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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

#171

Post by jsnell »

CharlesW wrote: post #158
niko001 wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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", "..."

How does the developer story get better if you're required to support many web rendering engines on iOS instead of one? Or is the endgame that you'd just point people to Chrome/Blink and extend the web monoculture to Apple devices too?

The endgame is that Apple is forced to actually make a working browser, rather than intentionally starve it of resources to benefit the App Store. Everyone wins.

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

#173

Post by tshaddox »

m-p-3 wrote: post #119
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, this denies me from using an actual Mozilla Firefox web browser on iOS. Imposing an artificial limit on iOS isn't how the web will move forward. > Whatever you think of their decisions, Apple is the only thing stopping a 90%+ Chrome web. I don't see Apple making any effort to diversify the browser ecosystem by making their browser available on other operating systems, so their inaction on other fro…

> On the other hand, this denies me from using an actual Mozilla Firefox web browser on iOS.

At the same time, most desktop computer users are able to use Firefox and we can see how often they choose to do so.

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

#174

Post by cromwellian »

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.

This is misleading because the Rendering Engine is the browser. Everything else is a skin.

The rendering engine determines pretty much everything related to we standards.

Third party iOS browsers are little more than third party themes/skins.

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

#175

Post by stjohnswarts »

m-p-3 wrote: post #119
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, this denies me from using an actual Mozilla Firefox web browser on iOS. Imposing an artificial limit on iOS isn't how the web will move forward. > Whatever you think of their decisions, Apple is the only thing stopping a 90%+ Chrome web. I don't see Apple making any effort to diversify the browser ecosystem by making their browser available on other operating systems, so their inaction on other fro…

Apple owns their platform and not you. They aren't forcing you to choose it as a platform or telling you that you can't buy an Android phone in order to use Firefox.

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

#176

Post by MBCook »

danShumway wrote: post #164
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.

The one number I can find is that 25% of iOS users already use Chrome on iOS. So that’s 5% of all surfing.

You know that would immediately become real Chrome.

Once it’s possible to have real Chrome my fear is Google would start breaking things on Safari (or just refusing to fix things) to drive people to it.

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

#177

Post by rPlayer6554 »

jedberg wrote: post #156
CharlesW wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> On the other hand, this denies me from using an actual Mozilla Firefox web browser on iOS. It denies you from using Gecko. You can use an actual Mozilla Firefox web browser on iOS.

A semantic nitpick that is totally irrelevant. Most people on this website usually mean Gecko when they say they want to use Firefox.

Let's not pretend all of HN is a hive mind. I for one thought that Firefox the browser had chosen not to be on IOS because to they couldn't use Gecko. This is new information to me.

So no, using the proper names for things is not a semantic nitpick. The commentator didn't not try to invalidate the parent's point, just show the language issue.

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

#178

Post by warning26 »

CharlesW wrote: post #166
mtomweb wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-pri…

All of these are Safari skins. If you really want your Safari to look like Firefox then you're fine, but if you'd like to actually use Firefox you're out of luck.

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

#179

Post by Someone »

CharlesW wrote: post #152
m-p-3 wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, this denies me from using an actual Mozilla Firefox web browser on iOS. Imposing an artificial limit on iOS isn't how the web will move forward. > Whatever you think of their decisions, Apple is the only thing stopping a 90%+ Chrome web. I don't see Apple making any effort to diversify the browser ecosystem by making their browser available on other operating systems, so their inaction on other fro…

> On the other hand, this denies me from using an actual Mozilla Firefox web browser on iOS. It denies you from using Gecko. You can use an actual Mozilla Firefox web browser on iOS.

If you’re going to nitpick, you can run Gecko on iOS. I see two ways that, according to the letter of Apple’s rules, would be legal:

- don’t allow it to browse the web (https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines, section 2.5.6: “Apps that browse the web must use the appropriate WebKit framework and WebKit Javascript”)

- compile Gecko to JavaScript and run it in Safari.

If you serve the compiled Gecko from a web server I don’t see them stopping you from doing the second, but of course, it would just be Gecko, not FireFox, and performance ‘might’ be somewhat subpar.

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

#180

Post by danShumway »

innocenat wrote: post #134
AlexandrB wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The size of macOS market is not relevant for the point being made here. I disagree. There are already plenty of sites that are broken on macOS Safari because it's a niche platform. The only saving grace is that websites still have to support iOS Safari. If vendors were able to say "we only support Chrome" on iOS as well, I think that 60% macOS Safari marketshare would drop rapidly due to necessity.

If you want website to not be broken on Safari, the solution is to give developer without a Mac the ability to test on Safari. I wouldn't be able to fix my site if it's broken on Mac Safari if I don't have a Mac.

Can't upvote this enough.

I support an Open web, I test my websites on Firefox and Chrome, I even occasionally do Edge testing, and I develop my websites often primarily in Firefox. But I'm not buying an iPhone or a laptop just to test websites, so I don't test in Safari.

Every other browser has a way to emulate in Linux, I can even download free VMs from Microsoft to test IE11 in Windows (and Edge now runs in Linux). If Apple isn't willing to make its operating system available to me to test on then I don't see why I should feel obligated to test on it.

And given that there is some Mac-specific behavior for Safari/Firefox that I've run into (differences in how blur works), and I generally can't assume that all of my stuff is going to work perfectly, I'm either going to fall back on progressive enhancement or (in the case of a complicated webapp) I'm going to tell users that Safari is unsupported and they're continuing at their own risk.

I'd love to support Safari. All Apple has to do is give me a way to.

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