However, it also holds back features that would increase the scope of what the web is, including more features that allow bad faith operators to track and monetize our data.
iOS release notes combine the OS, apps, and dependent libraries. If you compare to Chrome or Firefox on Windows or Android it's pretty hard to say that anyone has this solved other than to the extent that they're migrating to memory-safe languages. I think Chrome is a ahead on proactive mitigations but from a user's perspective it's basically a never-ending race to install updates since they all have high CVEs on a regular basis.
If Chrome can update itself in the App Store without a reboot like it does on Android, and Safari continues to require an OS update, Safari security will continue to be worse.
I use Safari and another WebKit-based browser (Orion) on macOS and iOS/iPadOS all the time, because neither Chrome or Firefox compares when it comes to battery consumption or feeling like a proper citizen of the OS it's running on.
It's seriously frustrating how little regard is given to efficiency in both Blink and Gecko. It don't care if the engine supports WebBanana 2.0 if it's destroying battery life.
But you are running WebKit in all four on iOS :) Because right now Apple doesn't allow other engines. So whatever it is that consumes batter, it's not blink or gecko.
My points of comparison are the macOS versions, where the difference is staggering. Architecturally macOS and iOS are very similar and it’s traditionally been quite rare for either engine’s team to focus squarely on improving efficiency (it’s always speed or features instead, with efficiency as a trailing afterthought), so there’s no reason to think that Blink and Gecko for iOS will be any more efficient than their macOS counterparts.
Yes. I have used every way to consume the web since text-only was preferred in early lynx days and finding gopher resources was the norm. NSCA Mosaic, Netscape Navigator, all IE versions, Firefox, Chrome when it first appeared. I want nothing more to only use Safari / OS WebKit on all my devices. If this winds up going through, I will actively delete all applications that switch off WebKit. To each their own...
No they aren't. There's no central webkitd or anything like that. WebKit is a framework, not a background daemon. If you quit all apps that use WebKit, then no associated processes will exist anymore. If you look in Activity Monitor all the web content processes are parented to launchd(1), but if you ask launchd about it, it'll tell you that the "responsible pid" for each web content process is the WebKit-enabled application that spawned it. And if you quit the application, all the associated web content processes shut down.
So, quit all of the WebKit apps and then check to see if WebKit libraries are still loaded. I posted instructions further down the thread, it's not hard to see for yourself.
If I quit all WebKit apps then by definition I've quit everything that loads the libraries.
You also seem to be very confused as to the difference between a library and a process, given what you've been saying. Having a bunch of apps using WebKit as a framework does not confer any kind of advantage on these apps. If I have an app using WebKit, and you have an app using WebKit, they don't affect each other in the slightest. The only way they would is if they were reusing shared web content processes and so didn't have to wait for those to launch, except a) I imagine launching a web content process is pretty quick, and b) they don't share web content processes so it doesn't matter.
So, do it. See what happens; WebKit is still loaded via MacOS because it's used to render UI elements that are considered part of the system. Unless you've modified the way default apps run on MacOS, WebKit should be loaded into memory from the moment you boot MacOS to the moment you shut it down.
The overhead of mapping the files on disk into memory is pretty minimal. The framework still has to be initialized anew for every application. About the only benefit I can think of is WebKit might be in the dyld shared cache (assuming that includes frameworks that can be updated independently of the system), and that just means it would bypass some of the dyld setup, but if so that would just have a minor effect on the launch time of the application.
Also if I actually do that right now I see a bunch of WebContent processes, the apps themselves and then there are a handful of daemons that have InfoPlist.strings open from WebKit (from the iOSSupport subsystem) but that's just a localization file and I don't know what it's doing there but it appears to be completely irrelevant (the daemons do not have anything else from WebKit loaded).
AFAIK macOS does not use WebKit to render UI. iOS has been known to use WebKit for text rendering in the past, but I'm not sure if it even still does that, and that was presumably in-process anyway. And even if it did that still wouldn't matter as far as applications' own use of web rendering engines is concerned.
Those aren't the OS, those are individual apps that have chosen to use a web rendering engine for various content, and it's not even correct. Calendar doesn't use WebKit at all and never has. Mail.app uses it to render external HTML input (i.e. email messages) rather than UI. I believe Music.app moved off WebKit some time ago as well, and it looks like App Store did too (Accessibility Inspector confirms that the Updates page, which used to be rendered with WebKit, is now a collection view). Both Music.app and App Store link against WebKit but that's likely because the Account Settings page is rendered with WebKit (this is likely content that is served remotely).
In any case, the OS itself does not rely on WebKit for UI, it just ships some apps that use WebKit.
The speed with which it launches isn't what anyone here means when they claim Safari is more efficient. They mean it's far more power-efficient and doesn't harm responsiveness and performance consistency on the rest of your system (i.e. programs that aren't the browser) as much as Chrome or FF do.
> and gets it's always-on processes reused by the browser when you launch it
Which is a moot point on macOS, since you hardly ever close the browser application. You just close the windows and the application stays activated in the Dock.
I found this held on a weak Chromebox I'd stuck Void on a while back, too. Dual-core Celeron, no hyperthreading, 2GB memory. Webkit-based browsers were the only ones that approached usability on that device.
You're correct, but the assumption that MacOS reuses system resources to run Safari still stands. It's not necessarily bad, it's just what the earlier comment suggested.
On iOS, Cocoa uses WebKit to render text, and everything UIKit-based on MacOS gets rendered with dynamically-linked WebKit as well. It's safe to say that if your Mac is on, WebKit is probably running.
And like everyone has said that would only affect startup time. Safari does absolutely blow away Chrome at startup time, but it also is more performant in basically every other way: battery, memory, runtime, window resize, tab open/close/re-open, forward/back, paint, layout...
The UI also is more minimal making well built sites feel much more native than Chrome (on Mac and iOS), especially combined with all the performance.
How does this prove that Safari gets an inherent performance advantage over Chrome? I guess on startup there could be a slight difference if the library is already loaded in memory.
Lifetime windows user, just got a MacBook. I heard safari was better for battery life (haven't tested so can't confirm) so I thought I'd try it. It works fine for all my needs so why change?
Side note, last pass on Mac is a pile of hot garbage. I wish I had never gotten my family onto it because switching is going to be a hassle.
I literally don't have Chrome on my Mac. Safari is faster and has less Google shoving their random product initiatives to me. I never have to log into Safari to do anything.
I choose safari every day. It uses less power and it's an overall smoother and better integrated experience. It's also not constantly hounding me to sign into Google accounts.
"Pushing the bounds of the web" specifically isn't a huge goal for me, I want to see the bounds of computing pushed. That doesn't have to be on the web. The web is Rube Golberg-esque enough as is. [edit] To be clear I'm not opposed to it, I'm neutral to it.
Battery life on my Macbook is better using Safari, so I choose to use it all the time. They've also been pulling ahead of Firefox on several occasions when implementing new CSS features.
The "peeking" you can do with the trackpad on a Mac when navigating backwards and forwards between pages is a must have for me in a browser. It's so nice in Safari, I use it hundreds of times a day. It's painful for me when I use other browsers that don't have this feature.
Is "pushing the bounds of what the web can do" something we should value? Given the current direction of the web, a preference for Safari's relatively slow feature rollouts seems reasonable.
> Is "pushing the bounds of what the web can do" something we should value?
Given that the alternative are app stores controlled by the device vendor, yes. Either we free our devices so that custom software is acceptable and common again or we make sure the web is the go to platform for everything.
You’ve been asked specific things about what features are missing from Safari / WebKit. You’ve replied with vague generalizations that don’t hold to be true outside of the echo chamber of the Chrome Reality Distortion Field.
precisely. and we see a lot of similar behavior from Chrome now as it helps them replace the good old search form with a url bar as the main driver of their ad dollars.
this unsolvable battle is exactly why I opted for the Brave [1] browser. all the better if they’re able to use alternate engine under the hood next.
> or seen apple pushing the bounds of what the web can do?
I get that it's easy to attack Apple these days but anyone paying attention can objectively see that Safari has been kicking ass this year. It's easy to do the "whataboutism" thing and they're late on a few things… but if this is a sign of things to come for Safari (style queries and masonry grids are in the works, for example), this is a Good Thing for the web and should be treated as such.
* first to implement (March) the most anticipated CSS feature that was thought to be impossible to implement for most of the past 20 years, the :has() parent selector [1]. It took Chrome until the end of August and it's still not enabled by default in Firefox because bugs
* first to implement wide-gamut color support [1a](2020)
* first to implement oklch and oklab (and a bunch more) color spaces [2]
* first to implement the open Webauthn standard Passkeys a few months ago; Chrome 108 just announced support
* support for all of the "hot" CSS features like Container Queries, Subgrid, new viewport units, AVIF image format and (as they say) "more" [3]
* Mozilla, Google, Apple and Microsoft agreed to focus on the interoperability of 15 web features; WebKit currently passes 98.5% of the tests the companies have agreed to, leading the other companies [4].
I agree that iOS Safari's popularity is the only thing currently keeping the web an open market. But I'm not too concerned that this move will break that situation. Most iPhone users just use the stock browser and don't know or care what rendering engine it is. Maybe Chrome for iOS gets a bit better due to this change, attracting a few more users, but I can't see it changing the numbers much.
