161–170 of 356 posts
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Yup. That's the downside of it. I am personally quite torn on the issue. On the one hand Apple must be made to open up iOS more. On the other hand it just leads to Chrome monopoly.
Then attack Chrome. There isn’t a moral conundrum here.
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…
For a large enough definition of "everyone", it would. "Everyone" has a Meta app installed. We've seen them pull evil tricks over and over to suck up data 24/7 - most recently running a local server on Android that their websites could talk to to bypass anonymization - and the moment a crack appears in the walled garden Meta will say "go install the FB/Instagram app from our app store with no privacy policy reviews" and a large enough definition of everybody will be much the worse for it.
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> ... 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.
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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.
That said, about half the list appears to be stuff I don't care about one way or the other. At least not without spending way more time researching those CSS elements than I care to invest.
And I'd be totally fine with an "Allow Alternate Browser Features: Y/N" setting or similar, as long as it defaulted to the current behavior (locked down Safari only).
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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.
Google also plays "fire and motion" with Web standards. They have a tendency to use non-standard(-yet) features on their websites. This gives them a perfect excuse to make other browsers look technically inferior (when the features are missing or the browser is blocked) or slow (when the features are implemented using inefficient polyfills). The unfairness is the one-sided choice of using whatever cutting-edge or Google-specific feature Chrome has, while they'd never do this in other direction. If Firefox implemented a new feature first, Google would never tell Chrome users that Chrome sucks and they need to upgrade to Firefox.
> 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…
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> 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.
And it feels a little better, personally, sending an innocuous iMessage—even though I won't get in trouble if a stingray happens to pick up “gm” “Happy birthday!” “Kevin forgot the biscuits again!” over SMS.
Self-destructing Signal for the most personal messages for sure. But SMS just feels dirty. Too exposed even if I’d shout the same message contents in a public square.
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>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…
Can you give an example of what your concern is?
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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.
Counterpoint: Your whole narrative is just Apple PR talk in disguise. If Safari were even remotely close to being "the best mainstream browser" as you claimed, it would manifest itself in Safari capturing a dominant market share i.e. people would naturally gravitate towards Safari without Apple forcing it upon users. Apple would also invest much more into Web technology, but they don't have any interest in doing that…
(Narrator) In one year Chrome market share hit 100% in Japan, and became the only browser websites are designed for.