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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

#271

Post by jokethrowaway »

munk-a wrote: post #226
paulmd wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, as I’ve said before: the root problem here is that the EU wants to outlaw apples business model. People don’t think of it that way, they tell themselves all the reasons why that’s a good thing, but that’s ultimately what it is - a legislative solution to end the “android vs iOS” debate for all time. The argument is walled gardens shouldn’t exist, so the solution is to either legislate requirements that apple de…

I feel like this is a win for consumers - I'd much rather there remain more OS competition on mobile devices[1] but if Apple wants to pursue a business model that excludes large portions of the world from their customer base that's their decision. I don't believe there exists any maliciousness from the EU towards Apple - they do, after all, benefit greatly from corporation tax revenues from Apple and iPhones are stil…

I don't see how you can call EU having any expectation of freedom when commenting about a law which forces a company to comply to regulation.

This actively reduces freedom, the freedom of running your business. You just don't care about it.

If you don't like walled gardens you can just not use them (I certainly never bought anything Apple for this very reason), there's no need to infringe on the freedom of everyone else who wants to use walled gardens.

The EU is in general becoming increasingly less free, thanks to barely elected bureaucrats who line up their pockets with sponsors money.

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

#272

Post by EasyMark »

summerlight wrote: post #65
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..…

Why should we trust Apple for security in that context? Apple also provides all those functionalities via their proprietary API, which is not even audit-able. If Apple really believes in that argument, they should disable their own API as well.

I don't trust anyone, but historically they seem on par with the big guys like Microsoft and Google. At some point you accept someone's security model or you roll your own system I guess and hope you're better than the security teams at these companies?

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

#273

Post by brikym »

aetherspawn wrote: post #205

I am on Apples side here. I have been a macOS and iPhone user for over a decade now, but have had Android devices and I use Windows for games and work. I think what the EU has done to Apple is unfair. It is unfortunate in my opinion that they can’t just tell them to get stuffed. They have had to build probably 100-million LOCs just so EU have the right to pick their own browser, and yet Safari works just fine. In fac…

> yet Safari works just fine

I laughed. Clearly you've never tried building a halfway complex web app.

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

#274

Post by SllX »

ambigious7777 wrote: post #234
SllX wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I mentioned this in another comment but they built out over 600 APIs and a system of accompanying entitlements to comply with the DMA, they’re clearly not at this point just for PWAs going to throw up their hands and a scare sheet and say “good enough for government work, devs: do what you want now”. EU iPhone customers are still iPhone customers. The security and privacy considerations don’t go away just because a new law was passed.

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

#275

Post by addicted »

JadeNB wrote: post #9
addicted wrote: post #5

I don’t think Apple’s pettiness is gonna work in their favor. I am not in the EU but my next iPhone is almost certainly not gonna be an iPhone despite me having used a non iPhone for about 6 months in the last 15 years. Their throwing their customers under the bus just to throw a tantrum in the EU does not bode well for how they would treat their customers in other situations.

> I am not in the EU but my next iPhone is almost certainly not gonna be an iPhone …. Next phone , right?

lol good call.

To be honest an iPhone and a phone have been synonymous for me for 15 years. The 6 months was a period of madness (or genius, considering I actually loved it) when I was using a Windows Phone, until basically all the 3rd party apps I used dropped support.

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

#276

Post by al_borland »

LeoPanthera wrote: post #7

Since the article doesn't actually repeat what Apple has said, here's what Apple says: == Begin quote == The iOS system has traditionally provided support for Home Screen web apps by building directly on WebKit and its security architecture. That integration means Home Screen web apps are managed to align with the security and privacy model for native apps on iOS, including isolation of storage and enforcement of sys…

It makes sense. This is one of the many reasons why I’m not in favor of the government demanding things of Apple, it’s not like people don’t have another platform to choose from.

As the governments demand more and more, I predict we will see several monkey paw moments.

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

#277

Post by redox99 »

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?

Regular S24. Yeah it's quite bigger, but still manageable.

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

#278

Post by vundercind »

LeoPanthera wrote: post #7

Since the article doesn't actually repeat what Apple has said, here's what Apple says: == Begin quote == The iOS system has traditionally provided support for Home Screen web apps by building directly on WebKit and its security architecture. That integration means Home Screen web apps are managed to align with the security and privacy model for native apps on iOS, including isolation of storage and enforcement of sys…

Oh wow. I'd assumed, in earlier discussions about this, that Apple'd just keep forcing Safari-only for PWA installation and use.

Does the rule not allow that? If so... yeah, as a user deep in their ecosystem and once-developer for the platform, hard agree on this. Whatever their other motivations (and Apple are masters at arranging things so that their interests happen to coincide with legitimate concerns about UX) the user-facing issues expressed are worth worrying about.

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

#279

Post by jwells89 »

fock wrote: post #207
kemayo wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume you mean the "read data from other web apps" part. That'd be because there's (presumably) not a system-level way to launch a third-party browser in "web app mode", with all data siloed off per-PWA. Thus the only way they could currently make web apps work would be to launch the third-party browser and trust that it silos everything adequately itself internally. Apple could add a bunch of new APIs to support…

the bunch of new APIs might just be a containerized copy of the users browser? Seems very easy.

Currently Safari on Mac copies over login cookies and data directly relevant to the site and nothing else when installing an app as a PWA.

This strikes me as the way to go, there’s no good reason for anything else to be copied and it reduces the amount of data that integrated privacy-compromising ad and analytics services can readily glean from users.

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

#280

Post by SigmundA »

teki_one wrote: post #255
SigmundA wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think Android already allowed that 7+ years ago: https://hacks.mozilla.org/2017/10/progressive-web-apps-firef...

Ok so I guess Android has some sort of API for allowing an app to install additional icons on the desktop with specific parameters like a shortcut and it shows the icon with a little icon representing the parent app, makes sense.

So if you install a PWA from Firefox it runs in Firefox and from Chrome it runs in Chrome similar to desktops. Looking at it this way I could see Apple doing something similar with less effort than trying to standardize a web view API and have PWA use the "system default browser".

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