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.
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.
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...
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.
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?
Google pushes Chrome HARD.
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.
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!
That said, the only plugins I use are ad blockers, so maybe I’m missing something.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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/main/...
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.
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
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?
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?
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.
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.
> 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.
So any language should be allowed as long as they instruct developers to be careful.
And heres a nice video about it: https://youtu.be/Gv4sDL9Ljww?si=Z4riPMKAKcIKaU0s
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.
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...
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."
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.
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.
Almost certainly someone (or an entire team) carefully crunched the numbers and deliberately decided not to keep a Lightning US iPhone.
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.
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.
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.
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?inline
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...
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.
>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?inline
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.
>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.
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.
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.
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.
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/
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.
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/
>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?inline
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.
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?inline
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.
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?
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 ---
The only reason Apple has banned alternative engines and continues to hold back on major web technologies is anticompetitive behaviour.
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.
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?
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
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.
> Steve Jobs himself envisioned a
> web app future as the future of[...]
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
>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?inline
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?
Enough with the Apple fanboy paternalism. They don't need absolute control "for users' sake". They're not entitled to it.
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!
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...
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.
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.
adtech is the big security and performance drain and allowing ads and making them hard to block is a big security and performance gap
* 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.
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?
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.
Also the EU, no?
Yes.
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.
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.
https://www.theverge.com/2024/1/26/24052067/mozilla-apple-io...
https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBOL-home?tab=readme-ov-file
(it's great)
But right now you can use uBlock origin lite in Safari. Or any other of multitude of other adblockers.
> 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.
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.
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
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.
At this point, Apple and Google devices are nothing more than instruments of coercion and mass surveillance.
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.
Coercion and surveillance problems are pretty far down the list of complaints most people have with their personal devices.
Linux on mobile is probably even more behind than Linux on desktop was in the 90s.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Installation: nothing.
Sharing: Cmd+C/Cmd+V
Freedom and privacy exist on graphene.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM
https://sneak.berlin/20201112/your-computer-isnt-yours/
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/apple-siri-lawsuit-settlement-i...
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?
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.
• (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
https://developer.apple.com/documentation/bundleresources/en...
Time to force Apple to do it everywhere. Very long overdue.
I’m sure some devs will love this. But equally, some may worry about the monoculture implications.
It's simply not a good excuse to defend the iOS browser ban.
Unfortunately I don't think we will see if this is how it plays out until Apple has to allow other browsers globally.
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?inline
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?inline
It would be good to see Firefox with its own engine there for example.
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.)
They are the ones allowing the alternatives because they are the gate keepers. They have "the keys"
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.