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

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

#171

Post by HWR_14 » Wed, Aug 06, 2025, 3:49 PM UTC

Hamuko wrote: post #149

nuker wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

You should probably not use Facebook then. How is it that the answer to an American megacorp trying to hoover all of your personal data is to try to get another American megacorp to add universal barricades to your device?

> How is it that the answer to an American megacorp trying to hoover all of your personal data is to try to get another American megacorp to add universal barricades to your device?

Because only Apple has the power to stop Chrome from being the only browser (like IE) or to stop Meta from insisting you give up all privacy. A government may be able to do it within their own borders for a period of time, but Meta, Google and Apple are all larger and more powerful than the majority of countries out there.

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

#172

Post by Zak » Wed, Aug 06, 2025, 3:49 PM UTC

nuker wrote: post #147

close04 wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair enough, and then your iOS should just report the list of permissions the app demanded, maybe even compare to the AppStore version, and then let people make their choice. It doesn't have to be a "one click" easy way to make mistakes. Most users won't bother to go through 3 extra steps to install the "alternative" app if they aren't missing anything in the regular one. The OS should anyway sandbox everything, and…

> and then let people make their choice. Some apps are de-facto unavoidable, like Facebook, Whatsapp and X.

That seems like a bit of a stretch.

Whatsapp is probably the hardest to avoid for most people in parts of the world where it's dominant. The number of people who need to use Facebook or Twitter is likely much smaller, and very few of those need to install a native app instead of using the website.

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

#173

Post by Shank » Wed, Aug 06, 2025, 3:50 PM UTC

KerrAvon wrote: post #153

Shank wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because you can provision Felica cards outside of Japan doesn't mean that you can actually use them. It's not really global support if you can add Suica in the US and then not use it. More likely is that Felica Networks agreed with this logic and Apple is only paying the license fee for JP devices, or has some side deal about not delineating between regions. If Apple didn't support Felica, it would just move mor…

On recent US SKU iPhones — don’t know how recent —- you can add a Suica card directly to Apple Wallet annd use it anywhere the physical card is accepted. No weird regional deals.

It is only accepted in Japan.

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

#174

Post by cosmic_cheese » Wed, Aug 06, 2025, 3:53 PM UTC

charcircuit wrote: post #47

reorder9695 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Monopolies are bad regardless. It’s similar to dictators — even if you have a “good” one that works in the interest of the people, that can all come crashing down and turn to despotism in an instant.

In the case of the web, it’s also bad for any single company to have as much influence as Google has on web standards development. There’s simply too much conflict of interest at play. As a web engine developer they should have some amount of sway but if any party is to have disproportionate power it’d be better if it were an org like Mozilla that’s more likely to give issues like privacy and potential for abuse greater consideration.

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

#175

Post by nuker » Wed, Aug 06, 2025, 3:53 PM UTC

tristan957 wrote: post #170

nuker wrote: post #130

(Narrator) In one year Chrome market share hit 100% in Japan, and became the only browser websites are designed for.

You're completely ignoring the staying power of defaults. Most users do not change anything about their system defaults.

Small percent of sites will start breaking down in Safari, making small percent of users switch to Chrome. Process will start slow but will only go in one direction, and accelerate.

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

#176

Post by radiofreeeuropa » Wed, Aug 06, 2025, 3:55 PM UTC

pornel wrote: post #152

radiofreeeuropa wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There's a grain of truth to it — Apple has learned from Microsoft's history that making the whole browser shitty is too obvious and annoys users. Apple was smart enough to keep user-visible parts of the browser in a good shape, while also dragging their feet on all the Web platform features that could endanger the App Store cash cow.

I don't want web apps on my phone (or, in an ideal world, anywhere else) so that's also a good thing. If they're not viable, it forces developers to make real apps or else just make a web page instead of whatever awful-UX nonsense they were planning.

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

#177

Post by kelthuzad » Wed, Aug 06, 2025, 3:55 PM UTC

tristan957 wrote: post #169

kelthuzad wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

FWIW, Mozilla seems to share the same sentiments about many of the standards that Google has been pushing for. They may have different incentives, but Apple does not sit alone on every one of their views.

Mozilla doesn't have a multi-billion dollar App Store creating a direct conflict of interest. Their motives aren't comparable. A few overlapping concerns don't refute the primary evidence of Apple's self-serving behavior. The key decisions that hobble web apps and protect the App Store moat are specific to Apple's conflict of interest.

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

#178

Post by namibj » Wed, Aug 06, 2025, 3:55 PM UTC

ygritte wrote: post #19

Looks like Japan learned from the malicious compliance shenanigans Apple is pulling with the EU. I hope Apple gets served some substantial fines that really hurt when they try to pull the same shit there. And I say, "when", not "if".

Imagine banning sale and import, wonder how long Apple stores have to be closed for Apple to give in....

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

#179

Post by ChocolateGod » Wed, Aug 06, 2025, 3:55 PM UTC

benoau wrote: post #61

ChocolateGod wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought in the UK, the government decided to only weakly enforce the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024.

Weakly might even be overstating it. Their roadmap has all this ambitious stuff like sideloading and competing app stores and allowing apps to link to their own payments, that they are aiming to have categorized into priority-buckets by the middle of next year. This could take the rest of the decade to actually be implemented on Apple's side.

The UK is kinda trying to balance both the US and EUs commercial interests when it comes to regulation right now

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

#180

Post by cosmic_cheese » Wed, Aug 06, 2025, 3:56 PM UTC

charcircuit wrote: post #143

lucasban wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a counterpoint, this does make it so that one group has disproportionate power over what features make it into that engine, or how they are implemented. What if their incentives change over time and are no longer aligned with what we might consider the success of the web?

Then it can be forked because it's open source.

The problem with forking Blink/Chromium is that in order to be able to counter Google, the organization maintaining the fork is going to need dev manpower on the order of Google’s to be able to keep up with upstream patches, which is prohibitively expensive for all but a handful of orgs (not to mention, skilled talent capable of working on web engines doesn’t grow on trees). Without that any fork that differs substantially from mainline is eventually doomed as the divergence grows and overwhelms the team.