Progress Delayed Is Progress Denied

Progress Delayed Is Progress Denied
infrequently.org

https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/

1. Rule 2.5.6: "Apps that browse the web must use the appropriate WebKit framework and WebKit Javascript."

Chrome for iOS is not real Chrome; Firefox for iOS is not real Firefox. Chrome/Firefox for iOS are just UI skins around WebKit, Safari's browser engine. They're not allowed to ship Blink/Gecko for iOS.

If Apple would just remove rule 2.5.6, Google and Mozilla could ship real Chrome and real Firefox, allowing users to choose their own browser on their own terms.

Users could switch from Safari to Chrome to workaround Safari's many bugs (documented here in TFA). Safari would have to fund the work to fix those bugs to compete. Safari would have to be better, or at least good enough, to compete.

iOS users are stuck on IE, even if they switch to "Firefox," and that just sucks.

2. Rule 4.2.2: "Other than catalogs, apps shouldn’t primarily be marketing materials, advertisements, web clippings, content aggregators, or a collection of links."

This rule forbids web apps in the App Store. If you try to package up a web app with a minimal iOS Swift wrapper, Apple might approve it, if they fail to notice what you're doing, but they'll typically reject it, claiming that your app is a "web clipping" under rule 4.2.2.

I'll bet you've never heard of a "web clipping," but the idea is that you can't have an app that's "just" a copy of a web page. But what if the web page is a web app, full of features? No matter. If your app is nothing but a wrapper for your web site, that's a "web clipping," and Apple can and will reject your app for that.

(Whenever anyone mentions this, someone pipes up to say, "Huh? This must be wrong. I submitted a web app with a minimal wrapper and Apple approved it." Lucky you that they didn't catch you, but each time you push an app update, you run the risk that Apple will notice the problem next time.)

Two little rules. Apple really, really ought to fix this.

Go to any news website and it contains tons of trackers trying to fingerprint you. Then, of course, they also have to show you tons of ads leaving at most 30% of the viewport to read any content. The web is user-hostile.

And the leading browser (i.e., Chrome) has not really done anything to solve this problem. While Safari had cache partitioning enabled for 5+ years, Chrome has still to deliver it to users even though it's a clear privacy and security win. Not just that, Chrome repeatedly keeps making decisions that hurt user's privacy and expectations [1][2][3][4].

One simple rule of thumb that I use to compare Safari and Chrome is that Safari cares about users (privacy, gating out APIs that have risk of being misued for fingerprinting), while Chrome cares about web developers (trackers, ads, More powerful APIs). As a user, my expectations align better with the former model. I would be happy if Chrome took a step back, acknowledge user's expectations and focus on progressing the privacy on the web instead of engaging in twitter wars.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22236106 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24817304 [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25337995 [4] https://web.dev/floc/