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Apple's grip on iOS browser engines disallowed under proposed EU rules

170 points by guerrilla 4y ago

warning26 4y ago
Good. Even putting aside the discussion on sideloading, Apple blocking all non-Safari browsers is utterly egregious. To think we considered Microsoft simply bundling IE bad in the 90s — imagine if they had software that actively prevented you from installing Netscape.
- als0 4y ago
  Here's what I don't understand. Microsoft had (and still has) a monopoly on desktop computer software. Like 90% of the market. The anti trust concern was that they could abuse their position to gain dominance in another market, such as the browser market. A very genuine concern, given their install base. Apple doesn't have more than 25% share in mobile or desktop markets. People can switch to Android and get what they want. It's egregious if a monopoly restricts you, but for smaller players where do you draw the line? 25% of the market?
  - matthewdgreen 4y ago
    Apple has ~57% of smartphone marketshare in the US.
    - Apocryphon 4y ago
      And gaining https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31136586 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31136586
      - als0 4y ago
        From your link, iOS is at 25% https://stockapps.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/market-dominance-of-smartphone-operating-systems-e1650959646697.png https://stockapps.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/market-domi...
        guiambros 4y ago
        BRIC countries largely dominate the high volume / low end of the range [1], so the share will change drastically per country and region. iOS is at 22% globally [2], but much higher in the US [3]. [1] https://newzoo.com/insights/rankings/top-countries-by-smartphone-penetration-and-users/ https://newzoo.com/insights/rankings/top-countries-by-smartp... [2] https://www.counterpointresearch.com/global-smartphone-share/ https://www.counterpointresearch.com/global-smartphone-share... [3] https://appleinsider.com/articles/22/02/15/apples-iphone-dominated-us-smartphone-market-in-2021 https://appleinsider.com/articles/22/02/15/apples-iphone-dom...
        paulmd 4y ago
        So why should users in those countries should just be discarded out of hand as far as marketshare concerns? Again, globally, an 87/13 split is extremely concerning and the numbers for actual browser share are even more tilted than that. Firefox and Safari are the only holdouts and they collectively make up about 10% of the market, everything else is Chromium in a wig.
        Apocryphon 4y ago
        The root comment in this thread is about market share in terms of monopoly concerns. Therefore it stands to reason that each local jurisdiction, whether the U.S., E.U., South Korea, etc., will determine monopoly standards based on regional marketshare.
        paulmd 4y ago
        The root comment in this thread is about browser marketshare in terms of monopoly terms. Hardware marketshare is actually a tangent to the actual discussion in the first place. Browser monoculture is the problem that - if you'll read back to the OP - this comment thread is supposed to be about. Forcing iOS to open up is a short-term benefit for user freedom and a long-term downside for user freedom due to the monoculture that will result when that 87% marketshare becomes 100% and we see a return to "this browser is not supported, please view this page using Chrome" and having captchas that are impossible to bypass unless you're feeding Google your personal information. Furthermore, even then, we're only at most talking about a 60-40 split even in the most cherrypicked markets... a 60-40 split is not monopoly power really. And in contrast, in the big picture Android already has an 87-13 majority, which is getting into the territory where monopoly is a concern (hence the concern over monoculture and privacy intrusions), and again that's hardware, looking at software the picture is even more bleak and Chrome/Chromium are over 90% marketshare. Anyway, you may not care about the market as a whole, but you still are affected by it regardless, so it matters, even if a few niches do remain majority (but not monopoly) apple.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  - brokenodometer 4y ago
    Substitution and lock-in are also things that the antitrust laws are concerned with as they are relevant to how you define the market in the first place. If the market is for iOS browser engines, Android browsers cannot effectively compete for consumers who are locked-in to the iOS ecosystem due to the switching costs and other barriers that must be surmounted in order for consumers to access those browsers. Almost no one is going to switch from an existing $1000+ phone to a new one solely because of their browser, leading to almost zero cross elasticity of demand between iOS and Android browsers (high cross-elasticity being indicia that products are part of the same market, e.g., mobile browsers). So one way to answer your question would be to say that Apple has complete control over the relevant market, which is the market for iOS browser engines.
