[HN Gopher] Apple's grip on iOS browser engines disallowed under...
___________________________________________________________________
Apple's grip on iOS browser engines disallowed under proposed EU
rules
Author : guerrilla
Score : 121 points
Date : 2022-04-26 16:01 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theregister.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theregister.com)
| astlouis44 wrote:
| Very excited for this. My team is bringing Unreal Engine to the
| browser, and it works great on computers but not so much on iOS
| due to the restrictions that iOS brings. Being able to use a
| Chromium browser together with WebGPU will enable a whole new
| distribution path for game developers who don't want to fork over
| a 30% tax to Apple. The open web allows for direct online
| distribution with no middlemen, that's always been the beauty of
| it.
|
| Video demo of our platform: https://youtu.be/WSIFyz-2PeY
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| > The open web allows for direct online distribution with no
| middlemen, that's always been the beauty of it.
|
| I'm still surprised considering it's basically WebKit under the
| hood. What are some of the things that don't work on iOS? Are
| they part of WebKit and removed for arbitrary reasons or is
| WebKit worse than I imagine?
| my123 wrote:
| Apple is building a web browser engine, Google is building a
| sandboxed application runtime - that happens to be a web
| browser engine superset.
| Rhedox wrote:
| Sounds interesting. How do you store assets? Unless it's a tiny
| game (for which UE4 isn't a great fit either) you could be
| looking at having to download 100MB or more every time you
| launch the game.
| astlouis44 wrote:
| We have our own asset fetching system which only loads in
| what is absolutely necessary, for example you don't need the
| entire game and can often get away with loading the first 5%
| or so. Everything else (assets) gets streamed in at runtime
| in the background.
| _aavaa_ wrote:
| Streaming sounds great. 5% instead of the whole game is an
| improvement over downloading 100% just to use a small
| portion of the game. But if the user has to keep re-
| downloading those 5% over and over, then it's a bit of a
| wash no?
| Mikeb85 wrote:
| Pretty sure you can get the browser to cache websites no?
| rektide wrote:
| Some of the biggest changes in gaming engines is that they
| have gotten much much more advanced about streaming first low
| res assets in, starting the game, then continuing to stream
| high res assets in on the fly.
|
| Even if a user doesnt have cached assets (which i think is
| the main point against your supposition, that assets can be
| cached after first launch), ideally a modern game could still
| load very fast at very low fidelity & keep pulling down
| higher fidelity assets as the user plays.
| astlouis44 wrote:
| Exactly, this is what we're doing with our asynchronous
| asset fetching system.
| threeseed wrote:
| > who don't want to fork over a 30% tax to Apple
|
| a) It's 15% for most developers and not a tax by any
| definition.
|
| b) It only applies to applications which accept money from
| users.
|
| c) No government has ever said that Apple is not entitled to
| this.
|
| d) You would have to be crazy to think Apple will allow b)
| without them being compensated. What is likely to happen is
| that Apple will have a Payment API that you as a developer will
| need to call every time you accept a payment. They will then
| bill you for the 15% each month and ban you for non-payment.
| And reconciliation is easy because they can simply download
| your app, trigger a payment and make sure they see a
| corresponding request for their API.
| compsciphd wrote:
| if games work in browsers, then they would have to ban the
| browser, which would presumably run afoul of these rules....
| threeseed wrote:
| I think you're confused. There are two ways to distribute
| applications:
|
| 1) Create a website and ask users to open it in
| Safari/Chrome. You have not benefited from Apple's
| technologies nor customer base that they acquired. You used
| your tools, you acquired your customers and so Apple claims
| no commission.
|
| 2) Create an app that is a wrapper around WebKit/Chromium.
| For this case you have used Apple's technologies (e.g.
| Swift/XCode) and you are benefitting from Apple's customer
| base (via the App Store). Whether you download the app from
| the App Store or a third party store is irrelevant. From
| Apple's perspective you still owe the 15-30% commission.
|
| And as I mentioned below this is not hypothetical. It's
| exactly what happened in Netherlands.
| aaomidi wrote:
| This wouldn't be acceptable under the spirit of these
| regulations. And definitely wouldn't be acceptable to a lot
| of us.
|
| If apple wants, they can split their OS and their phones if
| they want to "make money for writing an OS". At the same time
| that'd also obligate them to make it possible to install
| android OS on their hardware.
|
| But yeah no, apple does not "deserve" a percentage of your
| revenue because they have written the OS and don't let you
| switch the OS.