It's really a stretch to call something that's literally the only option "popular". But I agree, rendering engine is not enough to move any real needle. New browsers need to be able to integrate features that ios doesn't support currently that require hooking into the operating system like PWAs.
> It's really a stretch to call something that's literally the only option "popular".
It’s not a stretch; it’s silly to say otherwise. Regardless of the rendering engine and the ability to make a 3rd-party browser the default on iOS which has been a thing for a few years now, Safari is the most popular browser on iOS and iOS runs on something like 1.5+ billion devices worldwide.
Normies don’t know and don’t care about the rendering engine when they use Firefox, Brave, Chrome, etc. on iOS and yet those browsers probably have single digit installed base on iOS.
And nothing would meaningfully change even if Firefox and Chrome ran natively on iOS.
I agree that rendering engine alone won't move the needle. Users may care about features though: PWAs and extensions that don't need to go through the app store review process are the big ones.
Example: "Firefox has an extension that allows you to download videos from youtube -- it's way better than Safari."
- other browsers exist for iOS, and users seem not to care that much for the alternatives, but…
- if other engines are permitted, then user-facing differentiators like extensions will make their way to competing browsers on iOS.
Outside of PWAs, I can’t think of many other features other than maybe arbitrary file upload that requires more hooks into the OS (as opposed to greater control of the browser engine). Genuinely interested in hearing/thinking of more, if you have any.
Other browsers exist but those are apps using the same WebKit rendering engine, which means web developers have to support that. If Blink could run natively, you’d see more promotion on Google properties to change that.
How'd that work for Microsoft Edge? Firefox usage tanked when Google started heavily promoting Chrome on search, Gmail, Youtube, Docs, etc. and I would be shocked if this went through and every Google app didn't start telling people that they should install Chrome or certain features were being held back for Chrome users.
Iirc on macOS Safari is still the most popular, with over 50% using it. It's no where near as dominant as Safari is on iOS but significantly more than Edge is on Windows.
I like Safari too, so even with this change I'll keep using it on my Apple devices.
Chrome on iOS uses the same WebKit engine as Safari. Right now, if someone at Google wants to ship a web API they need to work with Apple and, to a lesser extent, Mozilla to implement it. If they could tell people to use Blink on iOS, they'd have the ability to ship the update and blow off attempts to change the code in the standardization process or even standardize at all because 95% of their users would be running code which they can arbitrarily update.
I think if Firefox had been allowed onto the iOS store much earlier (they had ports done and working at multiple points in history) it might have helped them fight off Chrome and slow the growth of the Chromium monopoly, but at this point it's not clear to me how you fix it. I'd still be happy to be able to use Firefox on an iPhone but Firefox's days as a usable browser are numbered in general, so at some point I'd be stuck going back to Safari on that device.
I increasingly have to open up Edge to do basic stuff because people have stopped testing on anything other than Chrome and the set of Chrome-only APIs out there to use is constantly expanding.
> If Chrome does use this as a power grab, then we should expect EU injunction again.
Since this is behaviour Google is already doing and has been doing for a decade, it seems like the EU could just skip to the part of actually doing something.
How so? There are a number of features Apple dragged their feet on (WebRTC, push notifications, WebM support, AV1, the list goes on), it could be argued that Apple was intentionally stifling the capabilities of the browser to enforce the profitability of the App Store. I understand your concern, but Apple's failure to compete with Google is not Google's fault. Apple had a chance to make a browser that Chrome users switched to, but they didn't. Chrome's market share destroys every Webkit-based browser combined.
Regulators can't see into the future. Thus-far, Chrome's behavior might be frustrating but totally fair game relative to the way Apple plays. Once Safari is competing on it's own merits, we'll see how things go and respond accordingly. If it's anything like the App Store, it'll take us ~8 years to observe the abuse and respond effectively.
Incidentally, many of these "features" came about from Google trying to create moats or cut out competitors. Further, Chrome is a dog on Apple Macs, cuts battery life to a fraction, plus brings a host of invasive and compromising behaviors.
In general Google has made no attempt for their browser to be competitive on feature dimensions that matter to many Apple hardware buyers; their share remains driven by residual tech influencer group-think still left over from the IE wars more than the value of, say, WebM over x265. (See also Duck Trumotion and Widevine for more of Google's motivation.)
The profitability motive is false, see Steam charging the same 30% despite e.g. Gog or Microsoft store. This is inconvenient for those making the argument Apple's fee is out of line.
> Chrome's market share destroys every Webkit-based browser combined.
Clearly they need more help with this. Glad EU is looking out for them.
Sounds like it sucks, then. If things are as bad as you say, then we have nothing to worry about because everyone will want to use Apple's browser. I'll let all the Linux guys know, and I'm certain they'll switch to WebKit right away.
> The profitability motive is false, see Steam charging the same 30% despite e.g. Gog or Microsoft store.
No, it's pretty substantial. The App Store made 80 billion USD last year, which was one of their only businesses that approached hardware profitability. Ensuring that nobody can eschew Apple's software control is completely their directive. If Apple did become more like Steam (eg. had other software stores to compete with) things would be pretty fair I'd argue.
> Clearly they need more help with this. Glad EU is looking out for them.
Apparently Chrome is borderline-unusable on Apple products anyways, so Apple has nothing to worry about.
Normal users install the browser Google advertises at them constantly on all Google's websites, then complain that Apple sucks because their laptop's battery went from a reliably 12 hours of life to 7 hours and also the fans kick on all the time now, but they have no idea why that's happening unless they happen to bring this up with some computer nerd in their life and the nerd explains what's going on.
If normal users install everything that's advertised to them, then they shouldn't be trusted with a computer full-stop. Unfortunately, operating a computer needs to be a conscious decision.
> If normal users install everything that's advertised to them
They 100% do. It's why software installation is as annoying as it is now. Did you do any tech support (even the unofficial kind) around the turn of the millennium, when computer ownership topped 50% (in the US) and Internet use was beginning to become widespread? It was a hellscape of unwanted shitware that users couldn't figure out how to get rid of, and viruses. More recently, I've seen normies install Chrome then wonder where their (Firefox, which they had because I'd installed it) bookmarks went and not know how to get them back (they didn't care at all whether they were using FF or Chrome, but ended up with Chrome anyway because "google said they needed it" on one of those ubiquitous "hey, this site works better in Chrome" ads they put everywhere whether it's true or not) and I've seen one end up paying for OneDrive, and have it totally fuck up their workflows, despite not knowing what OneDrive even does.
> then they shouldn't be trusted with a computer full-stop.
That is no longer an option and there's no chance at all we're going back to a time when it was. I wish we would! But we're not.
> > Since this is behaviour Google is already doing
> How so?
Using a different browser on google.com or youtube.com has many times shown me ads claiming that the web is better using Chrome.
Google Cloud's console frequently breaks for non-Chrome users.
YouTube for many years used a non-standard API which only Chrome optimized instead of the standard one which all three implemented, which meant that video playback used far more CPU on other browsers.
YouTube for many years favored WebM format at the expense of video quality and performance.
Google Meet for years would drop sessions for Firefox or Safari. No other WebRTC service had problems with those browsers.
> Chrome's market share destroys every Webkit-based browser combined.
Yes, that's the point. Chrome would not have gotten so far ahead of Firefox and WebKit without both a huge financial push and heavy promotion on Google's most popular web properties.
So, Google builds around Chrome. That's fine. Apple has every right to implement those non-standard APIs that Google uses (Microsoft fought Oracle for that right), and they could feasibly hack in workarounds for all of these problems if they cared or had to compete with Chrome in the first place.
We'll have to see where things go after Apple starts playing nice. I support legislation that restricts Chrome only if Apple doesn't stand to directly profit from it.
It's not that Google builds around Chrome as much as they use their control of things which are unrelated to Chrome to promote Chrome. Right now, Apple favors their browser on iOS and Google favors theirs everywhere. I fully support consumer choice so I think the right answer would be iOS supporting other browsers and Google not being allowed to promote their browser in unrelated apps. If Chrome is actually so much better, they don't need to interrupt a YouTube or Gmail user's session to tell them.
Then we're at something of an impasse. Apple also promotes their own browser on MacOS, so it's not like they're innocent of this too. Having more options is simply a greater priority than stopping $COMPANY from cross-promoting a browser.
You have to think about what happens next. Google pushing Chrome on users of their web apps has successfully put Firefox into what appears to be a fatal downward spiral, and has lead to more developers only supporting Chrome. Microsoft stopped trying to fight that and created Edge-on-Chromium. Safari on iOS has been the primary thing keeping web development from being Chrome development and if you care about the web or open standards you want to think about what happens if that changes.
Open Standards had their shot, Apple turned their back on them. It doesn't matter at this point what happens, because both companies have proven that they need government intervention to do the right thing.
If Apple doesn't want to build a Chrome competitor, then that's not Google's fault. Both companies are refusing to give up their strangleholds, and should be prosecuted accordingly.
First and foremost though, Apple needs to be litigated. The rights of the user should supercede the petty combat between browser developers.
It is untrue that Apple turned their back on open standards. What is true is that Google has hijacked the standards body and has pushed things as "standards" that nobody except Google wants (WebUSB anyone?) and have significant downsides for user security and privacy. WebKit has flat-out refused to implement standards that impose risks greater than their benefit. So has Firefox.
It would help if you argued on the facts, not on your emotion.
