[HN Gopher] iOS allows alternative browser engines in Japan
___________________________________________________________________
iOS allows alternative browser engines in Japan
Author : eklavya
Score : 325 points
Date : 2026-01-01 13:30 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (developer.apple.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (developer.apple.com)
| shmerl wrote:
| Did Japan decide to push proper competition laws?
|
| Time to force Apple to do it everywhere. Very long overdue.
| signal11 wrote:
| I agree with the "enforce competition laws" sentiment, but in
| this context, _enforced naively_ , all it'll do is entrench the
| dominant browser engine, Blink, even more across the mobile
| ecosystem.
|
| I'm sure some devs will love this. But equally, some may worry
| about the monoculture implications.
| dekoidal wrote:
| It hasn't on Macs. Safari is still popular among non-tech
| folk
| crossroadsguy wrote:
| That's because Apple adds two extra legs to Safari on OS
| level and cuts both the legs of other browsers in a manner
| of speaking by rigging this comparison.
| argsnd wrote:
| In what way do you think this is meaningfully occurring?
| I ask because I have not heard of Chrome or Firefox being
| inhibited on energy efficiency by platform limitations.
| Klonoar wrote:
| This needs a big ol' "citation needed" slapped across it.
| Spivak wrote:
| I think the narrative is that once developers have the
| option to tell all of their users "we only support Chrome,
| just install Chrome" then any support for Safari will dry
| up.
|
| Unfortunately I don't think we will see if this is how it
| plays out until Apple has to allow other browsers globally.
| leptons wrote:
| The reason Apple doesn't allow any other browser engines
| on iOS is due to them collecting up to 30% of purchases
| made through the apps from the app store. If a developer
| can do the same things with a _capable_ web browser, then
| they won 't need to create a native iOS app and that cuts
| into Apple's app revenue. So Apple purposely hobbles
| Safari so it doesn't have any advanced browser APIs for
| stuff like bluetooth or other APIs that apps have access
| to, forcing developers to create an app, where Apple can
| then cut into purchases made through the app.
|
| It has nothing to do with people no longer using Safari
| and Apple being sad about that. Other browsers can
| technically be installed on iOS, but the underlying
| browser engine is forced to be Safari, which lacks many
| APIs other web browsers could implement, reducing the
| need for a native app. It's purely Apple's anti-
| competitive greed that drives this situation. And the EU,
| Japan, and the US DOJ have noticed. So far only the EU
| and Japan have actually taken measures to force Apple to
| change this.
|
| Here's the entire DOJ lawsuit which includes many other
| instances of anti-competitive practices by Apple.
|
| https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/media/1344546/dl?inl
| ine
| otterley wrote:
| What evidence do you have, other than speculation, that
| Apple is so motivated? What standard features are missing
| from Safari's rendering engine that makes it a less
| capable browser such that developers are forced to
| produce apps instead?
| koolala wrote:
| WebXR hasn't been supported for 10 years so they control
| their own AR market.
| otterley wrote:
| How does it compare to, say, the experience on Android?
| leptons wrote:
| Specifically for me, my company has a product that could
| use Bluetooth, but Safari will never implement the Web
| Bluetooth API, where Chrome has for some time on Android.
| So the workaround is to use Wifi instead (my product
| supports both bluetooth and Wifi), which drains the phone
| battery faster.
|
| No, we do not want to write our own iOS app where Apple
| can then extort us for a percentage of any sales through
| the app, and we have to pay for the priviledge to develop
| that app, as well as buy Apple hardware to do so.
|
| So instead we use Wifi, where we can maintain one single
| codebase - the web application, which works on both
| Android and iOS, but has to use Wifi. If Apple allowed
| Chrome to use its own browser engine, we would simply
| tell users to install Chrome to interact with our device.
| Then we don't have to pay Apple for anything, nor should
| we have to.
|
| Apple purposely won't implement some APIs so they can
| force developers to create an app for their app store
| where they can collect money from any additional sales
| through the app. It's all spelled out in the DOJ suit,
| why won't you just read it??
|
| https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/media/1344546/dl?inl
| ine
| otterley wrote:
| We've responded to this in a different thread. See
| elsewhere.
| cosmic_cheese wrote:
| It's still got popularity within tech-inclined Mac/iOS
| circles too because it's easier on the battery than Chrome
| (+derivatives) and Firefox. Some would like to switch but
| because neither Google nor Mozilla has much to lose for
| their browsers being battery hogs, relatively little
| engineering effort gets dedicated to improving efficiency
| compared to WebKit (which is similarly efficient under
| Linux in e.g. GNOME Web, proving it's not purely first-
| party advantage).
| concinds wrote:
| The "monoculture" has never been less of a threat. WPT.FYI is
| driving towards asymptotically perfect compatibility and
| behavior. And the real web, the long-tail of websites, is too
| chaotic to be controlled by any entity regardless of browser
| market share. Chrome can cook up whatever API they want, no
| website can be forced to adopt it. And if someone can't use
| some WebMIDI site on Safari, well, they can't complain, they
| didn't want that site to exist in the first place.
|
| It's simply not a good excuse to defend the iOS browser ban.
| shmerl wrote:
| Banning competition can't possibly help increasing
| competition.
|
| It would be good to see Firefox with its own engine there for
| example.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| I know this isn't new for Japan, but this requirement caught my
| eye:
|
| > Use memory-safe programming languages, or features that improve
| memory safety within other languages, within the alternative web
| browser engine at a minimum for all code that processes web
| content
|
| Would Apple themselves meet this requirement? Isn't WebKit C++?
| Of course, I'm not sure what would be considered "features that
| improve memory safety within other languages," that's kind of
| vague.
| rafram wrote:
| https://github.com/WebKit/WebKit/wiki/Safer-CPP-Guidelines
| hu3 wrote:
| Documentation to guide devs on safe usage of C++ is enough?
|
| So any language should be allowed as long as they instruct
| developers to be careful.
| creato wrote:
| I don't know if they do this, but those conventions could
| be enforced by a tool.
| concinds wrote:
| Yes, they do this, and it's really not an unreasonable
| requirement.
| arcanemachiner wrote:
| Of course. It's just a coincidence that they're placing
| onerous restrictions on competi- I mean _alternative_
| browser engines. Restrictions which, of course, they 're
| not obliged to follow themselves.
|
| I am sure that Apple will make no other efforts to impede
| others from unwalling the garden. That would be
| completely ridiculous, and frankly, un-Apple-esque.
| concinds wrote:
| Both Chrome and Firefox are already compliant, so I don't
| see it as onerous, but the full context of the list is
| indeed an extremely loud and clear "FUCK YOU, WE OWN YOU"
| to regulators and other browser vendors.
| dagmx wrote:
| Which of the restrictions do you feel they don't abide
| by? It looks like they meet all their own restrictions
| JimmyBiscuit wrote:
| Theres C++ in military airplanes, they just cut out 90%
| of the features: https://www.stroustrup.com/JSF-AV-
| rules.pdf
|
| And heres a nice video about it:
| https://youtu.be/Gv4sDL9Ljww?si=Z4riPMKAKcIKaU0s
| dmazzoni wrote:
| Yes, in WebKit, SaferCPP guidelines are enforced by a
| static analysis tool.
| jjmarr wrote:
| My work bans raw new and delete, so we only use
| unique_ptr. It's not as memory safe as Rust's borrow
| checker but I've never seen a segfault.
| resonious wrote:
| Compliance often works exactly like this.
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| I do wonder how long before Apple either replaces WebKit with
| something built in Swift, or starts slowly converting their
| browser engine to Swift.
| zb3 wrote:
| The title is misleading. "Allows" need to be in quotes - they did
| everything they could to make sure this won't change anything in
| practice. Screw Apple.
| ninkendo wrote:
| Could you elaborate? Other than the "Japan" requirement it
| seems legit?
|
| I guess the requirements are pretty onerous, but they all seem
| like table stakes for a browser these days (Firefox or Chrome
| should have no problem with them, for instance.)
| catlikesshrimp wrote:
| They weren't going to title "Apple forced to allow
| alternative..."
|
| They are the ones allowing the alternatives because they are
| the gate keepers. They have "the keys"
| threethirtytwo wrote:
| Why only Japan? Seems like something forced them to in Japan.
| cubefox wrote:
| Yes, there is a new Japanese law that forces them.
| Hamuko wrote:
| It's in the EU and Japan, so basically all regions that have
| pushed back against Apple's anti-competitive ways.
|
| https://developer.apple.com/documentation/bundleresources/en...
| leptons wrote:
| The US DOJ was attempting to sue Apple in an antitrust suit for
| _many things_ , including blocking every browser engine except
| their own Safari browser on iOS.
|
| https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/media/1344546/dl?inline
|
| Who knows if this will actually move forward now that "Tim
| Apple" gave the current leader a meaningless golden trophy.
| guessmyname wrote:
| For many Hacker News readers who check the website every day,
| this is not news:
|
| * (4 years ago) Japan forces Apple to slightly loosen
| restrictions on 'reader' apps --
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28387094
|
| * (3 years ago) Japan pushes for Apple and Google to allow
| sideloading -- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36393809
|
| * (3 years ago) Japan to open up Apple and Google app stores to
| competition -- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36368735
|
| * (3 years ago) Japan to open up Apple- and Google-dominated
| phone apps to competition --
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36370398
|
| * (3 years ago) Apple Japan hit with $98M in back taxes for
| missing duty-free abuses --
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34156235
|
| * (2 years ago) Japan to crack down on Apple and Google app
| store monopolies --
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38773429
|
| * (2 years ago) Japan forces Apple and Google to open their
| mobile platforms --
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40666651
|
| * (2 years ago) Japan enacts law to curb Apple, Google's app
| dominance -- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40671162
|
| * (5 months ago) Japan: Apple Must Lift Browser Engine Ban by
| December -- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44810061
|
| * (5 months ago) Japan Law Will Require Apple to Allow Non-
| WebKit Browsers on iPhone --
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44826077
|
| * (15 days ago) Apple Announces Changes to iOS in Japan --
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46307858
|
| * (14 days ago) Apple and Google respond to new Japan
| smartphone law, including reduced app fees --
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46310074
|
| ... and more here: https://hn.algolia.com/?q=japan+apple
| drnick1 wrote:
| 2026 should be the year when every tech-minded person dumps Apple
| (and Google) for good and either starting running either a free
| Android OS (Graphene, Lineage or a couple of other variants) or a
| Linux phone.
|
| At this point, Apple and Google devices are nothing more than
| instruments of coercion and mass surveillance.
| airstrike wrote:
| Unfortunately, I appreciate the deep integration between my
| phone and my laptop too much to drop either
| drnick1 wrote:
| I don't have Apple devices to compare, but I think KDE
| Connect can closely replicate this, entirely locally. I
| wouldn't be surprised if Apple's "deep integrations" rely on
| cloud components that are privacy-violating by design (even
| if Apple promises not to look at the data flowing through
| their servers).