|
| Imagine arguing Microsoft should charge people x% of every
| software sale because they write the OS.
| threeseed wrote:
| > This wouldn't be acceptable under the spirit of these
| regulations
|
| You clearly haven't been paying attention to the EU
| regulations. Because it is exactly in the spirit of them
| and what Apple did in response to Dutch authorities
| demanding third payment providers [1]. They got their
| 15-30% either way.
|
| And it is completely normal for Apple to have a commission
| on application purchases made on their platform. It's no
| different to how many websites e.g. Shopify or hardware
| e.g. Playstation work.
|
| [1] https://developer.apple.com/support/storekit-external-
| entitl...
| aaomidi wrote:
| I have been. And I expect apple to get in a lot of
| trouble over the decision with NL.
|
| I actually wouldn't be surprised if we saw a huge % of
| global revenue fine for that. And apple would deserve it.
| somethoughts wrote:
| This seems like a really elegant solution - it simultaneously
| improves browser technology for all of the internent and avoids
| the appstore walled garden tax.
|
| The hope would be to that Unreal makes a generically useful
| browser that can navigate to any web page (include hacker news)
| so it can't be blocked from/taxed by the appstore. But also
| provides W3C/industry standard compliant WebGPU advances and
| ways to cache login info/game assets/game states and handle
| game networking - of which Unreal as well as its competitors
| such as Unity can use if they wanted to.
|
| If Unreal implements its browser hooks in a non-standardized,
| purposefully cryptic proprietary way - then they are really
| just creating their own walled garden - which they can do but
| can't really claim any moral high ground (if that's important
| to them).
| Apocryphon wrote:
| One of the reasons for why Apple disallowed third-party browser
| engines is because Mobile Safari alone is allowed to use a
| JavaScript JIT, ostensibly for security reasons. This is why
| Firefox on Safari uses WebKit, and why Chrome must rely on iOS's
| stock webviews rather than Blink's own JIT. Mobile Safari has
| this via the dynamic-codesigning entitlement.
|
| Further reading:
|
| https://saagarjha.com/blog/2020/02/23/jailed-just-in-time-co...
|
| Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22401146
| jsnell wrote:
| The actual reason is rule 2.5.6 from the App Store review
| guidelines:
|
| > 2.5.6 Apps that browse the web must use the appropriate
| WebKit framework and WebKit Javascript.
|
| Sure, if Apple does the predictable thing and allows JIT
| compilation only for WebKit-based browsers, questions will be
| asked. But so far it has been impossible for anyone to just
| accept that tradeoff and publish a browser with their own
| engine anyway.
| usrn wrote:
| Regardless of the validity of restricting JIT I'm sure many
| people would be happy having slower JS if they could use
| different browser engines.
| hellisothers wrote:
| "normal" people would pick a slower browser? Why would they
| do that, for any normal person reason?
| usrn wrote:
| I don't see the word "normal" in my comment but judging by
| their behavior with Windows and Chrome: yes, they will pick
| whatever works.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| It's possible that faster browser engines could be created,
| if potentially less secure. It would at least introduce more
| competitiveness into this space on iOS.
| NtGuy25 wrote:
| This is really the big reason. IOS blocks applications from
| running dynamic code. The kernel is immutable and replaced on
| every update, and safeguarding the JS engine is a huge benefit
| of controlling the OS. Antivirus's really struggle with this on
| PC because of all the dynamic code being ran that they can't
| really enforce things like code signing, requiring executable
| code to be mapped to the disk, etc.
|
| This is going to make everyones phone ALOT less secure. There's
| a reason android malware and hacks are a big issue and there's
| almost none on IOS, as the footprint is so low due to things
| like this.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| > _There 's a reason android malware and hacks are a big
| issue and there's almost none on IOS, as the footprint is so
| low due to things like this._
|
| Actually, iOS exploits are cheaper than Android exploits
| because iOS exploits are so plentiful in comparison[1][2].
|
| [1]
| https://www.theregister.com/2020/05/14/zerodium_ios_flaws/
|
| [2] http://zerodium.com/program.html
| asddubs wrote:
| I do support this in principle, and I don't think apple should be
| allowed to block other browsers, and I also think they should be
| forced to allow sideloading in general.
|
| That being said, in practice, I fear that this will lead to
| badness. Google already has so much power over what the web is
| and is not, and this will only strengthen it further.
| simion314 wrote:
| Apple could actually compete and fix their broken WebGl
| support, sound API or whatever makes the games not work on
| their browser.
