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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

#461

Post by smoldesu »

hinkley wrote: post #440
smoldesu wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Safari is truly objectively better than other browsers, then it should have no problem competing with the likes of Chrome and Firefox. They can even keep pre-installing it too, as long as they give people the choice of other browsers then I'm happy.

I don't know what logical leap you're trying to make but I'm not following it. Safari makes the iPhone a better device. They don't sell Safari. They sell devices. If you have a way to effectively and efficiently blame the bad behavior of your ecosystem on a third party, then there are whole industries waiting for you to sell them consulting services. If the king of Reality Distortion Fields couldn't figure it out, pr…

> Nobody is going to notice that Chrome is eating their battery.

I don't know what logical leap you're trying to make, but if people don't notice the impact of Chrome on their battery then what makes it worse than Safari?

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

#462

Post by asdff »

jenny91 wrote: post #239
techdragon wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Absolutely. Including the 2% from Python scripts :P

Those are probably running headless chrome though

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

#463

Post by stale2002 »

simondotau wrote: post #446
stale2002 wrote: post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apple's products don't fit your needs, the solution is trivial - don't buy Apple products. If you don't want to install alternative app stores or browsers, then you should simply choose to not install them. With the new digital markets act being passed in the EU, everyone will be able to install whatever app store or browser that they want. And you can't complain because you should listen to your own advice by not…

Does this digital markets act apply to game consoles and smart TV platforms? What about in-dash car systems?

The digital markets act only applies to certain companies, called "gatekeepers" that are large enough, have a certain very large amount of users, and have enough market power.

Generally speaking, the purpose of anti-trust law is not to effect small players, who do not control any markets.

Instead, the purpose of anti-trust law is to prevent multi-trillion dollar companies who control half of a duopoly, from doing anti-competitive actions.

So, for the examples that you gave, if those markets became multi-trillion dollar markets, in 2 company duopolies, then there would be laws created that would apply to them.

But before that happens, there is no need.

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

#464

Post by dwaite »

tambourine_man wrote: post #273

A few random thoughts: • There's a place for closed platforms if open ones are a reasonable choice. A closed platform must not be the only choice available to the customer, but it should be allowed to exist given a healthy market. It's hard to argue that iOS is a monopoly, and if so, than a browser engine and JS interpreter with access to the open web is a very powerful thing that the owner of the platform may deem t…

> Chrome's dominance of the Web is very scary. Not as scary as IE's, since it's open source, but still, it's such a huge beast that it's almost proprietary through complexity. I don't know if there's an easy solution out of this.

Both Chrome and Android are open-source bases for proprietary platforms. Google very consciously blurs the line between functionality available across all Android devices or across all web browsers, and the functionality which you only get with their products (e.g. licensed Android with Play services, or Google Chrome).

Would it really have made a difference if Internet Explorer 6 was open source? Most of the features in Internet Explorer were copyable by other browsers, just as most of the Chrome-only API are copyable today. There's other reasons why Firefox and Netscape on Windows didn't support ActiveX controls and XML Data Islands, such as both those features being lousy ideas.

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

#465

Post by dwaite »

smoldesu wrote: post #461
hinkley wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know what logical leap you're trying to make but I'm not following it. Safari makes the iPhone a better device. They don't sell Safari. They sell devices. If you have a way to effectively and efficiently blame the bad behavior of your ecosystem on a third party, then there are whole industries waiting for you to sell them consulting services. If the king of Reality Distortion Fields couldn't figure it out, pr…

> Nobody is going to notice that Chrome is eating their battery. I don't know what logical leap you're trying to make, but if people don't notice the impact of Chrome on their battery then what makes it worse than Safari?

I believe the parent's point was that they won't know it is _Chrome_ that is destroying their battery, just that their phone can't make it through half the day without a charge.

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

#466

Post by asdff »

TheDong wrote: post #154
amelius wrote: post #6

So they are saying that they can't make a secure sandbox? Why is running other applications somehow secure?

If an attacker has a way to escape the browser javascript sandbox on webkit and also has an iOS app sandbox exploit, that right now will pwn any iOS user who clicks a malicious link. If I can run firefox instead, and that javascript sandbox exploit was already patched in firefox, the iOS app sandbox escape won't do them any good. They can't get through the earlier layer to exploit it. The claims being made here is th…

That's one stance on security but its so baffling that there are two Apple's here. There is the apple that gives you the ropes on macos to install your own software and run unsigned code, knowing that this doesn't lead to macos users regularly being pwned or the world burning down or anything like that today. And there is also the apple that thinks that letting you do this same thing on a much less consequential device than your home computer, your cellphone or your tablet, would infact lead to the sky falling down and users around the world being pwned and the stock price no doubt crashing into the depths.

These two things can't both exist. The fact that the sky isn't falling on macos leads me to believe that this position of apple's, while spoken in terms of privacy and security publicly, is really all about dominating what software runs on their devices which i remind you have to pay a hefty fee on profits to apple in order to be installed on users devices through official means. That is pretty user hostile, but obviously shareholder friendly, which explains why it perpetuates and why apple share prices have reached the stratosphere since the iPhone.

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

#467

Post by dwaite »

EMIRELADERO wrote: post #428
tambourine_man wrote: post #273

A few random thoughts: • There's a place for closed platforms if open ones are a reasonable choice. A closed platform must not be the only choice available to the customer, but it should be allowed to exist given a healthy market. It's hard to argue that iOS is a monopoly, and if so, than a browser engine and JS interpreter with access to the open web is a very powerful thing that the owner of the platform may deem t…

Don't you believe that the physical owner of a device should be entitled to complete control of the code that is executed in it? This goes beyond business models.

Are you advocating a mode to remove iOS and boot another arbitrary system in its stead?

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

#469

Post by mr_toad »

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…

> this denies me from using an actual Mozilla Firefox web browser on iOS.

If Chrome became as dominant as IE was then using Firefox on any platform might become impractical.

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

#470

Post by yladiz »

Nullabillity wrote: post #422
AlexandrB wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Apple makes 100% of the OS options available to iDevices, and 100% of all devices that run iOS. They also control 100% of the OSes that run iOS applications, and allow iOS purchases to be redeemed. That sounds a lot like a monopoly to me.

Yeah, if you've chosen a contrived and extremely narrowly defined market as the one you base whether something is a monopoly, of course it's going to sound like a monopoly.
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