| cosmic_cheese wrote:
| Most cross device stuff in the Apple world actually works
| via P2P Bluetooth and WiFi and functions without an
| internet connection or even a shared WiFi network. Mac and
| iDevice WiFi hardware is even designed with this in mind
| and is capable of maintaining P2P connections to other
| devices and a WiFi network simultaneously without rapidly
| switching between the two like many commodity WiFi cards
| have to.
| cpuguy83 wrote:
| KDE Connect with iOS, while useful, is _terrible_.
| arzig wrote:
| Unfortunately the integration is really quite weak with
| Apple. KDE Connect cannot remain active while the
| application is not in the foreground. It's possibly a
| packaging issue but pairing from fedora is also quite
| flakey.
|
| As absurd as this sounds windows -> iPhone via their phone
| link is actually almost as good as apples built in
| ecosystem to the point where I can make phone calls and
| send texts on my computer. It's not quite as seamless
| especially the setup but that is a well done wizard and it
| mostly works.
| Rohansi wrote:
| > _KDE Connect cannot remain active while the application
| is not in the foreground._
|
| Looks like you can thank Apple for that one.
|
| https://github.com/KDE/kdeconnect-ios?tab=readme-ov-
| file#kno...
| websiteapi wrote:
| UX is much worse imo on graphene compared to iOS
| drnick1 wrote:
| I disagree. I had an iPhone in the past and find the
| minimalist Graphene UI refreshing. It's like comparing KDE on
| Arch to Windows 11 or MacOS. Nothing gets in your way or
| distracts you, the OS is what an OS is supposed to be, a
| platform for managing and launching apps.
| websiteapi wrote:
| _UX_ , not UI. perfect example is you copy something on
| your laptop and paste it on your phone. trivial on iDevice.
| Larrikin wrote:
| Tailscale drop is better and works across devices.
| websiteapi wrote:
| tail scale drop is much more complicated than literally
| copying and pasting on iDevice. that's literally all you
| do, no setup, nothing and this is just one example for
| one type of action.
|
| https://tailscale.com/kb/1106/taildrop
|
| look at all of that, lol. iDevice is literally copy and
| paste any file or text. the end - you don't even have to
| set it up.
| rendaw wrote:
| This sounds like hyperbole. I've never used tailscale,
| but reading that doc:
|
| Installation: Install the tailscale client
|
| Sharing: Click on the share menu and select tailscale
|
| It's a beta feature so there's also a switch you have to
| flip for now.
| websiteapi wrote:
| you don't need to believe me. I use it daily. don't know
| why you're so defensive lol - it's our own opinion. fyi I
| didn't have to do anything for this to work (clipboard
| laptop to phone)
| umanwizard wrote:
| Meanwhile, for Apple:
|
| Installation: nothing.
|
| Sharing: Cmd+C/Cmd+V
| Larrikin wrote:
| How do I copy it from my Mac to my Android?
| drnick1 wrote:
| KDE connect over Bluetooth or WiFi seems ideal for this,
| so it's definitely possible. I am not sure how the
| iDevices deal with this, but I really don't want anything
| cloud-connected.
| hu3 wrote:
| this doesn't work sometimes. my wife complains frequently
| bigyabai wrote:
| KDE Connect is more reliable than Continuity Clipboard,
| in my experience.
| bdd8f1df777b wrote:
| Trivial as in it works well sometimes and badly in other
| times with no explanation for why. That's my experience
| anyway.
| umanwizard wrote:
| It literally always works flawlessly for me unless
| Bluetooth is turned off.
| 8note wrote:
| so you have your file on a laptop running linux, and its
| just easy to move the file to your iOS phone?
| cosmic_cheese wrote:
| It's definitely something that varies from person to
| person. I tried putting Graphene on a _secondary_ Android
| device (an old Pixel 3XL) and compared to the stock ROM or
| more typical AOSP fork (e.g. LineageOS or Pixel
| Experience), I found it rather frustrating. I can't imagine
| running it on my daily driver.
|
| Similarly with Linux, the sheer number of rough edges,
| papercuts, and quirks is still too high (regardless of if
| I'm using a big name DE or hyper minimal tiling WM or
| somewhere in between) for them to serve as my main desktop
| environment.
| IlikeKitties wrote:
| >UX is much worse imo on graphene compared to iOS
|
| Freedom and privacy exist on graphene.
| bigyabai wrote:
| 2026 should be the _last_ year when anyone technical-minded
| comes around to the realization that Google /Apple are in the
| Fed's pocket. If you're making the switch in 2027 or 2028, it's
| probably too late for you.
| EA-3167 wrote:
| This is profoundly out of touch with how almost everyone who
| isn't a particularly zealous member of certain movements lives
| their lives.
| criddell wrote:
| Lectures and admonitions won't change anything. People will
| move to Graphene and Linux when it's better for them.
|
| Coercion and surveillance problems are pretty far down the list
| of complaints most people have with their personal devices.
| umanwizard wrote:
| > 2026 should be the year when every tech-minded person dumps
| Apple (and Google) for good
|
| Why? I am a very tech-minded person but simply don't care about
| running alternative browser engines on my phone. Am I "wrong"
| in your opinion?
| yokoprime wrote:
| Making "tech-minded persons" dump apple etc does NOTHING to
| move the needle in terms of what most people use.
|
| For example I'm running a pretty sweet calibre-web automated
| setup with Kobo readers. Ive changed the storefront on my kobo
| and have seemless sync OTA of selected shelves. And even I
| struggle to get my wife to choose that setup over Amazon
| kindle. The very minute there is a single snag, normies (sorry
| wife dear) lose interest.
| viktorcode wrote:
| Can you please elaborate on how iPhones are instruments of mass
| surveillance?
| drnick1 wrote:
| Among others:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM
|
| https://sneak.berlin/20201112/your-computer-isnt-yours/
|
| https://www.cbsnews.com/news/apple-siri-lawsuit-
| settlement-i...
| meindnoch wrote:
| Unfortunately, I prefer smooth animations.
| bsimpson wrote:
| So far as I can tell, Linux phones are still ass.
|
| Linux on mobile is probably even more behind than Linux on
| desktop was in the 90s.
| koolba wrote:
| Does this mean we'll finally have "real" firefox with support for
| ublock origin on iOS?
| modeless wrote:
| Apple is going to (mostly) obey the letter of the law but they
| will continue to resist strongly in every way they can. Onerous
| requirements, arbitrary restrictions, overzealous enforcement,
| and most of all bad APIs with limited capabilities and no
| workarounds for bugs.
|
| Shipping a good and complete browser engine on iOS will require
| more than just developers. You'll also need a team of lawyers
| to threaten and sue Apple to get their policy restrictions
| relaxed and APIs fixed.
|
| I doubt Mozilla or Google will be willing to spend the many
| developer-years and lawyer-years it will take to fully port
| every feature of a whole engine and properly maintain it in
| such a hostile environment, just for the Japan market. I expect
| to see some hobbyist-level ports but not something worth using
| for a long time. Unless other countries follow suit.
| arcanemachiner wrote:
| > just for the Japan market
|
| Also the EU, no?
| modeless wrote:
| Does the EU also require third party engines to be able to
| replace the web view in apps systemwide? Or does it only
| require that single standalone browser apps can use
| alternative engines?
| concinds wrote:
| > Does the EU also require third party engines to be able
| to replace the system web view in apps systemwide?
|
| Yes.
| modeless wrote:
| Hmm, actually now that I look closer at the Japan
| requirements, it doesn't seem to allow replacing the web
| view systemwide, as I thought, and as Android allows. And
| neither do the EU requirements. They only allow
| individual apps to embed an alternative engine on a per-
| app basis by including the whole engine within the app.
| And the Japan page includes the caveat "apps from browser
| engine stewards" which if interpreted zealously (and I
| expect Apple to) would forbid apps not from Google or
| Mozilla from embedding Chromium or Gecko.
|
| This is a pretty big limitation considering how much iOS
| web browsing happens in web views. Having both the EU and
| Japan as markets may be enough for Google to port
| Chromium just for Chrome itself, but we will have to wait
| and see. Actually Chromium development is open so it
| should be pretty easy to see if Google has a serious
| porting effort or not.
| concinds wrote:
| > neither do the EU requirements
|
| Wrong, they do specify "standalone web browsers as well
| as web browsers integrated or embedded in software or
| similar" are both covered, that's in the law.
|
| What you're referring to is how Apple chose to implement
| it. The EU hasn't opened a compliance case on Safari yet
| but I expect they'll do so at some point.
| Longhanks wrote:
| Could've happened some time ago already in the EU, so there
| must be reasons for Firefox an Google not to ship their own
| engines (yet?).
| __turbobrew__ wrote:
| uBO lite works pretty well on ios/safari for me.
| Zak wrote:
| Probably not, at least not from Mozilla themselves. They cite
| onerous requirements and the difficulty of having to maintain
| different apps for different regions.
|
| https://www.theverge.com/2024/1/26/24052067/mozilla-apple-io...
| wolvoleo wrote:
| Yeah malicious compliance :(
| ckcheng wrote:
| FYI. iOS Safari already supports uBlock Origin Lite. iOS
| Firefox can do the same anytime but it already has some
| tracking and content blocking built in too.
| aryonoco wrote:
| As someone who has recently switched from Android to iOS, I
| can tell you uBlock Origin Lite on Safari on iOS is a poor
| man's imitation of the real uBlock Origin on Firefox on
| Android.
| mi_lk wrote:
| are there major sites that don't work for you?
| LetsGetTechnicl wrote:
| How does it compare to 1Blocker? I use that in Safari and
| also a VPN when I'm away back to my home connection so it
| uses my NextDNS which also blocks a lot of in-app ads.
| ckcheng wrote:
| Oh definitely! I know you're just using the phrase and
| don't imply otherwise, but to clarify the word "imitation",
| uBO lite is _not_ a fake imitation but actually an official
| thing from uBO and Raymond Hill: see
| https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBOL-home
| viktorcode wrote:
| Probably not, as the same rules were applied to Apple devices
| in EU earlier, and no third party browser engines appeared.
|
| But right now you can use uBlock origin lite in Safari. Or any
| other of multitude of other adblockers.
| nntwozz wrote:
| There is ublock origin lite for Safari in the meantime:
|
| https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBOL-home?tab=readme-ov-file
|
| (it's great)
| swiftcoder wrote:
| Nope. Apple has successfully made the rules so complicated that
| we still don't have any 3rd party browser engines in the EU,
| more than a year later.
| mrtesthah wrote:
| You can actually use full uBlock origin in Kagi's Orion iOS
| browser.
