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iOS allows alternative browser engines in Japan

developer.apple.com

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Re: iOS allows alternative browser engines in Japan

#71

Post by OptionOfT »

rorylawless wrote: post #33

My hope for laws such as the ones Japan and the EU enacted was that companies would see the writing on the wall and change their practices worldwide, if only for cost reasons (it presumably being more expensive to maintain multiple sets of rules.) However, these companies are now so large that they can choose to absorb any inefficiencies on a country-by-country basis.

At a hardware level it seemed to work. Looking at USB-C on iPhones for example.

Software wise? Fail. EEA gets to disable start search in Windows 11. RoW does not. Interestingly EEA membership is decided at install time based on your selection, and is not changeable afterwards.

iPhones on the other hand have a daemon running that checks your location. It's not based on where you set up the phone. So traveling from Europe to somewhere else can actually prevent you from updating apps that you got via an alt-store:

https://www.macrumors.com/2024/03/06/alternative-ios-app-sto...

Re: iOS allows alternative browser engines in Japan

#72

Post by toast0 »

crazygringo wrote: post #47
rorylawless wrote: post #33

My hope for laws such as the ones Japan and the EU enacted was that companies would see the writing on the wall and change their practices worldwide, if only for cost reasons (it presumably being more expensive to maintain multiple sets of rules.) However, these companies are now so large that they can choose to absorb any inefficiencies on a country-by-country basis.

There are many things Apple does that have anticompetitive motivations, but the browser engine doesn't seem like one of them. It's genuinely about security and battery life and standardization. So if cost was never the reason in the first place, cost is not going to be the reason to change.

If browser F is worse at battery life than browser S, people will figure that out and adapt for themselves. If it's a big difference, it's self-evident; and small differences should show up in the battery life tool and computer press.

Security-wise, the sandbox should limit damage to within the browser, and if it doesn't that's not the browser's fault. Maybe restrict access to password filling and such though / figure out how to offer an API to reduce the impact.

Standardization, eh? Forcing Safari on iOS and not making it available on the mass market platforms (Android and Windows) makes it a pretty wonky standard. I guess there's a claim to be made for the embedded browsing engine, but IMHO, that should be an app developer choice.

Re: iOS allows alternative browser engines in Japan

#73

Post by Larrikin »

websiteapi wrote: post #18
Larrikin wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tailscale drop is better and works across devices.

tail scale drop is much more complicated than literally copying and pasting on iDevice. that's literally all you do, no setup, nothing and this is just one example for one type of action. https://tailscale.com/kb/1106/taildrop look at all of that, lol. iDevice is literally copy and paste any file or text. the end - you don't even have to set it up.

How do I copy it from my Mac to my Android?

Re: iOS allows alternative browser engines in Japan

#74

Post by concinds »

modeless wrote: post #52
arcanemachiner wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> just for the Japan market Also the EU, no?

Does the EU also require third party engines to be able to replace the web view in apps systemwide? Or does it only require that single standalone browser apps can use alternative engines?

> Does the EU also require third party engines to be able to replace the system web view in apps systemwide?

Yes.

Re: iOS allows alternative browser engines in Japan

#75

Post by crazygringo »

toast0 wrote: post #72
crazygringo wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are many things Apple does that have anticompetitive motivations, but the browser engine doesn't seem like one of them. It's genuinely about security and battery life and standardization. So if cost was never the reason in the first place, cost is not going to be the reason to change.

If browser F is worse at battery life than browser S, people will figure that out and adapt for themselves. If it's a big difference, it's self-evident; and small differences should show up in the battery life tool and computer press. Security-wise, the sandbox should limit damage to within the browser, and if it doesn't that's not the browser's fault. Maybe restrict access to password filling and such though / figur…

> people will figure that out and adapt for themselves

No they won't. People on HN will. Not the average person.

> Security-wise, the sandbox should limit damage to within the browser

The problem is, arbitrary code execution vastly expands the risks. Your "should" is doing all the work there.

> Standardization, eh? Forcing Safari on iOS and not making it available on the mass market platforms

Huh? Apple follows web standards. Why the heck should it make Safari available on Android and Windows? Safari isn't a standard, web standards are.

Re: iOS allows alternative browser engines in Japan

#76

Post by otterley »

leptons wrote: post #68
Spivak wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the narrative is that once developers have the option to tell all of their users "we only support Chrome, just install Chrome" then any support for Safari will dry up. Unfortunately I don't think we will see if this is how it plays out until Apple has to allow other browsers globally.

The reason Apple doesn't allow any other browser engines on iOS is due to them collecting up to 30% of purchases made through the apps from the app store. If a developer can do the same things with a capable web browser, then they won't need to create a native iOS app and that cuts into Apple's app revenue. So Apple purposely hobbles Safari so it doesn't have any advanced browser APIs for stuff like bluetooth or othe…

What evidence do you have, other than speculation, that Apple is so motivated? What standard features are missing from Safari’s rendering engine that makes it a less capable browser such that developers are forced to produce apps instead?

