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Apple confirms it's breaking iPhone web apps in the EU on purpose

techcrunch.com

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Re: Apple confirms it's breaking iPhone web apps in the EU on purpose

#231

Post by riscy »

ajross wrote: post #215
robertoandred wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This IS adhering to the DMA. Every browser engine is treated the same.

Deliberately removing useful features from your own product so that you don't have to let other people implement the same features may be technically conforming to the letter of the law, but is clearly violating it in spirit. The spirit of the law is platform interoperability: your control over the platform shouldn't restrict what other people can make it do (be it "run an app store" or "run a web app").

When did it become illegal to take features away from a products or create derivative products with different features? The “spirit of the law” most certainly is not what you’re imagining.

If they wanted, they could remove the App Store from iOS in EU, or pull the iPhone from the EU market entirely. Apple isn’t required by the DMA to part of a digital market at all.

Re: Apple confirms it's breaking iPhone web apps in the EU on purpose

#232

Post by Razengan »

Browsers should only display documents, not apps.

That's what operating systems are for.

Just give native apps what made the web popular in the first place:

• Ability to instantly launch any app just by typing its "name"

• No need to download or install anything

• Ability to revisit any part of an app just by copy/pasting some text and sharing it with anyone.

That's what ultimately matters to end users.

Re: Apple confirms it's breaking iPhone web apps in the EU on purpose

#233

Post by 2OEH8eoCRo0 »

rchaud wrote: post #225
zer00eyz wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without this type of isolation and enforcement, malicious... camera, microphone or location ... Browsers ... 30 some million lines of code in chromium browsers. Thats bigger than the linux kernel. The HN crowed might not LIKE apples response but they have a very defensible position. Edit: Its not like we haven't seen this play out on the desktop recently: https://www.theverge.com/24054329/microsoft-edge-automatic-c..…

Android handles this just fine. These are the world's largest corporations we're talking about, not some mom and pop shop that will be crushed under the heel of overzealous regulation.

Suddenly the user respecting innovators are all out of ideas!

Re: Apple confirms it's breaking iPhone web apps in the EU on purpose

#234

Post by ambigious7777 »

SllX wrote: post #201
WirelessGigabit wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is little difference on iOS between a PWA and a website which has a WebKit view and hosts a website. The only reason PWAs were interesting on iOS was to get an app on iOS, while feeling relatively native, without paying Apple.

Apple can make security guarantees about their own rendering engine that they can’t for any other rendering engine. It’s not about what PWAs are like in Safari, it’s about what they’re like in third-party browsers that have to by law be allowed to do whatever Safari can do with their own fully enabled rendering engines.

Apple could just say something like, "This app comes from a 3rd party browser engine, and it may not be secure. Are you sure you want to install this app?". Not too much effort, but still keeping the functionality.

Re: Apple confirms it's breaking iPhone web apps in the EU on purpose

#235

Post by accoil »

dbtc wrote: post #182
niutech wrote: post #169

Bad move from Apple. It's time to boycott iOS and move to FOSS alternatives, such as: AOSP, Ubuntu Touch, GNOME Mobile, KDE Plasma, Sailfish OS. Personally I am using both UBports and Sailfish OS and I appreciate the privacy they provide. As a possible workaround to fullscreen PWAs in iOS in the EU, I propose a convention to append some hash to the Web App Manifest start_url, e.g. #__pwa__, then set the default iOS w…

What's a good device to replace my iphone 13 mini?

What do you like about it? Size?

Re: Apple confirms it's breaking iPhone web apps in the EU on purpose

#237

Post by seszett »

ricardobeat wrote: post #210
seszett wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that's a real potential problem, why doesn't this already happen on Android? Why would this be exploited on the relatively small marketshare platform that is iOS, when in all those years this year not been a problem on the dominant platform? Because it's not a real problem.

You mean like this? https://www.tomsguide.com/news/hackers-are-using-a-new-trick... This stuff is part of the reason people commit to the Apple ecosystem despite its shortcomings. While Android dominates globally, iOS has nearly 60% market share in the US and some other countries.

I'm not especially aware of this particular thing, but sending an SMS with a link to a web page that asks to install a PWA seems to me like it would work on any platform that allows PWAs, irrespective of whether PWAs are restricted to one rendering engine or not, and totally unrelated to the exploit outlined in the post I was responding to (about a somewhat unclear process to me, that would open sites in the background, sending prompts to the user and somehow automatically installing many different PWAs this way).

What we are talking about is specifically targeted at the EU where iOS represents about 30% of users, and doesn't apply to the US. So it's unlikely that scammers would just hold off from exploiting Android and wait for the EU to force iOS to allow different browsers, and only then exploit this class of vulnerability.

Re: Apple confirms it's breaking iPhone web apps in the EU on purpose

#238

Post by SigmundA »

rchaud wrote: post #225
zer00eyz wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without this type of isolation and enforcement, malicious... camera, microphone or location ... Browsers ... 30 some million lines of code in chromium browsers. Thats bigger than the linux kernel. The HN crowed might not LIKE apples response but they have a very defensible position. Edit: Its not like we haven't seen this play out on the desktop recently: https://www.theverge.com/24054329/microsoft-edge-automatic-c..…

Android handles this just fine. These are the world's largest corporations we're talking about, not some mom and pop shop that will be crushed under the heel of overzealous regulation.

So Android allows alternative rendering engines besides Chrome for PWA? If you install Firefox it uses Gecko but still has native app look feel? I honestly don't know but would be surprised if they did.

Re: Apple confirms it's breaking iPhone web apps in the EU on purpose

#239

Post by m-p-3 »

shagie wrote: post #166
spaceribs wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That assumes that Apple would be blamed for Edge/Brave/Firefox's security oversight.

If you add a PWA (with Safari) a year ago to your Home Screen and then change your browser to Firefox, and that PWA breaks out and steals some other application data... Will you blame the software maker that you used to install the icon on the screen? or the one that is seemingly unrelated to the icon on your Home Screen?

Why silently change the underlying browser engine of an existing PWA without the user's knowledge?

That sounds like a bad UX. At least make the existing PWA stay with Safari and provide the ability to switch the underlying engine for each PWA afterwards if migrating is possible.

Re: Apple confirms it's breaking iPhone web apps in the EU on purpose

#240

Post by willsmith72 »

ricardobeat wrote: post #210
seszett wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that's a real potential problem, why doesn't this already happen on Android? Why would this be exploited on the relatively small marketshare platform that is iOS, when in all those years this year not been a problem on the dominant platform? Because it's not a real problem.

You mean like this? https://www.tomsguide.com/news/hackers-are-using-a-new-trick... This stuff is part of the reason people commit to the Apple ecosystem despite its shortcomings. While Android dominates globally, iOS has nearly 60% market share in the US and some other countries.

i don't think that's right, i think apple dominates the US because they're genius at marketing and design. you don't have to build something more secure, you just have to convince people you did
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