It seems a bit strong to suggest the "rights of the user" are in question here, when no one is being forced to use an Apple phone. It's happening everywhere in this thread, and I'm a bit surprised why more people don't recognize that consumers already have rights and a choice. It's called Android.
> I support legislation that restricts Chrome only if Apple doesn't stand to directly profit from it.
Why would you connect how these two different companies should be treated? Sculpting regulation to attempt to engineer an outcome institutionalizing the current market balance between two oligarchs is just about the opposite of what I want any regulator doing.
That doesn't make any sense as a response. You're claiming that Apple have been neutering Webkit to force people to make apps but people are making apps that are mobile sites using Webkit which belies your claim.
I hope you aren't trying to say that's what I wrote? My position is that if we're doing consumer choice, we should do it all the way: iOS is required to allow other browser engines (with any security requirements applied evenly); Google is not allowed to use unrelated business units to advertise Chrome in ways which Apple, Microsoft, or Mozilla cannot; and Google is required to test their applications in other browsers and promptly fix compatibility issues which are not due to a browser not implementing an approved W3C/WHATWG standard[1].
1. I mention “approved” because of things like the way YouTube used to be faster in Chrome because they shipped a draft of the Shadow DOM API and then took a long time updating to use the standard version which other browsers implemented, during which time those other browsers were served a slow polyfill instead. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17606027
Safari is pretty much the worst browser in existence. Basic technology like webrtc is absolutely riddled with bugs. It's so bad that most video chat services don't even support it.
On Mac, Safari is the only browser to respect battery drain and preserve power in any real meaningful way. I'll take some bugs for that win. I use Chrome or Firefox and my battery noticeably dies faster.
> It's so bad that most video chat services don't even support it.
All of the major services support it and the only one which I’ve ever had problems with is Google’s, which shockingly had issues with every browser other than Chrome. Do you have links to bug reports?
I switched to Safari primarily a while back because it used the least battery and memory (Safari & Firefox were close, Chrome is a distant gluttonous third place). I’ve noticed very, very few cases where a compatibility issue forced me to switch browsers. As a web developer I use all three, of course, and using Chrome doesn’t feel notably better so halving my energy usage is an easy trade.
I find Chrome indispensable on OS X. Whenever I begin to wonder if my Macbook Air has fans or not, I start up Chrome and whoosh, it’s like a Hawker Harrier performing a vertical take-off.
At one point I was doing a lot of coding in a coffee shop. When testing my work in Safari, I could sit down and run on my Mac’s batteries until I got tired of the coffee shop and headed home.
With Chrome, I had to plug in immediately. I believe people who tell me Chrome has better bling and is faster, but Safari is fast enough for my purposes, and battery life is a far bigger factor for my browser choice than raw performance.
Which specific ones have you personally verified as preventing use? That's a public tracker where anyone on the internet can report something — in many cases issues are duplicates, unreproducible, or specific to certain edge cases.
I ask because that returns 351 issues but if you do the same search for Chrome you'll find 414. I would assume that you would agree that the correct interpretation of that is not that Chrome doesn't support WebRTC?
Since all of the major services work without issue in all mainstream browsers, I would argue that to a first approximation this is not an effective proxy metric.
Sorry, trying to insinuate that WebRTC is basic technology just disqualifies your opinion. It has an enormous specification describing a privacy and security snakepit and definitely is not basic technology.
I have mixed feelings too, but for slightly different reasons: AFAICT Chrome is a power grab in the literal sense that (on macOS) it drains my battery a lot faster than Safari does, for equivalent use. Not great, but bearable on a laptop; on a phone, however, that's a critical issue. So at least in that respect it has been in the users' best interests to oblige developers to use the most power-efficient browser engine.
Chrome records everything you type in the address bar, everything you type in a textbox/form, every website you visit, everything you downloaded, button clicks, which ads you interact with, etc, etc. If any other software did that, it would be called a keylogger and malware. I wouldn't defend Google on privacy matters, but okay its your choice.
> I'm also cognizant of the fact that iOS' browser restriction is basically the only reason why “web” is not a synonym for “whatever the Google Chrome team chooses to ship”.
May you explain this, because Google can't even ship their browser engine (Blink) on iOS and have to use WebKit. Why hasn't the world coalesced around WebKit?
Look everywhere else: heavy promotion on some of the most popular web properties in the world (Google Search, Gmail, YouTube, etc.) has put Firefox into a death-spiral and Microsoft gave up on their own engine in favor of a Chrome derivative. There is little reason to believe that the same would not be true on iOS were it possible for Google to get users to switch.
I think that matters because while Chrome has a number of great engineers, it's a single team at one company and the web should be bigger than that. We've seen many examples of a Google-proposed spec which became better with feedback from Mozilla or Apple engineers, and that makes the web healthier overall. One really interesting example here has been with tracking where every browser which Google does not control has a better privacy stance because none of those companies make their money by tracking people.
Safari and Chrome have the exact same goals as they are maternal twins. They are both designed to monopolize their ecosystem and suppress the competition. Firefox is the odd one out.
One by one, the rumours indicate that Apple will be complying with each and every requirement under the EU Digital Markets Act. These include:
* Install any software
* Install any App Store and choose to make it default
* Use third party payment providers and choose to make them default
* Use any voice assistant and choose to make it default
* Use any browser and browser engine and choose to make it default
* Use any messaging app and choose to make it default
* Make core messaging functionality interoperable. They lay out concrete examples like file transfer
* Use existing hardware and software features without competitive prejudice. E.g. NFC
* Not preference their services. This includes CTAs in settings to encourage users to subscribe to Gatekeeper services, and ranking their own services above others in selection and advertising portals
* Use any voice assistant and choose to make it default *
I would so love to have Google Assistant rather than Siri on my iPhone. GA is so much better hands-free / eyes-free. Being able to say "OK Google ...." when driving, cooking, working out, etc and being able to get a decent answer is something I really miss from my Pixel days. It is so frustrating when Siri just says "here is what I found on the web"
just like having real access to NFC would mean that developers will have more access to the hardware, I believe the same will happen here. the ML hardware will be opened just enough to let developers choose their own verbal cue
Apple is not giving real access to anything. They will be providing a friendly, abstracted API as they always have.
And there is zero chance Apple will allow third parties to submit their own model since this part of the hardware has continuous access to the microphone.
Now add the money incentive and you get apps that track and trick you in every turn because the competition is so heavy and marketing costly. Let’s say Netflix makes their own app store for Netflix and their games. If they loose around a third of their customers it’s still ok. Now Netflix plays fast and loose with the sandboxing because they really want feature x, like lock the screen to the Netflix app only unlockable with their PIN, so they allow this, suddenly another app with malicious intent uses the feature.
We have seen similar things happen on early versions of Windows mobile and Palm Pilot.
If Netflix were to treat their customers like that, why would anyone continue to subscribe?
I get the argument that Apple fighting on behalf of users can be good. Unfortunately they went well beyond that remit, and have blocked all kinds of useful applications on specious and moral grounds. What right should Apple have to block xCloud? Or Fortnite? Or emulators? Or torrent applications? Or crypto wallets? Or adult themed apps? Or Parler? And this says nothing of their predatory revenue model. They had their chance to be good citizens of a dominant platform. They totally blew it. They chose to tell users and legislators to go fuck themselves. This is 100% Apple’s fault.
You will be pleased to discover that the Digital Markets Act doesn't permit any of those.
Edit: I'm not sure if the third point has been edited or I simply misread it, but the DMA would not prevent Apple from moderating their own App Store. It would prevent Apple from moderating apps on iOS, iPadOS, and macOS.
Just to be clear, I'm not stating that Apple won't be able to moderate apps on their store. I'm stating that Apple won't be able to moderate apps on their operating systems.
The Gatekeeper must allow installation of applications (Article 4. S4):
> The gatekeeper shall allow and technically enable the installation and effective use of third-party software applications or software application stores using, or interoperating with, its operating system and allow those software applications or software application stores to be accessed by means other than the relevant core platform services of that gatekeeper. The gatekeeper shall, where applicable, not prevent the downloaded third-party software applications or software application stores from prompting end users to decide whether they want to set that downloaded software application or software application store as their default. The gatekeeper shall technically enable end users who decide to set that downloaded software application or software application store as their default to carry out that change easily.
There is no wiggle room here. The Gatekeeper can't restrict installation of applications in any way, including by way of certificate requirements, approval processes, or fees.
If you're a legal geek like I am it's worth spending a few hours combing through it. I am thoroughly impressed with how meticulous they've been. It's easily the most comprehensive (and impressive) tech legislation in my lifetime.
I truly don't know what the point of getting an iPhone is if you're going to change every single part of it. A lot of us buy them BECAUSE of the software, not despite it.
Why do so many people want to force Apple to make them an Android phone?
I don't get this logic. I've bought 4 iPhones and the biggest frustration I have is that I can't use real Firefox like I can on Android (particularly my favorite variant, Fennec F-Droid.) Not all iPhone users are the same. I'm not forcing you to side-load apps, or switch off Safari. What about this is so bad?
It does force Apple to change their software and likely hardware to accommodate these things, and the result is likely to be a lower quality product. My experience with Android phones makes me want to avoid that at all costs: I switched to iPhone a few years ago because I was fed up with the garbage quality of the hardware and software even in “top of the line” models. Android phones are inferior in every respect to iPhones. I don’t want iPhones to become like Android phones.
