Apple's claim is that it bans other browsers for security • Hacker News Board

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

#161

Post by mynameisvlad » Mon, Jun 27, 2022, 4:50 PM UTC

niko001 wrote: post #150

nicce wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Safari is the new IE, there is a difference between a monopoly while still being able to use a competing product (like chrome in other platfroms), and forcing Safari(WebKit) while hindering the web because of Apples interests.(2-3) Ehm. Chrome is the new IE. Apple is using anti-competitive methods but its far far away from market domination. Microsoft is doing even more, by pushing so much Edge-only stuff. On iOS A…

It might not matter to users in the sense that they ask themselves what rendering engine Chrome on iOS is using under the hood, but the effects do matter. I get a lot of support requests saying "Your [web] app is broken on my iPhone!", "Right, Safari doesn't support feature XYZ", "I'm not using Safari, I'm using Chrome", "..."

That seems to be a communication problem. Instead of saying "Right, Safari doesn't support feature XYZ", say "Right, iOS doesn't support feature XYZ".

It's also technically more correct, the best kind.

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

#162

Post by Bud » Mon, Jun 27, 2022, 4:51 PM UTC

bogwog wrote: post #31

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…

On the other hand, if Apple's anti-competitive practices end and Chrome finally hits 90%+ market share, it would make it much harder for regulators to ignore Chrome's dominance and might lead to some actual change for once.

Let me see if I have this straight. Apple has a tiny slice of the overall market, but you are terribly, terribly offended, and so your proposed solution is for Chrome to get more than 90% market share, because that would be a better situation? And "change" would result? How? You don't say. What change? You don't even hint.

This just isn't a serious stance, I'm sorry.

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

#163

Post by giantrobot » Mon, Jun 27, 2022, 4:51 PM UTC

JamesSwift wrote: post #34

MBCook wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, but again why would that suddenly mean 90% of people use it vs the reality of desktop today where they don't own 90% of the market? Why are 9 out of 10 people suddenly jumping ship because Google pushed chrome on their phone vs on their desktop PC?

In terms of web traffic iOS is a large enough percentage that sites have to cater to iOS/Safari. Since Safari doesn't support all of Google's latest fingerprint/tracking friendly web APIs most sites won't hate their content behind them. As soon as a "just install Chrome" banner is viable on mobile there's no reason websites won't be flooded with Chrome-only features.

A Chrome-only web will edge out not just up to date competing browsers but any older iOS and Android devices that can't run top of tree Chrome.

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

#164

Post by danShumway » Mon, Jun 27, 2022, 4:52 PM UTC

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…

I completely sympathize with this worry, but are we certain that allowing multiple browsers on iOS would mean Chrome dominance?

Part of the reason Chrome dominates on Android is because it's the default browser. How many people on iPhone are we expecting will change their default browser? As far as I know, most users don't change their messenger clients on iOS.

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

#165

Post by smiddereens » Mon, Jun 27, 2022, 4:52 PM UTC

No post body was provided.

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

#166

Post by CharlesW » Mon, Jun 27, 2022, 4:52 PM UTC

mtomweb wrote: post #155

freediver wrote: post #140

@dang The title is misleading. Apple is not banning other browsers (there are over 100+ browsers on iOS). Apple is restricting iOS browsers to using the WebKit rendering engine which is an entirely different matter. Edit: Apple is also not claiming what the title suggests (source would be needed), the author of the tweet seems to just interpret it this way.

It's not misleading. Firefox, Edge and Chrome have all been banned on iOS. Instead Apple has forced them to produce separate browsers around a locked WebView that they exclusively control. Mozilla, Microsoft and Google have all spoken out against the ban in regulatory submission, and browser engineers at each vendor consider it a ban. The REAL browsers have been banned.

> Firefox, Edge and Chrome have all been banned on iOS.

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/firefox-private-safe-browser/i...

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/microsoft-edge-web-browser/id1...

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/google-chrome/id535886823

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/brave-private-web-browser/id10...

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/duckduckgo-privacy-browser/id6...

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/opera-browser-fast-private/id1...

Etc.

