Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

511–520 of 593 posts

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

#511

Post by dmitriid »

smoldesu wrote: post #409
dmitriid wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Good thing that regulation mentions browser engines and not the cardboard wrapping. Then why doesn't it target Chromium as the vastly dominant engine that has ~80% of global market? Or in the case of Chromium the cardboard wrapping like Edge etc. are different engines all of a sudden?

> Then why doesn't it target Chromium as the vastly dominant engine that has ~80% of global market? Because WebKit sucks! I don't intend to be vitriolic here, but this really is the status quo of rendering engines. You have Blink, which is capable of making complex webapps and fully-featured browser experiences, and then you have WebKit, which is almost exclusively capable of breaking them. I'm not mad that WebKit su…

> Because WebKit sucks!

Of course it doesn't suck

> the status quo of rendering engines. You have Blink

And so we've immediately arrived at the core of the matter: all you want is Chrome. Which is a) the dominant browser and b) whose "capable" is a bunch of Chrome-only non-standards

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

#512

Post by dmitriid »

lenkite wrote: post #473
dmitriid wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Good thing that regulation mentions browser engines and not the cardboard wrapping. Then why doesn't it target Chromium as the vastly dominant engine that has ~80% of global market? Or in the case of Chromium the cardboard wrapping like Edge etc. are different engines all of a sudden?

Google is already being targeted here by EU regulation on several fronts. If Google abuses their dominant position of Google Chrome, then by all means let's get regulation applied to them. I am perfectly fine with regulation applied to Google Chrome! Let Google Android be forced to come with other preinstalled browsers. But at the moment, Apple is the company that is abusing control of their platform and most web-dev…

> most web-devs and many educated users look forward to having real choices.

How is giving the web completely over to Google a real choice?

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

#513

Post by dmitriid »

mtomweb wrote: post #265
briandear wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apple sets unreasonable rules. How? As a user I’m able to do the things I want with reasonable guarantees of privacy and security. Most developers that release iOS software seem to be doing ok with those “unreasonable” rules. And the user benefits. If I wanted Android, I would have bought Android. I bought Apple specifically because I see value as a user to those unreasonable rules.

As a user the harms are invisible to you. If you'd like to find out how it harms consumers, businesses, developers and the web, please read our regulatory submission "Bringing Competition to Walled Gardens": https://open-web-advocacy.org/files/OWA%20-%20Bringing%20Com...

See, your link identifies you very uncharitably as a Google shill.

Both Firefox and Safari are against most hardware APIs for many reasons including technical ones. Only Chrome is reckless enough to enable them even though no consensus has been reached on them.

Those specs are nowhere near to being standard. They are "Draft community reports". And yet you list them there as if they were standards and as if Apple absolutely had to implement them for greater good (and not because the dominant browser implemented them)

Edit. I can't even begin with the laughable "Edge differentiates from Chrome" because it removed a few Google-specific things like Google Pay.

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

#514

Post by CAPSLOCKSSTUCK »

the_third_wave wrote: post #289
marricks wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one is using Firefox on mobile so it’s good for you, but not web on the whole. Also while an independent entity having a larger presence is better than Apple at least Apple having a large market share makes Google need to consider what happens in safari before they do something particularly shady with web standards

> No one is using Firefox on mobile I am No one, we are legion. Have been using FF on mobile since it became viable, many years ago. I just like my ads blocked and my data mine, that's why.

Count me among the ones using FF Mobile. I can't imagine browsing the mobile web without an ad-blocker, and I'm happy to fight back against the browser duopoloy.

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

#515

Post by dmitriid »

jpgvm wrote: post #37
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 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…

> Chrome is something users install because it's their preferred choice.

Ah yes.

The preferred choice advertised by dominant web search.

The preferred choice that is forced by Google apps when clicking on links that actually conveniently forget about said choice.

The preferred choice when Google sabotages competition across its dominant platforms https://twitter.com/johnath/status/1116871231792455686

And so on

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

#516

Post by JamesSwift »

freediver wrote: post #495
JamesSwift wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thats not the argument though, and its a bit of a difficult argument for Kagi specifically because it appears to be based on webkit I believe? The argument is: lets assume Kagi uses a non-webkit engine and is finished and live on desktop today. How much work would it be to now run against webkit? What is your feature set if you assume you are not able to modify the engine in any way?

We have a desktop WebKit browser and the amount of work needed for iOS browser is astonishing. So much that we didn’t even start working on the iPad version yet after three years. macOS, iOS and iPadOS are like three different operating systems with completely different UI/UX paradigms. But we are not a good example. Take Firefox or Chrome on iOS, teams with hundreds of engineers. They are terrible mobile browsers. T…

I would argue that yes, its because of Webkit. I used firefox for years on android. It was great. I use it on iOS now. Its basically garbage.

