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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

#201

Post by techdragon »

jakub_g wrote: post #184
tshaddox wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

According to stats from GitHub, 12% of their traffic is from Firefox. 3x more than Safari. https://github.blog/2022-06-10-how-we-think-about-browsers/ Of course this is just part of the story. In every country it's different. In some EU countries Firefox is up to 20%. In UK it's almost non-existent. Local markets shape the browser support. If a few major websites are too lazy to support a browser properly, users will…

GitHub visitors are definitely not a representative sample of the web browsing public.

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

#202

Post by toast0 »

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…

Safari for Windows did exist (it was supremely terrible, IMHO). Apple says 5.1.7 was the last version of that; if versioning matches the Mac OS builds, that was from 10 years ago.

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

#203

Post by lenkite »

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…

"Whatever you think of their decisions, Apple is the only thing stopping a 90%+ Chrome web."

Sorry what ? Can you point me to the place where I can download Safari for Linux and Windows and Android ? If they actually had those builds, I would believe what you say.

But no - All they are doing is protecting their turf by hitting every other browser with sticks so folks prefer native apps over web apps.

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

#204

Post by [deleted] »

lucasyvas wrote: post #99
Joeri wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But letting the chips fall where they may is what led to the current situation, with a browser market heavily distorted and made anti-competitive by two tech giants. What people are asking for is a regulator that steps in and redresses the imbalances so a healthy browser market can arise. If the regulator does not step in they are choosing the status quo which by itself also is a deliberate choice. Inaction is always…

It's the regulators job. If they don't do their job, the users (not another anti-competitive company) will take matters into their own hands. There are alternative protocols that could be developed - the only reason they haven't taken off is because we are at stalemate.

[deleted]

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

#205

Post by echelon »

tshaddox wrote: post #173
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. At the same time, most desktop computer users are able to use Firefox and we can see how often they choose to do so.

> most desktop computer users are able to use Firefox

Desktop-using software engineers can write software for desktop users in a ton of different ways. There's so much freedom and there exist multiple mechanisms and platforms to deploy your code.

Desktop-using software engineers are not free to choose how to deploy software to mobile audiences. They've got to go through Apple to reach 50+% of the US market. Apple sets unreasonable rules.

Unfortunately, Americans spend most of their time computing with mobile devices now. We've been forced into this situation.

Both Apple and Google have made our industry worse and more locked down than Microsoft in the 90's and 00's, and they both deserve to the the target of smartphone and browser antitrust lawsuits.

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

#206

Post by stale2002 »

nemothekid wrote: post #181
jsnell wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is what I was talking about. There will only be one result to opening iOS and it scares me. Why? Does Apple not have the resources to build a competitive browser? Do they not have the motivation? Do they not have the engineering skills? Do they not have a large and extremely desirable user-base who prefer to stay as much as possible in Apple's ecosystem? Given all the advantages Apple has, how could it possibl…

Replace Apple with Microsoft and you get your answer. Since when did having a trillion dollars guarantee success? Replace Apple with any company; do you think Google lacked the motivation and engineering skills to build a social network? Ignoring much of the fact how Google would leverage it's existing properties to make sure you couldn't open a single web page without being nagged about installing Chrome; it would t…

> Since when did having a trillion dollars guarantee success?

So then your answer is that Apple's browser is significantly worse than competitors, and that users wouldn't use this much worse product if it were not for Apples anti-competitive behavior?

> But to pretend this is about the "browser diversity

> Just say you want Chrome

I think most open web supporters would be a lot happier if Apple even simply allowed Firefox.

That would still be massively better than the status quo.

Are you saying that all someone would have to do is argue for allowing just Firefox, and you would no longer do this thing where you attack some alleged secret motivations?

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

#207

Post by paulmd »

mtomweb wrote: post #53
judge2020 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Based on this video[0], it looks like "mini-apps" are just webviews, as everything is either .js, .css, or .wxml (html). Thus, anything that integrates with WeChat or system APIs is going through some API within the wechat binary itself which allows Apple's static analysis to inspect the API usage during App Store review. 0: https://youtu.be/cOm9XKga7l0

Ish. There's bridges to native functions and there are a lot of functions. For example you can write a mini-app that connects to bluetooth. It's essentially loading dynamic code that bridges to native code.

So your point is... that bluetooth is accessible via browser api? Yes, that's true, Bluefy is a whole browser built around that API, for example.

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Web_Bluetoo...

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/bluefy-web-ble-browser/id14928...

So what? Apple has never required review of every web page you load with safari, regardless of which browser APIs they use... the browser is the browser. That is the farthest Apple goes on "dynamic content" but yes, it is potentially a pretty wide net given the various APIs and extensions. But from Apple's perspective it is also a defined boundary.

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

#208

Post by toast0 »

Melatonic wrote: post #197
jpgvm wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the IE comparison is apt. IE shipped on (almost) every machine, had a ton of lock in features like ActiveX, etc. MS actively abused their monopoly position to make it so preventing default installation of Netscape by OEMs, incentivising ISVs to ensure web based enterprise products shipped with "Works best in Internet Explorer" etc. Netscape lost market share to IE not because it lost users but because w…

Lets face it - IE always just sucked. A lot. Whereas Chrome does not. Here on HN we might rail on it mainly for ideological reasons but the user experience is pretty solid. This is coming from a Firefox user.

IE 4 and 6 were decent to good compared to competitors when released (although, IIRC, neither had ftp support?). What sucked was that they stagnated at that point in time while also becoming dominant. IE 5 for mac was well regarded, but I don't have personal memories.

None of the future IEs were very good though, IMHO.

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

#209

Post by lenkite »

lamontcg wrote: post #147
cowtools wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want Firefox on iOS, and I want Tor Browser on iOS, and I want Lynx on iOS, and I want wget on iOS, and I want youtube-dl on iOS, and I want to run whatever the hell I damn well please on iOS. Underhanded? It's pretty clear that your stated goals don't align with your real goals here. Edit: I have a hard time putting into words why your arguments seem so deceptive to me. It is like whataboutism: the arguments you a…

Get FF or some other browser a healthy market share first and then talk about cracking open iOS. Instead what happens is this internecine warfare where everyone shits all over FF for political reasons (most of which have no relevance to their day to day use of a web browser) and uptake of Tor/Brave is miniscule and most everyone sticks with Chrome.

"Get FF or some other browser a healthy market share first"

Why ? Open up the platform first.

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

#210

Post by danShumway »

MBCook wrote: post #176
danShumway wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's a somewhat legit concern given that people have alleged they basically did that already with Firefox.

And the stats make me curious -- given that Chrome on iOS is just a wrapper around Safari, are people just switching because Google Docs tells them to, and that's enough? I'm having a hard time of thinking of a functionality reason to switch to Chrome in iOS (maybe browser/bookmark sync, I guess). I'm surprised to see a number that high.

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