|
| The reason I personally don't support Safari is because I can
| test it, there is no Safari for Linux and when I tried to use a
| third party service for testing they were missing the Beta
| versions and a coworker that had a Mac could not install the
| Beta because Apple wanted an OS update first. But we support
| Firefox so if Chrome/Chromium is not on your liking for my
| stuff you can use Firefox.
| asddubs wrote:
| Epiphany is a pretty good safari substitute under linux,
| although I do share your gripe. In the end I did just buy a
| used iphone 6s to test stuff on mobile safari, but I agree
| that I shouldn't have to.
|
| Still, I fear that if google manages to do to safari what it
| did to firefox, that it will be bad for firefox as well.
| Right now safari is realistically pretty much the last hurdle
| from people just testing exclusively against the chrome API
| along with all its bugs and proprietary interfaces.
| simion314 wrote:
| A phone is not enough, you need a desktop too, most of our
| issues where with WebGl , first they broke it on iOS and we
| put a check to detect the mobile devices and disable th ee
| WebGl feature and use a downgraded 2D version , later Apple
| decided to update iPads browser to pretend it is a
| desktop(probably to avoid some websites sending iPad users
| the mobile version) but this broke our detection and this
| people where getting the webGl feature that failed on iOS.
| We fixed this iPad issue but later Apple put on desktop
| same broken WebGl thing and now we had to detect all newer
| Safari versions and downgrade them all to the 2d slower and
| uglier thing.
|
| I do not control the WegGl plugin I spoke of so I don't
| know the details why it broke, anyway we had the issues
| reported by customers because no developer in our team
| wants to use Apple stuff. I don't think the GNOME browser
| would have caught this WebGl issues since is probably
| related with Apple removing OpenGl support for their
| drivers.
| kitsunesoba wrote:
| Yes, Chromium/Blink should be spun off into a Mozilla
| Foundation like non-profit. There's too much conflict of
| interest with Google wielding so much control over such a large
| piece of internet infrastructure.
| sytelus wrote:
| It is intriguing to see EU's vs US's philosophy differences. Such
| legislation would never fly in US. People will be up in arms
| about government interference and not letting businesses figure
| things out. The general sentiment in US is that government is
| stupid, incompetent and inefficient. They put more barriers to
| progress and almost always screw things up even when they are
| well intentioned. This philosophy has worked out well at least
| considering there in no Apple, Google, Tesla or other thousands
| of companies in EU and some how all these creative giants almost
| always born in US. The concerning part is that all EU legislation
| get automatically applied in US. For example, none of the US
| companies have to do stupid "accept cookies" things but they are
| forced into it anyway.
| sangnoir wrote:
| Have you considered confounding factors?
| [deleted]
| jdmoreira wrote:
| Soon I will need to use chrome on my iphone just to keep up with
| webapps that rely on apis not supported by Safari? That's
| terrible. I already have to use chrome on the desktop to be able
| to use a hanful of apps and I'm not pleased.
| [deleted]
| smoldesu wrote:
| Nope, soon Apple will be required to compete with Chrome on
| features. As the largest company in the world, that shouldn't
| be an issue for them.
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| It doesn't matter. Even if Safari is competitive, Google will
| force everyone to use Chrome on iOS and it won't matter what
| Safari can and can't do.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| They don't force it on macOS, so your description of this
| as a fait accompli doesn't quite gel.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Sounds like FUD to me, especially considering nobody is
| forced to use Chrome on Windows, macOS or Linux, and that
| I've been using Firefox on Android for a decade now.
| threeseed wrote:
| What's the market share for Firefox ?
|
| I think that should answer the question about whether
| it's FUD or not.
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| This is untrue: I regularly deal with companies forcing
| people and other companies to use Chrome on Windows and
| such. Your lack of experiencing it doesn't mean it isn't
| happening.
|
| But you're also missing the point: Without Safari,
| there's no longer further incentive for Google to
| participate in the web standards process, over just
| forcing people to use Chrome.
| smoldesu wrote:
| > Without Safari, there's no longer further incentive for
| Google to participate in the web standards process, over
| just forcing people to use Chrome.
|
| Nobody is getting rid of Safari, they're just repealing
| the idea of forcing any one user to use a first-party
| browser. Worrying about Chrome's dominance is a
| completely separate topic from the freedom to choose the
| browser you want to use.
| threeseed wrote:
| You should look at the history of Netscape and Microsoft.
|
| And how Microsoft would push proprietary features e.g.
| ActiveX which took nearly a decade to become a HTML standard
| and locked websites specifically to IE.