To bring it back to Kagi, if I'm reading your FAQ correctly for instance, you would not be able to support firefox/chrome extensions on iOS since you had to fork Webkit. Now imagine you are a browser with over a decade of use and features that now has to target a static other engine. How great of an experience do you really think you are going to get out of that?

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

#517

Post by mr_toad »

liveoneggs wrote: post #313
snowwrestler wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People do not seem to understand how important it is to Google they they achieve full control of the browser end of the WWW. The blog post at the top of this thread talks about CVEs and other measures of resistance to 3rd party bad actors. It does not engage with the concept of Google themselves as a bad actor. With full control of the rendering engine on all platforms, Google can stop engaging with standards bodies.…

Yeah I have a really hard time believing https://open-web-advocacy.org/ is not actually google but it is certainly aiming towards Google's benefit and, ironically, the end of any chance of an "open" web

It’s a consortium of developers, and the customer is ad-tech.

You could say this is less about Apple vs Google, and more about users vs advertisers.

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

#518

Post by stale2002 »

simondotau wrote: post #508
stale2002 wrote: post #485

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point being, that in a situation where there is a 2 company duopoly, with multi trillion dollar companies, then there is going to be laws that regulate these multi trillion dollar companies that have significant market power. > compete with open competition They can compete all they want. They simply can't use their market power to anti competitively prevent users from installing other app stores or browsers, of…

> It is actually the user who will now be free to decide The user will be free to decide? Really? The user, most of whom are understandably ignorant to and/or disinterested in the nuances of privacy and tracking, won't remain captive to decisions implemented by programmers, hidden in code, concealed behind encryption and not exposed as a choice? Free to decide. I can't fathom that anyone actually might seriously beli…

> The user will be free to decide? Really?

Yes, they can choose to not install whatever app store or browser that they want.

> or disinterested in the nuances of privacy and tracking

It sounds like you just don't like the user's choice. You could have just said that you disagree with what the user will do, and want to take away their choice to install whatever browser or app store that they want.

Don't pretend like you care about user choice, if you are then going to pivot and say that you disagree with the choice of the user, because you think the user is dumb, or would choose different than your personal preference.

Thats the problem. Just own your position. If you hate competition, and hate giving power to the user to choose whatever they want, and think that there needs to be a monopoly that anti-competitively controls everything that the user does, against their will, then just say that.

Just take your mask off, and say that you think that you know better than everyone else, about their own property, and want to force everyone else to do what you want, and you want to take away their ability to choose for themselves.

Don't dress it up like you were doing previously, like pretending like you care about markets. Just say that you hate the user's opinion, and you want to take away their freedoms to choose what they want to do with their own device, and stop hiding behind fake arguments that you don't believe in.

> to give users absolute freedom to control all aspects of how their privacy is handled?

Users will be given the choice to install whatever browser or app store that they want.

If a user prefers whatever it is that you are talking about, then they are free to not install those app stores or browsers, and continue to use the Apple recommended choice.

But once again, I look forward to people crying more about this soon. Because there is nothing you or Apple can do to stop users from installing alternative app stores and browser in the future, as the laws are about to be passed.

Apple lost. You can't change that.

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

#519

Post by asdff »

idle_zealot wrote: post #502
asdff wrote: post #466

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 devi…

> letting you do this same thing on a much less consequential device than your home computer, your cellphone or your tablet Last I heard then officially defend this apparent contradiction, the Apple rep asserted that people's phones are in fact the more important/personal devices, as well as being more common, and as such security on iOS is more important than on macOS.

But why, because the phone connects to your instagram account? Meanwhile, most people's computers have passwords to literally all their accounts saved in the various system or web browser autofillers. They might also have personal documents such as tax information saved locally. Maybe even their social security number and other very important information written down in a word document on their desktop. Especially if your macbook is synced with icloud, I can't imagine why your phone might be a more sensitive device considering at that point the macbook is at feature parity with everything sensitive that the iphone does and more perhaps.

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

#520

Post by asdff »

lttlrck wrote: post #488

If I could run Safari on Linux I'd switch from Chrome and make it my primary browser... if I could run Firefox on iOS, I might consider making that my primary - but I trust Apple to optimize battery/performance more than Mozilla or Google and I'd probably still stick with Safari. I wish they'd open up just a little. Plus iMessages.

Just stick to firefox on linux. Safari is honestly slower on my macbook than firefox, the font rendering looks worse imo and more for the farsighted, plus all the advertisement and tracking and the adblockers are anemic compared to ublock origin on firefox.
Post reply on HN