| rorylawless wrote:
| My hope for laws such as the ones Japan and the EU enacted was
| that companies would see the writing on the wall and change their
| practices worldwide, if only for cost reasons (it presumably
| being more expensive to maintain multiple sets of rules.)
| However, these companies are now so large that they can choose to
| absorb any inefficiencies on a country-by-country basis.
| crazygringo wrote:
| There are many things Apple does that have anticompetitive
| motivations, but the browser engine doesn't seem like one of
| them. It's genuinely about security and battery life and
| standardization. So if cost was never the reason in the first
| place, cost is not going to be the reason to change.
| greiskul wrote:
| It is literally done for strategic reasons to put a
| stranglehold on innovations on the web, so that there is no
| risk of web app technology developing to a point to threaten
| the dominance of native apps and the app store.
|
| Anybody that thinks otherwise is hopeless naive, Steve Jobs
| himself envisioned a web app future as the future of
| technology; before Apple found out the gold mine that the app
| store became.
| otterley wrote:
| > Anybody that thinks otherwise is hopeless naive
|
| This is inappropriate. People can reasonably disagree
| without being insulting to each other.
|
| If you have concrete evidence that Apple is deliberately
| withholding some essential advancement in Safari or its
| support for Web standards so that it can sell more apps, by
| all means, cite it.
| greiskul wrote:
| https://www.google.com/search?q=safari+is+the+new+ie
|
| Just read the summary that Gemini provides for a good
| quick understanding, and follow up the multiple articles
| about it. Then please don't come back and say that there
| is nothing concrete about this evidence, that is just
| people speculating about a behavior that Apple has been
| engaging repeatedly and continuously for over a decade.
| givinguflac wrote:
| Seriously, you expect people to click a Google search
| link for people who agree with you- and then read what
| the LLM has to say?? When did HN become a garbage dump
| where people don't do their own research and/or thinking?
| otterley wrote:
| About 10 years ago, by my reckoning. The less people know
| about a subject, the more strongly opinionated and
| certain they are about it. It's not just HN, though; it's
| a very human condition.
| otterley wrote:
| It is you that needs to cite the evidence, not some LLM,
| and with hard facts coupled with evidence of intent, not
| just referring to mere opinions.
|
| You claim to know something with certainty, so one can
| reasonably expect you have the expertise and data to
| prove it. If you come to the kitchen claiming to be a
| chef, you'd better come with sharp knives, not photos of
| them.
| xp84 wrote:
| Look, I agree that Safari sucks, but with or without the
| AI overview (which I don't believe is Gemini, rather that
| is a very cheap and dumb model that's been told to
| summarize a few top results), linking to a search is not
| a strong debating technique. I could link to a search for
| "Safari has the best technology" and it would have the
| same zero value.
| crazygringo wrote:
| > _to put a stranglehold on innovations on the web_
|
| I think that's the hypothetical part, it's not reality.
| Safari continues to be a fully modern browser. It doesn't
| release new features quite as fast as Chrome, but it does
| generally adopt them.
|
| If Apple were attempting to put a "stranglehold on
| innovations on the web", Safari's feature set would look
| _very_ different. But that 's not what's happening.
|
| Like I said, Apple does lots of anticompetitive things. I'm
| not blind to what they do with the app store. I just don't
| think that the single browser engine policy is motivated by
| this, or has much effect on it, given how Apple _does_ keep
| maintaining Safari as a modern browser.
| aryonoco wrote:
| Safari is the modern IE. the fact that PWAs didn't take
| off in the last decade js purely due to Safari.
|
| The only reason Apple has banned alternative engines and
| continues to hold back on major web technologies is
| anticompetitive behaviour.
| ryandrake wrote:
| No, I think Chrome is the modern IE. It has huge market
| share, to the point where developers often just ignore
| the other browsers or at best treat them as P2. Just like
| they did when IE was dominant.
|
| I'm torn on this honestly. Safari (particularly mobile
| Safari) is literally the only thing keeping the web from
| becoming Chrome-only. While I would love to see Safari-
| alternative engines on the iPhone, I fear that the "open
| web" in terms of browser compatibility is cooked the day
| that happens: Commercial web developers are supremely
| lazy and their product managers are, too. They will
| consider the web Chrome-only from that day forward and
| simply refuse to lift a finger for other browsers.
|
| I think when IE6 died, on one hand it was a relief for
| web developers, who (very quickly) deleted all the code
| needed to maintain compatibility, but on the other hand,
| it made the web worse by bringing us closer to browser
| monopoly.
| xp84 wrote:
| Chrome is the IE in that it's all the web devs target or
| test and the browser that every enterprise just uses as
| the assumed target. Safari is the late-stage IE that
| doesn't add any features or modern standards that its
| (supposed) competitors add. Although Apple seems to have
| different and more strategic reasons than MS did. Apple
| just hates the Web because they can't effectively
| tollbooth it, whereas I think MS just didn't care about
| investing in IE after 2001 or so.
| crazygringo wrote:
| > _Safari is the modern IE._
|
| That's not true. It's not even available on most
| computers. IE was about Microsoft _not_ following web
| standards and abusing its monopoly position; Safari is a
| minor browser by overall market share and is broadly
| standards-compliant.
|
| > _the fact that PWAs didn't take off in the last decade
| js purely due to Safari._
|
| So then why aren't PWA's super-popular on Windows and on
| Android? Since Safari doesn't affect those?
| realusername wrote:
| > Safari is a minor browser by overall market share and
| is broadly standards-compliant.
|
| It's officially compliant but in practice there's a lot
| of buggy implementations in Safari and you'll spend lots
| of time on workarounds and debugging.
|
| It's also the last non-evergreen browser being tied to
| the OS so it's the slowest to update, compounding that
| effect.
|
| > So then why aren't PWA's super-popular on Windows and
| on Android? Since Safari doesn't affect those?
|
| Personally I think that's because it's still not that
| convenient even on Android even if better.
| crazygringo wrote:
| If those are the extent of complaints, then I think
| Safari's doing just fine. That's _nothing_ like the next
| IE, and shows that PWA still have their own problems
| regardless of Apple.
| kelthuzad wrote:
| It's interesting how the "Apple can do no wrong"
| shareholders and "I will hate on PWAs no matter what"
| types, curiously converge and keep regurgitating the same
| talking points that have been addressed ad nauseam, even
| in this thread. Every technology has its "own problems"
| regardless of Apple, but it certainly doesn't help when
| Apple, being one of the biggest companies in the world,
| persistently engages in its sabotage.
| kelthuzad wrote:
| >So then why aren't PWA's super-popular on Windows and on
| Android? Since Safari doesn't affect those?
|
| Says who?
|
| "Yes, PWAs have become popular on these platforms. I work
| for Microsoft on the Microsoft Store (app store on
| Windows) and I work with the Edge team, and I work on
| PWABuilder.com, which publishes PWAs to app stores. Some
| of the most popular apps in the Microsoft Store are PWAs:
| Netflix, TikTok, Adobe Creative Cloud, Disney+, and many
| others.
|
| To view the list of PWAs in the Store, on a Windows box
| you can run ms-windows-store://assoc/?Tags=AppExtension-
| microsoft.store.edgePWA" -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46457849
| leptons wrote:
| It absolutely is reality. _Safari is the worst browser by
| far_ , it's been compared to Microsoft's old Internet
| Explorer browser. But don't take my word for it, lots of
| people have written about it...
|
| https://www.google.com/search?q=safari+is+the+new+ie
|
| And Apple purposely will never implement lots of APIs
| that only their native apps allow (which other browsers
| implement), specifically to force many developers to
| create a native app to use these APIs, so that Apple can
| force the developer to give them a percentage of any
| purchases made through the app. They can't force a
| developer to give them a cut of purchases made through a
| web browser, which is why they purposely hobble the
| Safari browser engine and then force all other browsers
| to use this engine. If you can't see how bad this is,
| then you've been taken over by the reality distortion
| field.
|
| It's spelled out in the DOJ lawsuit against apple, among
| many other anti-competitive practices.
|
| Microsoft got sued and lost in an antitrust suit for
| bundling IE with Windows. Apple bundles Safari with iOS
| but forbids any other browser engine but their Safari
| engine. Can you imagine if Microsoft forbade any other
| browser from being installed on Windows? It's time Apple
| was brought to justice over their abusive anti-
| competitive practices.
|
| Here's the whole DOJ suit against Apple:
|
| https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/media/1344546/dl?inl
| ine
| givinguflac wrote:
| You seriously just link to a google search of people who
| agree with you?? Solid investigation. Hard disagree on
| safari being even in the same ballpark as IE; what's your
| alternative, Google owns the entirety of the browser
| space?
| leptons wrote:
| I included that link not as "research" but as proof that
| I am not the only one calling Safari "the new IE". It's
| been written about ad nauseum, and just because you think
| a google search is pointless doesn't mean my argument
| lacks merit - and if you were to do your own "research",
| I'd bet you would start with a google search. Thousands
| of people have written about it, so go see what they have
| to say, I am not the only one claiming it.
|
| >Hard disagree on safari being even in the same ballpark
| as IE;
|
| It's a crap browser, and Apple implements things the way
| they want to, especially around touch interactions. So I
| have to have a real iPhone to debug problems with Apple's
| implementations. Safari fucking sucks, it just does, and
| your trolling comment doesn't disprove it.
|
| >what's your alternative, Google owns the entirety of the
| browser space?
|
| I don't care if they do or if they don't. All I want is
| an alternative to Safari on iOS. Is that really so bad??
|
| https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/media/1344546/dl?inl
| ine
| crazygringo wrote:
| > _So I have to have a real iPhone to debug problems with
| Apple 's implementations. Safari fucking sucks_
|
| You'll still have to debug it. Even when other browsers
| are allowed, Safari isn't going away.
|
| "Safari fucking sucks" isn't an argument that Apple is
| being anticompetitive. There are a bunch of things that
| suck about Chrome too. And Firefox as well. No product is
| perfect.
| xp84 wrote:
| I don't really agree with allowing one monopolistic
| company to behave anticompetitively because we're scared
| of their only competitor, another monopolist. They're
| both menaces to consumer rights.
| ChadNauseam wrote:
| I suspect it might have been motivated by antitrust
| concerns, but safari is really not that bad. Check out
| Interop 2025: https://wpt.fyi/interop-2025
|
| They generally are pretty caught up on features. They
| have webgpu, they support the web notifications API (once
| a PWA is installed), lots of stuff. My main gripe is that
| they make it too hard to install PWAs, but we're still
| waiting for an actual API for that. (Maybe in 2027? [0])
|
| > And Apple purposely will never implement lots of APIs
| that only their native apps allow (which other browsers
| implement)
|
| Can you give an example?
|
| [0]: https://blogs.windows.com/msedgedev/2025/11/24/the-
| web-insta...
| kelthuzad wrote:
| >> And Apple purposely will never implement lots of APIs
| that only their native apps allow (which other browsers
| implement)
|
| >Can you give an example?