| smoldesu wrote:
| I'm familiar. I also remember how endless litigation and
| antitrust lawsuits forced them out of the practice, and
| sent a warning and a precedent to the rest of the industry.
| threeseed wrote:
| I don't think you are familiar.
|
| Because the litigation and antitrust lawsuits were to do
| with the bundling of IE and the coercion Microsoft
| applied against OEMs.
|
| There was nothing against Microsoft for adding
| proprietary features.
| smoldesu wrote:
| Because proprietary features are fine? Nothing happened.
| ActiveX died. You're better off complaining about the
| "proprietary" APIs in iOS and how they're stifling cross-
| platform innovation because Apple refuses to publish them
| everywhere else. Whining about being forced to use
| certain platforms for certain features is pretty damn
| ironic when you're standing in iOS' corner.
|
| I say, let it happen. If Apple had a better browser, this
| wouldn't be a problem. C'est va.
| ece wrote:
| ActiveX is a far cry from Chromium-based browsers being
| available on every other platform which has nearly
| perfect Chrome compatibility save for some DRM bits if I
| remember correctly.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| I've used desktop and mobile Firefox for everything for years
| and it's worked perfectly well. This sounds like FUD to me.
| Just because you're scared of Chromium doesn't mean that
| everyone should be forced to use Safari and only Safari on the
| hardware they own.
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| The fact that Safari is required to support iOS is the only
| reason site owners can't switch entirely to Google-
| proprietary standards. As soon as alternative engines in iOS
| is allowed, web standards are over, and your Firefox will
| stop being adequate.
| ComradePhil wrote:
| Meh! Chromium is the standard, not what Google builds on
| top of it. There's Edge, Brave, Opera, Vivaldi etc. which
| will continue to exist even if Google suddenly disappears.
|
| Besides, Apple maintains Safari the way it does for no
| other reason than for disallowing people from building more
| functional open web apps so that to reach iOS users, one
| has to build native iOS apps.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Doubt it, considering that Firefox single-handedly defeated
| the IE monopoly and no one was forced to use it like
| they're forced to use Safari.
| hollerith wrote:
| The IE team was being hobbled by MS management out of a
| desire to prevent as much as possible the movement of
| apps from Windows to the web.
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| This is an entirely fictional history of the world. IE
| was never defeated on the scale we are currently forced
| to suffer Chrome. Firefox took some consumer market share
| (until Chrome took it), but most businesses stayed on IE
| for an extremely long time, until enterprise apps left
| Java/ActiveX only a few years ago for more HTML5-based
| design. Then Chrome took a large chunk of enterprise, and
| finally Microsoft killed their own child by forcing
| everyone over to the new Chrome forked Edge.
|
| Comparatively, Chrome controls the majority of consumer,
| business, and mobile, and the sole defense against a
| completely proprietary web platform is Safari being
| required on iOS.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| > _IE was never defeated on the scale we are currently
| forced to suffer Chrome_
|
| IE actually had a much larger scale the Chrome does, as
| IE had 95% of the browser marketshare in 2004. Just
| because IE existed for years afterwards, despite only
| having a minuscule amount of marketshare, doesn't mean it
| wasn't defeated, either.
| olliej wrote:
| You're literally saying Firefox defeated the IE monopoly,
| and then turning around and saying IE had 95% market
| share.
|
| "Just because IE existed for years afterwards, despite
| only having a minuscule amount of marketshare, doesn't
| mean it wasn't defeated, either."
|
| Lets go look at what actual numbers were:
|
| 2008:
|
| IE: 69% Firefox: 26% Chrome: 0% Safari: 2-3%?
|
| 2009/2010 (Peak Firefox): IE: 55% Firefox: 32% Chrome:
| >4% Safari: <4%
|
| I'm going off graphs rather than tables so the numbers
| are a bit off.
|
| 2012 (Peak safari): Firefox: 24% IE: 34% Chrome: 32%:
| Safari: 8%
|
| 2018 (Edge Becomes a chromium wrapper): Firefox: 12% IE:
| 6% Edge: 4% Chrome: 69% (Hey that's where IE was!)
| Safari: 3%
|
| October 2021 (From chart on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki
| /Usage_share_of_web_browsers) Firefox: 6-8% IE: / Edge:
| 12% Chrome: 73% Safari: 3% Actually just chrome: 85%
|
| Opening up iOS is not going to magically make Firefox
| popularity boom, any more than android, if people install
| a different browser it will be chrome.
