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What happened in this article reinforces my belief that devices marketed as "general purpose" devices _must_ allow users to, in some way, run their own software

by rekoil 5y ago

What happened in this article reinforces my belief that devices marketed as "general purpose" devices _must_ allow users to, in some way, run their own software on them "unrestricted" (standard sandboxing of course, mostly the same rules as App Store apps, just none of the application class rules or arbitrary API access restrictions). In the case of ChromeOS they do allow you to install Linux which satisfies this on paper (and to me, but perhaps not everyone?), however the iPad does not allow this in any way (the App Store, as pointed out by the author, explicitly disallows browsers), and I think there needs to be regulations on makers of devices that are classed as "general purpose computing devices".

alisonkisk 5y ago
erichocean 5y ago
You can install your own browser on your own iOS device, you simply can't distribute it through the App Store.
- rekoil 5y ago
  Not really, you can only do that for 7 days at a time, unless each device owner pays $99 yearly, and even then there's no simple and obvious way to do it.
- LinAGKar 5y ago
  No you can't (unless you jailbreak)
  - null_object 5y ago
    - rekoil 5y ago
      > you can install one of the numerous alternative browsers that are available and updated for iOS 12 Those "browsers" are more like skins, they can't actually modify how websites are rendered or how JavaScript is executed. So no, the article is correct, you can't install actual browsers from the App Store. Fun fact: Because of this fact, for a brief moment in history Google actually purposefully caused Google Chrome on iOS to crash when they detected that JavaScript on a site was attempting to perform a uXSS attack[1], because they couldn't actually stop the attack since that would require modifying WebKit. [1]: https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=841105 https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=841105
    - LinAGKar 5y ago
      Show me an iOS browser that's not just a Safari reskin
- null_object 5y ago
  > You can install your own browser on your own iOS device, you simply can't distribute it through the App Store. Or you can use one of the plentiful choices of browser that are distributed on the App Store and still updated for iOS 12.
  - rekoil 5y ago
    All of which run WebKit under the hood and can not implement support for optional-chaining on their own as that is a JavaScript engine thing which they can't touch.

by rekoil 5y ago

alisonkisk 5y ago

erichocean 5y ago

You can install your own browser on your own iOS device, you simply can't distribute it through the App Store.

rekoil 5y ago
Not really, you can only do that for 7 days at a time, unless each device owner pays $99 yearly, and even then there's no simple and obvious way to do it.
LinAGKar 5y ago
No you can't (unless you jailbreak)
- null_object 5y ago
  - rekoil 5y ago
    > you can install one of the numerous alternative browsers that are available and updated for iOS 12 Those "browsers" are more like skins, they can't actually modify how websites are rendered or how JavaScript is executed. So no, the article is correct, you can't install actual browsers from the App Store. Fun fact: Because of this fact, for a brief moment in history Google actually purposefully caused Google Chrome on iOS to crash when they detected that JavaScript on a site was attempting to perform a uXSS attack[1], because they couldn't actually stop the attack since that would require modifying WebKit. [1]: https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=841105 https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=841105
  - LinAGKar 5y ago
    Show me an iOS browser that's not just a Safari reskin
null_object 5y ago
> You can install your own browser on your own iOS device, you simply can't distribute it through the App Store. Or you can use one of the plentiful choices of browser that are distributed on the App Store and still updated for iOS 12.
- rekoil 5y ago
  All of which run WebKit under the hood and can not implement support for optional-chaining on their own as that is a JavaScript engine thing which they can't touch.