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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

#241

Post by concinds »

MBCook wrote: post #172

I’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 can't wait until regulators do their job and take away Apple's dictatorial control, in all areas, and all these doom-and-gloom predictions on all these tangential issues end up proving ludicrous.

What kind of control would Chrome have over the web? Adding APIs doesn't force the billions of websites to adopt them. So what if a website adds WebBluetooth? You don't want the web to have that anyway, and if you keep using Safari, you still won't have it. Happy you!

If scrappy Firefox on open platforms could save the web from 95% IE, then why are we all dependent on Apple, alone, to save us from ~60% Chrome? It's learned helplessness and Stockholm syndrome. I wonder how our species survived before the trillion-dollar company started taking such good care of us!

Re: iOS allows alternative browser engines in Japan

#242

Post by torben-friis »

geraldwhen wrote: post #230
torben-friis wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Google has no actual content left to find. It’s AI spam website after AI spam website. And if you find any content, it’s on a website riddled with ads. AI search has none of these issues. Google from 15 years ago was wildly superior to today.

>AI search has none of these issues

Yet. AI feeds from the content it substitutes. I’m skeptical to the long term feasibility for this reason, how is it going to bring me news when publishing those news is no longer profitable, for example?

Re: iOS allows alternative browser engines in Japan

#243

Post by xp84 »

greiskul wrote: post #120
otterley wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Anybody that thinks otherwise is hopeless naive This is inappropriate. People can reasonably disagree without being insulting to each other. If you have concrete evidence that Apple is deliberately withholding some essential advancement in Safari or its support for Web standards so that it can sell more apps, by all means, cite it.

https://www.google.com/search?q=safari+is+the+new+ie Just read the summary that Gemini provides for a good quick understanding, and follow up the multiple articles about it. Then please don't come back and say that there is nothing concrete about this evidence, that is just people speculating about a behavior that Apple has been engaging repeatedly and continuously for over a decade.

Look, I agree that Safari sucks, but with or without the AI overview (which I don’t believe is Gemini, rather that is a very cheap and dumb model that’s been told to summarize a few top results), linking to a search is not a strong debating technique. I could link to a search for “Safari has the best technology” and it would have the same zero value.

Re: iOS allows alternative browser engines in Japan

#244

Post by xp84 »

n8cpdx wrote: post #122
toast0 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Safari exclusivity is the only reason we aren’t living in a 100% “this site built for chrome” world. I think folks must forget the IE days and how bad that was. There is zero percent chance developers are wasting a second making sure their sites actually work cross platform if not for iOS (and iOS more moneyed user base).

We were in a “built for Netscape” world right before IE had its brief window of innovation in versions 4-5. The fact that people were building to IE though was only painful for a few specific reasons: 1. the versions of IE targeted were exclusive to Windows (Mac IE was way different, so it wasn’t that useful for when the site had targeted Windows IE)

2. IE stopped all development of useful UI or web standards features, meaning if you needed the compatibility you were stuck with a stagnant browser

3. Due to #2, of course web devs hands were tied when it comes to adopting things like HTML5, tags etc. Users would have needed to switch between the two constantly — Firefox for cool new sites and IE for their bank, school, government, whatever.

I would posit that none of the above seems true about Chromium. They do continue developing it, they add new web standards the most aggressively of anyone, and it’s available on basically every platform except the one Apple bans it from. Mind you I don’t really want Google to own it, because they are way too damn big even without Chrome… but honestly it’s no IE situation.

Re: iOS allows alternative browser engines in Japan

#245

Post by concinds »

lokar wrote: post #199
baby wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Safari is so bad, I want a real chrome experience on iOS

Can you explain how? Poor standards implementation? Performance? UX?

I cannot go through a day without "this tab has been reloaded due to a problem" on Safari iOS and any other browser. It's been happening for years, across phones. It's dogshit. Safari Mac is fine.

Even if that's an edge case, it's why having only one engine is pathological. Maybe Safari iOS works fine for you. Not for me. I don't want rationalization on why it's not Apple's fault, or somehow not Safari's fault, or "they'll fix it one day", or "I'm doing it wrong", or all the fanboy-talk that sounds like the enabling relative of an alcoholic. Don't care. I should be able to switch for even the most frivolous reason. Maybe I don't like that it doesn't render every website in pink.

It's like having only one type of chocolate in existence. This was never normal.

Re: iOS allows alternative browser engines in Japan

#246

Post by otterley »

concinds wrote: post #232
otterley wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple made it very clear that their security concerns related to third party browsing engines are about difficult-to-contain threats posed by JIT compilation. (JITs require non-text memory pages to be executable.) Apple doesn’t allow other apps to use such technology, so they’re consistent in that respect. Apple even disables JIT for Safari itself when you put an iPhone in lockdown mode, at no small cost to performan…

Yes. Safari is a less secure browser than Chrome, architecturally. Took far longer to ship sandboxing. Still hasn't fixed SLAP and FLOP. Still hasn't shipped proper site isolation. Takes far longer to fix reported vulnerabilities, and consistently "fixes" them superficially and incorrectly, requiring another fix. Enough with the Apple fanboy paternalism. They don't need absolute control "for users' sake". They're not…

> Still hasn't fixed SLAP and FLOP. Still hasn't shipped proper site isolation.

Those are interesting facts, but are ultimately a red herring. How will enabling JIT for other browser engines, absent the detailed vetting Apple is requiring to provide a Web Browser Engine entitlement, yield a more secure outcome?

> Enough with the Apple fanboy paternalism. They don't need absolute control "for users' sake". They're not entitled to it.

You are, of course, welcome to choose an alternative. If you prefer Android, by all means, use it!

Re: iOS allows alternative browser engines in Japan

#247

Post by panstromek »

lokar wrote: post #199
baby wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Safari is so bad, I want a real chrome experience on iOS

Can you explain how? Poor standards implementation? Performance? UX?

Late on a lot of standards, quirky in many ways and just a lot of bugs, especially around images and videos. Also positioning issues. They recently broke even position fixed, which broke a ton of web pages on iOS, including apple.com

Re: iOS allows alternative browser engines in Japan

#248

Post by Apocryphon »

Imustaskforhelp wrote: post #156
steelbrain wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While its not Firefox, you can run uBlock origin with the Orion browser from the Kagi people.

Okay now that we have come to the topic, How is Orion browser on App store whereas all others aren't? is there a way to make more innovation in this area and maybe an extension or two developed adding more perms etc or forking Orion or the know-how behind it and replicating it could finally allow PWA on apple iphones?

Orion has always been designed to use WebKit.

Re: iOS allows alternative browser engines in Japan

#249

Post by panstromek »

jonhohle wrote: post #239
lokar wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you explain how? Poor standards implementation? Performance? UX?

I hear this a lot, but have used Safari as my since it was launch in 2003.Performance has always been great. UI has always been minimalist, out of the way, and has never upsold me on anything. There are times where it lags and times where it leads standards. There may be a a site every now and then that doesn’t work, but iOS makes that less likely. The only thing I can ever think of is that it’s not or doesn’t have .…

It might look ok from user's point of view, but lot of the problems fall on web developers who have to work around a bunch of these issues to make their pages work in Safari

Re: iOS allows alternative browser engines in Japan

#250

Post by basisword »

vips7L wrote: post #213
lokar wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you explain how? Poor standards implementation? Performance? UX?

I’d like the extension ecosystem from chrome or Firefox. I miss having real Firefox with real Ublock like on Android.

The extension ecosystem that Google has been locking down? You can get the same UBlock extension on Safari and Chrome now (on Safari desktop and iOS).
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