|
| Web Bluetooth, Web USB, Web NFC, Web Serial...
|
| Of course Apple will uphold its usual charade to claim
| that it's about pRiVacy & sEcuRiTy to maintain plausible
| deniability. They could easily implement it and keep it
| disabled by default, such that users could make the
| conscious choice to enable it or keep it disabled. Any
| adequate analysis of Apple's behavior and motivations
| must mention Apple's conflict of interest, because Apple
| will be biased against technology that could diminish the
| value proposition of "native" apps which Apple has been
| taxing so unchallenged for all these years.
| troupo wrote:
| > Web Bluetooth, Web USB, Web NFC, Web Serial
|
| Chrome-only non-standards. Note that Firefox is against
| these, too.
|
| > Any adequate analysis of Apple's behavior and
| motivations must mention Apple's conflict of interest
|
| I've yet to see an adequate analysis that doesn't pretend
| that anything Chrome shits, sorry, ships is immediately a
| standard that must absolutely be implemented by everyone
| immediately.
| kelthuzad wrote:
| You're right that Firefox also opposes some of these
| specific _implementations_ in its current form, and that
| Google often rushes features. However, that doesn 't
| diminish Apple's conflict of interest at all, so
| sometimes their arguments happen to align with reality
| just as a broken clock is correct twice a day. Apple
| applies many double standards e.g. they allow native apps
| to access these hardware features (where they happen to
| collect a 30% tax) but block the Web from doing the same
| (where they collect 0%). If privacy was the only concern,
| they would work on a safe standard, but instead they
| block the capability entirely to ensure that any of the
| App Store's rivals remain constrained and thus inferior
| such that the App Store's revenue isn't threatened.
| troupo wrote:
| > You're right that Firefox also opposes some of these
| specific implementations in its current form, and that
| Google often rushes features. However, that doesn't
| diminish Apple's conflict of interest at all
|
| Funny how you agree that Firefox opposes these non-
| standards, and how Google rushes things. And immediately
| turn around and basically say "no-no-no, Apple is to
| blame and Safari (and, by extension Firefox) must
| absolutely implement these non-standard features from
| Chrome".
|
| The rest of demagoguery is irrelevant.
|
| BTW literally the moment Firefox relented and implemented
| WebMIDI they had originally opposed, they immediately ran
| into tracking/fingerprinting attempts using WebMIDI that
| Chrome just couldn't care less about.
| kelthuzad wrote:
| >Funny how you agree that Firefox opposes these non-
| standards, and how Google rushes things. And immediately
| turn around and basically say "no-no-no, Apple is to
| blame and Safari (and, by extension Firefox) must
| absolutely implement these non-standard features from
| Chrome".
|
| There is nothing "funny" about me acknowledging facts,
| that's what a reasonable person should always do, try it.
| What's not funny though, is how you're butchering and
| misrepresenting my arguments to such a gross degree. I've
| never stated that everybody "must implement these non-
| standard features from Chrome", instead I've made a much
| more nuanced argument about how Apple's conflict of
| interest is motivating them to reject entire feature sets
| for competing technology instead of helping to implement
| a safe standard, which is indicative of their bad faith
| motivations. That anti-competitive strategy has been
| essential for Apple in collecting billions in app taxes
| by systematically hobbling any competition before it can
| emerge.
|
| >BTW literally the moment Firefox relented and
| implemented WebMIDI they had originally opposed, they
| immediately ran into tracking/fingerprinting attempts
| using WebMIDI that Chrome just couldn't care less about.
|
| So? Just as native apps give users certain freedoms that
| can have problematic aspects, web apps should have _equal
| rights_ and be able to play on a level playing field. The
| choice and freedom should be the users' and not that of
| Apple's finance division. None of this gives Apple the
| right to uphold its anti-competitive strategy with its
| corporate double speak. And the fact that you're so
| hyperfocused on specifics while failing to grasp the
| broader argument, so you can cheerlead for Apple's anti-
| competitive behavior, is revealing a clear bias.
| troupo wrote:
| > Apple's conflict of interest is motivating them to
| reject entire feature sets for competing technology
| instead of helping to implement a safe standard
|
| It literally is "everyone must immediately implement
| anything Chrome shits out". You don't even accept the
| fact that _both_ Safari _and_ Firefox team reject the
| entire premise _on the same grounds_.
|
| Nope. "They must work on better standards for these
| features that Chrome ships".
|
| > The choice and freedom should be the users' and not
| that of Apple's finance division.
|
| Funny how in the paragraph you respond to I didn't
| mention Apple once.
|
| > And the fact that you're so hyperfocused on specifics
| while failing to grasp the broader argument
|
| There's no broader argument. You literally dismiss
| Firefox as irrelevant [1], assume that whatever Chrome
| ships is good, and assumes that Apple is both a bad actor
| driven entirely by money _an_ must implement whatever
| Chrome comes up with (under the guise of "should work to
| implement a safe standard").
|
| [1] Their position on these Chrome features is literally
| the same as Apple's https://mozilla.github.io/standards-
| positions/
| kelthuzad wrote:
| >It literally is "everyone must immediately implement
| anything Chrome shits out". You don't even accept the
| fact that both Safari and Firefox team reject the entire
| premise on the same grounds.
|
| It isn't factually and certainly not "literally" that.
| I've explicitly stated that the problem isn't the
| rejection of the specific implementation in its current
| form, but the wholesale refusal of features to deny rival
| technology equal rights, instead of helping to implement
| a safe standard. That is evidence of Apple's bad faith
| motivation to hobble competing technology in favor of
| their App Store tax funnel. You consistently refuse to
| understand this and resort to deflecting from and
| distorting that fact.
|
| >There's no broader argument.
|
| There is, it's the one you've been deflecting and
| distracting from, because it refutes your biased talking
| points completely.
|
| >You literally dismiss Firefox as irrelevant [1][1] Their
| position on these Chrome features is literally the same
| as Apple's https://mozilla.github.io/standards-positions/
|
| No I don't. You're literally making stuff up and ignoring
| the fact that I have actually even started my response
| with an acknowledgement of that point: "You're right that
| Firefox also opposes some of these specific
| implementations in its current form, and that Google
| often rushes features. However, that doesn't diminish
| Apple's conflict of interest at all, so sometimes their
| arguments happen to align with reality just as a broken
| clock is correct twice a day."
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46457938
|
| >and assumes that Apple is both a bad actor driven
| entirely by money an must implement whatever Chrome comes
| up with
|
| There is no such assumption, only the fact that Apple has
| a conflict of interest, which manifests itself in anti-
| competitive behavior, for which I've provided documented
| evidence. I've also never stated that they "must
| implement whatever Chrome comes up with", that's a gross
| misrepresentation, which you are stubbornly repeating,
| despite me having refuted it several times now. Your bias
| in this matter couldn't be more obvious, due to your
| dedication to distorting any evidence that refutes
| Apple's propaganda narrative, so you keep blindly
| repeating the same tired and old talking points despite
| evidence to the contrary.
| xp84 wrote:
| Are the Chrome features useful? Are they open? If it's
| bad for users (e.g. some new ad tracking) or if it's
| proprietary and thus expensive to license or reverse
| engineer that's one thing, but if it's not that, then
| refusing to ever adopt those standards (or to provide
| their own alternatives) is either foolish NIH syndrome on
| Apple's part or it's greed.
| troupo wrote:
| > If it's bad for users (e.g. some new ad tracking)
|
| Yes
|
| > but if it's not that, then refusing to ever adopt those
| standards (or to provide their own alternatives) is
| either foolish NIH syndrome on Apple's part or it's
| greed.
|
| Note that Firefox's position is literally exactly the
| same as Apple's on these Chrome-only features:
| https://mozilla.github.io/standards-positions/
| jauntywundrkind wrote:
| Personally my feel is Safari at least isn't dead in the
| water any more, does ship some stuff. It's much better
| than 2 years ago. 4 years ago it was a travesty.
|
| But there's still all sorts of wonkiness they just makes
| Safari non viable. If you don't PWA install, your storage
| gets cleared alarmingly quickly. If you do install it's
| still cleared wicked fast. Notifications seem to have
| incredibly unreliable delivery issues and require PWA
| installs to work at all. The features are closer to
| parity than before but the base functionality is still
| sabotaged deeply. 'The user is secure' with Apple is
| amazing doublespeak (the second meaning being securely in
| Apple's pocket with no where to go).
|
| It's worth noting that Interop participants meet and
| decide via unanimous consent what they are going to work
| on each year. The anti-trust case against Apple would be
| far stronger if they didn't show up & find some stuff to
| work on, to agree to. And with apologies as I break out
| the tin foil hat, showing up also gives them some
| leverage to shape what _doesn 't_ get worked on too.
| leptons wrote:
| Safari is the worst browser by far, especially on iOS.
| Apple also does things their own way, ignoring standards,
| so that I have to have a real actual iPhone to debug
| their platform-specific problems, especially around touch
| interactions.
|
| >Can you give an example?
|
| Web Bluetooth API, and lots of others. My product could
| use bluetooth but we're forced to work around Apple's
| Safari limitations and use Wifi instead, which drains the
| battery faster. We do not want to write a specific app
| for iOS (which costs us money to build and maintain),
| which then allows Apple to extort us for a percentage of
| sales through the app. Bluetooth would be the better
| option, but Wifi works although is a bit more cumbersome
| to deal with. So sorry Apple fans, you have to use wifi
| with our product because Apple reasons.
|
| I am going to open a bottle of champagne when the DOJ
| finally forces Apple to allow other browsers on iOS.
|
| https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/media/1344546/dl?inl
| ine
| concinds wrote:
| No, it's just not true.
|
| Interop 2025 is a subset of web features, but Apple gets
| a veto on which features get included in each Interop
| round, and vetoes heavily. It doesn't reflect
| interoperability in general. Safari also consistently
| starts out the worst each year, and improves the slowest.
|
| They don't support notifications correctly, they have a
| semi-broken implementation. Only a subset of sites will
| work, even though they'll work perfectly on Chrome or
| Firefox or even minor browsers. Even if you put the site
| on the homescreen.
| troupo wrote:
| > https://www.google.com/search?q=safari+is+the+new+ie
|
| Which is of course bullshit
|
| --- start quote ---
|
| The allegation that Safari is holding back web
| development by its lack of support for key features is
| not new, but it's not true, either. Back fifteen years
| ago IE held back the web because web developers had to
| cater to its outdated technology stack. "Best viewed with
| IE" and all that. But do you ever see a "Best viewed with
| Safari" notice? No, you don't. Another browser takes that
| special place in web developers' hearts and minds.
|
| ...even though Chrome is not the standard, it's treated
| as such by many web developers.
|
| https://www.quirksmode.org/blog/archives/2021/08/breaking
| _th...