But we're only asking for Apple to do what they do for macOS and Mac computers on iOS, essentially. Hate to seem dismissive but I really don't understand all of the fear, uncertainty and doubt around it.
FUD accusations are just gaslighting at this point. Actual experience with real phones isn’t FUD. Phones are not desktops: they’re appliances. They don’t need the same level of customizability or direct user control, and the quality falls substantially when those anti-features are added.
The reason for a "FUD accusation" is the lack of any reasonable explanation for how the experience would "fall off." The problem with Android would be exactly the same if you were constrained to Google Play Store. The difference between Android and iOS is not that one of them allows sideloading and alternate web browsers.
(And also, I viscerally disagree that a smart phone is in any way, shape or form, an "appliance". Appliances exist to serve a specific purpose. The main differentiation between an appliance containing a computer, and a computer, is that the appliance's computer hardware and software exists to drive the main function of the appliance. Smart phones are being used as pocket computers. That's not an appliance.)
Smart phones are being used as computers in the same sense smart refrigerators are. People don’t “do computing” on smart phones. The apps don’t feel or function the same as a windows or Mac desktop app, they aren’t installed or managed the same way, and people don’t expect them to be similar at all.
What's funny is, knowing some younger folks who are not particularly tech savvy, what you're saying people DON'T do with phones is exactly what they do.
Install and run programs? Yep. Perform productivity tasks, like edit video or even sketch? Yep. Writing blog posts, browsing the internet? Yep. Playing video games, streaming videos? Yep.
My friend. You can fight it, but this is a general purpose mobile computer.
Serious question though: why do you use iPhones if you want to do Android stuff? Why did you switch over in the first place? It's my impression that the hardware for newer android phones is pretty much on par, no?
What is "Android stuff"? 99% of the time, I use my phone pretty much how anyone else uses a smartphone. The status quo today is that on Apple phones, you can't even view a WebM inside of Safari. Do you have any idea how often I'd come across a page that only had WebMs? Safari won't even tell you why it's broken, it will just sit there and not load the video silently.
It's worse optically considering how big of a conflict of interest it is for them, and astounding considering that on macOS, a platform with browser choices, Apple has no issues supporting WebM. No battery life problems or anything.
(On Android, I do definitely take advantage of being able to use Termux, and Yt-dlp, and actually manage files. That said: this is the exception. It's very useful, but not something I'd even consider absolutely necessary.)
>It's my impression that the hardware for newer android phones is pretty much on par, no?
No, it isn't; the iPhones are a dramatically better value provided you're not looking at the high end. The SE 2 and Pixel 6A have as much useful life remaining in them- they'll leave support at the same time and are competitive in terms of performance. The problem, of course, is that the SE 2 is half the price of the Pixel 6A.
At the same price point, you have the SE 3, which is an iPhone 13 inside; Apple just happens to be 2014 Intel compared to the 2014 AMD of Qualcomm/Samsung/Google (yes, they really are that bad at CPU design). 90Hz screens aren't an advantage if the hardware and software can't keep (or stop keeping) up, and Android only has disadvantages in those areas.
The only things I wish my iPhone did was block ads on YouTube (and play videos with the screen off) and not require a hundred dollar subscription fee for the privilege of not arbitrary expiring my applications after 7 days. NewPipe, uBlock Origin, and being able to install whatever I want are massive boons for the way I use my phone; provided iOS had those things, I would likely never consider an Android phone again barring significant hardware changes that Apple intentionally fails to integrate (like the foldable screens).
How is this a meaningful retort to the other commenter? They get to use FF on iOS, you get to keep using Safari and every other stock app. What exactly is the problem there besides what comes across as some weird form of "keep the dirty Android users away from my iPhone"?
>I'm not forcing you to side-load apps,
And no one is forcing you to buy an iPhone. Why don't you buy Android if you want to do all that stuff?
This is turning something that should be a gradient into a zero-sum. Features like side load dot not make existing features stop working. Allowing other browsers doesn't make iPhone just not work.
> they just want something that works.
The reason people are interested in side loading apps and opening up iOS is there are quite a few people like me that drop $1000 on an iPhone, and it does not just work for me when it really should work better than a $100 Android. The only difference seems to be anti-me features that protect Apple's monopoly on the app store.
Whatever changes Apple will have to make to support drop-in replacements for Siri, a complete elimination of certification requirements for Gatekeeper, and so on, as listed in this very thread, will absolutely disrupt the status quo and make things more complex.
I hope that Apple will strive to make it so the defaults match the current reality, but just like soldered-in batteries mean more capacity without the need for connectors, so too do baked-in defaults mean more stability without the need to pluggability.
It may not be the end of the world, but it is a pretty drastic change that people are dismissing as "allow alternate browser engines," when it's so much more than that.
It's true that there is nonzero engineering effort to make some of these things happen, but in my opinion, a lot of the problem is self-inflicted. I mean... Apple also eventually decided to support third-party keyboards. Was it a bit buggy? Absolutely. Did it obliterate quick type and make all typing buggy for all users? No. As far as I can guess, they actually special-cased third party keyboards. Fine by me. Probably fine by regulators as long as there's nothing malicious about it.
Truth be told, I don't care about alternate voice assistants. That said, today, you can get almost all of Google Assistant on an iPhone just fine, the only thing it really can't do is well, respond to your voice passively and do things on the lock screen. Exactly how much power they're willing to expose I'm not sure, but it doesn't really seem like they have to give everyone access to the same internal APIs they use so as long as the APIs they provide give enough feature parity.
Great example: keyboards are definitely more complicated and fiddly since the introduction of multiple keyboards. Absolutely necessary to support multiple countries, but the tradeoff is real.
The sky isn't falling by any means, but iOS is absolutely going to get more complicated as a result of these changes, even for people who stick with the defaults, as I likely will in most or all cases.
And of course I wonder: will Apple be releasing Siri for Android? Presumably Google would be required to allow for it.
There hasn't been anything stopping Apple from releasing Siri on Android. Amazon's Alexa already available on Google Play Store, and Samsung Bixby is on Samsung devices. I'm sure there's plenty of alternatives on Chinese phones that do not have Google too.
> It may not be the end of the world, but it is a pretty drastic change that people are dismissing as "allow alternate browser engines," when it's so much more than that.
It doesn't seem possible that Apple would not have coded Safari up in a way that they would be able to replace the engine. I don't see why they would have couple it so tightly. It seems un-Apple like. What if they wanted to replace the engine?
Why would Apple ever want to replace the engine they develop? I'm not sure that's been considered a priority, or even an option.
However, they do release WebKit for use by others, so in that sense I presume there's a certain looseness in the coupling. Which is not to say there aren't assumptions that will have to be unwound.
Sometimes I don't like democrats. I don't like all policies backed by democratic candidates, and I definitely have problems with the DNC. However, that doesn't mean I want to vote Republican, or Green Party, or Libertarian.
Please don't get caught up in taking the analogy to it's logical extreme (or read it literally, because it's not literal.) The point is that there is no perfect option on the market for me. I don't have a single criteria for the perfect smartphone. I don't just want a device that boots Firefox well.
And in fact, Apple, much to the chagrin of those of us who hate Apple, makes some of the best computer and phone hardware on the planet. It's not even a contest, in some cases.
Do you use a macOS computer by chance? Do you feel like the Asahi Linux effort is harming your ability to use and enjoy the Mac computer? Does it cause problems for you, or make things no longer "just work", when someone is allowed to install Firefox?
> Why don't you buy Android if you want to do all that stuff?
I do. They're not perfect either. Google Pixel phones are pretty good, but I doubt I need to expound upon the problems of them for you. You pretty much seem to get it given the next few lines. (Not trying to be condescending here.)
> Actually most of them are- they don't want to deal managing a device.. they just want something that works.
Most users of all mass-market devices are like this, be it Samsung Galaxy, Google Pixel or iPhone. It's not really to your point, though, because iPhone has bred perhaps one of the most interesting communities through people's sheer desires to break it apart and customize it. I'm sure you're aware of the rich history of jailbreaking iPhones; and while a small percent of users, (just like Android rooting,) those jailbreaks get nontrivial huge amounts of attention. It's basically international news when a new untethered jailbreak kit shows up, and undoubtedly millions of users use them.
Apple may very well not want these users, but Apple wants to make the world's best phone. Well, you may not want the consumer you get, but that's the symmetry of this all. There's a give and a take.
>> as if that is possible on android phones. on most phones you cant even get stock android.
It's true that some Android phones are more locked down than others.
However, on most you can side load apps and install alternative App Stores such as f-Droid or Amazon, with just a few settings changes.
The same is not possible with Apple devices. You can temporarily side load an app if you pay the costs to get a developer key to sign an app. Alternative App Stores are just not possible yet.
> A lot of us buy them BECAUSE of the software, not despite it.
Well the built-in software will still be there. And if you have a use-case that it doesn't support then you'll have the option to install other software that does. Seems like a pure win from a user perspective.
The software you like isn't going anywhere and you don't have to change any of those defaults. The mac allows you to change defaults and install whatever you want and it's still a great platform.
I agree completely. Having a walled garden forces Apple to focus on the quality of their software if they wish to have a competitive product. (And their software, on the whole, is good because they have control over their vertical integrations.) If you forcibly take away their incentive to compete, the appeal of the iPhone disappears. Every phone's environment becomes a Bazaar; no more Cathedrals.
