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Japan: Apple Must Lift Browser Engine Ban by December

open-web-advocacy.org

121–130 of 356 posts

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

#121
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…

> One of the most outlandish one being that freedom to use your phone however you want would necessarily compromise security and privacy for everyone.

I suppose in a round-a-bout way, it could, more specifically around iMessage, which is Apple's baby in the US and a big part of their lock in effect for US users.

Right now, you can reasonably assume that using iMessage with another iPhone user that both ends are reasonably secure and private. Break open the walls of the garden and now you could say that you can't trust that the other end you are communicating with hasn't installed some random crapware or malware that's scraping their messages, or recording the screen during a facetime call, thereby compromising your own privacy by interacting with a bad devices.

In that instance, Apple is correct - but what Apple doesn't tell people is that all other forms of digital communication are open to the same risks so they aren't special.

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

#122
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*.

Safari is often regarded as the "new Internet Explorer" by front-end developers because of how much is unsupported or has to be worked-around...

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

#123
post #11
post #2

So after the EU and the UK, Japan is now putting an end to Apple's iOS alternative browser engine ban too. Those are 3 large jurisdictions, I wonder if that's now a market big enough for Chrome and Firefox to invest into iOS versions of their browser that use Blink and Gecko under the hood. From what I heard this was one of the main reasons they haven't done it yet.

From the same website, there are still blocks put in place by Apple to discourage anyone, especially large browsers, from publishing their own engine: https://open-web-advocacy.org/blog/apples-browser-engine-ban...

HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44557348

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

#124
post #104
post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ... freedom to use your phone however you want I want to use my phone locked down hard and apps reviewed by Apple. I sleep better with things as they are. I suspect 99% of normal users are in the same boat.

Apple must provide opt-in or opt-out for the lockdown.

Then Facebook will grant its app all permission entitlements, and will direct all users to opt-out lockdown for the app to work.

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

#125
post #14
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought it was because Apple still put so many roadblocks in the way of browser developers that nobody was able to pass them.

Yeah other reasons I've heard of include the obligation to adopt iOS-specific APIs for features like scrolling and text inputs; developing a separate app for these markets and therefore loosing their existing userbase; and signing a pretty crazy contract, among other things. But the bigger the market they can reach, the bigger the reward, and so at some point it may justify investing resources to work around those ro…

> Yeah other reasons I've heard of include the obligation to adopt iOS-specific APIs for features like scrolling and text inputs

TBH I'm fine with that. Applications, browsers or not, should use the operating system's components and APIs for things for a unified experience across all apps and interactions. On the desktop side of things, I hate when an application breaks convention for the OS it's deployed on. If I'm using macOS, for example, I want every app on my mac to look and behave like any other, consistent with the rest of the OS.

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

#126
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?

https://ios404.com/

Safari is missing many performance and device-related features that would allow you to create a compelling web application and bypass the App store.

I tried once, you run into the most unexpected roadblocks and come to the conclusion "I have to release this as an App." Well... guess why.

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

#127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple's Safari is unfortunately not keeping away the Web from being a Chrome monoculture.

Apple is the only thing keeping web standards in place. Many vendors we work with only support Chrome, including Chrome... on iOS. Which means because on iOS that's just Safari, the website has to meet web standards. So we know thanks to Apple, it'll work on Firefox! Soon as this happens, Chrome is the web. The OWA knows this, it's their goal, it's an astroturf outfit.

Can you please elaborate on what your point is here? Previously you've made comments in support of opening up the Apple ecosystem, but now it seems that you're no longer in support of the idea after a sudden realization that opening up the platform to everyone means that it's also opened up to Google?

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

#128
post #59

We've got to assume that Google have internally been developing "real" Chrome for iOS for a long time, so that it'll be ready to go immediately, right?

February 2023: "Google begins effort to run Chrome’s Blink engine on iOS in place of Apple’s WebKit"

https://9to5google.com/2023/02/06/google-chrome-blink-ios-we...

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

#129

Japan has a funny relationship with Apple. For example, the Felica ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FeliCa ) based ticket system is built into every iPhone globally, making life in Japan significantly easier for foreign iOS users. More surprisingly actually using the tickets does not require any app at all - you just use Apple Pay. This is all narrowing the scope of what advantages native apps have (they do still have…

Japan has higher iOS market share (64%) than the US (59%) or the UK (47%) or Europe (34%).

https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/mobile/japan

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