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Something must absolutely be done to allow competing browser engines on iOS, such an anti-competitive behaviour is astonishing. How much money did Apple make th

• flenserboy 6y ago
  Only if Apple can have two versions of iOS on offer: one that is locked down and possibly/putatively safe; the other that is wild-west, Android-like in quality of store offerings, with all the tracking issues that goes with that. I know which one I'd choose, and it isn't the latter; my suspicion is that the market would make the same decision.
  • toyg 6y ago
    That's a false dichotomy. Apple itself is famous for picking good defaults, I'm sure they can implement a decent compromise that simply moves the needle a bit more towards consumers. Free browsers and a simple option to allow 3rd party appstores, set to off by default and somewhat bothersome to switch (i.e. buried into iTunes account screens, behind password, possibly with a periodic reminder every few months) would be more than enough. People who want to stay safe in the Appstore garden have nothing to do, and everyone else can go the extra mile if they want to. Anything else, like two iOS versions, is simply a provocation on the level of "we cannot unbundle IE".
    • zepto 6y ago
      “People who want to stay safe in the Appstore garden have nothing to do, and everyone else can go the extra mile if they want to.“ This is where this line of reasoning goes wrong. People will be persuaded to go out of the App Store ecosystem regardless of whether it is good for them or not. Tens of billions of dollars and the most valuable advertising real estate on Facebook, Amazon, and the front page of Google, not to mention Epic and the other TenCent owned games companies will all be used to convince users to install alternative App Store. Facebook and Amazon will presumably bundle stores directly into their apps. Why wouldn’t many other companies do this. Presumably TikTok would.
      • tekknik 6y ago
        > People will be persuaded to go out of the App Store ecosystem regardless of whether it is good for them or not. This. We devs do a great/horrible enough job of this already being lazy with implementations and saying “Chrome is the only supported browser”
      • toyg 6y ago
        This reasoning presumes that consumers will see no advantage at all in staying in the Apple Appstore. If true, this would simply prove that the Apple Appstore is effectively uncompetitive in the market, and can only profit in a situation of monopoly. But it doesn’t matter, because all this is effectively false in practice. The overwhelming majority of people can barely be bothered to change their desktop browser, and even then they mostly do it only when directed (by their IT or their power-user of reference). This idea that they will all suddenly go tweak-crazy and install every appstore under the sun is simply an exaggeration, a strawman propped up to defend Apple’s utterly anticompetitive practices.
        • zepto 6y ago
          “This reasoning presumes that consumers will see no advantage at all” You’re going to need to explain this. I don’t see anything in what I wrote that leads to the conclusions in your first paragraph. 1. Users may not understand the security/privacy benefits until after they have sacrificed them. 2. There will be very large competitors trying to persuade them that there are no benefits. E.g. https://www.theverge.com/2020/12/16/22178068/facebook-apple-newspaper-ads-ios-privacy-changes https://www.theverge.com/2020/12/16/22178068/facebook-apple-... 3. Alternate stores will pay for exclusives and users will be forced to use them or lose important apps. 4. Key apps such as Facebook itself will just build stores into their apps. As to your second paragraph: “The overwhelming majority of people can barely be bothered to change their desktop browser, and even then they mostly do it only when directed..” This is true, which is precisely why only Facebook and Google plus Amazon and a few others, E.g. Epic, will have the resources to persuade users to establish large alternative stores. Google advertised Chrome on the front page, and on TV. This is exactly what would happen with alternative stores. “This idea that they will all suddenly go tweak-crazy and install every appstore under the sun is simply an exaggeration..” A strawman is when you present a deliberately weak version of another person’s argument, and then attack it. This paragraph of yours is a strawman. Nobody alluded to anyone going tweak crazy etc. Nobody defended Apple. My comment was a response to this: “People who want to stay safe in the Appstore garden have nothing to do, and everyone else can go the extra mile if they want to.“ Which is clearly an unrealistic depiction of how things would be.
• bzzzt 6y ago
  In what universe is Apple (a private company) responsible for the growth of the Web as an app platform? (which was not a design consideration when the web was invented). And who could make a sincere argument of being damaged by Apple not caring enough? Is it Apple's responsibility to make your life easier? In that case I've got a long list of companies to sue...
  • Daishiman 6y ago
    Apple has deliberately not fixed rendering inconsistencies in Safari when every other browser works more or less ina standardized manner. Most frontend devs that I know making PWAs complain endlessly about the number of exceptions and workarounds for Safari, and indeed it does slow down development and ends up being a justification for contemplating dedicated mobile apps.
  • agust 6y ago
    The problem is not that Apple doesn't care enough about the Web. If they don't want to add features to Webkit, that's fine. The problem is that they prevent other browsers to add these features, because they prevent them from using their browser engines. That way, they prevent these browsers to really compete with theirs (Safari). Because if we could run the real Chrome on iOS, with all the APIs it supports, it's obvious everyone would ditch Safari straight away. And more importantly, that way they prevent Web apps from competing with native apps. Because obviously, who would use a Web app which can't even send push notifications instead of a native app with all the native APIs it has access to? So the problem is not Apple not caring enough about the Web. The problem is Apple having anti-competitive behaviour regarding Web browsers and application platforms on iOS.
    • tannhaeuser 6y ago
      It's true that Apple outright bans apps that themselves could be vectors for platforms such as Flash back in its day. Today's "browsers" with their ever-increasing scope surely fit that criterion. I'm not defending Apple, but the idea that the web is an "open" platform (when it's overwhelmingly just Chrome) should not be used as an argument here, when Google employs just other anti-competitive tactics.