|
| And once that is possible, Google will push Chrome on all
| of their properties. Just like they do on desktop.
|
| To reinforce the amount of power google has. No other
| browser managed to kill IE6, not even IE>6. Then one day
| Google literally just decided that they would stop
| support IE6 on YouTube. Every person who came to YouTube
| with IE6 was greeted with "your browser is not supported.
| Update to a newer one. Chrome is a browser by Google that
| is designed from the ground up for security and
| performance. You can get it here".
|
| They rapidly rolled that change to their other
| properties, and by the power of controlling all the
| largest and most popular sites on the web they killed IE6
| in like 6 months.
|
| The entire existence of other browsers is dependent on
| what Google does with their dominance in web content.
|
| I don't know about Firefox, but in Safari when I go to
| pretty much any google property it's aggressively
| marketing Chrome, and reasonably high % of the time.
| Google.com itself, possibly 100% of the time?
|
| At the same time google has actively pushed back against
| most privacy efforts on the web, regularly nominates new
| standards that have the sole purpose of supporting their
| advertising business, etc
| kitsunesoba wrote:
| This is what I'm worried about as well. Remember those "Works
| best in Internet Explorer" badges and having to close Netscape
| and open IE just to have sites function? That experience is
| about to have a modern incarnation.
|
| It's bad news for Firefox, too. With Firefox/Gecko marketshare
| barely hanging on at 3%, WebKit/Safari is the last bastion
| against a near-Chromium/Blink monopoly at 19%. If devs don't
| have to care to test against Safari they definitely aren't
| going to bother testing against Firefox.
|
| At this point I think it may be prudent to push for
| Chromium/Blink to be spun out of Google into a non-profit
| organization. Its overwhelming majority marketshare makes it
| too prone to abuse by its owning corporation.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| If other browser engines can be allowed, then Mozilla can
| port Gecko to iOS. Firefox Browser iOS is currently using
| WebKit.
| olliej wrote:
| You're missing the point: for better or worse, "Safari
| only" on iOS is probably the only thing causing any
| significant friction for "this site only works in chrome".
|
| Sites already routinely require chrome on desktop. Remove
| Safari on iOS and ask yourself: will more sites support
| non-chrome browsers, or will fewer?
| kitsunesoba wrote:
| It'll be nice to have real Gecko on iOS, but it's moot
| because it won't be what's taking marketshare from
| Safari/WebKit. It'll be something Chromium/Blink based
| instead, most likely Chrome.
|
| Even now on Android Chrome is by far the dominant browser
| despite lacking extension capabilities (and thus,
| adblocking capabilities) entirely. Firefox for Android has
| the massive technical advantage of being able to run uBlock
| Origin but it doesn't make much of a difference.
|
| Users will go where developers and heavyhanded marketing
| (as Google has been notorious for with Chrome) push them.
| jb1991 wrote:
| > That experience is about to have a modern incarnation.
|
| You speak like it's coming, but it's already been this way
| for years. I worked at a company with an SPA that officially
| only supported Chrome, and I've since used services by other
| companies that did not work in Safari or FF only be told by
| their tech support that I must use Chrome.
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| Line of business apps are definitely already this way, it's
| why I know the apocalypse is coming for the web when this
| goes through.
|
| My favorite was being told we _had_ to use Chrome on iOS
| for a site to work... even though obviously it 's still
| just Webkit.
| dv_dt wrote:
| Chrome gets closer and closer to becoming the new Internet
| Explorer in terms of browser interoperability, privacy, and
| lock in.
| SahAssar wrote:
| Not even close. IE did things like include directx filters
| (which obviously need directx to work), activex, choose a
| non-standard box-model (which webdevs might choose these
| days, but back then there was no choice) and many, many more
| things. I don't like chrome and especially on the privacy
| front it's bad but they usually try to make sure that their
| features are at least technically adoptable by other
| platforms.
|
| We don't have to call a browser "the new IE" to argue against
| their anti-features.
| Rhedox wrote:
| To be fair Chrome is also far ahead of Firefox when it comes
| to performance and security (not to be confused with
| privacy).
|
| Safari is fast but compatibility is lacking, not just
| compared to Chrome.
