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Japan: Apple Must Lift Browser Engine Ban by December

open-web-advocacy.org

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Re: Japan: Apple Must Lift Browser Engine Ban by December

#71

Post by lucasban »

charcircuit wrote: post #47
reorder9695 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It'd probably be easier but not good, diversity in engines is good here. We don't want something like the IE monopoly again.

The issue that you bringing up was more of an issue of Microsoft thinking they were finished with the web and the lack of automatic updates. It was not due to lack of diversity of engines, but of market share of a single product. This is very different from having the dominant browser engine invested in the success of the web with automatic updates to ensure that the web platform is able to advance and not stagnate.

As a counterpoint, this does make it so that one group has disproportionate power over what features make it into that engine, or how they are implemented. What if their incentives change over time and are no longer aligned with what we might consider the success of the web?

Re: Japan: Apple Must Lift Browser Engine Ban by December

#72

Post by simondotau »

cguess wrote: post #69
ajaimk wrote: post #63

Is this a good thing? Doesn't this just expand the marketshare of Chromium?

It does indeed. Safari on iOS is the one thing keeping the web from just being "All Chrome Everywhere".

Haven’t you heard? The web is dead. It’s now called the Chrome Platform. The standard is defined as whatever Google implements.

Re: Japan: Apple Must Lift Browser Engine Ban by December

#74

Post by benoau »

garyclarke27 wrote: post #3

This is good news, the US should join in aswell in stopping this despicable behaviour by Apple. Apple handicaps browsers because web apps are the only viable alternative to Native Apps which generate huge commission for Apple.

It's a factor in the DOJ antitrust case that's going to trial soon -

> 43. Developers cannot avoid Apple’s control of app distribution and app creation by making web apps—apps created using standard programming languages for web-based content and available over the internet—as an alternative to native apps. Many iPhone users do not look for or know how to find web apps, causing web apps to constitute only a small fraction of app usage. Apple recognizes that web apps are not a good alternative to native apps for developers. As one Apple executive acknowledged, “[d]evelopers can’t make much money on the web.” Regardless, Apple can still control the functionality of web apps because Apple requires all web browsers on the iPhone to use WebKit, Apple’s browser engine—the key software components that third-party browsers use to display web content.

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.njd.544... (p22)

Re: Japan: Apple Must Lift Browser Engine Ban by December

#75

Post by betaby »

simondotau wrote: post #72
cguess wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does indeed. Safari on iOS is the one thing keeping the web from just being "All Chrome Everywhere".

Haven’t you heard? The web is dead. It’s now called the Chrome Platform. The standard is defined as whatever Google implements.

> Chrome Platform.

The West's Internet is just Cloudflare's proxy.

Re: Japan: Apple Must Lift Browser Engine Ban by December

#76

Post by ezfe »

sunaookami wrote: post #73
ajaimk wrote: post #63

Is this a good thing? Doesn't this just expand the marketshare of Chromium?

If Safari can only survive because Apple has a monopoly on browsers on iOS then it's a shit browser.

Even if Safari was perfect, people would still switch to Chrome because that's what they think they need.

Re: Japan: Apple Must Lift Browser Engine Ban by December

#77

Post by ezfe »

Shank wrote: post #67
fidotron wrote: post #52

Japan has a funny relationship with Apple. For example, the Felica ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FeliCa ) based ticket system is built into every iPhone globally, making life in Japan significantly easier for foreign iOS users. More surprisingly actually using the tickets does not require any app at all - you just use Apple Pay. This is all narrowing the scope of what advantages native apps have (they do still have…

FeliCa Networks support is the direct result of the fact that mobile transit and mobile payments use in Japan predates the iPhone. Mobile Suica and Osaifu-Keitai already existed, and Apple needed to compete. It started with Japanese SKU iPhones but expanded globally. Even now in Japan, mobile payments are anything but a monopoly. When Apple is forced to compete, they do things like add Suica with Express Transit. Pay…

Android phones don't support it globally so saying that Apple is "forced" to compete where Android doesn't proves the point that they're doing more than needed.

Re: Japan: Apple Must Lift Browser Engine Ban by December

#79

Post by Shank »

ezfe wrote: post #77
Shank wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FeliCa Networks support is the direct result of the fact that mobile transit and mobile payments use in Japan predates the iPhone. Mobile Suica and Osaifu-Keitai already existed, and Apple needed to compete. It started with Japanese SKU iPhones but expanded globally. Even now in Japan, mobile payments are anything but a monopoly. When Apple is forced to compete, they do things like add Suica with Express Transit. Pay…

Android phones don't support it globally so saying that Apple is "forced" to compete where Android doesn't proves the point that they're doing more than needed.

Just because you can provision Felica cards outside of Japan doesn't mean that you can actually use them. It's not really global support if you can add Suica in the US and then not use it. More likely is that Felica Networks agreed with this logic and Apple is only paying the license fee for JP devices, or has some side deal about not delineating between regions. If Apple didn't support Felica, it would just move more users in Japan onto physical cards or Android.

Re: Japan: Apple Must Lift Browser Engine Ban by December

#80

Post by loa_in_ »

yupyupyups wrote: post #48
HHad3 wrote: post #35

I would welcome if this global legislative push would end up in a more open app ecosystem for iOS overall. BrowserEngineKit is a thin wrapper over XPC and iOS' extension system. The system would be so much better to develop for if XPC was an open API, and JIT for isolated sub-processes was permitted without Apple's blessing. * Messengers could have separate sub-processes for preprocessing untrusted inputs -- iMessage…

>and as we all know that'll be the end of the world. I'll enjoy seeing all the accounts on MacRumors clawing their eyes out when that happens. It would be naive to think that Apple isn't funding sites and narratives on the internet to serve their economic interests. One of the most outlandish one being that freedom to use your phone however you want would necessarily compromise security and privacy for everyone. It's…

Freedom to use your phone however you like would make bug tracking on Apple's side more complicated and therefore more expensive and therefore it damages their profit bottom line. They would happily freeze development altogether if it was a feasible option.
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