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Apple confirms it's breaking iPhone web apps in the EU on purpose

techcrunch.com

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Re: Apple confirms it's breaking iPhone web apps in the EU on purpose

#811

Post by paulmd »

Nullabillity wrote: post #206
paulmd wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, as I’ve said before: the root problem here is that the EU wants to outlaw apples business model. People don’t think of it that way, they tell themselves all the reasons why that’s a good thing, but that’s ultimately what it is - a legislative solution to end the “android vs iOS” debate for all time. The argument is walled gardens shouldn’t exist, so the solution is to either legislate requirements that apple de…

Apple is free to switch to a less fascistic business model.

Is SELinux also fascistic? Grow up.

if someone wants to sell systems where the only supported configuration is SELinux, why should that be illegal?

Re: Apple confirms it's breaking iPhone web apps in the EU on purpose

#812

Post by dangus »

TheCapeGreek wrote: post #490
dangus wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think PWAs are an outright failure and a technical solution looking for a problem. I don’t even know where to find one. For one thing, if Apple is complying with the EU’s alternative App Store and browser engine mandate, they’re even less useful than before. Why do I as a user want a PWA when I could have a native app?

>technical solution looking for a problem In some regards yes. In practical regards they're a threat to app store margins (on all app stores, not just Apple), so there's no incentive to truly support them other than developers being loud about it. >I don’t even know where to find one. Because Apple has crippled the ability for you to use them, so developers can't really spend time working on them. Chicken and egg pro…

I also don’t know where to find one on my Windows PC.

Re: Apple confirms it's breaking iPhone web apps in the EU on purpose

#813

Post by hamandcheese »

_8j50 wrote: post #792
hamandcheese wrote: post #477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, probably because the digital markets act isn't an Apple Tax. It merely provides more freedom to users. > They undermine the entire concept of free market capitalism by forcing companies to do unprofitable things instead of letting consumers vote with their wallets by using alternative products of which there are many If this truly forces unprofitable behavior, we should expect Apple to pull out out Europe. But…

> It merely provides more freedom to users. Users already have freedom and apple has a minority market share in europe already. > If this truly forces unprofitable behavior, we should expect Apple to pull out out Europe. But I would bet my life that doesn't happen. Less profit does not mean no profit. You essentially expect companies who can't compete because of rules made to prevent them from competing to pull out?…

> Users already have freedom and apple has a minority market share in Europe already.

There is nowhere near enough competition in the market to give people meaningful choice.

> You essentially expect companies who can't compete because of rules made to prevent them from competing to pull out?

If a product can't compete in a market without immoral practices, then I think it is entirely reasonable for that product to not exist in that market.

> I hope america never catches that nanny state disease.

I'm American by the way. The most American thing of all is freedom to run the software you want on a device you own. Live free, or die.

Re: Apple confirms it's breaking iPhone web apps in the EU on purpose

#814

Post by acdha »

xvector wrote: post #808
acdha wrote: post #798

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you’re going to lionize startups as the only thing which matters, you can’t exclude Spotify. And, yes, that list is very uneven because the U.S. financial sector has been very supportive of those but it’s not zero just because you don’t follow it. This is an especially interesting time to discuss it because the current layoff bloodbath has not been evenly distributed and the European side which never flew so high…

When the EU's biggest competitor to Apple, Google, and OpenAI is Spotify and Booking.com, there's a serious problem with the EU. It shows that the region is barely capable of encouraging innovation that will meaningfully advance technological progress, which is the single biggest predictor of quality of life in human history. Yes, the EU might be nicer to work in, more vacation days, less layoffs. Such a view is shor…

> When the EU's biggest competitor to Apple, Google, and OpenAI is Spotify and Booking.com, there's a serious problem with the EU.

Whoa, where are you getting Apple and Google from? They’re outside of your arbitrary window, too, and Apple massively predates modern startup culture, even though I can understand why you want to claim some profitable companies to avoid having to make the claim that US quality of life is massively improved by companies trying to cause massive unemployment (OpenAI) or profit from it (Uber, DoorDash, etc.).

It is interesting seeing how focused you are on GDPR, because the only businesses that prevents are the ones which rely on users not controlling their personal data. There have been a lot of those because it offered easy paths to high user numbers, but they also tend not to be great for consumers - for all your lofty talk about “literal humanity-changing advancements”, most of the US startup market has been far less dramatic attempts to pull an Uber on some existing market.