    - irrational 4y ago
      But, nobody pays for browsers (anymore). What are they competing for? It is ALWAYS about money. Are they competing to see who can collect your data to see to third parties? Who can show you ads in their browser? Those are both bad things in my opinion, so Apple blocking them is consumer friendly behavior. But, of course, in a country ruled by corporations, this would be seen as bad.
  - saurik 4y ago
    If every supermarket in the West half of the country is owned by one company, that is a monopoly even though they only have 50% of the market, as "the relevant market" gets analyzed to mean "the west side of the country". The real question is whether one believes that iPhone vs. Android counts as morally equivalent to West vs. East, due to how: 1) most normal people only have a single phone, and thereby they can't just randomly pop over to Android to buy something the same way they can just pop over to a different supermarket in a market with competing supermarkets; and 2) high switching costs--which are partly born from an active decision by these companies to make purchases be non-transferable--prevents people from even "moving to the other side of the country" (similar to the high switching costs of physically doing literally that) in order to switch markets.
  - heavyset_go 4y ago
    > Apple doesn't have more than 25% share in mobile or desktop market This is incorrect. In the US, Apple has over 60% of the mobile OS marketshare[1], and 60% of the market is therefore forced to use Safari and only Safari. [1] https://www.pcmag.com/news/ios-more-popular-in-japan-and-us-android-dominates-in-china-and-india https://www.pcmag.com/news/ios-more-popular-in-japan-and-us-...
    - paulmd 4y ago
      You're singling out one particular market and claiming that represents the big picture, when it very much is an exception. Specific niche markets having a small majority of one or the other isn't concerning, someone is going to be on top and 57-43 is basically as equal as it gets even in your cherrypicked example. Globally, Android has 87% of the market and iOS has 13%. That is far far more concerning than Apple having a small majority in one specific market. And to be clear it's not over 60%, even your own source says that's false - you're backing a literal browser monoculture with 87% global hardware marketshare and 90% software marketshare by wrapping yourself in the language of antitrust and competitiveness, and you still can't do it without using falsehoods and exaggerations.
      - heavyset_go 4y ago
        I'm in the US, and advocate for regulation in the US. I do not care about marketshare in the rest of the world, and neither does the FTC. The only statistic that matters in this case is that iOS has 60% of the marketshare in the US, and what happens in other countries is irrelevant.
        paulmd 4y ago
        To be clear, the FTC doesn't have a problem with the current situation, so evidently they don't think it matters either.
        Apocryphon 4y ago
        The FTC's current priority under Lina Khan is data privacy regulation, which is already a huge topic. One can of worms at a time.
  - dmonitor 4y ago
    Apple's mobile marketshare is much higher in the US, which is where an antitrust suit could reasonably happen. It's above 50%
  - orev 4y ago
    > The anti trust concern was that they could abuse their position No. The antitrust concern was that they *did* abuse their position to damage the browser market, which is evidenced by how long IE11 has been around. Luckily the value prop of the web was enough to overcome their strategy. Being a monopoly is not illegal. A company can perfectly legally have a natural monopoly of 100% of a market without being illegal. The problem only comes when they use that position to prevent other competitors from entering the market, or when they use their position to take over other markets.
    - als0 4y ago
      Sorry but where did I say that a monopoly is illegal?
  - _v7gu 4y ago
    Anti-trust doesn't care about monopolies, it cares about market power. Apple does have the market power, as evidenced by the 30% rent they extract from developers.
jdmoreira 4y ago
Soon I will need to use chrome on my iphone just to keep up with webapps that rely on apis not supported by Safari? That's terrible. I already have to use chrome on the desktop to be able to use a hanful of apps and I'm not pleased.
- dv_dt 4y ago
  Chrome gets closer and closer to becoming the new Internet Explorer in terms of browser interoperability, privacy, and lock in.
  - Rhedox 4y ago
    To be fair Chrome is also far ahead of Firefox when it comes to performance and security (not to be confused with privacy). Safari is fast but compatibility is lacking, not just compared to Chrome.
