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Apple's Browser Engine Ban Persists, Even Under the DMA

open-web-advocacy.org

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Re: Apple's Browser Engine Ban Persists, Even Under the DMA

#251

Post by quitit »

simondotau wrote: post #183
v5v3 wrote: post #2

That you for your ongoing work Open Web Advocacy.

The open web requires browser diversity in order to remain healthy, far more than it needs individuals to have browser choice. The former is important for the health of open standards; the latter only matters if you believe the web is whatever Google implements in Chrome. Without healthy browser diversity, the web might as well be renamed the Chrome Protocol and the "browser choice" you care about so much is gone.

Android already has all of the things being demanded of Apple and there is no dawn of a new age. No demand for web apps. No demand for alternative browser engines. All that's there is the Chrome desert with a near-total market share and a sprinkling of alternative app stores that few trust or use.

It's a form of regulatory capture, coopting legislation to rid the market of remaining competition.

Re: Apple's Browser Engine Ban Persists, Even Under the DMA

#252

Post by troupo »

Seattle3503 wrote: post #243
danbruc wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are not generally used to this in our field but just think about the amount of paperwork you have to go through in order to construct a bridge or an airplane. Browsers have become a critical component and it seem not really unexpected that there will eventually be legal requirements to help to ensure that browsers are safe given the amount of software that runs on top of browsers. And this is also not new, there h…

How will regulations on browsers make us safer though?

By making their implementors responsible for implementation and safety errors, presumably. See every other engineering profession and business

Re: Apple's Browser Engine Ban Persists, Even Under the DMA

#253

Post by lern_too_spel »

superkuh wrote: post #170
rafaelmn wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google has an incentive to make everything work through the web. Safari has the incentive to gatekeep the app store revenue, which is why PWAs are a joke on iOS. Google also has bad incentives (Android, ads) but Safari is the IE6 of modern web.

Work? No. Google has an incredible incentive to make everything javascript so they can make money through spying. The web is HTML.

The web gives users a lot of control using extensions. That's why companies don't like it. Google tries to fight it by not supporting extensions in its mobile browser. Apple is more egregious, preventing people from doing many things using the web platform entirely, with no escape hatch.

Re: Apple's Browser Engine Ban Persists, Even Under the DMA

#254

Post by odyssey7 »

pxeger1 wrote: post #113

Relatedly, all Google apps (e.g. Maps) on iOS try very hard to push Chrome on you (even though iOS Chrome still has to use WebKit). When you click an external link, they present you the options of Chrome, Google (the search app), or Safari. This happens even if you don't have Chrome/Google installed, so they take you to the App Store instead of opening the webpage. If you choose Safari, it still doesn't open Safari,…

Gosh, thanks for laying that out more clearly for me. I'll try giving Apple Maps another go.

Re: Apple's Browser Engine Ban Persists, Even Under the DMA

#255

Post by quitit »

scarface_74 wrote: post #124
lozenge wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes but there's no reason to use another browser today, because the browsers aren't able to add differentiating features. I don't think you are correct to assume games can't go to the web. Any feature they need from native APIs can be added to the web. Full screen, gyro, vibration, multi touch, payment APIs, notifications, WASM and GPU support are already on the web!

Then why aren’t profitable games based on web technology on Android if it is just Apple holding it back? But it’s not about the technology even then. Games make money via in app purchases by whales. In app purchasing is easy and they are able to tap into kids spending money. Most parents aren’t going to put their credit cards on kids phones. They will let kids do in app purchases with parental controls that are avail…

Considering Apple isn't even a go-to choice for gamers, the idea that iOS's minority market-share is holding back Windows, Android (and even macOS), is nothing short of farcical b/s-ing.

Heck, most developers don't even produce versions of their games for any Apple hardware, even though there are plenty of cross-platform development suites.

Re: Apple's Browser Engine Ban Persists, Even Under the DMA

#256

Post by FirmwareBurner »

abirch wrote: post #213
RamblingCTO wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you mean the US GDP is bigger because the US lacks consumer and environmental protection?

We can look at China that is focused on growth at all costs. If you look at rare earth metals, they're equally distributed but they are toxic to extract. The west has pretty much stopped extracting. China is still going full steam ahead. https://e360.yale.edu/features/china-wrestles-with-the-toxic... China would bulldoze my hometown in 2 seconds if it meant an addition 0.1 GDP. I would say that the US is between Euro…

>We can look at China that is focused on growth at all costs.