Re: Apple confirms it's breaking iPhone web apps in the EU on purpose

#815

Post by paulddraper »

niutech wrote: post #803
paulddraper wrote: post #768

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Size, camera, performance, battery life. I say this as a lifelong Android user......there's nothing that actually competes with iPhone 13 mini.

Xperia XZ2 Compact is almost the same size, has better camera (19MP vs 12MP), the same 4GB RAM + SD card which iPhone doesn't have: https://m.gsmarena.com/compare.php3?idPhone1=9082&idPhone2=1...

Depending on your carrier (not Verizon, not Sprint).

Re: Apple confirms it's breaking iPhone web apps in the EU on purpose

#816

Post by paulddraper »

ajross wrote: post #796
paulddraper wrote: post #769

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can keep using your green aquarium lights all you want. But if you install their newest version of aquarium lights, they won't have a green option.

No, you already bought the lights, and they've always been green. You don't "install the newest version" of lights. Just like you don't for hardware devices like phones. You install software updates, which clearly have a presumption of not removing features for which you paid. That's just straight up common law warranty stuff, come on. Again, this kind of allegorical confusion is generally a sign that you're wrong an…

> software updates which clearly have a presumption of not removing features

oof, that is not a good assumption

Re: Apple confirms it's breaking iPhone web apps in the EU on purpose

#817

Post by ricardobeat »

seszett wrote: post #237
ricardobeat wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean like this? https://www.tomsguide.com/news/hackers-are-using-a-new-trick... This stuff is part of the reason people commit to the Apple ecosystem despite its shortcomings. While Android dominates globally, iOS has nearly 60% market share in the US and some other countries.

I'm not especially aware of this particular thing, but sending an SMS with a link to a web page that asks to install a PWA seems to me like it would work on any platform that allows PWAs, irrespective of whether PWAs are restricted to one rendering engine or not, and totally unrelated to the exploit outlined in the post I was responding to (about a somewhat unclear process to me, that would open sites in the backgrou…

That was in response to your statement that “in all those years this year not been a problem on the dominant platform”. It has. The exploit in the news article is only possible because of the way Android lets websites initiate a PWA install, with a prompt that looks like a normal app install, lacking any warning about unsecure sources.

Android was also infamous for causing users to develop permission-blindness and just accept everything, later replaced by every app havinf an extensive permission list that everyone just shrugs and accepts as normal.

Re: Apple confirms it's breaking iPhone web apps in the EU on purpose

#819

Post by jakub_g »

xvector wrote: post #387
leifross wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the contrary, this tantrum by no means works to lessen the growing idea that control of the platform should be put into the hands of a independent third party. While not European in origin, the platform holds and manages tremendous value for us, to the extent where small changes can cause mayor economic disruption, and Apple has not been managing it fairly. And for a state actor, which exists to serve the common g…

The EU is economically meaningless on the grand scale. They are only 7% of Apple's revenue, and similarly low for other companies. And every day they become a less profitable market to operate in. The EU holds power only as long as the rest of the world is willing to deal with its BS. Trying to "break up Apple" is simply not within the EU's power as Apple is worth more than the EU's whole tech industry combined. Appl…

> [EU] are only 7% of Apple's revenue

*citation needed.

Looking at [0] it seems to be around 25%.

[0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/382175/quarterly-revenue...

Re: Apple confirms it's breaking iPhone web apps in the EU on purpose

#820

Post by jc_dc »

noirscape wrote: post #749
jc_dc wrote: post #748

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tend to agree with all of this. Manifest is way too finicky. Would be interesting to see how the play store changes in the event of Android honoring code signing for side loading like windows. Eg..no scare screen on side loaded apk’s as long as they’re code signed. I suspect the App Store would live on as a consumer focused App Store and the enterprise apps would direct distribute which makes sense anyhow cause IAP d…

Android doesn't do scare screens actually. The only real difference between installing an APK from the play store and an APK you found on the internet is that the application calling the installer has a one time "OK" to make sure you are the one who wants to install an APK; Play Store has this as well, but the default distribution has it turned on, by going in the settings you can fiddle with it and turn it off if yo…

Yeah, still have what equates to a scare screen. Tells you file may be harmful upon download, then you need to change a setting which is streamlined to what it was before, but still a scare screen. Now you can allow from source…but the source isn’t the web address, it’s the initiating application eg. Chrome or Files so there’s a huge security hole with this implementation presumably on purpose to manufacture the incident they need to justify their behavior.
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