    - olliej 4y ago
      Yeah, but compatibility is already defined as "what chrome does". To be clear I mean quirks, not features. You can easily make objective comparisons on "does feature exist in browser Y" so I'll leave that as an exercise for the reader :D But "compatibility" is things like layout quirks, and before Chrome was the IE of the web, "correct behavior" was "what IE does". A lot of the IE escape was engineering effort devoted to developing IE compatibility. A chrome monopoly is going mean google has functionally complete control of the web, so they can simply state that their behavior is the spec. On top of that they already regularly force the addition of google identity based spying directly into the browser.
      - mmis1000 4y ago
        It 'is' already working in this way. Firefox do support a few WebKit prefixed api due to heavy usage by web developers (also because chrome never finalize them, let them keep prefixed) https://caniuse.com/css-line-clamp https://caniuse.com/css-line-clamp
  - 4y ago
corobo 4y ago
Man I hope this means we’ll be getting Firefox extensions on iOS eventually, that’d be so useful
- cardiffspaceman 4y ago
  I'm afraid it will mean we have to endure Google extensions.
  - emptyparadise 4y ago
    Safari already supports those.
    - ComradePhil 4y ago
      What do you mean? Safari definitely doesn't support Chrome extensions.
      - captn3m0 4y ago
        They probably meant that Chrome WebExtension API is re-used (with some limitations) on Safari. So you can re-pack your Chrome extensions to get them to work with Safari. Of course you can only do this with a Mac.
      - emptyparadise 4y ago
        Safari for iOS supports WebExtensions. Of course Apple has some really weird packaging requirements.
- freediver 4y ago
  This is already possible, (some) Firefox extensions work in Orion browser on iOS.
  - corobo 4y ago
    Aye but the main benefit of using Firefox on iOS is the sync/share with desktop If I was going to break sync I’d probably just use Safari
astlouis44 4y ago
Very excited for this. My team is bringing Unreal Engine to the browser, and it works great on computers but not so much on iOS due to the restrictions that iOS brings. Being able to use a Chromium browser together with WebGPU will enable a whole new distribution path for game developers who don't want to fork over a 30% tax to Apple. The open web allows for direct online distribution with no middlemen, that's always been the beauty of it. Video demo of our platform: https://youtu.be/WSIFyz-2PeY https://youtu.be/WSIFyz-2PeY
- Rhedox 4y ago
  Sounds interesting. How do you store assets? Unless it's a tiny game (for which UE4 isn't a great fit either) you could be looking at having to download 100MB or more every time you launch the game.
  - rektide 4y ago
    Some of the biggest changes in gaming engines is that they have gotten much much more advanced about streaming first low res assets in, starting the game, then continuing to stream high res assets in on the fly. Even if a user doesnt have cached assets (which i think is the main point against your supposition, that assets can be cached after first launch), ideally a modern game could still load very fast at very low fidelity & keep pulling down higher fidelity assets as the user plays.
    - astlouis44 4y ago
      Exactly, this is what we're doing with our asynchronous asset fetching system.
  - astlouis44 4y ago
    We have our own asset fetching system which only loads in what is absolutely necessary, for example you don't need the entire game and can often get away with loading the first 5% or so. Everything else (assets) gets streamed in at runtime in the background.
Apocryphon 4y ago
One of the reasons for why Apple disallowed third-party browser engines is because Mobile Safari alone is allowed to use a JavaScript JIT, ostensibly for security reasons. This is why Firefox on Safari uses WebKit, and why Chrome must rely on iOS's stock webviews rather than Blink's own JIT. Mobile Safari has this via the dynamic-codesigning entitlement. Further reading: https://saagarjha.com/blog/2020/02/23/jailed-just-in-time-compilation-on-ios/ https://saagarjha.com/blog/2020/02/23/jailed-just-in-time-co... Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22401146 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22401146
- usrn 4y ago
  Regardless of the validity of restricting JIT I'm sure many people would be happy having slower JS if they could use different browser engines.
  - Apocryphon 4y ago
    It's possible that faster browser engines could be created, if potentially less secure. It would at least introduce more competitiveness into this space on iOS.
  - hellisothers 4y ago
    “normal” people would pick a slower browser? Why would they do that, for any normal person reason?
