It will become a weird menagerie
iOS allows alternative browser engines in Japan
201–210 of 431 posts
Re: iOS allows alternative browser engines in Japan
#202Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 creat…
You seriously just link to a google search of people who agree with you?? Solid investigation. Hard disagree on safari being even in the same ballpark as IE; what’s your alternative, Google owns the entirety of the browser space?
I included that link not as "research" but as proof that I am not the only one calling Safari "the new IE". It's been written about ad nauseum, and just because you think a google search is pointless doesn't mean my argument lacks merit - and if you were to do your own "research", I'd bet you would start with a google search. Thousands of people have written about it, so go see what they have to say, I am not the only one claiming it.
>Hard disagree on safari being even in the same ballpark as IE;
It's a crap browser, and Apple implements things the way they want to, especially around touch interactions. So I have to have a real iPhone to debug problems with Apple's implementations. Safari fucking sucks, it just does, and your trolling comment doesn't disprove it.
>what’s your alternative, Google owns the entirety of the browser space?
I don't care if they do or if they don't. All I want is an alternative to Safari on iOS. Is that really so bad??
https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/media/1344546/dl?inline
Re: iOS allows alternative browser engines in Japan
#203Re: iOS allows alternative browser engines in Japan
#204Earlier quoted context omitted.
>> And Apple purposely will never implement lots of APIs that only their native apps allow (which other browsers implement) >Can you give an example? Web Bluetooth, Web USB, Web NFC, Web Serial... Of course Apple will uphold its usual charade to claim that it's about pRiVacy & sEcuRiTy to maintain plausible deniability. They could easily implement it and keep it disabled by default, such that users could make the con…
> Web Bluetooth, Web USB, Web NFC, Web Serial Chrome-only non-standards. Note that Firefox is against these, too. > Any adequate analysis of Apple's behavior and motivations must mention Apple's conflict of interest I've yet to see an adequate analysis that doesn't pretend that anything Chrome shits, sorry, ships is immediately a standard that must absolutely be implemented by everyone immediately.
Are the Chrome features useful? Are they open? If it’s bad for users (e.g. some new ad tracking) or if it’s proprietary and thus expensive to license or reverse engineer that’s one thing, but if it’s not that, then refusing to ever adopt those standards (or to provide their own alternatives) is either foolish NIH syndrome on Apple’s part or it’s greed.
Re: iOS allows alternative browser engines in Japan
#205Especially with Apple, I often see people scared that if they open up their ecosystem, then users will lose one of the most consumer friendly tech companies out there. It’s not just “if apple allows alternative browsers then Chrome will win”, which is (probably) true. It’s:
* If Apple allows alternative app stores then the whole ios ecosystem will rot and be foooded with malware, brough up during the Apple vs. Epic cases
* If Apple can’t control the data on their user’s phones, then privacy rights will disappear, a common talking point during the Apple vs. Facebook case for opt-in data collection.
And like, these points are correct — Apple kind of acts like a “benevolent dictator” when it comes to their ecosystem. But shouldn’t there be alternatives between “Apple can control all software on the hardware they sell” and “the moment Apple doesn’t have control of their user’s experience then it’ll be far worse”? Like, we should have more tech companies, more options to pick from between these two extremes. The market needs to be more competitive, and if that isn’t possible shouldn’t there be regulation to protect users and devs better? This constantly feels like a “pick your poison“ kind of deal, where we can only pick between a company locking down their hardware or abuse of users via. software. If Microsoft banned alternative browser engines there’d be riots in these comments. Apple is just better to its users.
Giving companies the power to lock down hardware they sell isn’t a solution that will work when Apple inevitably turns against its users, and is a horrible precedent to set legally. Lord knows John Deere and a million other predatory hardware companies are salivating at the idea of users of their hardware not having control over what they bought, and Meta and Microsoft love the idea of users not having control of the software they run and the data it collects. We can’t just picking between the least worst of two companies.
