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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

#561

Post by dmitriid »

lenkite wrote: post #553
dmitriid wrote: post #532

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish it were a strawman argument. Chrome is ~80% market share of browsers. Google search is dominant, and pushes Chrome heavily. Google's own apps and platforms push Chrome, and on mobile they ignore user choice and offer to open links in Chrome by default. Google is known to have repeatedly sabotaged Firefox [1] Google fully dominates web standards committees. Google already barrells through with their proposals w…

Again, this is irrelevant. Regulation should be left to government and not to private companies who want to protect their turf of native app development by taking away consumer choice. Consumer choice of browser on a marketplace is the argument here. Google is already facing multi-billion dollar fines for anti-trust in the EU. Why can't Apple make an exception for Firefox and non-Chrome browsers ? Disallow Google Chr…

> Why can't Apple make an exception for Firefox and non-Chrome browsers ?

How do you imagine such a ban? And how much worse Apple will look in this scenario?

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

#562

Post by MBCook »

toast0 wrote: post #523
Spivak wrote: post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s wild to have such huge differences in experience, I bought my iPhone because I borrowed my friends and was shocked at how fast Safari was compared to mobile Chrome.

Safari on iOS (or MacOS) is a different beast than Safari for Windows.

Right. That’s what I meant. I use Safari on Mac/iOS because it’s so fast (among other things).

I’ve always assumed the Windows version ran on a port of all of Apple’s libraries on top of the Windows libraries, making it so much slower.

Much like how iTunes/QuickTime on Windows was way slower than iTunes/QuickTime on Mac.

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

#563

Post by snowwrestler »

migueldeicaza wrote: post #415
snowwrestler wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft were were quite transparent about being forced to adopt Chromium because of the prevalence of Electron apps on Windows.

That wasn’t the reason. Edge could just not compete with chrome, despite throwing hundreds of engineers at the problem. They tried, and tried, and tried. In the end “edge doesn’t work” was just code for “edge is not chromium” Electron was and is still a separate beast, Microsoft doesn’t even need to deal with that: third party developers do, they have to ship the binary.

Seems like you would certainly know! Thanks

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

#564

Post by acdha »

SheinhardtWigCo wrote: post #418

The claim is laughable because this policy makes it impossible for external developers to step in and address fundamental, inexcusable problems with WebKit, such as the fact it's written in C++ and therefore produces a consistent supply of memory corruption bugs year after year. Also, I'm skeptical of the notion that every type of app except web browsers can be meaningfully screened for security. How can one not inte…

> inexcusable problems with WebKit, such as the fact it's written in C++ and therefore produces a consistent supply of memory corruption bugs year after year.

Are you under the impression that Chromium and Gecko are not written in C++? Mozilla has been using _some_ Rust but the modern browser engines are some of the largest, most complicated C++ codebases in existence and your statement applies to all of them.

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

#565

Post by coryfklein »

mccr8 wrote: post #10

Comparing CVE counts is a bit nonsensical. For instance, Chrome and Firefox don't individually assign CVEs for internally reported vulnerabilities. For instance, in these patch notes Chrome lists "Various fixes from internal audits, fuzzing and other initiatives" and doesn't even look to have a CVE: https://chromereleases.googleblog.com/2022/05/stable-channel... Or for Firefox, there's a dozen or so bundled together…

And do we have reason to believe the vulnerability/CVE process for Safari is different from Chrome or Firefox?

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

#566

Post by tambourine_man »

EMIRELADERO wrote: post #487
tambourine_man wrote: post #477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s the last in my bullet point

That wouldn't achieve the same level of control over the device as Apple. You would still have a locked bootloader and an unaccesible Secure Enclave.

Secure Enclave should remain inaccessible, even to Apple.

Bootloader should be doable once you can run unprivileged arbitrary code, but some support could be offered as well, like they do with the M series Macs

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

#567

Post by tambourine_man »

Jcowell wrote: post #479
tambourine_man wrote: post #478

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe they can prove what can be done by running arbitrary code and argue that they can’t provide warranty against that use case.

As irc Apple would need to explicitly prove that the arbitrary code broke the battery.

That’s my point. And it shouldn’t be hard. A stress loop should heat and require constant recharge, enough to significantly reduce battery life. A few years worth of regular use in a few weeks of stress testing should be pretty easy do.

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

#568

Post by ImPostingOnHN »

dmitriid wrote: post #559
ImPostingOnHN wrote: post #550

Earlier quoted context omitted.

as an observer, most of your responses to valid, good faith points (e.g. "I'm not even going to dignify that with a response") seem to indicate that you are arguing to argue, rather than to come to clarity with the other person. Also, they are pretty rude (for reasons beyond the above one), and seem to me to be against the spirit of HN commenting. tl;dr if you think your dignity is above responding to someone, don't.

Sibling comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31907602

That one doesn't really have a substantive response either.

Just as an example: do you believe web apps are currently treated by apple in a lower tier than native apps?

if so, do you think they should be n-class citizens, where n is the same class as native ios apps?

if you do not, then I can see why you do not personally want the things that come with it, like your other conversation partner said

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

#569

Post by NegativeLatency »

raydev wrote: post #380
robertoandred wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are plenty of ad blockers for Safari, not sure what nerfed experience you're referring to.

> There are plenty of ad blockers for Safari And none of them work as well as uBlock Origin on Chrome. Trust me, I tried. I even paid money to try a few extensions out on Safari in the hopes I would get a better experience, but even that doesn't work.

(As a safari user) I've found running a pihole to be a good solution

Also been trying out this webkit based browser for macos: https://browser.kagi.com (supports ublock origin)

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

#570

Post by ascagnel_ »

toyg wrote: post #63
thayne wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, if chrome did have 90%+ market share maybe we would finally see some antitrust regulation against Google's monopoly (ideally splitting chrome off from Google). Although there is no guarantee that would happen.

This. If Chrome reaches certifiable monopoly levels, it becomes easier to use anti-monopolistic instruments to force them to unbundle browser-making from other activities - which is really how things should be.

- You're assuming that there's the political will to do so. In the US, the Department of Justice would prosecute an antitrust case, and cases in the past (most notably Microsoft's antitrust case) have been dropped as political winds have shifted.

- Antitrust proceedings are slow. The Microsoft case (which was a much more cut-and-dry antitrust case) was filed in May 1998 and settled in November 2001 -- three and a half years. Given that Google today moves faster than Microsoft in the late 90s, 3.5 years is enough time to drive a critical mass of users away from other browsers, which effectively kills any market.

- What antitrust behaviors could be forced that would restore a competitive browser market? I could see Google being forced to spin off Chrome into its own company or donate the code to a third-party, open-source organization, but these only shift the problem around, they don't get at the root issue of there not being a competitive browser market.

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