Japan: Apple Must Lift Browser Engine Ban by December • Hacker News Board

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

#131

Post by radiofreeeuropa » Wed, Aug 06, 2025, 3:01 PM UTC

meibo wrote: post #82

ajaimk wrote: post #63

Is this a good thing? Doesn't this just expand the marketshare of Chromium?

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.

Counterpoint: Safari is by far the best mainstream browser, because it's got the only engine that gives half a shit about battery life, and because they push back on shitty features Google wants to make "standard" so they can trash my UX and the computing ecosystem even more.

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

#132

Post by numpad0 » Wed, Aug 06, 2025, 3:02 PM UTC

ezfe wrote: post #77

Shank wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FeliCa Networks support is the direct result of the fact that mobile transit and mobile payments use in Japan predates the iPhone. Mobile Suica and Osaifu-Keitai already existed, and Apple needed to compete. It started with Japanese SKU iPhones but expanded globally. Even now in Japan, mobile payments are anything but a monopoly. When Apple is forced to compete, they do things like add Suica with Express Transit. Pay…

Android phones don't support it globally so saying that Apple is "forced" to compete where Android doesn't proves the point that they're doing more than needed.

iPhone just wasn't going to exit the curious gadget status and become a first class citizen in the Japanese phone market without it. Same for emoji support and flick inputs and lots of those little things.

They were never forced to compete in the sense that no one is forced to be first class citizen anywhere. Apple just wanted to be by its own free will. That's technically correct.

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

#133

Post by AlexandrB » Wed, Aug 06, 2025, 3:06 PM UTC

pton_xd wrote: post #126

perfectviking wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

About half that list is marketing for why I use Safari instead of something else on my laptop.

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

#134

Post by radiofreeeuropa » Wed, Aug 06, 2025, 3:07 PM UTC

overfeed wrote: post #114

fkyoureadthedoc wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 culpab…

Chrome did that three ways: 1) performing better and crashing less than mainstream alternatives (just IE and Firefox, then) on non-Mac platforms (so, most desktop computers) for a good long while; 2) aggressive advertising to trick people who don't actually give a shit what browser they're running (or even know) into downloading it because "google said it would make my gmail work better" or "I dunno, google just told me to download this so I did"; and, later in the race, by 3) being the default on most Android installations.

One of three major factors involved actually being good, and I'd bet the other two factors overwhelm that one.

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

#135

Post by input_sh » Wed, Aug 06, 2025, 3:08 PM UTC

nuker wrote: post #124

zakki wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Are they doing that on Android right now?

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

#136

Post by mock-possum » Wed, Aug 06, 2025, 3:09 PM UTC

thewebguyd wrote: post #121

yupyupyups wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 reaso…

Is iMessage really that big a deal to people, for privacy / security particularly?

Practically speaking I can’t even tell the difference, apart from text messages sometimes failing to send, and getting the option to retry as SMS.

If I want something private / secure, I use Signal.

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

#137

Post by radiofreeeuropa » Wed, Aug 06, 2025, 3:13 PM UTC

npteljes wrote: post #22

kjfaejgoaeijhei wrote: post #4

to anyone who believes this is good news: enjoy your chrome monoculture in a few years when apple stops developing safari

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

It's the only reason you don't see a lot more broken websites on Firefox, which would drive its market share even lower.

Lots and lots of Web development projects target Chrome, then make sure it works on Safari. In that second step, they accidentally fix a lot of bugs that'd show up on Firefox, too.

Not a lot of them are bothering to check Firefox directly these days. Hell, a decade ago it wasn't making the test list in tons of cases.

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

#138

Post by NotPractical » Wed, Aug 06, 2025, 3:13 PM UTC

ajaimk wrote: post #63

Is this a good thing? Doesn't this just expand the marketshare of Chromium?

The government can solve that, too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Google_LLC_(2...

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

#139

Post by charcircuit » Wed, Aug 06, 2025, 3:15 PM UTC

troupo wrote: post #97

charcircuit wrote: post #13

Earlier 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.

> to switch to Blink, working together with Google making an alternate browser engine for iOS. How is switching to Blink, a Google-controlled engine, supposed to help creating an "alternative engine"?

Because Blink is an alternate engine to Webkit.

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

#140

Post by concinds » Wed, Aug 06, 2025, 3:16 PM UTC

frou_dh wrote: 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?

Google has been porting Blink to iOS and making steady progress. Here's the tracking bug on Chromium's bugtracker: https://issues.chromium.org/issues/40254930

Presumably they would have invested more resources into it and been done by now, if there was a viable path to release, which there isn't yet due to Apple's EU geofencing, and because there were a number of bugs and limitations in Apple's BrowserEngineKit which browsers are forced to use.