|
| --- end quote ---
| otterley wrote:
| I'm truly curious: as either a user or a developer, how
| are you impacted by Apple's behavior and decisions with
| respect to its web browser engine policy? What is it
| preventing you from accomplishing?
| leptons wrote:
| Specifically for me, my company has a product that could
| use Bluetooth, but Safari will never implement the Web
| Bluetooth API, where Chrome has for some time on Android.
| So the workaround is to use Wifi instead (my product
| supports both bluetooth and Wifi), which drains the phone
| battery faster.
|
| No, we do not want to write our own iOS app where Apple
| can then extort us for a percentage of any sales through
| the app, and we have to pay for the priviledge to develop
| that app, as well as buy Apple hardware to do so.
|
| So instead we use Wifi, where we can maintain one single
| codebase - the web application, which works on both
| Android and iOS, but has to use Wifi. If Apple allowed
| Chrome to use its own browser engine, we would simply
| tell users to install Chrome to interact with our device.
| Then we don't have to pay Apple for anything, nor should
| we have to.
|
| Apple purposely won't implement some APIs so they can
| force developers to create an app for their app store
| where they can collect money from any additional sales
| through the app. It's all spelled out in the DOJ suit,
| why won't you just read it??
|
| https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/media/1344546/dl?inl
| ine
| otterley wrote:
| It's not alleged in the complaint that Apple cripples
| Safari in order to incentivize developers to build apps
| instead. Respectfully, did _you_ read it?
|
| Also, why would your company cut off its nose to spite
| its face? If using Bluetooth is a customer requirement
| (as opposed to merely a "nice to have"), why wouldn't you
| go to the lengths to provide an app for them?
| crazygringo wrote:
| > _Apple purposely won 't implement some APIs so they can
| force developers to create an app for their app store
| where they can collect money from any additional sales
| through the app._
|
| So then why doesn't Firefox support the Web Bluetooth API
| either? How can you jump to the conclusion that the lack
| of Safari support is _about apps_?
|
| The reality is that the Web Bluetooth API is a draft. Not
| ratified. Not on the formal standards track. And Firefox
| doesn't even _intend_ to implement it, due to security
| and privacy concerns around it and the fact that is it
| not ratified.
|
| But go on assuming it's all about being
| anticompetitive...
|
| > _It 's all spelled out in the DOJ suit, why won't you
| just read it?_
|
| I just did a Ctrl+F for Bluetooth and everything relates
| to smartwatches, not web APIs. There are only two
| references to Safari, none of which say anything about
| standards. The phrase "web standard" appears nowhere. The
| document is 88 pages long, and it's not immediately
| obvious to me where any of what you're talking about is
| spelled out. I hope you'll understand I'm not going to
| spend my afternoon reading the whole thing.
| avar wrote:
| > Steve Jobs himself envisioned a > web app future
| as the future of[...]
|
| I'm not putting cynical motivations past Apple, but you're
| reading too much (or too little?) into what Jobs said at
| the time.
|
| His remarks at the time of the initial iPhone release (with
| the benefit of hindsight) were clearly because they weren't
| ready to expose any sort of native API's.
|
| Pissing on you and telling you it's raining was typical
| Jobs reality distortion field marketing, and not an
| indication that he actually believed it was raining.
| gumby271 wrote:
| The web browser is the singular hole in Apple's grip over the
| user's device. While there are definitely arguments that can
| be made about security, I think it's naive to think that
| Apple is unaware of this and is operating on something other
| than protecting their app store fortune.
| toast0 wrote:
| If browser F is worse at battery life than browser S, people
| will figure that out and adapt for themselves. If it's a big
| difference, it's self-evident; and small differences should
| show up in the battery life tool and computer press.
|
| Security-wise, the sandbox should limit damage to within the
| browser, and if it doesn't that's not the browser's fault.
| _Maybe_ restrict access to password filling and such though
| / figure out how to offer an API to reduce the impact.
|
| Standardization, eh? Forcing Safari on iOS and not making it
| available on the mass market platforms (Android and Windows)
| makes it a pretty wonky standard. I guess there's a claim to
| be made for the embedded browsing engine, but IMHO, that
| should be an app developer choice.
| crazygringo wrote:
| > _people will figure that out and adapt for themselves_
|
| No they won't. People on HN will. Not the average person.
|
| > _Security-wise, the sandbox should limit damage to within
| the browser_
|
| The problem is, arbitrary code execution vastly expands the
| risks. Your "should" is doing all the work there.
|
| > _Standardization, eh? Forcing Safari on iOS and not
| making it available on the mass market platforms_
|
| Huh? Apple _follows_ web standards. Why the heck should it
| make Safari available on Android and Windows? _Safari_ isn
| 't a standard, _web standards_ are.
| leptons wrote:
| >> people will figure that out and adapt for themselves
|
| >No they won't. People on HN will. Not the average
| person.
|
| Yes they will, Apple has made it very easy to see.
|
| To check iOS app power usage, go to Settings > Battery,
| where you'll see a breakdown of battery consumption by
| app for the last 24 hours or 10 days, showing usage time
| and background activity, allowing you to identify power-
| hungry apps and manage settings like Background App
| Refresh to improve battery life.
|
| So yeah, it's easy to see which app is taking the most
| power, and users can do this easily, unless you think
| Apple's UX is so bad that users won't know how to read
| it?
|
| >The problem is, arbitrary code execution vastly expands
| the risks. Your "should" is doing all the work there.
|
| If that's a problem for web browsers, then it's a problem
| for every single app in the app store. There's nothing
| really unique about a web browser app that makes it more
| risky than any other app. Javascript is already very much
| sandboxed. And there have been plenty of exploits that
| already target Safari. So saying other browsers are the
| problem is like blaming the victim (of Apple's anti-
| competitive practices).
|
| >Huh? Apple follows web standards. Why the heck should it
| make Safari available on Android and Windows? Safari
| isn't a standard, web standards are.
|
| If web standards are standards, then let other web
| browsers on iOS.
|
| The real reason Apple disallows other browser engines on
| Safari is so they can force developers to create native
| apps where they can get a cut of any purchase made
| through the app. The problems with Apple's anti-
| competitive practices have been spelled out in the DOJ
| lawsuit against them:
|
| https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/media/1344546/dl?inl
| ine
| crazygringo wrote:
| > _go to Settings > Battery, where you'll see a breakdown
| of battery consumption by app_
|
| And what percentage of users do you think ever check
| that, or even know it's there to check?
|
| > _If that 's a problem for web browsers, then it's a
| problem for every single app in the app store._
|
| No it's not, the app store disallows arbitrary code
| execution.
|
| > _There 's nothing really unique about a web browser app
| that makes it more risky than any other app._
|
| Yes there is -- JavaScript.
|
| > _Javascript is already very much sandboxed._
|
| ...by Safari. It wouldn 't be if you allowed any
| developer to write their own JavaScript interpreter as
| part of their own browser.
|
| > _If web standards are standards, then let other web
| browsers on iOS._
|
| That's a non-sequitur.
| leptons wrote:
| >And what percentage of users do you think ever check
| that, or even know it's there to check?
|
| It does not matter. The functionality is there. If a user
| can't figure it out then they have other problems that
| having a smartphone won't fix for them.
|
| >No it's not, the app store disallows arbitrary code
| execution.
|
| You mean Javascript interpreters inside a web browser?
| lol. You mean like Safari is allowed to do? So only Apple
| can allow Apple apps to do this? I'm not sure you're
| thinking this through. Apples rule is a made-up rule
| designed to keep competition out, and force developers to
| write native apps so Apple can extort the developers by
| taking a percentage of purchases made through the native
| app.
|
| >Yes there is -- JavaScript.
|
| That's the dumbest possible argument you could make.
| Javascript has been very much sandboxed and secure for a
| very long time. There have been flaws in Safari that
| allowed remote code execution had nothing to do with
| Javascript, so good luck moving that goalpost somewhere
| else.
|
| >...by Safari. It wouldn't be if you allowed any
| developer to write their own JavaScript interpreter as
| part of their own browser.
|
| I'm not recommending my users use H@ck0rbR0Ws3R, I'm
| recommending they use _Google Chrome_ , specifically
| because it supports the APIs my company needs to use for
| our product (on Android at least).
|
| Okay Tim Apple, the DOJ is coming for you. You can
| explain this all to them when they come knocking, and
| they will.
| swiftcoder wrote:
| > So yeah, it's easy to see which app is taking the most
| power, and users can do this easily, unless you think
| Apple's UX is so bad that users won't know how to read
| it?
|
| It's easy to see, but seeing doesn't mean the user will
| do anything about it. I guarantee that for the average
| user, their list goes something like
| Instagram/TikTok/FaceBook/Twitter, and they haven't
| uninstalled any of those yet due to battery drain...
| otterley wrote:
| Apple made it very clear that their security concerns
| related to third party browsing engines are about
| difficult-to-contain threats posed by JIT compilation.
| (JITs require non-text memory pages to be executable.)
| Apple doesn't allow other apps to use such technology, so
| they're consistent in that respect.
|
| Apple even disables JIT _for Safari itself_ when you put
| an iPhone in lockdown mode, at no small cost to
| performance, in an effort to harden the device even more.
|
| Do you have a rebuttal to that?
| concinds wrote:
| Yes. Safari is a less secure browser than Chrome,
| architecturally. Took far longer to ship sandboxing.
| Still hasn't fixed SLAP and FLOP. Still hasn't shipped
| proper site isolation. Takes far longer to fix reported
| vulnerabilities, and consistently "fixes" them
| superficially and incorrectly, requiring another fix.
|
| Enough with the Apple fanboy paternalism. They don't need
| absolute control "for users' sake". They're not entitled
| to it.
| otterley wrote:
| > Still hasn't fixed SLAP and FLOP. Still hasn't shipped
| proper site isolation.
|
| Those are interesting facts, but are ultimately a red
| herring. How will enabling JIT for other browser engines,
| absent the detailed vetting Apple is requiring to provide
| a Web Browser Engine entitlement, yield a more secure
| outcome?
|
| > Enough with the Apple fanboy paternalism. They don't
| need absolute control "for users' sake". They're not
| entitled to it.
|
| You are, of course, welcome to choose an alternative. If
| you prefer Android, by all means, use it!
| concinds wrote:
| The "vetting" is irrelevant because the other engines
| will continue to not exist. By design.
|
| I am currently forced to use a less secure browser due to
| Apple's restrictions, which invalidates your original
| claim. Your skillful dodging of that point is why it's so
| frustrating to have any conversation about Apple. There
| really are cult-like aspects.
| Tagbert wrote:
| Safari has long been better for battery than Chrome but
| people still install Chrome on their MacBooks.
