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Japan: Apple Must Lift Browser Engine Ban by December

open-web-advocacy.org

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Re: Japan: Apple Must Lift Browser Engine Ban by December

#111

Post by overfeed »

perfectviking wrote: post #87
meibo wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Safari is not a good browser, by design, because it's in Apple's interest to cripple the Web as a platform. If they want their browser to be actually competitive instead of forcing people to use it, they should make a good browser. That is markets working as they are supposed to.

What is your argument that Safari is not a good browser? Using market forces to encourage more consolidation into a single engine is *bad*.

> What is your argument that Safari is not a good browser?

Safari is often the hold-out on implementing features[1] that would be useful to users - presumably because it would make web apps viable on iOS, and compete with App store apps where Apple takes a 30% cut

> Using market forces to encourage more consolidation into a single engine is bad.

Competition on a level playing-field is not bad, even if you dislike the superior product (as determined by the free hand of the market.)

1. If memory serves: various APIs useful for PWAs were delayed or kneecapped on Safari

Re: Japan: Apple Must Lift Browser Engine Ban by December

#112

Post by shmerl »

dylan604 wrote: post #93
shmerl wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'd be able to use proper Firefox there. And it is a good thing, it weakens Apple's malicious control over Web standards (sabotage of using SPIR-V for WebGPU is Apple's fault).

You've missed the point. Once the restriction on which browsers can be used is lifted, people won't be switching to Firefox in vast numbers. They will be switching to Chrome. Just because someone is able to use Firefox does not mean they will use Firefox.

May be not, but currently they can't switch to anything at all. So it can't be worse than it is already. Let users decide what they want to use instead of deciding for them. Just the fact that you could use alternatives will already put more pressure on Apple to behave.

Basically it's not an argument at all against forcing Apple to remove that ban.

Re: Japan: Apple Must Lift Browser Engine Ban by December

#113

Post by the_sleaze_ »

fkyoureadthedoc wrote: post #83
TheDong wrote: post #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 it…

To increase their already tiny fraction of marketshare by another tiny fraction?

To be fair a tiny fraction of marketshare can represent a very attractive level of revenue depending on the market

Re: Japan: Apple Must Lift Browser Engine Ban by December

#114

Post by overfeed »

fkyoureadthedoc wrote: post #89
sunaookami wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Safari can only survive because Apple has a monopoly on browsers on iOS then it's a shit browser.

Firefox is overall a fine browser. Still has 2% marketshare. There's also the fact that websites themselves need to be mindful of multiple browser engines existing because of Safari. Once users are able to install Chrome on iPhones, developers will just abandon every other engine wholesale.

> Firefox is overall a fine browser. Still has 2% marketshare

Firefox used to have a 25-30% share before Mozilla shat the bed by neglecting it while treating Firefox like a money-piñata to fund a series of dead-end, copy-cat projects in their big-tech cosplay era.

Blaming Chrome for Firefox and Safari being shit (as reflected by the percentage of users who voluntarily use the respective browsers) removes their culpability. Chrome had to grow their share from 0%.

Re: Japan: Apple Must Lift Browser Engine Ban by December

#115

Post by [deleted] »

perfectviking wrote: post #87
meibo wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Safari is not a good browser, by design, because it's in Apple's interest to cripple the Web as a platform. If they want their browser to be actually competitive instead of forcing people to use it, they should make a good browser. That is markets working as they are supposed to.

What is your argument that Safari is not a good browser? Using market forces to encourage more consolidation into a single engine is *bad*.

[deleted]

Re: Japan: Apple Must Lift Browser Engine Ban by December

#116

Post by fsflover »

perfectviking wrote: post #87
meibo wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Safari is not a good browser, by design, because it's in Apple's interest to cripple the Web as a platform. If they want their browser to be actually competitive instead of forcing people to use it, they should make a good browser. That is markets working as they are supposed to.

What is your argument that Safari is not a good browser? Using market forces to encourage more consolidation into a single engine is *bad*.

> What is your argument that Safari is not a good browser?

It doesn't support Ublock Origin.

Re: Japan: Apple Must Lift Browser Engine Ban by December

#117

Post by overfeed »

ACCount36 wrote: post #46
KingOfCoders wrote: post #30

I 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.

[flagged]

Several red-states in the US had already passed similar laws before the UK - see headlines where the pornographers responded by blocking visitors geolocated in those states because they figured there's no sensible way to verify age.

Re: Japan: Apple Must Lift Browser Engine Ban by December

#118

Post by JimDabell »

fkyoureadthedoc wrote: post #89
sunaookami wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Safari can only survive because Apple has a monopoly on browsers on iOS then it's a shit browser.

Firefox is overall a fine browser. Still has 2% marketshare. There's also the fact that websites themselves need to be mindful of multiple browser engines existing because of Safari. Once users are able to install Chrome on iPhones, developers will just abandon every other engine wholesale.

> Once users are able to install Chrome on iPhones, developers will just abandon every other engine wholesale.

This is the thing that is most concerning. We’ve seen this happen before. We ended up with an Internet Explorer monoculture that paralysed front-end development for over a decade. Huge numbers of developers were happily writing Internet Explorer-only websites and didn’t care about any other browser at all. There’s a real danger that this ends the open web and turns it into a Chrome platform controlled by Google.

Re: Japan: Apple Must Lift Browser Engine Ban by December

#119

Post by fennecfoxy »

yupyupyups wrote: post #48
HHad3 wrote: post #35

I 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…

The security thing is BS anyway; Apple aren't perfect at security and having only one option can make this worse.

Google's Project Zero uncovered quite a few 0 days in Apple's "perfect" operating system. They're not magical wizard cult gods over there, they're just a buncha developers same as 'em all. And given the quality of what's been coming out of Apple _and_ Google recently sometimes I wonder if someone's dug a pit under their supposedly high bars they held in the 2010s. Even just Youtube is a disgustingly buggy app nowadays.

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