I feel it should be the opposite. If Apple is heading in the direction of more service revenue and is forced to compete on a level playing field with competitors like Spotify, for example, wouldn't this encourage them to improve Apple Music?
Yeah no kidding, I don't understand the parent comment at all. How does not allowing anyone to compete make it so you want to make your software better?
I don't mean this to sound rude, but I don't know the answer: Are you a software developer? Being forced to depend on service revenue rather than the appeal of an integrated platform means that the quality of the integrated platform will decline. Sure, Apple Music as an individual piece of software in support of the service offering may improve, but what about the underlying Frameworks that support it? The money, in developer resources, has to be spent somewhere.
You only need a cookie modal to allow opting out of non-essential cookies though. Needing a cookie to store a login? Fine, no modal needed. Cookies to track you everywhere you go until the end of days? Requires a modal. This, to me, seems fair and reasonable. It's everyone else that botched it by using unnecessary and annoying modals for required cookies.
Eu mandated that the users should be clearly told what would be tracked, they should be given an easy way to accept, reject, and choose which of them they accept.
The corporations - mainly the US - chose to 'get around' these requirements in the undying US corporate tradition: Make it difficult for the user to reject cookies so they will have to give up and just accept. Most modals have only an 'accept' and 'choose' sections, and the 'choose' section includes a gigantic list of 'vendors' which you have to individually turn off one by one. So that you will give up and just click 'accept'. Some of them offer a 'reject all' button way at the bottom of of the list, after listing 30-40 vendors. So basically its the usual corporate trickery to force user to do things they don't want to.
However, this is illegal - Eu works on civil law, and civil law is a clear, well defined legal practice. If it says you have to do some specific thing, there isnt much 'interpret my way around it'. So, per that law, all the cookie modals that do not give the users an EASY way to reject cookies are in violation of that law. It absolutely does not matter zit if the user 'consents' to the terms. Mutual agreements and contract law overriding actual law is a trait of the Anglosaxon common law, not civil law. In civil law, it doesnt matter zit if the other party agreed to something illegal per law.
Therefore, not only all these pesky modals that try to force you into accepting those ~80 cookies from a random website you visit are not Eu's doing, but also most of them are actually in violation of the GDPR law.
So if the website doesn't collect any data at all, except for what is needed for running the website and preventing malicious users (so, collecting ips for a week in the logs to use fail2ban), do they need a "privacy" section?
I ask because a privacy section requires a lawyer, and that is a big cost for a simple static website with no earning goals
> So if the website doesn't collect any data at all, except for what is needed for running the website and preventing malicious users (so, collecting ips for a week in the logs to use fail2ban), do they need a "privacy" section?
I dont think they do. There are such sites indeed and I havent seen any prompts in them.
> so, collecting ips for a week in the logs to use fail2ban
IP by solely itself wouldnt constitute 'Personally identifiable information' as far as I know. But Im not sure.
> I ask because a privacy section requires a lawyer
Not really. Website privacy legal templates already exist and they are pretty standard at this point.
Well the prompt is required only if you have to accept stuff, otherwise a privacy section would be sufficient.
IP is considered identifiable information if it's used for some purpose (e.g. statistics for website visits). I'm pretty sure it's considered "legit use" if it's for filtering malicious users.
Could you point to some of those standards? I had a customers reaching out and found myself without any idea how to handle that privacy section.
Prompt is necessary to accept/reject in case there is any potential of collecting data. Since you cant collect data if someone does not have an accept button. if you dont collect data, I believe you dont need to disclose it.
> IP is considered identifiable information
Not at all. IP by itself is meaningless and it just points to a computer or a proxy. Only if you have other information then it starts becoming identifiable. Even in court cases that involve IPs its not enough - the ISP gives the IP to the court, but then the court must find who was the person using that IP at that given point in time in that house, even the person using the computer.
> Could you point to some of those standards?
You can just google privacy section templates with GDPR keyword. There are a lot of templates as such. WordPress itself provides an easy way to create such templates and it already has GDPR tools built in.
IMO if it's open to abuse then it wasn't properly designed. And If its being abused even while not open to interpretations then its not enforceable, which also means its a bad design.
I feel like people give a pass and even defend it because it had good intentions. Clearly it wasn't well thought and people should criticize it more instead. Bad execution can ruin good ideas.
Of course there are other good things on GDPR as a whole but this cookie consent thing was a disaster. I live in the EU but use a VPN routing my connections to a nearby non-eu country to have an overall better browsing experience.
> IMO if it's open to abuse then it wasn't properly designed
Its not open to abuse. Its just that the US corporations are violating its articles.
> Clearly it wasn't well thought
It was well thought out. It mandates easy Accept / Reject for tracking. Just one click. Tell the users what you will track. And allow them to choose if they want to.
The route that the US corps. took is no different from how they go around and violate laws in their home turf. They think that they can do the same with civil law. But it doesn't work that way. Eventually one will get busted for not obliging with the articles of the law.
Its pretty enforceable. It is enforced for large corporations promptly, and you would be surprised, but if someone reports a small website from an individual or small corporation, they also get the law applied to them. Eu's enforcement website has a lot of local businesses and individuals who had collected people's emails without their permission (buying them from warez sites etc), sending out spam emails then got fined for violating GDPR for collecting data without the knowledge and consent of those people.
There are zillions of good ideas that the Eu mandated - ideas which you dont even notice because they became parts of your daily life. They range from the obligation that food producers must have all the ingredients clearly listed in their products to the expiration dates. From no-spam laws to right to repair.
What you say just sounds like Daily Mirror grade smear.
I grew up in Australia. We somehow mysteriously managed to have expiration dates on food too, despite our distance from Brussels. What developed country doesn’t have expiration dates?
The EU is great at taking credit for things it had very little to do with. Sometimes it’s obvious things that happen elsewhere without the EU (expiration dates on food), sometimes it’s the work of other organisations (like NATO). “Oh, there’s peace in Europe? Yeah, the EU did that. Oh, there’s war in Europe? Hmm, more EU should fix that.”
> What you say just sounds like Daily Mirror grade smear.
I’m a euro-federalist, so I doubt the Daily Mirror would be interested. The EU is a mixed bag and I want it to do better. Reflexively attacking people whose views you know very little about seems unconstructive.
> We somehow mysteriously managed to have expiration dates on food too, despite our distance from Brussels
A large part of the world adopted such rules after the Eu implemented them. The Eu is seen as the leader and standard in these things. Eu implemented consumer protections, everyone else in OECD also did. Eu implemented EUVAT, OECD countries are also doing it. Also various US states. Eu implemented GDPR, and suddenly from Brazil to US every other country or state has their own GDPR.
Now the Eu has its digital gatekeepers law. Watch how long will it take for other OECD countries to adopt similar laws.
> Reflexively attacking people whose views you know very little
Sorry but we are on public internet. We dont have the time to sit and get to know people. If you are talking like the people from a certain group, then its normal that people respond to you as if you were from that group.
Moreover, the culture that people grow up in affects their perspective greatly. Not surprisingly, having grown in an Anglosaxon country seems to have shaped your perspective too.
Brazilian here. GDPR is the only example in your list that is factual and that's because Europe requirements for market agreements. It was passed mainly to be able to establish trade with the EU.
We had most of these other things before EU even existed. Brazilian's Código de Defesa do Consumidor dates from 1990. Expiration dates are such a common thing worldwide its not even worth searching on there internet. A quality assurance institution named INMETRO exists since the 70s testing everything from condoms reliability to reporting small parts in children's toys. Brazil also pioneered net neutrality one year before the EU.
Talking about culture perspective you seem to admire the EU regulatory frame and that's fine but as I said before nothing is perfect and its totally ok to criticize something that is poorly conceived even if intentions were good.
I think they mean EU countries. EU laws are mostly laws from specific countries that bubbles up to the union. Regulations along these lines has existed in Europe for over a century.
> EU laws are mostly laws from specific countries that bubbles up to the union
Nope. Euparl does most of these regulations. The GDPR, digital gatekeepers and various other internet related laws originated from the left wing parties in Euparl - those parties grew from pirate party roots. The pirate parties that were founded in many Eu countries in mid 2000s during the copyright/filesharing battles.
> GDPR is the only example in your list that is factual and that's because Europe requirements for market agreements
That is a big factor in proliferation of such agreements, however thats not the normal mechanic. Japan has no need for copying EUVAT to trade with the Eu for example. But they are doing it. Also, various US states implemented similar schemes without any such need.
> Talking about culture perspective you seem to admire the EU regulatory frame
I explicitly do. What you are seeing with the emergence of recent regulations like GDPR, digital gatekeepers is due to the ascent of pro-people, pro open web parties that grew from pirate party roots coming to power in the Eu parliament.
> A quality assurance institution named INMETRO exists since the 70s
Eu started as a coal cooperation organization in mid 1950s and by 70s most of its institutions and practices were in place - especially in the direction of consumer, product and manufacturing regulations. It was the example even by then.
This is ludicrous. Food labelling long predates the EU, and appears to have started in the United States sometime around the 1930s on a voluntary basis. Food labels predate the EU even in Europe, by many years.
The idea of VAT dates back to the First World War, and while the EU assists European governments in coordinating its collection in Europe, it had no meaningful impact on the adoption of VAT-style taxes overseas. Neither Australia nor the United States levy VAT.