| cosmic_cheese wrote:
| Yep. Chrome's mindshare and momentum is incredibly
| difficult to overcome, and outside of technology-oriented
| circles users generally don't develop associations
| between specific programs and poor battery life unless it
| gets the fans blaring like you're running Cyberpunk 2077
| with setting cranked to max or something.
|
| It's similar to how the overwhelming majority of people
| driving cars aren't going to make note of the difference
| in driving dynamics between CVT and automatic
| transmissions unless one severely underperforms compared
| to the other. It either runs or it doesn't and that's
| where the distinction ends for people who treat their
| car/computer/phone as an appliance.
| michaelt wrote:
| _> If browser F is worse at battery life than browser S,
| people will figure that out and adapt for themselves._
|
| Unfortunately, the makers of a certain browser also control
| several major web properties, and regularly make 'mistakes'
| that break compatibility with competing browsers, while
| releasing a set of apps that 'forget' users' browser
| selections on a monthly basis.
|
| Personally, I'd much prefer apple allowed a browser engine
| with proper ad blocking support. But I do worry that the
| moment they do so, the almost-monopoly browser market would
| become a total monopoly.
| n8cpdx wrote:
| Safari exclusivity is the only reason we aren't living in a
| 100% "this site built for chrome" world. I think folks must
| forget the IE days and how bad that was.
|
| There is zero percent chance developers are wasting a
| second making sure their sites actually work cross platform
| if not for iOS (and iOS more moneyed user base).
| xp84 wrote:
| We were in a "built for Netscape" world right before IE
| had its brief window of innovation in versions 4-5. The
| fact that people were building to IE though was only
| painful for a few specific reasons: 1. the versions of IE
| targeted were exclusive to Windows (Mac IE was way
| different, so it wasn't that useful for when the site had
| targeted Windows IE)
|
| 2. IE stopped all development of useful UI or web
| standards features, meaning if you needed the
| compatibility you were stuck with a stagnant browser
|
| 3. Due to #2, of course web devs hands were tied when it
| comes to adopting things like HTML5, <video> tags etc.
| Users would have needed to switch between the two
| constantly -- Firefox for cool new sites and IE for their
| bank, school, government, whatever.
|
| I would posit that none of the above seems true about
| Chromium. They do continue developing it, they add new
| web standards the most aggressively of anyone, and it's
| available on basically every platform except the one
| Apple bans it from. Mind you I don't really want Google
| to own it, because they are way too damn big even without
| Chrome... but honestly it's no IE situation.
| 8note wrote:
| why wouldnt they just drop safari and switch to firefox with
| ublock origin included in that case?
|
| adtech is the big security and performance drain and allowing
| ads and making them hard to block is a big security and
| performance gap
| OptionOfT wrote:
| At a hardware level it seemed to work. Looking at USB-C on
| iPhones for example.
|
| Software wise? Fail. EEA gets to disable start search in
| Windows 11. RoW does not. Interestingly EEA membership is
| decided at install time based on your selection, and is not
| changeable afterwards.
|
| iPhones on the other hand have a daemon running that checks
| your location. It's not based on where you set up the phone. So
| traveling from Europe to somewhere else can actually prevent
| you from updating apps that you got via an alt-store:
|
| https://www.macrumors.com/2024/03/06/alternative-ios-app-sto...
| ryandrake wrote:
| Yea, unfortunately with software, using enough granular
| feature flags, they can make their software "maximally bad"
| for each given region. They lose a battle in the EU and are
| forced to make the software better? They will make it better
| only in the EU. Lose another one in Japan over a different
| issue? Just make a "japan" flag and only make it narrowly
| better for that use case in that region. Lose further battles
| in other regions, just add more flags.
|
| They will never deploy the "better" feature worldwide if they
| have the opportunity to limit the better code to a particular
| region.
|
| 1: And of course, by "better" I am always referring to
| "better for the user" not "better for Apple."
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| Even in a hardware level, this is easily obtainable, and
| Apple already does it.
|
| Chinese iPhones? They have 2 physical SIM card slots and no
| eSIM.
|
| EU iPhones? 1 SIM card slot, and 1 eSIM.
|
| US iPhones? 2 eSIM card slots and no physical SIM. US
| iPhones also have mmWave when other countries do not.
|
| If Apple wanted to, keeping a Lightning US iPhone was
| easily on the cards. The EU's role in forcing the issue in
| the US is exaggerated.
| ryandrake wrote:
| You make an excellent point. I would guess that it is
| orders of magnitude more expensive for Apple to create a
| new hardware configuration than it is for them to add
| software feature flags, though. But, assuming the cost of
| making the hardware change worldwide exceeds the cost of
| reconfiguring their factories for new hardware, you're
| right that they would not choose to make the hardware
| change worldwide.
|
| Almost certainly someone (or an entire team) carefully
| crunched the numbers and deliberately decided not to keep
| a Lightning US iPhone.
| mod50ack wrote:
| There are different levels to these things. The number of
| SIM card slots or bands varying from model to model isn't
| that unusual. The average user just needs it to work. In
| fact, the SIM and band configuration differences have
| nothing to do with regional legal mimina -- they have
| more to do with the standard practice and available
| systems in each region (for example, mmWave isn't widely
| deployed outside the US). The configurations aren't
| really "worse" in the same way as locking down browser
| access is worse. Phones have had regional variants going
| back ~forever for pretty mundane and benign reasons.
|
| More importantly, if a user travels from one region to
| another, as long as they can use their phone in the place
| they arrive, having slightly non-optimal bands or a
| different SIM configuration doesn't matter. The fact that
| your phone is slightly different from the local model is
| not really a problem.
|
| But having your charger vary across regions? That's a
| recipe for disaster. Not only is that another level of
| variance in your external casing, it impacts day-to-day
| use. When an American user travels to, say, France, or
| vice versa, and wants to buy a charger, or share one with
| someone else, having the same model of iPhone be
| incompatible would be a major frustration. It would be
| stupid to engineer a lightning AND USB-C version of the
| same device for each market.
| bsimpson wrote:
| My dad got his phone stolen on day 1 of a monthlong trip.
| He went without a phone the whole trip, in part because
| he was nervous he wouldn't have the right radios if he
| brought a euro phone home.
| wolvoleo wrote:
| That's true they are different. It'll still work, but the
| bands aren't exactly the same so it may lead to coverage
| issues depending on the network.
| 15155 wrote:
| Sounds like a market for Faraday GPS spoofer boxes.
| skinner927 wrote:
| We still playing Pokemon go?
| gyomu wrote:
| 1) Apple loves USB-C, they helped invent it and were one of
| the first to ship a USB-C only laptop
|
| 2) Apple committed to 10 years of lightning support to
| weather the backlash from dropping 30-pin
|
| USB-C on iPhone was going to happen regardless of the EU.
| viktorcode wrote:
| And what's your opinion if the law would oblige the companies
| to remove features their products have like tracking
| transparency popups? Two countries' courts already fined Apple
| for enforcing a popup that warns users about tracking across
| third party apps (a feature Apple themselves do not use)?
| rorylawless wrote:
| My prior POV was that Apple would jettison the feature
| globally, but the discussion elsewhere in this thread
| suggests that salami slicing at the software-level is a cost
| larger companies are willing to bear.
| ninkendo wrote:
| The fact we still can't get this in the US is atrocious. They
| have already paid the cost to implement this for the EU and
| Japan, but simply don't allow it for US users because... spite, I
| guess? Horrible.
|
| It reminds me of when I asked for my account to be deleted from
| some online learning site (Udacity maybe?) And they're response
| was: "Nope, we only do that for European users." Like they went
| through all the effort of implementing a proper way to delete
| your data, but they just... _don 't do it_ if you're not in the
| right geographic area.
| __aru wrote:
| > The fact we still can't get this in the US is atrocious.
|
| To be honest, I suspect that Apple is purposefully doing this
| to make alternatives a logistical and legal nightmare vs their
| own App store.
|
| By having different rules for different countries, different
| fee structures, etc, Apple is basically making alternatives as
| inconvenient and painful as legally possible
|
| The US not getting these features is on purpose, it makes the
| entire idea of "alternatives on iOS" extremely inconvenient vs
| just using the App store.
| swiftcoder wrote:
| > They have already paid the cost to implement this for the EU
| and Japan, but simply don't allow it for US users because...
|
| If by "this", you mean "a set of rules so complicated that no
| 3rd party will ever ship a browser"...
|
| In practice, they've shipped a whole lot of nothing, and we
| still don't have any 3rd party browser engines available in the
| EU
| concinds wrote:
| The separate-binary requirement makes it completely DOA, so
| they're still breaking the law. Deliberately. It bans actions
| that make it unlikely for browsers to adopt alternative engines.
| And they mandate no sharing of login-state with any other app
| from the same developer, despite violating that themselves
| (Safari sync is turned on by default, no encryption by default).
| Funny. And they mandate blocking third-party cookies, great but
| completely inappropriate for _an OS_ to impose. The most
| hilarious:
|
| > Prioritize resolving reported vulnerabilities with expedience
| [...] Most vulnerabilities should be resolved in 30 days, but
| some may be more complex and may take longer.
|
| Apple _does not_ comply with this.
| iqandjoke wrote:
| So can people in Okinotorishima, Takeshima, Senkaku Islands use
| that alternative browser?
| gumby271 wrote:
| It's so disappointing to be fed crumbs like this instead of
| seeing real consumer protection laws put in place. Let users
| install software on their computers outside of what the
| manufacturer permits, why focus on browsers and "app stores"?
| aryonoco wrote:
| Because capitalism.
| GaryBluto wrote:
| I'm surprised Apple haven't thrown in the towel and opened things
| up worldwide yet. It's only a matter of time until it becomes too
| confusing and problematic to try and run the same system
| relatively openly in one country and walled in another.
| apples_oranges wrote:
| FeatureToggles.swift
| travisgriggs wrote:
| This. It's computation. Computation doesn't really "get"
| geopolitical borders.
|
| I'm so sick of the ever increasing variances between the
| different "store" offerings in different regions of the world.
| Seems like every time I push an update (every month or so), I
| have to answer updated questions and declarations, often
| relative to different parts of the world.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| This is a poorly thought through argument, as there is
| _nothing_ that "gets" geopolitical borders.
| overfeed wrote:
| > It's only a matter of time until it becomes too confusing and
| problematic to try and run the same system relatively openly in
| one country and walled in another
|
| They will continue to do so for as long as it remains
| profitable. Navigating the complexities of multiple
| jurisdictions is the bread and butter of MNCs - it's the price
| of admission into the multinational club. Apple is guaranteed
| to have lawyers, admins, and executives already on the payroll
| for this task.
| valleyer wrote:
| Lawyers, admins, and executives, sure. But what about the
| complexity on the engineers who now have to maintain an
| exploding matrix of modes? I can definitely see that becoming
| burdensome.