| olliej wrote:
| Yeah, but compatibility is already defined as "what chrome
| does". To be clear I mean quirks, not features. You can
| easily make objective comparisons on "does feature exist in
| browser Y" so I'll leave that as an exercise for the reader
| :D
|
| But "compatibility" is things like layout quirks, and
| before Chrome was the IE of the web, "correct behavior" was
| "what IE does". A lot of the IE escape was engineering
| effort devoted to developing IE compatibility. A chrome
| monopoly is going mean google has functionally complete
| control of the web, so they can simply state that their
| behavior _is_ the spec. On top of that they already
| regularly force the addition of google identity based
| spying directly into the browser.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| I doubt it. I use Firefox on my phone (as in, actual Firefox,
| not the Safari shim available on iOS) and pretty much
| everything works perfectly fine. Web apps, addons, you name it.
|
| Of course, Firefox and Safari lack a completely different set
| of features, but people actually need to test for Safari
| because of Apple's iron grip over their customers' phones.
| Nobody tests on Firefox, especially not Firefox mobile!
|
| Sometimes someone here links a fancy new piece of tech relying
| on Google's weird proprietary APIs, and that's when I switch to
| Bromite.
|
| You'll be fine. I don't know what applications you need to use
| Chrome for on the desktop, but I very much doubt there'll be an
| exodus from the app store to the mobile web any time soon.
| lstamour wrote:
| Things might only work fine now because people are forced to
| test mobile apps in Safari. If Safari's market share drops
| significantly over a 3-5 year period, you might see "Works
| best in Chrome" start to appear again...
|
| I get it though. Every so often I find a site that works well
| in both Safari and Chrome due to WebKit but doesn't work in
| Firefox. It's pretty rare, but it happens.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| I don't think Safari's market share will drop as much as
| Firefox's did. Safari brings some features for mac/iOS
| users that Chrome struggles to emulate. The Apple's laser
| focus to make their stuff work on their devices and their
| devices alone makes Safari have some decent value for
| people who bought into their ecosystem.
|
| If anything, I think it'll drive Apple to pay more
| attention to their browser. They can afford to leave their
| bug reports open because users don't have a choice in
| browser, but once they can't anymore, they'll have a reason
| to use some of their excessive wealth to improve their
| browser.
|
| Also remember that this law only applies to EU sales. Apple
| will likely still block real browsers in markets outside
| the EU just like they're setting up different systems for
| each government that takes action against their walled
| garden. Big web applications often come from the USA and
| they'll need to support the American general public.
| ridiculous_fish wrote:
| On the flip side, you can expect Google to engage in a
| massive advertising campaign to push Chrome on iOS. I
| think Google would be very happy to enjoy the same level
| of Chrome marketshare on iOS as they do on Android.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| They already have significant marketshare on iOS. But
| there's only so much you can get without official first
| party control or favoritism, e.g. Google being the
| default search engine on browsers. An advertising
| campaign will pick up some more new users, sure, but this
| EU mandate doesn't really ramp things up unless an iOS
| Blink-based Chrome offers substantially better experience
| than the current WebKit-based Chrome.
| rektide wrote:
| You could run a chromium build or Edge. Perhaps Firefox would
| work, or one of the upstart new browsers.
|
| What apps/sites are Chrome only for you?
|
| I tend to think this is a huge non-issue, & outsizedly bemoaned
| as a convenient way to dock the obvious advantage of freedom.
| In practice I expect this only to be an issue where it is
| critical, such as the top current comment's example of running
| Unreal Engine, which Safari just cant do. The web still has
| enough collective memory of the bad times that social pressure
| against favoring specific browsers will be strong. I havent
| heard actual examples of problems/ outrage yet; if it became a
| significant issue, I'd expect then we'd see real vocal &
| concerted pushback.
|
| In general I favor not governing technology choices/alignment
| by fear of the unknown. We dont know yet on tbis one. Insisting
| on a conservative limited approach, based on fear, without
| enabling exploration, consigns us to limited sad fates.
| warning26 wrote:
| Good. Even putting aside the discussion on sideloading, Apple
| blocking all non-Safari browsers is utterly egregious.
|
| To think we considered Microsoft simply bundling IE bad in the
| 90s -- imagine if they had software that _actively prevented_ you
| from installing Netscape.
| als0 wrote:
| Here's what I don't understand. Microsoft had (and still has) a
| monopoly on desktop computer software. Like 90% of the market.
| The anti trust concern was that they could abuse their position
| to gain dominance in another market, such as the browser
| market. A very genuine concern, given their install base.
|
| Apple doesn't have more than 25% share in mobile or desktop
| markets. People can switch to Android and get what they want.
| It's egregious if a monopoly restricts you, but for smaller
| players where do you draw the line? 25% of the market?
| saurik wrote:
| If every supermarket in the West half of the country is owned
| by one company, that is a monopoly even though they only have
| 50% of the market, as "the relevant market" gets analyzed to
| mean "the west side of the country". The real question is
| whether one believes that iPhone vs. Android counts as
| morally equivalent to West vs. East, due to how: 1) most
| normal people only have a single phone, and thereby they
| can't just randomly pop over to Android to buy something the
| same way they can just pop over to a different supermarket in
| a market with competing supermarkets; and 2) high switching
| costs--which are partly born from an active decision by these
| companies to make purchases be non-transferable--prevents
| people from even "moving to the other side of the country"
| (similar to the high switching costs of physically doing
| literally that) in order to switch markets.