Consumer protections absolutely do not originate in the EU. It’s a claim so absurd I honestly don’t know what to say to it. English civil law has had case law and statute protecting consumers for centuries, which is in no way remarkable, seeing as even Roman law had consumer protections in cases of fraud, mistake, or duress.
The idea that the EU is some shining beacon on a hill that everyone looks up to is something one hears a lot around Europe, but I think the people who think this may have places like Moldova confused with the rest of the world. The EU is the fastest shrinking trade bloc, in relative terms, on the face of the planet. Europeans used to like saying that if they were a single country, they’d be the largest economy in the world. That ceased to be true in the last few years - the US has now overtaken the EU. Whereas the US has to manage runaway growth and speculative excess, the EU is forced to make provisions for its relative economic decline. If European countries were US states, living standards in large European economies like Germany and France would rank near the bottom. This is a huge problem. Less prosperity means less quality government services, including healthcare, social security, and education. Less growth over time means fewer nurses, fewer teachers in the future. If the EU single market is such a towering achievement, why is EU growth so sclerotic? It’s hard for Europeans to hear, but the EU is simply not a model people outside of Europe aspire to, even people who otherwise love Europe.
The European project has wonderful achievements, in my opinion, like the Schengen area, and deep scientific and educational cooperation, including Erasmus exchanges for young people. But instead of focusing on those, the EU prefers to claim credit for the sunrise. I’d rather see the EU reformed than abolished - it’s still a net good, I think - but far too many Europeans are far too myopic about the EU’s shortcomings, and far too ignorant about how the rest of the world functions to consider alternatives. (Or even just apply a reasonable degree of scepticism when the EU claims credit for things that predate it or that are already widespread elsewhere.)
> Sorry but we are on public internet. We dont have the time to sit and get to know people.
You seem to be defending bad faith assumptions as a time saving device. Seems to me like that would just set you up for a lot of unnecessarily adversarial discussions, and a generally less pleasant experience than you could be having.
The goal wasn't hurting them in the first place, just ensuring that Apple plays fair on their own hardware. You may be totally correct with your second point, if Apple implements things well.
> just ensuring that Apple plays fair on their own hardware
As software, firmware, and hardware lines blur, it's a legacy concept that hardware and software must be divided.
Incredible value comes from fluid and designer-driven remixing of the three according to usability, ruggedness/resilience, and security principles.
The most useful appliances for Normals™ will be the ones that blend these best. This kind of ruling holds us back from the huge vertically integrated design investments that deliver ease of use and trust that end users want.
Well, good news. Apple can still blur the lines for you while unlocking the bootloader for me and letting normal users install software packages. You have yet to present an example of how the things I want conflict with the things you want.
Go read the discussion sections of any of the other 50,000 times this exact exchange has happened. There's plenty of explaining in those. It never seems to get through, but you could fill a 20-volume encyclopedia with those (incredibly repetitive) posts.
TL;DR many Apple users like the way things are now, and don't want any amount of risk to that. The chief risk we see is that we'll no longer be able to get 100% of the software we want (or are forced to use) on iOS through the Apple app store, with all of Apple's protections and guarantees, or that Apple will have to reduce those protections and guarantees to keep such a splintering from happening. Yes, we're aware that Android hasn't seen much adoption of alternative stores, but Android also hasn't (delightfully) jammed a thumb in Facebook's eye over and over. Even a small chance of that coming to pass isn't worth it to us. We wish you'd all just go use Android or Linux phones or whatever and leave us alone.
Well, sucks for you. Europe wants Apple to compete with other software stores, and you'll be hard-pressed to defend Apple's stranglehold on software distribution.
It's fine that you enjoy Apple's curation, they can still curate things for you under the new law. They just also need to provide competitive app distribution. Considering how many complaints I've heard from devs vis-a-vis the App Store, I reckon some competition is exactly what Apple needs to put them in line.
>The chief risk we see is that we'll no longer be able to get 100% of the software we want (or are forced to use) on iOS through the Apple app store
I don't think that's ever been the case. You've never been able to get an alternative browser on the Apple App Store or a streaming gaming app such as Xbox Cloud Gaming, or Geforce Now. Or currently I cannot get Fortnite
These are all apps I want that are not available on the Apple App Store.
I play Xbox Cloud Gaming. On iOS. As a web app saved to Home Screen. Works fantastic, iPad Pro with Xbox controller is the bomb.
(Btw, SetApp app approach works too.)
Meanwhile, Steam competes with Gig on PC and charges 30%. All this 'allow alt app stores to break apple's pricing' (zero other real benefits are cited) has not happened on PC.
Sure, but I'm responding to a complaint about apps not being available on the App Store, and neither is Xbox Cloud Streaming. If we were talking about iOS, then alternative app stores and browsers would still be iOS.
Steam is a different product in a different market. Steam's 30% is set by the market deciding that Steam's value is worth the 30%. Apple's 30% comes from whatever Apple feels like charging because there is no alternatives, hence the complaints. If you believe Apple's 30% comes from value and that no one can beat it, then they should be able to prove it in some free market competition like Steam has.
> There is absolutely no argument for preventing other people from using something else.
There is though. I'm not going to post it yet again because it's already in this thread multiple times, and in literally every other thread like this ever on this site.
You might disagree with the argument, but you're flat-out wrong that it doesn't exist or can be trivially dismissed on factual grounds.
I think it will help some people use apple who were infinitely frustrated by this. But I'm sure Apple has done the calculation and benefits more than it hurts from being a total dick to its users, or they wouldn't be doing it.
Music isn't mentioned specifically but I believe any app is covered. Article 6:
> 4. The gatekeeper shall allow and technically enable the installation and effective use of third-party software applications or software application stores using, or interoperating with, its operating system and allow those software applications or software application stores to be accessed by means other than the relevant core platform services of that gatekeeper. The gatekeeper shall, where applicable, not prevent the downloaded third-party software applications or software application stores from prompting end users to decide whether they want to set that downloaded software application or software application store as their default. The gatekeeper shall technically enable end users who decide to set that downloaded software application or software application store as their default to carry out that change easily.
Even on macOS if i accidentally click on the play button of my keyboard without having anything to play (like an open YouTube tab somewhere) will open the Apple Music app which i have never used nor opened myself.
I've found when talking to Apple-ecosystem users that they aren't even aware of how well Apple Music works. I'm aware there's certain integrations that might not be possible, or a random family member being on Android that would preclude its use, but it really does work great if you don't have any reason to stray from the ecosystem. Lots of people I talk to started using Spotify years ago and just never reevaluated. Similarly, people that only use iPhones and Macs and still use Dropbox. I'm sure someone has curated a list somewhere...
I think there is a good chance it could be applied to Microsoft, if not Sony and Nintendo as well. At least, I see no reason it should not. They satisfy a lot of the requirements as Gatekeepers like market cap and revenue.
I don't fundamentally have a problem with Chrome or Firefox on iOS being able to use their own engine. They're responsible, competent organizations who will regularly update and maintain their browsers.
What worries me is every app that's not a dedicated browser suddenly including an entire browser engine (the way that every app on macOS/Windows now does). Apps will import one version of Chromium and then not update it for *years*, long past the point where it contains security holes and lacks support for new platform features.
Steam on Win/Mac/Linux is still using Chromium 85! That's 2 years old, and it's a piece of software under active development.
I know of an actively-developed Windows game using CEF 3!!
In other words: do you want your favorite bank/airline/restaurant/government agency's app to be 100+ MB bigger and contain a growing number of vulnerabilities? I don't, and neither does Apple. If this goes ahead, I hope the App Store rules around it are thorough. Shipping a browser is a huge responsibility, one that most organizations are not prepared for.
The solution to this is simple, Apple needs to make their browser usable enough that people don't go to extremes such as packaging entire browsers with their code. In many cases Safari's Javascript engine will even beat Chromium's engine.
Android allows any browser engine you like (even Webkit if someone would manage to compile it) and people don't generally do nonsense this on Android. I don't see why the situation would be any different here. The reason is simple: the web view API is easy to use, automatically updated, and backwards compatible.
As another benefit, devices that have fallen out of support may receive updates for browsers, making them usable again.
Developers will package browsers in their code as a way to spy on users with fewer restrictions, not because Safari is unusable.
That being said, I returned my first and last iPhone after realizing that Firefox on iOS couldn't run the NoScript extension.
It is frankly shocking that Apple has managed to go this long while blatantly contravening the precedent set by United States v. Microsoft Corp., and I'm glad the EU is finally taking a stand on that front.
> Developers will package browsers in their code as a way to spy on users with fewer restrictions, not because Safari is unusable.
I've also seen developers cling to particular versions of Electron simply because their app is so brittle that its behavior on different versions of Chromium is not consistent or even breaks, which is frankly ridiculous. If it doesn't run on the latest version of Chrome at minimum it shouldn't be shipped.
And then people are going to complain about not getting JIT access is unfair advantage to safari, but then if they do get a JIT entitlement they are going to slack on patching vulnerabilities...
I love Apple but I also know that in these situations where they're being forced to punch a whole in their walled garden that they'll usually just go about making the solution as shitty to use as possible.