| SheinhardtWigCo wrote:
| $500k+ TC makes many burdens worth shouldering
| theplatman wrote:
| Engineers say they want to work on hard problems then
| complain that they can't solve something because it's too
| complex
| MrMetric wrote:
| The difference is this isn't an inherently hard problem.
| It's just stupidity. The difficulty is not inherently
| interesting, because it's all made up.
| xp84 wrote:
| Seconded, compliance-induced complexity is the most
| asinine and tedious possible application of programming
| skills.
| abacadaba wrote:
| sounds like a problem for claude to worry about
| davnicwil wrote:
| much has been written about the deteriorating quality of
| iOS.
|
| There's bluntly not strong external evidence that software
| quality is a driving priority at Apple in recent years, so
| it most probably follows that concerns about
| maintainability aren't either.
| npunt wrote:
| they make $1b in revenue and $300mm a day in profit
| xp84 wrote:
| You're not wrong, it is burdensome but the sheer volume of
| money they secure primarily because of their license to
| rent-seek mercilessly (in the US especially because it's
| the market they dominate most and with the weakest
| regulators) makes even a hilarious amount of complexity
| supportable. Besides, it's mainly the users who suffer from
| the codebase falling apart, not Apple decision makers.
| lxgr wrote:
| Or until they've successfully "demonstrated" that it always
| was impossible.
|
| > Apple is guaranteed to have lawyers, admins, and executives
| already on the payroll for this task.
|
| As both a shareholder and user, I really wish they'd invest
| their resources into feature development instead of
| manufacturing obstacles.
| hypeatei wrote:
| I've always thought the same. Obviously there isn't much of a
| technical hurdle since they have the engineering talent. But,
| keeping track of all these cross-region rules and training your
| staff+customers on it has to be quite costly in multiple
| respects (time, energy, mental models, etc.)
|
| My personal opinion is that keeping the browser engine locked
| down isn't much of a profit generator, unlike maintaining full
| reign over the app store would be.
| bloppe wrote:
| Hobbling browser engines is a key pillar of app store
| control. Decent PWA support would be a massive blow to
| Apple's bottom line.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| This is the conspiratorial version.
|
| The more likely explanation is that when every app can
| bundle their own browser engine, we will not see a
| competition explosion. Instead, Electron apps will come to
| mobile, with every app shipping its own browser stack.
|
| You can't tell me Gecko, which has already failed on
| desktop, will suddenly be popular on mobile. You can easily
| tell me every app shipping their own Chromium would be very
| popular with developers.
| bloppe wrote:
| a browser is essentially an app store with no 30% cut for
| Apple. If you can ship a browser, you don't need to pay
| the Apple tax
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| Has PWA become popular on unencumbered platforms like
| Android or Windows?
|
| No.
|
| Even if unencumbered on iOS, it will still fail, because
| PWA is an intrinsically confusing technology. The pitch
| to non-technical users is terrible. Just like passkeys,
| which has also been terrible.
| kelthuzad wrote:
| >Has PWA become popular on unencumbered platforms like
| Android or Windows? No.
|
| Obviously. When a major Gatekeeper systematically holds
| it back to prevent it from challenging its taxation
| funnel, then it has no chance of competing and will thus
| not be chosen on competing platforms either, which will
| prevent its adoption and any investment in it.
|
| >Even if unencumbered on iOS, it will still fail, because
| PWA is an intrinsically confusing technology.
|
| PWA is not an "intrinsically confusing technology" and
| making such an absurd statement without proper
| elaboration reeks of pure bias.
| judah wrote:
| > "Has PWA become popular on unencumbered platforms like
| Android or Windows? No."
|
| Yes, PWAs have become popular on these platforms. I work
| for Microsoft on the Microsoft Store (app store on
| Windows) and I work with the Edge team, and I work on
| PWABuilder.com, which publishes PWAs to app stores. Some
| of the most popular apps in the Microsoft Store are PWAs:
| Netflix, TikTok, Adobe Creative Cloud, Disney+, and many
| others.
|
| To view the list of PWAs in the Store, on a Windows box
| you can run ms-windows-store://assoc/?Tags=AppExtension-
| microsoft.store.edgePWA
|
| I run PWABuilder.com as well, and I can tell you that
| many, many PWAs get published to the Google Play Store,
| including some very popular ones.
|
| I agree there is some confusion around PWA installation.
| There are some proposed web standards with Google and
| Microsoft's backing to help with that, e.g. Web Install:
| https://github.com/MicrosoftEdge/MSEdgeExplainers/blob/ma
| in/...
| xp84 wrote:
| It's not that confusing. To a user it could be the same
| as an app, just one you can be prompted to "install"
| instantly without a download and without wasting space on
| your device.
|
| If Apple weren't incentivized to block PWA use, they'd
| allow them to be "installed" with the same type of little
| top banner that prompts you to get/open an App Store app.
| Instead they relegate it to some obscure buried option
| inside the Safari Share menu.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| Every app shipping its own Chromium isn't currently
| forbidden, as I understand it. They're just not allowed
| to use their own engines for webviews.
| bloppe wrote:
| https://www.macobserver.com/news/15-months-later-iphone-
| user...
| chuckadams wrote:
| Technically you can even write your own webview, but you
| can't make it the default, nor will it be able to JIT-
| compile JS, since that requires an entitlement that Apple
| never grants. Having no JIT is murder on both performance
| and battery life.
| kelthuzad wrote:
| >This is the conspiratorial version.
|
| Everything that's inconvenient for your preferred
| narrative can just be dismissed as conspiratorial
| thinking, makes the world so much easier - doesnt it?
| I've compiled some of the evidences that makes clear how
| one of the Gatekeepers (Apple) has a tremendous conflict
| of interest, which manifested itself in systematic
| sabotaging of PWAs over the years:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45534316
| wolvoleo wrote:
| Firefox is really good now on android. It's my go to
| browser now for everything. It just needed full addon
| support but when that was finally there it was great.
| xp84 wrote:
| This is true, however I think an App Store rule that to
| ship a browser engine, you have to be a browser, defined
| as having a browser that is maintained on MacOS, Linux,
| and/or Windows and which can be made the default browser
| on those platforms. Or even simpler, it has to present
| web browsing to the user as the primary function and not
| secondary to accessing content/shopping/gaming.
|
| Seems either approach would rule out your Slack, Amazon
| app, etc. from shipping their own outdated 900MB
| Chromiums but allow Chrome, Firefox, K-Meleon, whatever.
| WD-42 wrote:
| Good. The sooner I can run Firefox with the legit uBlock origin
| the better.
| steelbrain wrote:
| While its not Firefox, you can run uBlock origin with the
| Orion browser from the Kagi people.
| WD-42 wrote:
| That's what I'm currently doing - it's barely functional.
| I'm sure it'll get there eventually but it misses a ton of
| stuff the desktop version blocks.
| browningstreet wrote:
| I'm running 1Blocker on iOS Safari, what am I not
| getting?
| nvr219 wrote:
| I'm using wipr and it's great. using vinegar/baking soda
| for video adblocks.
| concinds wrote:
| Proper, _full_ blocking of ads and trackers. Just because
| you can 't see most of them doesn't mean the network
| requests aren't getting through. And you're not getting a
| free and open-source extension. And you're not getting 3
| extra bucks a month in your wallet, because those
| grifters made you pay for some pixels despite not
| contributing to the adblock lists their "business"
| depends on.
| Imustaskforhelp wrote:
| Okay now that we have come to the topic, How is Orion
| browser on App store whereas all others aren't?
|
| is there a way to make more innovation in this area and
| maybe an extension or two developed adding more perms etc
| or forking Orion or the know-how behind it and replicating
| it could finally allow PWA on apple iphones?
| dcdc123 wrote:
| There are many browsers on the App Store but they all
| have to use one of two browser engines bundled with iOS.
| Imustaskforhelp wrote:
| No you don't get me but all browsers in Iphone even
| firefox and chrome are webkit forks
|
| and neither of them allow any sort of extensions on top
|
| Orion is the only one I think which still supports
| firefox or chrome extensions as well. I am sure that it
| can support PWA or already does, not sure, someone should
| probably test it out.
|
| Theoretically if you can modify the engine enough to run
| firefox/chrome extensions on it when firefox/chrome
| themselves on Iphone can't but somehow Orion can, I don't
| see a reason why nobody's else doing it but combined with
| some really really good pwa support as well?
| dcdc123 wrote:
| I don't think you get how it works. When you download a
| browser on iOS it does not have an engine _at all_, not
| even a "WebKit fork". The browser is just a UI and
| wrapper for one of the engines bundles in iOS. No
| modifications can be done to the engine whatsoever, it is
| part of the OS.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Orion has always been designed to use WebKit.
| MBCook wrote:
| I don't think you understand Apple's stubbornness. They DO NOT
| like being told what to do.
|
| They seem to have gotten a long way better with Japan in this
| process than the EU, but they're still not happy about it. So
| they're absolutely not gonna just roll over for everyone.
| d--b wrote:
| I'm all for privacy and alternative app stores, but opening
| browser engines to the competition isn't something I'm keen to
| have.
|
| Now every phone will ship with 2 engines (inevitably chrome is
| going to be bundled in at least one of your apps). Both are tied
| to large tech companies. And both have approximately the same
| feature set.
|
| At this stage, I can't think of any upside for the end user. New
| CSS crap or obscure web APIs, or proprietary DRM? And the cost is
| that we're going to get new website badges "only in Chrome", or
| "only in Safari", like it's 1999.
|
| This is Apple, people know what they get into, and they kind of
| want that an iPhone is not a PC.
|
| It looks like everyone thinks that this is a good thing. Can
| anyone explain beyond the "this is a monopoly" argument? It's not
| a monopoly if the engine is free, and if they need the engine to
| more or less match all the desktop engines.
|
| I don't feel cornered by Apple on that one.
| mettamage wrote:
| I would love to have a browser that I can use my stylus to
| scribble with.
| MBCook wrote:
| I'm not going to say I think Apple should be able to lock out
| competing browsers, I know this is going to happen.
|
| But God I don't want this. The iPhone is basically the only thing
| stopping a total Chrome/Chromium hegemony from ruling the web the
| way IE did.
|
| I don't think Google will practically abandon things the way
| Microsoft did. But they will absolutely have the kind of power
| Microsoft did to force any feature.
|
| I don't want to be forced to use Chrome because it's the only
| browser that works on most sites. It's already bad enough with
| some sites.
|
| But Apple's stubbornness and completely different reasons are the
| only things accidentally holding back the tide.
| herpdyderp wrote:
| I don't see any reason why Google _wouldn't_ abandon web
| features left and right, given how they do that with everything
| else.
| anticensor wrote:
| Because they themselves use them?
| brokencode wrote:
| Also because they know what happened to Microsoft when they
| did that with IE.