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| Apple has ~57% of smartphone marketshare in the US.
| [deleted]
| Apocryphon wrote:
| And gaining
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31136586
| als0 wrote:
| From your link, iOS is at 25% https://stockapps.com/wp-
| content/uploads/2022/04/market-domi...
| guiambros wrote:
| BRIC countries largely dominate the high volume / low end
| of the range [1], so the share will change drastically
| per country and region. iOS is at 22% globally [2], but
| much higher in the US [3].
|
| [1] https://newzoo.com/insights/rankings/top-countries-
| by-smartp...
|
| [2] https://www.counterpointresearch.com/global-
| smartphone-share...
|
| [3] https://appleinsider.com/articles/22/02/15/apples-
| iphone-dom...
| paulmd wrote:
| So why should users in those countries should just be
| discarded out of hand as far as marketshare concerns?
|
| Again, globally, an 87/13 split is extremely concerning
| and the numbers for actual browser share are even more
| tilted than that. Firefox and Safari are the only
| holdouts and they collectively make up about 10% of the
| market, everything else is Chromium in a wig.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| The root comment in this thread is about market share in
| terms of monopoly concerns. Therefore it stands to reason
| that each local jurisdiction, whether the U.S., E.U.,
| South Korea, etc., will determine monopoly standards
| based on regional marketshare.
| paulmd wrote:
| The root comment in this thread is about _browser_
| marketshare in terms of monopoly terms. _Hardware_
| marketshare is actually a tangent to the actual
| discussion in the first place.
|
| Browser monoculture is the problem that - if you'll read
| back to the OP - this comment thread is supposed to be
| about. Forcing iOS to open up is a short-term benefit for
| user freedom and a long-term downside for user freedom
| due to the monoculture that will result when that 87%
| marketshare becomes 100% and we see a return to "this
| browser is not supported, please view this page using
| Chrome" and having captchas that are impossible to bypass
| unless you're feeding Google your personal information.
|
| Furthermore, even then, we're only at most talking about
| a 60-40 split even in the most cherrypicked markets... a
| 60-40 split is not monopoly power really. And _in
| contrast_ , in the big picture Android already has an
| 87-13 majority, which _is_ getting into the territory
| where monopoly is a concern (hence the concern over
| monoculture and privacy intrusions), and again that 's
| _hardware_ , looking at _software_ the picture is even
| more bleak and Chrome /Chromium are over 90% marketshare.
|
| Anyway, you may not care about the market as a whole, but
| you still are affected by it regardless, so it matters,
| even if a few niches do remain majority (but not
| monopoly) apple.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| In this discussion, browser and hardware are
| intrinsically linked, because the hardware is the
| platform that the browser lives on, and iOS as a platform
| has specific restrictions about what browser engines can
| be used on it.
| brokenodometer wrote:
| Substitution and lock-in are also things that the antitrust
| laws are concerned with as they are relevant to how you
| define the market in the first place. If the market is for
| iOS browser engines, Android browsers cannot effectively
| compete for consumers who are locked-in to the iOS ecosystem
| due to the switching costs and other barriers that must be
| surmounted in order for consumers to access those browsers.
| Almost no one is going to switch from an existing $1000+
| phone to a new one solely because of their browser, leading
| to almost zero cross elasticity of demand between iOS and
| Android browsers (high cross-elasticity being indicia that
| products are part of the same market, e.g., mobile browsers).
|
| So one way to answer your question would be to say that Apple
| has complete control over the relevant market, which is the
| market for iOS browser engines.
| irrational wrote:
| But, nobody pays for browsers (anymore). What are they
| competing for? It is ALWAYS about money. Are they competing
| to see who can collect your data to see to third parties?
| Who can show you ads in their browser? Those are both bad
| things in my opinion, so Apple blocking them is consumer
| friendly behavior. But, of course, in a country ruled by
| corporations, this would be seen as bad.
