Of all the things that iOS could do, why browser engine is so important? Is there anything to them other than UI nowadays, especially on small form factor?
Japan: Apple Must Lift Browser Engine Ban by December
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Re: Japan: Apple Must Lift Browser Engine Ban by December
#42to anyone who believes this is good news: enjoy your chrome monoculture in a few years when apple stops developing safari
Ideally, the next step is for the US FTC to break up Google. This will probably have to wait until 2028, but it could happen earlier — it doesn't seem to be hard to get on this administration's bad side.
Re: Japan: Apple Must Lift Browser Engine Ban by December
#43to anyone who believes this is good news: enjoy your chrome monoculture in a few years when apple stops developing safari
You underestimate the power of the default setting
Normally, I'd agree with you -- defaults are a very, _very_ powerful thing.
But if you're using Google's web tools, they make it (too) easy to download their apps and push you in that direction in a million little ways. For example, GMail's native iOS app will either open a link in a WKWebView or Chrome (if it's not installed, it'll prompt you to install it), but you have to jump through some hoops if you want to open a link in the system's default browser. Similarly, if you're searching for something via google.com, they'll put up a prompt to download their search app, with the default "Continue" option taking you to the store rather than continuing with your current task (and then click-jack the back button).
Re: Japan: Apple Must Lift Browser Engine Ban by December
#44> the determination is made based on the degree of likelihood that [it will prevent alternative browser engines]
If you interpret that very liberally, doing a region-locked "you can release alternate browser engines but only regionlocked to japanese apple accounts" could be seen as intentionally preventing alternative browsers from existing.
Why would mozilla port firefox when it can only target a tiny fraction of its users?
I know it's not super realistic, but maybe there's a path to global browser choice in there.
Re: Japan: Apple Must Lift Browser Engine Ban by December
#45to anyone who believes this is good news: enjoy your chrome monoculture in a few years when apple stops developing safari
I use Brave. Just fork it.
The way Google handles the Chromium source (one big Git monorepo that's undergoing near-constant refactoring) means anything that doesn't want to hard fork is limited to bolting on a new UI and features around the core rendering engine -- but anything inside that core rendering engine won't be long-lasting.
So Brave, Arc, Dia, Edge, et al., all add their own sauce on top of Chromium, but none of them can make changes like back-porting Manifest V2 back into their Chromium.
Re: Japan: Apple Must Lift Browser Engine Ban by December
#46I found the power of "It can be done" amazing. One country does it, everyone else thinks "It can be done, we don't want to be left behind" after 20 years of this being impossible.
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Re: Japan: Apple Must Lift Browser Engine Ban by December
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wonder if it would make more sense and be easier for Firefox to switch to Blink, working together with Google making an alternate browser engine for iOS.
It'd probably be easier but not good, diversity in engines is good here. We don't want something like the IE monopoly again.
The issue that you bringing up was more of an issue of Microsoft thinking they were finished with the web and the lack of automatic updates. It was not due to lack of diversity of engines, but of market share of a single product. This is very different from having the dominant browser engine invested in the success of the web with automatic updates to ensure that the web platform is able to advance and not stagnate.
Re: Japan: Apple Must Lift Browser Engine Ban by December
#48I would welcome if this global legislative push would end up in a more open app ecosystem for iOS overall. BrowserEngineKit is a thin wrapper over XPC and iOS' extension system. The system would be so much better to develop for if XPC was an open API, and JIT for isolated sub-processes was permitted without Apple's blessing. * Messengers could have separate sub-processes for preprocessing untrusted inputs -- iMessage…
>and as we all know that'll be the end of the world.
I'll enjoy seeing all the accounts on MacRumors clawing their eyes out when that happens.
It would be naive to think that Apple isn't funding sites and narratives on the internet to serve their economic interests.
One of the most outlandish one being that freedom to use your phone however you want would necessarily compromise security and privacy for everyone. It's such a bizarre and indefencible take, and yet it's repeated over and over again on those Apple-worship platforms.
Re: Japan: Apple Must Lift Browser Engine Ban by December
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
If I was worried about a chrome monoculture I would want Safari to face competition. Apple has more then enough resources to invest in it.
if chrome ever ends up with a majority browser share on ios/ipados, apple won't have any way to keep up. at this point, google already almost 100% controls web standards, and they can push new features (no matter how privacy-hostile or overreaching) without even allowing apple the chance to keep up. at that point, the incentives for apple to keep developing safari would slowly dwindle away. (oh, and gecko is a joke,…
Gecko works just fine.
Re: Japan: Apple Must Lift Browser Engine Ban by December
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
The only real chrome alternative is Gecko.
if you hate privacy, want more ai in your browser asap and don't care about battery life and performance, yeah, sure!
This doesn't make sense. How is firefox bad for privacy? It's the only browser that supports proper adblock.
No idea what you mean by more ai.
Less battery life is something I'm willing to live with if it means I can run a browser that does what I want.