They might let other engines in, sure; but will they relax the restriction on their memory mapping entitlements to allow for optimizing JITs? Doubt it. Means you'll only be able to use alternative rendering engines that have JS interpreters with no optimizing JIT. Stuff like that.
If it means that I can stop accidentally swiping left and right on webpages, and leaving web pages where I have entered text without prompting me, it’s unfortunately a solid trade off.
Similar to how people say "I hate so and so" in sports - there's no actual hatred or ill will towards the person (although there are some nutcases out there that mean it), it's just easier than making up some new vocabulary to describe or to preamble everything with padding.
As the Sports Guy said, there's sports hate and regular hate.
It does dawn on me the possibility that I'm also over analyzing your comment :)
This policy change is actually just a direct consequence of the upcoming 2024 EU law that forces Apple to allow third party app stores for iOS devices.
Because Apple can't control what applications get uploaded to the third party stores, like browsers that use a different web engine, then they try to lax the rules in their own store to desperately keep developers from jumping the ship.
Does this EU law require Xbox to allow Apple to sell games on Xbox, or require Sony to support Xbox GamePass? What's the delta between a console and an appliance?
Who is allowed to vertically integrate, and who isn't? Under what principle of free markets and user choice? Should users by forbidden from choosing true vertical integration as a design choice? Why?
Why does Steam charge 30% if we think Apple having no competitors is why they charge 30%? Since you can sell anything for PC users anywhere, why don't developers jump from Steam's ship when options like Gog are available?
> Who is allowed to vertically integrate, and who isn't? Under what principle of free markets and user choice? Should users by forbidden from choosing true vertical integration as a design choice? Why?
Vertical integration related to the central communication system in society has been recognized as particularly problematic for quite some time.
> Who is allowed to vertically integrate, and who isn't? Under what principle of free markets and user choice?
There is no 'free market' in any environment that is 'vertically integrated' by a handful of organizations. The very reason why we abolished feudal aristocracy and even went to the extent of doing revolutions and setting up guillotines was to get rid of that kind of environments - which its owners were totally unwilling to let go.
Technological corporate feudalism is as bad as aristocratic feudalism of the yesteryear. They are both based on the concept of property ownership to start with, so they stem from the same concept of private tyrannies where a private tyrant can do whatever it want with what it 'owns' even if it dominates the lives of millions of people.
> Apple can't control what applications get uploaded to the third party stores
Is this actually true? I don't know how I would find the answer to this question without paying a team of lawyers to analyze the 40,000 word Digital Markets Act. However, my guess is that it's more nuanced.
Structurally, I think the developer program will be unchanged. iOS will still require code signing using a certificate issued by Apple. It will also continue to have sandboxing and restrictions that prevent apps from using private APIs. Apple will continue to require developers to accept an agreement and reserve the right to revoke access in the event of a violation.
As dictated by the DMA, legal agreements like the App Store guidelines will become more permissive and new public APIs will be introduced to support certain use cases that were previously reserved for Apple. But this does not mean Apple can't control their platform anymore.
Hopefully so. All I see here is increased attack surfaces for malware. I like the fact that Apple must sign everything running on my phone. I don't want everyone's security thrown away in the name of some idealized perfectly competitive market.
The App Store Guidelines really have two separate groups of restrictions: platform security/privacy, verses use cases/content that Apple doesn't want to be commercially associated with.
My "perfect world" would be Apple retaining strong security/privacy/integrity related controls (on a non-discriminatory basis) at the platform level, potentially through something that looks like the existing Apple Developer Program, while allowing for third party distribution, marketing, and retail. Ideally Apple's own user facing apps would be meeting the same platform level controls as third-party apps.
F-Droid is an odd one. The apps aren't malware but in my experience most of the apps on it are pretty low quality in at least one area (especially in user interface and experience), but that's a problem prevalent in FOSS in general, not just F-Droid.
I'd say the Google Play store is the one actually full of awful software a lot of which is actually malware. Part of this can be attributed to Google's loose requirements and the other perhaps Android's security model in general is too permissive. It's very easy to fuck up your Android phone in a way that you simply can't on iOS.
I'm not terribly concerned about it since I think a lot of it comes down to how iOS and Android are designed, but it's not not a concern.
Not being able to use firefox + ublock origin is the only negative of ios I have after moving from Android. That and a headphone jack, but that was impossible to find on Android also.
> That and a headphone jack, but that was impossible to find on Android also.
Maybe it's the part of the market I shop in, but headphone jacks on Android seemd to be disappearing only for one, maybe two cycles, and now they're back. I only owned one phone without one (and it was annoying, so I won't buy another phone without a jack). Although, I guess current Pixels are missing headphone jacks again?
Really like Kagi and their web browser but I can't justify the price relative to my location (I'm pretty sure it's reasonable on the US/West cost of living scale).
> That and a headphone jack, but that was impossible to find on Android also.
Yep. Android decided to compete with apple. They're almost entirely worse at it and by competing by turning off all the features the once had they've just become a worse phone alternative that's cheaper and also lets you install custom apps.
Apple allows custom apps and apps stores and that's the death of Android as far as I'm concerned.
> > That and a headphone jack, but that was impossible to find on Android also.
There are plenty of Android smartphones, including from major manufacturers, that have 3.5mm jacks; they tend to not be flagships, because that’s not where the demand for them is, but they aren’t hard to find.
> Android decided to compete with apple.
“Android” is a large number of different manufacturers, many of which individually produce many more smartphone models targeting different market segments than Apple.
> They're almost entirely worse at it and by competing by turning off all the features the once had they've just become a worse phone alternative that's cheaper and also lets you install custom apps
I’ve never regreted leaving the iPhone ecosystem for Android, and I’ve pretty consistently been buying Samsung flagships, which aren’t particularly cheaper than Apple. And sideloading or using alternate app stores isn’t a huge part of that, though its nice to have the option.
Apple is chasing profits in the phone market, not raw sales. There will always be people who want Android, or price segments Apple is unable to enter. Anything below USD 500$, anything with technologies Apple does not have (headphone jack, under-the-screen fingerprint reader, etc.).
Yup. The absence of Firefox + [uBlock Origin + Dark Reader + Bypass Paywalls Clean] is the only thing stopping me from getting an iPad. I really hope these new rules apply to iPads as well.
Dark Reader is available as an extension for Safari on iOS and iPadOS, for what it's worth. I could see why these rules might not apply to iPads, but I don't think they would bother with maintaining that dichotomy for pretty much no benefit.
Those rumors are not really providing new information.
The EU law has passed. It's pretty clear that it requires Apple to do the things those reports say Apple is "considering" (allow truly alternative browsers, allow other app stores etc.).
The law is taking effect soon. Apple has little choice but to comply.
It would be news if Apple was considering not complying with EU law. Which would likely be suicidal but it's not like Apple wasn't jerking around South Korea and some european country with fake compliance.
What I would like to know: will Apple give US a big middle finger by only implementing this in EU or globally.
Again, I think excluding US from those changes would lead to blowback but Apple was so arrogant about those things in the past that I wouldn't consider that impossible.
It feels like Apple has actually been moving in this direction for a while now, it's just that you don't see it because all of the visible movement has been happening on the macOS side.
The security model in macOS has changed dramatically since 2019 with Catalina—so much so that the OS is basically unrecognizable to me from an admin level.
It is likely that iOS is going to get the same Full Security, Reduced Security, and Permissive Security options as macOS. It seems like the only thing that Apple hasn't decided on yet is whether or not they will continue to allow signed, non-App Store apps under the default Full Security policy. I suspect they will not or that this is where iOS and macOS will diverge in terms of security policy, or that possibly one other category is created under Full Security that allows this. I would not be that surprised if the next version of macOS requires you to boot into the startup utility to set "App store and identified developers" as an option and further restricts what signed applications are allowed to do.
Apple is going to go the extra mile and allow companies like Epic and Spotify to do whatever they want. But they don't have to sign their apps and let them do it under the default security policy. They can simply say, "You can ask your customers to switch their security policy to Reduced Security if they want to install unsigned apps." And then customers can decide if they'd rather play Fornite or use ApplePay.
I wonder if Apple would have ended up better off if they had made iOS devices friendly to third-party OSs. Maybe a nice homebrew culture would have emerged and LineageOS would have a nice set of images to install and all the geeks would have been satisfied. I know I would. But most users wouldn't bother, and it would be an all-or-nothing choice. Meanwhile they'd have quite a bit more ability to argue for their walled garden in the OS to regulators. It might still not have worked but they would have had a much better chance I think. For most users this is a much better outcome though and maybe someday Google will let me buy a Pixel phone...
It is indeed a shame that no alternative OS is available for iPhone. With how long its taking to get Macs to boot Linux without caveats though, one can understand why it never happened.
Hopefully, the ability to select an OS upon boot will come to iPhone someday.
This would be great. I don't want to install another app store or sideload much if that big change comes next year as I am a fan of the walled garden. My one worry was web browsing as I would prefer a firefox/ublock setup on my iphone.
I trust Apple to do a decent job at protecting me (and more importantly, my less tech minded friends) more than a 3rd party app store. I dont mind using webkit, but I do recognize that its a shit move by Apple to not allow other rendering engines in the store. Just not a shitty enough for me to go F-Droid and micromanage my phone.
I will not install a 3rd party app store if Apple allowed it
I would sideload a browser from an official repository.
But if apple loosened the webkit restriction, I could get my preferred browser without sideloading or using 3rd party appstore.