| dmonitor wrote:
| Apple's mobile marketshare is much higher in the US, which is
| where an antitrust suit could reasonably happen. It's above
| 50%
| heavyset_go wrote:
| > _Apple doesn 't have more than 25% share in mobile or
| desktop market_
|
| This is incorrect. In the US, Apple has over 60% of the
| mobile OS marketshare[1], and 60% of the market is therefore
| forced to use Safari and only Safari.
|
| [1] https://www.pcmag.com/news/ios-more-popular-in-japan-and-
| us-...
| simonh wrote:
| s/is therefore forced/have therefore chosen
|
| There, fixed that for you. They chose to buy an iPhone and
| I think at this point people know what they're choosing and
| why. Nobody forced them to do anything. If I buy a
| PlayStation, I'm not being 'forced' to not be able to play
| Call of Duty. I do feel some of apple's App Store
| rextrications are excessive, although they are being pushed
| in the right direction, but this sort of frothingly
| apoplectic language gets really irritating.
| paulmd wrote:
| You're singling out one particular market and claiming that
| represents the big picture, when it very much is an
| exception. Specific niche markets having a small majority
| of one or the other isn't concerning, _someone_ is going to
| be on top and 57-43 is basically as equal as it gets even
| in your cherrypicked example.
|
| Globally, Android has 87% of the market and iOS has 13%.
| That is far far more concerning than Apple having a small
| majority in one specific market.
|
| And to be clear it's not over 60%, even your own source
| says that's false - you're backing a literal browser
| monoculture with 87% global hardware marketshare and 90%
| software marketshare by wrapping yourself in the language
| of antitrust and competitiveness, and you _still_ can 't do
| it without using falsehoods and exaggerations.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| I'm in the US, and advocate for regulation in the US. I
| do not care about marketshare in the rest of the world,
| and neither does the FTC. The only statistic that matters
| in this case is that iOS has 60% of the marketshare in
| the US, and what happens in other countries is
| irrelevant.
| paulmd wrote:
| To be clear, the FTC doesn't have a problem with the
| current situation, so evidently they don't think it
| matters either.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| The FTC's current priority under Lina Khan is data
| privacy regulation, which is already a huge topic. One
| can of worms at a time.
| orev wrote:
| > The anti trust concern was that they could abuse their
| position
|
| No. The antitrust concern was that they *did* abuse their
| position to damage the browser market, which is evidenced by
| how long IE11 has been around. Luckily the value prop of the
| web was enough to overcome their strategy.
|
| Being a monopoly is _not_ illegal. A company can perfectly
| legally have a natural monopoly of 100% of a market without
| being illegal. The problem only comes when they use that
| position to prevent other competitors from entering the
| market, or when they use their position to take over other
| markets.
| marcofiset wrote:
| EU is making some solid moves in the legislation against tech
| giants. I love it.
| makerofspoons wrote:
| Very exciting if this means PWA support on iOS can now reach
| parity with Android.
| lstamour wrote:
| PWA support is improving, though. https://firt.dev/ios-15.4b
| (that post is based on a beta, it's possible noted bugs will be
| fixed already, though this is Apple we're talking about...)
| dr_spicy wrote:
| I tried playing around with PWAs the other day, but certain
| like [0] seem to really jeopardize the "Progressive" part of
| PWAs which is one of their major differentiatiors.
|
| [0]
| https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=891339
| Brian_K_White wrote:
| Yet another case of "Ridicule the gdpr cookie banners all you
| want but I'll take that over the nothing everyone else has even
| tried."
|
| I cheer them on, banners and all. go go go!
| ridiculous_fish wrote:
| _Once web apps work properly across all devices and can provide
| native-like functionality, how many companies will choose to
| rebuild their app several times (with the vastly increased
| development and maintenance costs) [for multiple platforms]
| rather than just build it once [for the web]._
|
| This is uncritically presented as desirable.
| mtomweb wrote:
| Significantly reducing the costs of app development is
| desirable in so many different ways.
| corobo wrote:
| Man I hope this means we'll be getting Firefox extensions on iOS
| eventually, that'd be so useful
| cardiffspaceman wrote:
| I'm afraid it will mean we have to endure Google extensions.
| emptyparadise wrote:
| Safari already supports those.
| ComradePhil wrote:
| What do you mean? Safari definitely doesn't support Chrome
| extensions.
| freediver wrote:
| This is already possible, (some) Firefox extensions work in
| Orion browser on iOS.
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