Re: iOS allows alternative browser engines in Japan

#77

Post by aryonoco »

crazygringo wrote: post #67
greiskul wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is literally done for strategic reasons to put a stranglehold on innovations on the web, so that there is no risk of web app technology developing to a point to threaten the dominance of native apps and the app store. Anybody that thinks otherwise is hopeless naive, Steve Jobs himself envisioned a web app future as the future of technology; before Apple found out the gold mine that the app store became.

> to put a stranglehold on innovations on the web I think that's the hypothetical part, it's not reality. Safari continues to be a fully modern browser. It doesn't release new features quite as fast as Chrome, but it does generally adopt them. If Apple were attempting to put a "stranglehold on innovations on the web", Safari's feature set would look very different. But that's not what's happening. Like I said, Apple…

Safari is the modern IE. the fact that PWAs didn’t take off in the last decade js purely due to Safari.

The only reason Apple has banned alternative engines and continues to hold back on major web technologies is anticompetitive behaviour.

Re: iOS allows alternative browser engines in Japan

#78

Post by ryandrake »

OptionOfT wrote: post #71
rorylawless wrote: post #33

My hope for laws such as the ones Japan and the EU enacted was that companies would see the writing on the wall and change their practices worldwide, if only for cost reasons (it presumably being more expensive to maintain multiple sets of rules.) However, these companies are now so large that they can choose to absorb any inefficiencies on a country-by-country basis.

At a hardware level it seemed to work. Looking at USB-C on iPhones for example. Software wise? Fail. EEA gets to disable start search in Windows 11. RoW does not. Interestingly EEA membership is decided at install time based on your selection, and is not changeable afterwards. iPhones on the other hand have a daemon running that checks your location. It's not based on where you set up the phone. So traveling from Eur…

Yea, unfortunately with software, using enough granular feature flags, they can make their software "maximally bad" for each given region. They lose a battle in the EU and are forced to make the software better? They will make it better only in the EU. Lose another one in Japan over a different issue? Just make a "japan" flag and only make it narrowly better for that use case in that region. Lose further battles in other regions, just add more flags.

They will never deploy the "better" feature worldwide if they have the opportunity to limit the better code to a particular region.

1: And of course, by "better" I am always referring to "better for the user" not "better for Apple."

Re: iOS allows alternative browser engines in Japan

#79

Post by aryonoco »

ckcheng wrote: post #63
koolba wrote: post #31

Does this mean we'll finally have "real" firefox with support for ublock origin on iOS?

FYI. iOS Safari already supports uBlock Origin Lite. iOS Firefox can do the same anytime but it already has some tracking and content blocking built in too.

As someone who has recently switched from Android to iOS, I can tell you uBlock Origin Lite on Safari on iOS is a poor man’s imitation of the real uBlock Origin on Firefox on Android.

Re: iOS allows alternative browser engines in Japan

#80

Post by leptons »

crazygringo wrote: post #67
greiskul wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is literally done for strategic reasons to put a stranglehold on innovations on the web, so that there is no risk of web app technology developing to a point to threaten the dominance of native apps and the app store. Anybody that thinks otherwise is hopeless naive, Steve Jobs himself envisioned a web app future as the future of technology; before Apple found out the gold mine that the app store became.

> to put a stranglehold on innovations on the web I think that's the hypothetical part, it's not reality. Safari continues to be a fully modern browser. It doesn't release new features quite as fast as Chrome, but it does generally adopt them. If Apple were attempting to put a "stranglehold on innovations on the web", Safari's feature set would look very different. But that's not what's happening. Like I said, Apple…

It absolutely is reality. Safari is the worst browser by far, it's been compared to Microsoft's old Internet Explorer browser. But don't take my word for it, lots of people have written about it...

https://www.google.com/search?q=safari+is+the+new+ie

And Apple purposely will never implement lots of APIs that only their native apps allow (which other browsers implement), specifically to force many developers to create a native app to use these APIs, so that Apple can force the developer to give them a percentage of any purchases made through the app. They can't force a developer to give them a cut of purchases made through a web browser, which is why they purposely hobble the Safari browser engine and then force all other browsers to use this engine. If you can't see how bad this is, then you've been taken over by the reality distortion field.

It's spelled out in the DOJ lawsuit against apple, among many other anti-competitive practices.

Microsoft got sued and lost in an antitrust suit for bundling IE with Windows. Apple bundles Safari with iOS but forbids any other browser engine but their Safari engine. Can you imagine if Microsoft forbade any other browser from being installed on Windows? It's time Apple was brought to justice over their abusive anti-competitive practices.

Here's the whole DOJ suit against Apple:

https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/media/1344546/dl?inline

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