You don't even need a third-party app to get a virus on iPhone. As long as you're signed in with your Apple ID, you're vulnerable to Pegasus and a number of other decoder-based payloads that can crash, manipulate or create an entire VM inside your iPhone.
Worrying about the contents of an Open-Source binary is small-fries, my friend.
Alternatively, just have realistic expectations of the devices you own. Everything you have is vulnerable to exploits and social engineering. Apple can't save you from that any more than Google, Microsoft, or even the Open Source community can. Apple pretending that they're poised to solve these problems is an illusion, and one you probably shouldn't argue in favor of.
What strawman are you fighting? What expectation did I say that isn't realistic? I did not state that I was against Apple allowing 3rd party appstores or against sideloading. I said that I prefer to use the offical app store, and I am happy that Apple is loosening the restrictions around 3rd party browser engines as I did not agree with it.
Maybe I am misinterpreting your argument? I feel like you stated that since state actors can hack my phone, I should stop worrying about security.
The appstore limited Facebooks ability to collect information on me. This is a fact.
> I trust Apple to do a decent job at protecting me [...] more than a 3rd party app store.
Arguing over App Store security borders on hypocrisy when there are gaping-wide exploits in the default iOS ecosystem.
Also, this bit:
> more importantly, my less tech minded friends
If your friends can't be trusted to use the internet without direct supervision, maybe they shouldn't have access to Safari, YouTube, Twitter or an iPhone either. It's a hard argument to strongman when the iPhone has a web browser packed in.
How am I hypnotized? I'm not even arguing against 3rd party app stores right to exist, nor am I arguing against the ability to sideload.
Is it impossible to believe that some people want to able to go into a curated store of items and not a free for all where shady individuals could take advantage of people? I'll let you know right now that there is ZERO reason for my mother to install a 3rd party app store. And I believe that to be true for the majority of users.
I wish people were better at understanding how comments like this make them come across. Like… it’s never feasible that people just disagree with you. It’s that they’ve been hoodwinked, brainwashed, or hypnotised.
There's nothing wrong with liking Apple's app store. I don't use Apple products, have never willingly used Apple products, and will not be using Apple products in the future, but this is crossing into Apple derangement syndrome.
I just don't want Apple purchasers to be trapped in a manipulative relationship with the company for the life of the product, and I want developers to have alternative ways of reaching the customers who want their products. I'm not interested in making Apple users do anything they don't want to do, and I don't understand what you get out of insulting the people who enjoy the way Apple runs things.
Is your sole aim to make Apple users defensive of the company? Because that's all this sort of talk is achieving.
Or, Apple could actually invest in Safari to make it better than the competition, instead of artificially making it the best browser on iThings. As one of the founder members of Open Web Advocacy (the group who have been briefing UK, EU, Japanese and Australian regulators) wrote, "But let’s set out aspirations higher. Imagine a fantastic Safari on iOS, Mac, Android, Windows and Linux, giving Chrome a run for its money. If anyone can take on Google, Apple can. It has talented WebKit engineers, excellent Standards experts, a colossal marketing budget, and great brand recognition.
If Apple allowed Safari to actually compete, it would be better for web developers, businesses, consumers, and for the health of the web. Come on, Apple, set Safari free!"
https://brucelawson.co.uk/2021/set-safari-free/
I thought a large part of the Chromium argument is that Google et al would be able to just put “use Chrome” banners on their site and provide a worse experience for other browsers.
This is massive news for mobile web game developers. It's currently suicide to try to support iOS Safari.
It's actually really sad that you make something that should be cross-platform by default but breaks because iOS Safari lacks support for the most basic things.
You make something that works identical on Android Chrome and Firefox at 60fps but as soon as you try it on iPhone you're bombarded with glitches and problems that you don't even know where to start. If you want to make a cross-platform mobile game you're currently forced to go native.
I naively thought because I could install my own web browser on android that I got more privacy than having any web browser on ios having to use webkit underneath (where they could centrally "spy" or get info for ad targeting).
For example if look for tor on ios, you find info reminding you of using the system webkit. Has anyone looked into whether (1) android does provide you more privacy by bringing your own browser or not, (2) whether apple in fact has no privacy when using a browser?
Even if the WebKit requirement is lifted, it is likely that it will take months if not years for any Blink/Gecko browsers to show up on iOS/iPadOS after the lift.
The reason is the sheer complexity of building for a mobile OS with very deep native integrations, that was out of their reach for a decade. More likely scenario is that we will see browsers using forked versions of WebKit running to enable more features (yes that would make uBlock Origin possible on iOS for example).
"it is likely that it will take months if not years for any Blink/Gecko browsers to show up on iOS/iPadOS after the lift." Mozilla demoed a Gecko browser on a jailbroken iPhone. They've done the work once. The combined heft of Google, Samsung and Microsoft could surely get Chrome running on iOS, given that Chrome was originally a fork of WebKit.
Is there really such a big difference between iOS and macOS? Sure, there are APIs that the browser can't access (or, rather, shouldn't access according to Apple) that are usable on macOS, but my understanding is that large swathes of the API is kept relatively compatible.
Also remember that Chromium was WebKit based way back when, the Android API for the chromium web view still uses WebKit terminology as a result.
If Google were to open a Google Play Store for iOS and put Chrome in there, I'd expect building the basic browser to take less than a month. The UI framework and designs are all there from their current Webkit version. Same with Firefox, though Mozilla has significantly fewer resources available.
I'd say yes there is especially if you are trying to optimize for low-level, close to hardware features, like rendering performance and battery life, both crucial on a phone. No browsing engine comes close to WebKit for those even on macOS.
My best guess is that it would take a few years on iOS (at least) to get to the current difference that Blink/Geck have to WebKit on macOS, which is already considerable in favor to WebKit to begin with, despite being able to develop for this platform for decades.
Er, I thought someone had already (like, years ago) written a version of Firefox for iOS that used Gecko, and the only problem was that they couldn't publish it in the app store?
I disagree. The EU is already forcing them through the DMA and the writing was on the wall the second alternative app stores were even an option. If Google wasn't going to get Chrome into the app store, they'd get it into Google Play for iOS.
Staying ahead of EU action would've involved appeasing the antitrust worries when the DMA was still taking shape. Google has done so in small ways by redesigning Android's package installer APIs to make alternative app stores more feasible.
Of course there are no popular app stores outside of open source and piracy circles because there's usually little to gain in using them on Android. Amazon's app store is available as a normal download, though I don't think they've marketed that enough for it to be any kind of success.
An important argument against third party browsers is the requirement of a third party JIT compiler for Javascript, which means Apple needs to allow a third party app to cause unsigned code to be run from other sources than a signed package.
1. Whether Apple is violating the law is up to the legal system to decide.
2. A lifting of the requirement is an implicit endorsement of a Chrome monopoly. This seems difficult to square with the intent of lifting the requirement.
The legal system didn't decide anything because it's reactive (i.e. someone has to go after Apple for this to happen and Apple gladly use the fact that no one bothered enough). And in general competition law became so toothless that it's rarely applied even in such glaringly egregious cases.
I don't really care what their motivation for lifting it is. They got away with it for too long causing a lot of very concrete anti-competitive damage to progress of the Web.
> They got away with it for too long causing a lot of very concrete anti-competitive damage to progress of the Web.
How are you defining progress here? "Progress" is inherently value-laden.
Are you defining it only in terms of developer convenience, with the goal of making the web like an operating system? Or are you defining the web's progress in terms of freely available information and as a document retrieval system? It has obviously regressed in the latter sense.
Why isn't it just as reasonable to suggest that iOS Safari is the last bastion against the decline of the web?
This better not lead to any “best viewed in chrome” banners. At this point the only reason some of my fellow engineers even test outside of Chrome is because of Mobile Safari.
Looking forward to people installing a third party browser from a third party app store, loading it up with random malware-infested plugins, and then complaining that iPhones are slow.
This was the thing that sank OG Firefox before Chrome came along. There was a plethora of garbage browser plugins everyone installed, and it tanked performance. Chrome wasn't that much faster than FF, but on a fresh install and without any plugins it seemed screaming fast.
Serious question... why do you care about users doing that? As long as you yourself can avoid that, what's the issue?
I, on the other hand want to be able to install my own applications on my phone without having to buy an apple developer license or having them signed by apple. After all it is my phone...
I personally care because I think it'll make the system less secure, which is something I've been able to take for granted. iOS security wasn't perfect, but it was pretty decent and I think this is opening pandora's box.
> After all it is my phone...
It's not your platform, though, and writing your own apps doesn't happen in a vacuum, they work by integrating with Apple's OS that they pour oceans of money into developing and maintaining. It's not a general purpose computing device and it was never advertised as such.
I get it though, it is your hardware. I think the way to go about this, since it's your hardware, is to allow users to opt to do a complete wipe of the device, get their own OS, write their own drivers, and use the hardware for whatever they wish with the understanding that they're completely on their own.
It feels like this would be best if paired with some regulatory pressure banning cross-promotion of Chrome on Google properties and requiring Google to actually do QA rather than accidentally breaking YouTube, Gmail, Google Cloud, etc. for users other browsers. For all of the “Safari is the new IE6” memes posted, I have far more frequently encountered cases where a Google web application is doing something which only works in Chrome but there is no technical why it could not work just as well in any other modern browser engine.