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

#167

Post by freediver » Mon, Jun 27, 2022, 4:53 PM UTC

jedberg wrote: post #160

freediver wrote: post #140

@dang The title is misleading. Apple is not banning other browsers (there are over 100+ browsers on iOS). Apple is restricting iOS browsers to using the WebKit rendering engine which is an entirely different matter. Edit: Apple is also not claiming what the title suggests (source would be needed), the author of the tweet seems to just interpret it this way.

A semantic nitpick that is totally irrelevant. Most people on this website usually mean Gecko when they say they want to use Firefox, Blink when they say Chrome, etc. You and I both know the headline means allowing other rendering engines.

I strongly disagree. It is not semantic at all. Difference between a browser and a web rendering engine is huge. I am in a business of building a browser and although we get rendering engine for free, three years later and thousands of dev hours later, our browser is still in beta and half finished. [1]

Building a general purpose web browser is one of the most challanging software development projects. This may not be the case if one is cloning Chromium/Firefox where you get both the rendering angine and the browser app for free. If you are using WebKit, you are writing the browser application from scratch.

[1] https://browser.kagi.com

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

#168

Post by warning26 » Mon, Jun 27, 2022, 4:54 PM UTC

AlexandrB wrote: post #127

freedomben wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. can you imagine if Microsoft had made it so that IE was the only browser you were allowed to install on Windows so you couldn't install Netscape even if you wanted to?

This would have been fine if Windows wasn't 95+% of desktop computer market share at the time. The regulatory argument was that Microsoft was abusing their desktop OS monopoly to give themselves an unfair advantage in another market (browsers). By contrast iOS is ~50% of mobile OS market share (in the US, I think it's less elsewhere). Hardly a monopoly. If using a different mobile browser is important to you, there's…

People always say "oh you can just switch mobile OSes" as if that's as simple as walking into a Target instead of a Walmart.

Ecosystems exist. Throw away your phone and every piece of software you've ever bought for it just so you can install a particular app? Ridiculous.

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

#169

Post by brundolf » Mon, Jun 27, 2022, 4:55 PM UTC

JamesSwift wrote: post #26

brundolf wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 revi…

Interesting. I'll admit I don't have much first-hand knowledge of the process

> but I think every native dev has done some form of dynamic code at some point

This is a little ambiguous; theoretically a VM - even a custom one - would still be above-board because the native code is static. My understanding was that the main problem with third-party browsers is third-party JS engines, but only because any modern JS engine has to JIT in order to perform the way people expect; the app developer takes responsibility for generating unsafe native code, which has the potential to wreak all kinds of havoc on the user's system in a way that dynamically-updated JS code for example can't

It would be interesting to try and submit a fully-custom browser with a non-JIT JS interpreter to the App Store. I bet they'd allow it; just, nobody would use it because it would be slow as mud

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

#170

Post by dcow » Mon, Jun 27, 2022, 4:55 PM UTC

MBCook wrote: post #121

agust wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Open Web Advocacy has been very clear that they want competition on iOS, not Chrome specifically. The reason being that the absence of competition is currently allowing Apple to deteriorate the web experience on iOS, preventing the web and web apps from competing with native apps. Their objective is to lift these artificial limitations imposed by Apple and free the web. OWA members have actually been actively reporti…

Competition on iOS without real competition on the desktop already existing could quickly mean unbreakable Chrome hegemony. That’s why I originally commented. If you focus on just one of those I believe there will be terrible unintentional consequences.

This whole chrome fetish thing you've got is actually the issue. Everyone thinks "there is only Chrome" so in a sense we all deceive ourselves. I don't know a single person anymore who uses Chrome. Maybe you do but that's not really the point. If you don't want a Chrome hegemony then don't fool yourself into thinking there is one and don't proliferate that ideology. Tell your product people that NO, you're not going to just ship the Chrome version and support Safari and Firefox later. Put in the work to make software work on other browsers. That's how you break the status quo. The amount of times I've seen some software company tell users "our product only works on Chrome" is disgusting. No wonder it's popular... people don't have a choice because of shitty software.