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Apple's claim is that it bans other browsers for security

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Re: Apple's claim is that it bans other browsers for security

#21

Post by judge2020 »

criddell wrote: post #13
xrisk wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

fwiw: the App Store also prohibits JITed code or in general code pulled in after app publishing. I guess the idea is that (at least in theory) that Apple sees all code that an app runs.

There are development environments that run on the device. For example, Pyto[1] is for developing and running Python code. [1]: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/pyto-python-3/id1436650069

That doesn't use JIT. In theory a browser like Chrome doesn't have to either, but then Apple might be lambasted since presumably JIT is required to be competitive against Safari in terms of performance.

Re: Apple's claim is that it bans other browsers for security

#22

Post by thayne »

MBCook wrote: post #14

I’m going to ignore the security angle and post my big fear. Chrome has dominance similar to IE at the height of its popularity. Whatever you think of their decisions, Apple is the only thing stopping a 90%+ Chrome web. (Note: not why they’re doing it, just a side effect) People keep arguing Apple is being anti-competitive. But no one seems to recon with the possible consequences of what they’re asking for. And I fea…

Well, if chrome did have 90%+ market share maybe we would finally see some antitrust regulation against Google's monopoly (ideally splitting chrome off from Google). Although there is no guarantee that would happen.

Re: Apple's claim is that it bans other browsers for security

#23

Post by JamesSwift »

MBCook wrote: post #14

I’m going to ignore the security angle and post my big fear. Chrome has dominance similar to IE at the height of its popularity. Whatever you think of their decisions, Apple is the only thing stopping a 90%+ Chrome web. (Note: not why they’re doing it, just a side effect) People keep arguing Apple is being anti-competitive. But no one seems to recon with the possible consequences of what they’re asking for. And I fea…

Why would they hit 90%? I assume the way this would play out is that most people would stick with the stock browser because they don't even know/care about alternatives. The people that do care would likely install the same browser they use on desktop. I don't think Chrome owns 90% of desktop market share.

Re: Apple's claim is that it bans other browsers for security

#24

Post by izacus »

MBCook wrote: post #14

I’m going to ignore the security angle and post my big fear. Chrome has dominance similar to IE at the height of its popularity. Whatever you think of their decisions, Apple is the only thing stopping a 90%+ Chrome web. (Note: not why they’re doing it, just a side effect) People keep arguing Apple is being anti-competitive. But no one seems to recon with the possible consequences of what they’re asking for. And I fea…

No post body was provided.

Re: Apple's claim is that it bans other browsers for security

#26

Post by JamesSwift »

brundolf wrote: post #12
xrisk wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

fwiw: the App Store also prohibits JITed code or in general code pulled in after app publishing. I guess the idea is that (at least in theory) that Apple sees all code that an app runs.

Not all code pulled in after app publishing; it's very common to push at least JS code to an app after the user's installed it, without going through the App Store But I think they draw the line at native (read: unsafe) code, which, is not totally unreasonable

Its always been a sort of wink-wink agreement, never allowing exceptions as far as I'm aware. Its much more common to do post-release updates of JS than native, but I think every native dev has done some form of dynamic code at some point. In one app we did, we ended up disabling the dynamic update but still ran a handrolled VM with dynamically interpreted code files which we baked into the app. Its all manually reviewed in the end, so no guarantees they would even catch it anyways.

Re: Apple's claim is that it bans other browsers for security

#27

Post by imwillofficial »

izacus wrote: post #24
MBCook wrote: post #14

I’m going to ignore the security angle and post my big fear. Chrome has dominance similar to IE at the height of its popularity. Whatever you think of their decisions, Apple is the only thing stopping a 90%+ Chrome web. (Note: not why they’re doing it, just a side effect) People keep arguing Apple is being anti-competitive. But no one seems to recon with the possible consequences of what they’re asking for. And I fea…

Quoted post unavailable.

You’re accusing GP of shilling, then you distort the argument from the entire market that they were referring to, to only the iPhone.

What kind of weird and aggressive behavior is this?

You should be ashamed of your behavior.

Re: Apple's claim is that it bans other browsers for security

#28

Post by MBCook »

mtomweb wrote: post #17
MBCook wrote: post #14

I’m going to ignore the security angle and post my big fear. Chrome has dominance similar to IE at the height of its popularity. Whatever you think of their decisions, Apple is the only thing stopping a 90%+ Chrome web. (Note: not why they’re doing it, just a side effect) People keep arguing Apple is being anti-competitive. But no one seems to recon with the possible consequences of what they’re asking for. And I fea…

Safari still has around 60% on MacoS and all the normal users believe that there is browser competition now. At best it's speculation, but we can compare that to the very real harms of Apple's browser ban. We've written about the harms in detail here: https://open-web-advocacy.org/files/OWA%20-%20Bringing%20Com...

It may be 60% on MacOS but that’s a very tiny market. Overall Chrome is quite dominant.

Numbers I found say on desktop Chrome is at 70%. Include the 7.75% for Edge (because it’s basically Chrome) and that’s almost 80%. FF at least exists and is similar to Safari.

On mobile it’s at 65%. Safari is the only other browser above 5%.

Chrome is dangerously close to total monopoly.

Re: Apple's claim is that it bans other browsers for security

#29

Post by bogwog »

IIRC, every video game console that ships with webkit has been jailbroken due to vulnerabilities in webkit. Off the top of my head at least, I know the following have been exploited that way:

* PS4

* PS Vita

* 3DS/New 3DS

* Wii U

* Wii

Also maybe PS3/PSP and likely also PS5 will get the webkit exploit treatment at some point.

Re: Apple's claim is that it bans other browsers for security

#30

Post by MBCook »

JamesSwift wrote: post #23
MBCook wrote: post #14

I’m going to ignore the security angle and post my big fear. Chrome has dominance similar to IE at the height of its popularity. Whatever you think of their decisions, Apple is the only thing stopping a 90%+ Chrome web. (Note: not why they’re doing it, just a side effect) People keep arguing Apple is being anti-competitive. But no one seems to recon with the possible consequences of what they’re asking for. And I fea…

Why would they hit 90%? I assume the way this would play out is that most people would stick with the stock browser because they don't even know/care about alternatives. The people that do care would likely install the same browser they use on desktop. I don't think Chrome owns 90% of desktop market share.

You don’t think Google will push Chrome to iOS users with banners when they search, use YouTube, Gmail, etc?

That’s what they did on desktop.

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