It's easy to look down on others from an ivory tower in the wealthy developed west, but consider that China was dirt poor a few decades ago. What else would you have chosen? Die of poverty while protecting the environment? Same with India. They did what they had to in order to survive.

The west did that too in the industrial revolution. China had to speed run decades of industrial evolution in years. So why gaslight other countries for doing the same thing your country did a few decades earlier?

The good news for them is China recently stopped extracting rare earths on the cheap for the west. Their cities, air, water are waaay cleaner than they were just a decade ago. Chinese cities are actually livable now.

That's why the west is scrambling to find alternative sources on the cheap in other places that will let their environment be trashed, like Ukraine and Africa, since China doesn't want to be the west's easily exploitable environmental pay-piggy anymore, and good for them.

The bad news for the planet is that environmental destruction is not stopping, it's just moving away from China to other poorer places with weaker economies and militaries who are more malleable to western pressure and corporate demands.

>China would bulldoze my hometown in 2 seconds if it meant an addition 0.1 GDP.

Your western nation most likely did the same from the industrial revolution till WW2.

Re: Apple's Browser Engine Ban Persists, Even Under the DMA

#257

Post by troupo »

stockresearcher wrote: post #245
danaris wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if you want to make a browser in the EU, you have to be extremely serious about it. Why is this a problem? No, really; why is it a bad thing that if you want to create a complete new browser, you have to actually be serious and committed to it? A web browser is a pretty significant piece of software, and it sits between you and the entire web . You do your banking through it. You access your email through it. You b…

Yes, I don't want to say that this is a problem (or not a problem). The original article has a quote from Apple saying that they don't know why nobody has submitted any new browser for them to approve and then goes on to list a bunch of reasons for why this is the case. All of which center on Apple being obstinate. If Apple was suddenly a nice friendly corporation, would the browser landscape in the EU change much? T…

> If Apple was suddenly a nice friendly corporation, would the browser landscape in the EU change much?

Not immediately. Because there are literally no browser vendors beyond the existing three. Everyone else is just söapping on different coats pf paint on Chromium.

But then there's Ladybird for example https://2025.stateofthebrowser.com/speaker/andreas-kling/

Re: Apple's Browser Engine Ban Persists, Even Under the DMA

#258

Post by lern_too_spel »

fkyoureadthedoc wrote: post #160
resource_waste wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is some wild moral coating.

It's the unfortunate truth. Nobody gives a shit about Firefox, not even Mozilla. Safari is the only major non chromium browser. You get rid of it and Google basically has full control of web standards and we've come full circle.

I use Firefox because it is the only mobile browser worth a damn. Mozilla screwed up by wasting resources on FirefoxOS and other projects that had no business case in the early days of mobile browser adoption, but they eventually got their act together and started supporting extensions and other differentiating features that people want. They're still slow-walking container support, but nobody else has that either.

Re: Apple's Browser Engine Ban Persists, Even Under the DMA

#259

Post by scarface_74 »

quitit wrote: post #255
scarface_74 wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then why aren’t profitable games based on web technology on Android if it is just Apple holding it back? But it’s not about the technology even then. Games make money via in app purchases by whales. In app purchasing is easy and they are able to tap into kids spending money. Most parents aren’t going to put their credit cards on kids phones. They will let kids do in app purchases with parental controls that are avail…

Considering Apple isn't even a go-to choice for gamers, the idea that iOS's minority market-share is holding back Windows, Android (and even macOS), is nothing short of farcical b/s-ing. Heck, most developers don't even produce versions of their games for any Apple hardware, even though there are plenty of cross-platform development suites.

I think you are misinterpreting what “games” are. Mobile gaming and in app purchases of loot boxes and other pay to win mechanics are a much bigger market than console or PC games.

Re: Apple's Browser Engine Ban Persists, Even Under the DMA

#260

Post by troupo »

p0w3n3d wrote: post #166

First of all. We must not agree that all the market will be taken by one engine (i.e. Chromium) Sadly there's no incentive for this, of course we have Firefox (still, right?) but it may perish because of underfunding for example. We used to have opera, IE, those engines are lost. So what I think about the EU directive is that it basically allows one company (Google) take over the whole market. Because what we have to…

> So what I think about the EU directive is that it basically allows one company (Google) take over the whole market.

Yup. It's a lose-lose situation

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