301–310 of 356 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hehehe, like Apple tried to pull "we'll keep back AI from EU as a punishment" ? Were there riots? :)
Just change your language to English on your device and you have it. They did not really try.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I stand by what I said. Apple used to be the leading smartphone manufacturer in China, now they aren't even in the top 5. Sometimes things change, and I doubt China's in shambles because Airdrop isn't ubiquitous. I see no reason why Japan would be different. The notion that American tech companies are invincible is really only a view held by Americans. The overwhelming majority of people I speak to internationally do…
Maybe not brand loyalty... but people, universally, want the best product available. Today, for a large portion of the world, that is perceived to be the iPhone. The iPhone being banned in Japan because of some policy dispute with the government is going to go over like a bag of wet cement. People may not care that it's "Apple", but they do care the "Best" is being banned for reasons the population doesn't care about…
Maybe I'm not a person, but I almost always pick one of the cheaper if not cheapest option. Rarely, if ever, do I care enough to get the best of anything...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Most people on desktops / laptops interact with these services via a web browser, which has very limited permissions on the system. Not sure how you could control that tightly on a fully open iOS.
So iOS must allow web apps.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
To be fair a tiny fraction of marketshare can represent a very attractive level of revenue depending on the market
We thought the same when the Slovenian government passed a law requiring Apple (among others) to translate their operating systems to Slovene. Apple was the outlier here, as Android, Windows, even various Linux distros had all been translated years ago. To the surprise of many, they complied, releasing a full translation of decent quality in a stunningly short time. The market they'd otherwise lose access to would be…
It depends on the cost.
Translating the OS to Slovene really just costs whatever a translation service costs, plus review & a bit of ongoing maintenance. Even on the high end, I doubt it would push 8 figures up front, and probably 6 in yearly maintenance.
If compliance with the Japanese law means every iOS build in every region must support alternate browser engines, what's the cost to Apple? They clearly must believe it's high (otherwise they would have done so already). Brand risk? Maybe, and hard to price that, but at Apple's valuations and revenues that could be 9+ figures depending on severity. Loss of revenue from Google (if they still pay to be the default search engine in Safari)? That could be a large number too.
It all comes down to the numbers. How much will Apple lose by pulling out of Japan (possibly betting on such a move being temporary, hoping Japan changes their mind, and also hoping that their reputation worldwide doesn't suffer) vs allowing alternate browser engines worldwide?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What is your argument that Safari is not a good browser? Using market forces to encourage more consolidation into a single engine is *bad*.
> What is your argument that Safari is not a good browser? https://ios404.com/ Safari is missing many performance and device-related features that would allow you to create a compelling web application and bypass the App store. I tried once, you run into the most unexpected roadblocks and come to the conclusion "I have to release this as an App." Well... guess why.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Firefox is overall a fine browser. Still has 2% marketshare. There's also the fact that websites themselves need to be mindful of multiple browser engines existing because of Safari. Once users are able to install Chrome on iPhones, developers will just abandon every other engine wholesale.
> Firefox is overall a fine browser. Still has 2% marketshare Firefox used to have a 25-30% share before Mozilla shat the bed by neglecting it while treating Firefox like a money-piñata to fund a series of dead-end, copy-cat projects in their big-tech cosplay era. Blaming Chrome for Firefox and Safari being shit (as reflected by the percentage of users who voluntarily use the respective browsers) removes their culpab…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Who told you that these are reasons the population doesn't care about? I know at least in Europe there has been wide support for initiatives such as the DMA, even knowing what it would entail. You're running on conjecture here.
You think the population of Japan will be ok with banning iPhones because their governments thinks other web browsers should run on the devices too? How many iPhone users, outside of a small group of "techies" are even aware there are other mobile browsers? Think about your parents or grandparents - not you, someone who has vastly more knowledge in this area. How many "normals" really care... I'd wager near zero.
Why wouldn't they? Japan has no codified Apple-specific lock-in. Their citizens won't miss a criminally illegal iPhone any more than they demand to import the gold Escobar phone, Huawei handsets or the FBI's ANOM. It would be effortless from a legislation perspective and harm Apple far more than it harms Japanese people.
Japan isn't part of FIVE-EYES, their government doesn't rely on Apple for surveillance purposes. There's no real potential for political blowback unless America's politicians take it personally. Japanese citizens would just buy different phones, no different from what China has already done (without any pushback). If America demands that they give Apple market access, they can embargo the iPhone under security pretenses instead.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> contradiction to apply the competitive logic of proprietary platforms to fundamental OSS infrastructure. Chromium is controlled and developed by Google. And it's dangerous to have fundamental infrastructure in the hands of one company. Here's a reminder what they did with Android: https://www.androidauthority.com/google-android-development-...
They can do nothing to Android because as the article points out Samsung or the entirety of China and the billions of other people in the world will just work on a fork and that will become consensus. If you have one company acting as the dominant player in an open source project, the fact that everyone else can walk away puts an implicit limit on what they can do. To literally take Chromium as an example. Look at Go…
Yes, yes, billions of people will work on the fork.
> To literally take Chromium as an example. Look at Google's manifest v3 changes.
That literally changed nothing in Chrome dominance.
> Brave and all the other chromium based browsers just put their own ad blocking shim on top and they're fine.
You mean: they literally just slap a skin on top of a Google-developed project, do no actual browser development of their own (do they even participate in web standards?), have vanishingly few users and are likely hemorrhaging money?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> to switch to Blink, working together with Google making an alternate browser engine for iOS. How is switching to Blink, a Google-controlled engine, supposed to help creating an "alternative engine"?
Because Blink is an alternate engine to Webkit.
So what would Firefox (or anyone) gain by Firefox ditching their engine and helping Google?