81–90 of 431 posts
It's so disappointing to be fed crumbs like this instead of seeing real consumer protection laws put in place. Let users install software on their computers outside of what the manufacturer permits, why focus on browsers and "app stores"?
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> 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.
I'm torn on this honestly. Safari (particularly mobile Safari) is literally the only thing keeping the web from becoming Chrome-only. While I would love to see Safari-alternative engines on the iPhone, I fear that the "open web" in terms of browser compatibility is cooked the day that happens: Commercial web developers are supremely lazy and their product managers are, too. They will consider the web Chrome-only from that day forward and simply refuse to lift a finger for other browsers.
I think when IE6 died, on one hand it was a relief for web developers, who (very quickly) deleted all the code needed to maintain compatibility, but on the other hand, it made the web worse by bringing us closer to browser monopoly.
2026 should be the year when every tech-minded person dumps Apple (and Google) for good and either starting running either a free Android OS (Graphene, Lineage or a couple of other variants) or a Linux phone. At this point, Apple and Google devices are nothing more than instruments of coercion and mass surveillance.
Why? I am a very tech-minded person but simply don't care about running alternative browser engines on my phone. Am I "wrong" in your opinion?
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UX , not UI. perfect example is you copy something on your laptop and paste it on your phone. trivial on iDevice.
Trivial as in it works well sometimes and badly in other times with no explanation for why. That’s my experience anyway.
Now every phone will ship with 2 engines (inevitably chrome is going to be bundled in at least one of your apps). Both are tied to large tech companies. And both have approximately the same feature set.
At this stage, I can't think of any upside for the end user. New CSS crap or obscure web APIs, or proprietary DRM? And the cost is that we're going to get new website badges "only in Chrome", or "only in Safari", like it's 1999.
This is Apple, people know what they get into, and they kind of want that an iPhone is not a PC.
It looks like everyone thinks that this is a good thing. Can anyone explain beyond the "this is a monopoly" argument? It's not a monopoly if the engine is free, and if they need the engine to more or less match all the desktop engines.
I don't feel cornered by Apple on that one.
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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.
This sounds like hyperbole. I've never used tailscale, but reading that doc: Installation: Install the tailscale client Sharing: Click on the share menu and select tailscale It's a beta feature so there's also a switch you have to flip for now.
Installation: nothing.
Sharing: Cmd+C/Cmd+V
Did Japan decide to push proper competition laws? Time to force Apple to do it everywhere. Very long overdue.
I agree with the “enforce competition laws” sentiment, but in this context, enforced naively , all it’ll do is entrench the dominant browser engine, Blink, even more across the mobile ecosystem. I’m sure some devs will love this. But equally, some may worry about the monoculture implications.
It would be good to see Firefox with its own engine there for example.
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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 s…
>No they won't. People on HN will. Not the average person.
Yes they will, Apple has made it very easy to see.
To check iOS app power usage, go to Settings > Battery, where you'll see a breakdown of battery consumption by app for the last 24 hours or 10 days, showing usage time and background activity, allowing you to identify power-hungry apps and manage settings like Background App Refresh to improve battery life.
So yeah, it's easy to see which app is taking the most power, and users can do this easily, unless you think Apple's UX is so bad that users won't know how to read it?
>The problem is, arbitrary code execution vastly expands the risks. Your "should" is doing all the work there.
If that's a problem for web browsers, then it's a problem for every single app in the app store. There's nothing really unique about a web browser app that makes it more risky than any other app. Javascript is already very much sandboxed. And there have been plenty of exploits that already target Safari. So saying other browsers are the problem is like blaming the victim (of Apple's anti-competitive practices).
>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.
If web standards are standards, then let other web browsers on iOS.
The real reason Apple disallows other browser engines on Safari is so they can force developers to create native apps where they can get a cut of any purchase made through the app. The problems with Apple's anti-competitive practices have been spelled out in the DOJ lawsuit against them:
https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/media/1344546/dl?inline
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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.
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.
> Steve Jobs himself envisioned a
> web app future as the future of[...]
His remarks at the time of the initial iPhone release (with the benefit of hindsight) were clearly because they weren't ready to expose any sort of native API's.
Pissing on you and telling you it's raining was typical Jobs reality distortion field marketing, and not an indication that he actually believed it was raining.
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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…