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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

#41

Post by pmontra »

ThatMedicIsASpy wrote: post #11
TheDong wrote: post #4

I agree with the point about non-EU web developers. As long as people in the US can't test their web app on "firefox for iOS" without first buying a plane ticket to the EU and getting an EU sim card, all eu-only browser engines on iOS will be second-class citizens. I think the next logical extension is that actually limiting general public use across the entire world makes apple less compliant with the DMA. Mozilla w…

What a load of BS. How can I test my website on safari without owning Apple hardware? I can't so I don't.

I develop on Firefox and it works on Chrome and Safari with no issues on all OSes (Windows, Mac and Linux). In the extremely rare case when there are some platform specific issues customers tunnel to my dev machine and check the web app (it's Vue) with their iPhones or Macs. I remember only two issues in about 3 years with this customer, all of them with the Apple ecosystem:

1. A form that could not find anymore a picture when they selected it from the Mac Photos app. Apparently Photos creates a temporary file that disappears before the browser submits the form, when probably reads it again from disk. No problems when the picture is loaded from a normal folder. We should read the picture into the memory of the browser and add it to the form from there, of transition to a JSON request. My customer decided that it's a niche case and it's not worth working on it.

2. A slight misalignment of an arrow and a checkbox, but that also happens in a different way with Chrome and Firefox, so there is some structural bug in the DOM/CSS of those UI elements. We're working on that.

Except those issues I can't remember any cross browser or cross OS problems in the last years. If it works in Firefox it works in Chrome and Safari too.

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

#42

Post by tehbeard »

oblio wrote: post #29
TheDong wrote: post #4

I agree with the point about non-EU web developers. As long as people in the US can't test their web app on "firefox for iOS" without first buying a plane ticket to the EU and getting an EU sim card, all eu-only browser engines on iOS will be second-class citizens. I think the next logical extension is that actually limiting general public use across the entire world makes apple less compliant with the DMA. Mozilla w…

> As long as people in the US can't test their web app on "firefox for iOS" without first buying a plane ticket to the EU and getting an EU sim card, all eu-only browser engines on iOS will be second-class citizens. VM is EU. Heck, it can be an ephemeral instance on EC2, so it would only cost money while in use, probably tens of cents or something. If there's a will, there's a way.

Remote debug on iOS is ass unless you are fully invested into their ecosystem.

And apple has some "nice" licencing nonsense around their software that makes VMs not the "obvious" solution.

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

#43

Post by giingyui »

fabian2k wrote: post #13

The simple fact that they restrict this to the EU, where they are forced to provide the option, shows that Apple is not serious about this. They're barely fulfilling the letter of the law here. If this would be only about security as Apple claims, there would be no reason to restrict this to the EU and to force Browser vendors to publish other engines as separate apps after they meet the security conditions Apple imp…

It’s actually the opposite, no? If it’s about security it makes sense they choose to compromise the security of their platform only where they are forced to.

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

#44

Post by Jyaif »

> Safari is the highest margin product Apple has ever made.

Anybody has the number of committers to webkit from Apple? It would give us a good idea on the margin of the product.

Assuming 100 engineers costing Apple 500k per year, that's 50 millions in investment for 20 billion in revenue.

> For each 1% browser market share that Apple loses for Safari, Apple is set to lose $200 million in revenue per year.

They should be investing like crazy to make Safari the best browser out there instead of just relying on their monopole. And why the fuck is there no Windows version to make their iOS users happy?

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

#45

Post by pmontra »

lmm wrote: post #22
ThatMedicIsASpy wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What a load of BS. How can I test my website on safari without owning Apple hardware? I can't so I don't.

> How can I test my website on safari without owning Apple hardware? Download the windows version from their website? If Apple doesn't want to make their browser available for other hardware that's on them and they'll suffer the consequences. Blocking other entities from making their browser available on Apple's hardware is very different.

I remember Safari for Windows. It had a Mac chrome that was extremely weird to look at on Windows XP. It did work but Apple killed it after a short while, maybe because they decided that after all the iPhone was not going to use web apps Apple could not cash on, but native apps Apple could get their 30% from the store.

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

#46

Post by agust »

oblio wrote: post #29
TheDong wrote: post #4

I agree with the point about non-EU web developers. As long as people in the US can't test their web app on "firefox for iOS" without first buying a plane ticket to the EU and getting an EU sim card, all eu-only browser engines on iOS will be second-class citizens. I think the next logical extension is that actually limiting general public use across the entire world makes apple less compliant with the DMA. Mozilla w…

> As long as people in the US can't test their web app on "firefox for iOS" without first buying a plane ticket to the EU and getting an EU sim card, all eu-only browser engines on iOS will be second-class citizens. VM is EU. Heck, it can be an ephemeral instance on EC2, so it would only cost money while in use, probably tens of cents or something. If there's a will, there's a way.

Testing mobile interactions such as scrolling and swiping, as well as animations' performance cannot be done through a VM.

Only real devices allow to test these aspects properly.

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

#47

Post by jeroenhd »

ThatMedicIsASpy wrote: post #11
TheDong wrote: post #4

I agree with the point about non-EU web developers. As long as people in the US can't test their web app on "firefox for iOS" without first buying a plane ticket to the EU and getting an EU sim card, all eu-only browser engines on iOS will be second-class citizens. I think the next logical extension is that actually limiting general public use across the entire world makes apple less compliant with the DMA. Mozilla w…

What a load of BS. How can I test my website on safari without owning Apple hardware? I can't so I don't.

You can run Gnome Web for free. It's the open source version of WebKit so you won't be able to see all the tweaks Apple adds to their proprietary build, but it's close enough that obvious differences are visible, at least on desktop.

Safari on iOS cannot be tested without paying Apple so I generally don't for my personal stuff either.

All of that said, American developers often can't even be bothered to support characters like ñ or é, so I think it's quite reasonable to expect an EU browser to be a second class citizen for American developers. We can work around that pretty easily by simply not buying products and services that don't work well in the EU.

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

#49

Post by Batman8675309 »

Jyaif wrote: post #44

> Safari is the highest margin product Apple has ever made. Anybody has the number of committers to webkit from Apple? It would give us a good idea on the margin of the product. Assuming 100 engineers costing Apple 500k per year, that's 50 millions in investment for 20 billion in revenue. > For each 1% browser market share that Apple loses for Safari, Apple is set to lose $200 million in revenue per year. They should…

> They should be investing like crazy to make Safari the best browser out there instead of just relying on their monopole. And why the fuck is there no Windows version to make their iOS users happy?

Simple. Apple doesn't want you to use Windows. They want you to buy an expensive Apple computer instead.

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

#50

Post by robin_reala »

Jyaif wrote: post #44

> Safari is the highest margin product Apple has ever made. Anybody has the number of committers to webkit from Apple? It would give us a good idea on the margin of the product. Assuming 100 engineers costing Apple 500k per year, that's 50 millions in investment for 20 billion in revenue. > For each 1% browser market share that Apple loses for Safari, Apple is set to lose $200 million in revenue per year. They should…

Why would you only count engineers?
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