Re: iOS allows alternative browser engines in Japan
#206I’m not going to say I think Apple should be able to lock out competing browsers, I know this is going to happen. But God I don’t want this. The iPhone is basically the only thing stopping a total Chrome/Chromium hegemony from ruling the web the way IE did. I don’t think Google will practically abandon things the way Microsoft did. But they will absolutely have the kind of power Microsoft did to force any feature. I…
I don’t see that as a threat honestly. safari being the default app pretty much guarantees its place unless google comes up with a killer feature for iOS chrome. And they are unlikely to make that push considering apple demands the app to be distributed only in Japan. Besides, the mobile web is becoming more and more of a niche platform, since the web is becoming centralised as time passes and most main sites redirec…
It was the default on the Mac and it’s nowhere near the most popular there.
Google pushes Chrome HARD.
Re: iOS allows alternative browser engines in Japan
#207Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Sounds like a market for Faraday GPS spoofer boxes.
We still playing Pokémon go?
Re: iOS allows alternative browser engines in Japan
#208Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Does the EU also require third party engines to be able to replace the system web view in apps systemwide? Yes.
Hmm, actually now that I look closer at the Japan requirements, it doesn't seem to allow replacing the web view systemwide, as I thought, and as Android allows. And neither do the EU requirements. They only allow individual apps to embed an alternative engine on a per-app basis by including the whole engine within the app. And the Japan page includes the caveat "apps from browser engine stewards" which if interpreted…
> neither do the EU requirements
Wrong, they do specify "standalone web browsers as well as web browsers integrated or embedded in software or similar" are both covered, that's in the law.
What you're referring to is how Apple chose to implement it. The EU hasn't opened a compliance case on Safari yet but I expect they'll do so at some point.
Re: iOS allows alternative browser engines in Japan
#209Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 creat…
I’m truly curious: as either a user or a developer, how are you impacted by Apple’s behavior and decisions with respect to its web browser engine policy? What is it preventing you from accomplishing?
Specifically for me, my company has a product that could use Bluetooth, but Safari will never implement the Web Bluetooth API, where Chrome has for some time on Android. So the workaround is to use Wifi instead (my product supports both bluetooth and Wifi), which drains the phone battery faster.
No, we do not want to write our own iOS app where Apple can then extort us for a percentage of any sales through the app, and we have to pay for the priviledge to develop that app, as well as buy Apple hardware to do so.
So instead we use Wifi, where we can maintain one single codebase - the web application, which works on both Android and iOS, but has to use Wifi. If Apple allowed Chrome to use its own browser engine, we would simply tell users to install Chrome to interact with our device. Then we don't have to pay Apple for anything, nor should we have to.
Apple purposely won't implement some APIs so they can force developers to create an app for their app store where they can collect money from any additional sales through the app. It's all spelled out in the DOJ suit, why won't you just read it??
https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/media/1344546/dl?inline
Re: iOS allows alternative browser engines in Japan
#210Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
> Safari is the modern IE. That's not true. It's not even available on most computers. IE was about Microsoft not following web standards and abusing its monopoly position; Safari is a minor browser by overall market share and is broadly standards-compliant. > the fact that PWAs didn’t take off in the last decade js purely due to Safari. So then why aren't PWA's super-popular on Windows and on Android? Since Safari d…
>So then why aren't PWA's super-popular on Windows and on Android? Since Safari doesn't affect those?
Says who?
"Yes, PWAs have become popular on these platforms. I work for Microsoft on the Microsoft Store (app store on Windows) and I work with the Edge team, and I work on PWABuilder.com, which publishes PWAs to app stores. Some of the most popular apps in the Microsoft Store are PWAs: Netflix, TikTok, Adobe Creative Cloud, Disney+, and many others.
To view the list of PWAs in the Store, on a Windows box you can run ms-windows-store://assoc/?Tags=AppExtension-microsoft.store.edgePWA" - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46457849