| gigel82 wrote:
| I'm sure if Apple keeps innovating and adopting some of the Web
| standards they'll outcompete other engines. But let's be
| realistic, they 100% are blocking other engines and not
| adopting standards in their own because they want that sweet
| sweet 30% cut when developers can't publish PWAs and are forced
| into the "app" model.
| cosmic_cheese wrote:
| WebKit's progress has been significant in recent years, it's
| just been more focused on things like improving CSS instead
| of things like an API that tells the developer how many beers
| the user has in their fridge.
| kace91 wrote:
| I don't see that as a threat honestly. safari being the default
| app pretty much guarantees its place unless google comes up
| with a killer feature for iOS chrome. And they are unlikely to
| make that push considering apple demands the app to be
| distributed only in Japan.
|
| Besides, the mobile web is becoming more and more of a niche
| platform, since the web is becoming centralised as time passes
| and most main sites redirect to their own apps.
|
| And that's without considering direct web search being replaced
| by AI search,which google seems convinced is the way forward.
| MBCook wrote:
| It was the default on the Mac and it's nowhere near the most
| popular there.
|
| Google pushes Chrome HARD.
| cosmic_cheese wrote:
| Yep. I've even been seeing Chrome TV ads lately (on Amazon
| Prime Video). They're marketing it pretty hard despite
| being dominant.
|
| Also, it's wise to not underestimate the power of
| developers ceasing to test against non-Blink browsers and
| taking a page from their IE-era past selves with "Best
| Viewed in Chrome" and "Browser outdated! Download Chrome"
| badges. There are few user motivators stronger than things
| not working.
| ribosometronome wrote:
| Similarly, Edge is the default on Windows. Chrome has 75%
| of the market share.
| ndiddy wrote:
| Yeah it's fun how Google displays a full-page ad for Chrome
| every few times I do a Google search on iOS Safari that I
| have to dismiss before seeing the results.
| benoau wrote:
| Yeah but the solution to that is to _be good at breaking
| monopolies_ , not allowing one to stop another.
| geraldwhen wrote:
| Google has no actual content left to find. It's AI spam
| website after AI spam website.
|
| And if you find any content, it's on a website riddled with
| ads.
|
| AI search has none of these issues. Google from 15 years ago
| was wildly superior to today.
| kace91 wrote:
| >AI search has none of these issues
|
| Yet. AI feeds from the content it substitutes. I'm
| skeptical to the long term feasibility for this reason, how
| is it going to bring me news when publishing those news is
| no longer profitable, for example?
| tom1337 wrote:
| > safari being the default app
|
| but this can change. At least in the EU Apple already prompts
| a user which browser they want [1]. While at the moment every
| browser is WebKit under the hood, this will probably change
| as the EU is also pushing Apple to allow other engines [2] -
| and with users knowing Chrome from Ads, their work or from a
| previous Android phone, I can imagine a lot of them selecting
| Chrome as a default.
|
| 1: https://www.heise.de/en/news/Apple-alters-selection-
| screen-f... 2:
| https://developer.apple.com/support/alternative-browser-
| engi...
| lukeschlather wrote:
| That ship has already sailed. And Apple is part of the problem.
| Recently I used Microsoft Edge because Facetime doesn't support
| Firefox. I couldn't get audio working so switched to Google
| Meet (which does work in Firefox.)
| baby wrote:
| Safari is so bad, I want a real chrome experience on iOS
| lokar wrote:
| Can you explain how? Poor standards implementation?
| Performance? UX?
| vips7L wrote:
| I'd like the extension ecosystem from chrome or Firefox. I
| miss having real Firefox with real Ublock like on Android.
| lokar wrote:
| I find the "use reader automatically " setting helps a
| lot
| basisword wrote:
| The extension ecosystem that Google has been locking
| down? You can get the same UBlock extension on Safari and
| Chrome now (on Safari desktop and iOS).
| socalgal2 wrote:
| No full screen API so impossible to make lots of types of
| game experiences.
|
| No orientation API so impossible to make games and other
| experiences that require a certain orientation
|
| No WebXR (though Apple will allow it on Vision Pro)
|
| No support for ResizeObvserver devicePixelContentBoxSize so
| impossible to get correct rendering reguardless of user's
| zoom level.
|
| No simple PWA installation. Requires an obscure incantation
| that only expert users know.
|
| That's just a few off the top of my head.
|
| Yes, I know all the comments will be about how they don't
| want those features. That's really irrelevant. Allow them
| to be turned off. Require permissions. Those features have
| been shipping on other OSes, Desktop and Mobile for > 5
| years and the world hasn't ended.
| jonhohle wrote:
| I hear this a lot, but have used Safari as my since it was
| launch in 2003.Performance has always been great. UI has
| always been minimalist, out of the way, and has never
| upsold me on anything. There are times where it lags and
| times where it leads standards. There may be a a site every
| now and then that doesn't work, but iOS makes that less
| likely. The only thing I can ever think of is that it's not
| <insert favorite browser> or doesn't have <some favorite
| esoteric feature>.
|
| That said, the only plugins I use are ad blockers, so maybe
| I'm missing something.
| panstromek wrote:
| It might look ok from user's point of view, but lot of
| the problems fall on web developers who have to work
| around a bunch of these issues to make their pages work
| in Safari
| concinds wrote:
| I cannot go through a day without "this tab has been
| reloaded due to a problem" on Safari iOS and any other
| browser. It's been happening for years, across phones. It's
| dogshit. Safari Mac is fine.
|
| _Even if_ that 's an edge case, it's why having only one
| engine is pathological. Maybe Safari iOS works fine for
| you. Not for me. I don't want rationalization on why it's
| not Apple's fault, or somehow not Safari's fault, or
| "they'll fix it one day", or "I'm doing it wrong", or all
| the fanboy-talk that sounds like the enabling relative of
| an alcoholic. Don't care. I should be able to switch for
| even the most frivolous reason. Maybe I don't like that it
| doesn't render every website in pink.
|
| It's like having only one type of chocolate in existence.
| This was never normal.
| panstromek wrote:
| Late on a lot of standards, quirky in many ways and just a
| lot of bugs, especially around images and videos. Also
| positioning issues. They recently broke even position
| fixed, which broke a ton of web pages on iOS, including
| apple.com
| concinds wrote:
| I can't wait until regulators do their job and take away
| Apple's dictatorial control, _in all areas_ , and all these
| doom-and-gloom predictions on all these tangential issues end
| up proving ludicrous.
|
| What kind of control would Chrome have over the web? Adding
| APIs doesn't force the billions of websites to adopt them. So
| what if a website adds WebBluetooth? You don't want the web to
| have that anyway, and if you keep using Safari, you still won't
| have it. Happy you!
|
| If scrappy Firefox on _open platforms_ could save the web from
| 95% IE, then why are we all dependent on _Apple, alone_ , to
| save us from ~60% Chrome? It's learned helplessness and
| Stockholm syndrome. I wonder how our species survived before
| the trillion-dollar company started taking such good care of
| us!
| hparadiz wrote:
| Firefox exists.
| lcnmrn wrote:
| Hopefully with AI we will have other browser engines than Chrome
| and Firefox.
| giobox wrote:
| Apple appear to be using the same rules that they made up when
| "allowing" third party browser engines in the EU. It's worth
| pointing out that these restrictions are such, that to best of my
| knowledge, no one has shipped a browser with an alternate engine
| in the EU app stores yet despite being permitted to for over a
| year now.
|
| The demand that the application with its alternate browser engine
| must be a completely new and separate binary from any app already
| using the built in browser makes it hard for existing big players
| like Chrome - they would have to manage two apps on the store
| during any transition to their own engine, which supposedly has
| been one of the biggest stumbling blocks for them already in the
| EU.
| benoau wrote:
| Another hurdle in the EU is _the browser app developers must be
| in the EU_ too.
| keepamovin wrote:
| It will become a weird menagerie
| arn3n wrote:
| Especially with Apple, I often see people scared that if they
| open up their ecosystem, then users will lose one of the most
| consumer friendly tech companies out there. It's not just "if
| apple allows alternative browsers then Chrome will win", which is
| (probably) true. It's:
|
| * If Apple allows alternative app stores then the whole ios
| ecosystem will rot and be foooded with malware, brough up during
| the Apple vs. Epic cases
|
| * If Apple can't control the data on their user's phones, then
| privacy rights will disappear, a common talking point during the
| Apple vs. Facebook case for opt-in data collection.
|
| And like, these points are correct -- Apple kind of acts like a
| "benevolent dictator" when it comes to their ecosystem. But
| shouldn't there be alternatives between "Apple can control all
| software on the hardware they sell" and "the moment Apple doesn't
| have control of their user's experience then it'll be far worse"?
| Like, we should have more tech companies, more options to pick
| from between these two extremes. The market needs to be more
| competitive, and if that isn't possible shouldn't there be
| regulation to protect users and devs better? This constantly
| feels like a "pick your poison" kind of deal, where we can only
| pick between a company locking down their hardware or abuse of
| users via. software. If Microsoft banned alternative browser
| engines there'd be riots in these comments. Apple is just better
| to its users.
|
| Giving companies the power to lock down hardware they sell isn't
| a solution that will work when Apple inevitably turns against its
| users, and is a horrible precedent to set legally. Lord knows
| John Deere and a million other predatory hardware companies are
| salivating at the idea of users of their hardware not having
| control over what they bought, and Meta and Microsoft love the
| idea of users not having control of the software they run and the
| data it collects. We can't just picking between the least worst
| of two companies.
| concinds wrote:
| It's weird that people never distill those arguments to their
| most basic logic.
|
| Apple directly dictate the shape, speed, and existence of any
| innovation on iOS, and by extension, any innovation involving
| mobile phones or meant to run on mobile phones. They don't
| simply have "power" over it, in the sense that they get to say
| "Yes" or "No". iOS is locked down in such a fundamental way
| that any innovation will not come about unless Apple
| specifically envisions it and designs the OS to support it.
|
| Browsers didn't exist when Windows 1.0 came out. But they
| happened. If it had been iOS, there would have been no
| networking, no JIT (I know that came later, bear with me),
| Firefox/Gecko could never have existed and been able to fix the
| web. Apple _alone_ would have controlled the evolution of the
| most important tech of the past few decades. It couldn 't have
| existed in the first place unless _Apple_ , and no one else,
| invented it and put it in iOS themselves. Basic OS features:
| files and the filesystem, sharing, casting your screen,
| communicating with other devices. It doesn't exist until Apple
| makes it. It doesn't change until Apple changes it.
|
| Even something as simple as file syncing. They forced Dropbox,
| GDrive, OneDrive to adopt their shitty, buggy backend. Those
| services all had to drop basic features to adapt. Those
| features can't ever come back unless Apple allows them. Any
| hypothetical new features won't exist unless _Apple_ , and no
| one else, thinks of them and adds them.
|
| How is this sane?
| robertoandred wrote:
| Isn't the alternative Android?
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