    - usrn 4y ago
      I don't see the word "normal" in my comment but judging by their behavior with Windows and Chrome: yes, they will pick whatever works.
    - postalrat 4y ago
      It's not a "slower" browser if it's the only browser that works on sites not supported by safari.
- jsnell 4y ago
makerofspoons 4y ago
Very exciting if this means PWA support on iOS can now reach parity with Android.
- lstamour 4y ago
  PWA support is improving, though. https://firt.dev/ios-15.4b https://firt.dev/ios-15.4b (that post is based on a beta, it’s possible noted bugs will be fixed already, though this is Apple we’re talking about…)
  - dr_spicy 4y ago
    I tried playing around with PWAs the other day, but certain like [0] seem to really jeopardize the "Progressive" part of PWAs which is one of their major differentiatiors. [0] https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=891339 https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=891339
  - mmis1000 4y ago
    What pwa support…? safari's fixed element is like bugged forever since safari 11 or 12. You can't even have a properly fixed header or footer without crazy hack (like wrap the whole site into a fixed element). I don't really know. If they aren't actively sabotaging web app, why such a big obvious problem is left untouched like that. See also: https://github.com/w3c/csswg-drafts/issues/6299 https://github.com/w3c/csswg-drafts/issues/6299
marcofiset 4y ago
EU is making some solid moves in the legislation against tech giants. I love it.
Brian_K_White 4y ago
Yet another case of "Ridicule the gdpr cookie banners all you want but I'll take that over the nothing everyone else has even tried." I cheer them on, banners and all. go go go!
asddubs 4y ago
I do support this in principle, and I don't think apple should be allowed to block other browsers, and I also think they should be forced to allow sideloading in general. That being said, in practice, I fear that this will lead to badness. Google already has so much power over what the web is and is not, and this will only strengthen it further.
- simion314 4y ago
  Apple could actually compete and fix their broken WebGl support, sound API or whatever makes the games not work on their browser. The reason I personally don't support Safari is because I can test it, there is no Safari for Linux and when I tried to use a third party service for testing they were missing the Beta versions and a coworker that had a Mac could not install the Beta because Apple wanted an OS update first. But we support Firefox so if Chrome/Chromium is not on your liking for my stuff you can use Firefox.
  - asddubs 4y ago
    Epiphany is a pretty good safari substitute under linux, although I do share your gripe. In the end I did just buy a used iphone 6s to test stuff on mobile safari, but I agree that I shouldn't have to. Still, I fear that if google manages to do to safari what it did to firefox, that it will be bad for firefox as well. Right now safari is realistically pretty much the last hurdle from people just testing exclusively against the chrome API along with all its bugs and proprietary interfaces.
    - simion314 4y ago
      A phone is not enough, you need a desktop too, most of our issues where with WebGl , first they broke it on iOS and we put a check to detect the mobile devices and disable th ee WebGl feature and use a downgraded 2D version , later Apple decided to update iPads browser to pretend it is a desktop(probably to avoid some websites sending iPad users the mobile version) but this broke our detection and this people where getting the webGl feature that failed on iOS. We fixed this iPad issue but later Apple put on desktop same broken WebGl thing and now we had to detect all newer Safari versions and downgrade them all to the 2d slower and uglier thing. I do not control the WegGl plugin I spoke of so I don't know the details why it broke, anyway we had the issues reported by customers because no developer in our team wants to use Apple stuff. I don't think the GNOME browser would have caught this WebGl issues since is probably related with Apple removing OpenGl support for their drivers.
sytelus 4y ago
It is intriguing to see EU’s vs US’s philosophy differences. Such legislation would never fly in US. People will be up in arms about government interference and not letting businesses figure things out. The general sentiment in US is that government is stupid, incompetent and inefficient. They put more barriers to progress and almost always screw things up even when they are well intentioned. This philosophy has worked out well at least considering there in no Apple, Google, Tesla or other thousands of companies in EU and some how all these creative giants almost always born in US. The concerning part is that all EU legislation get automatically applied in US. For example, none of the US companies have to do stupid “accept cookies” things but they are forced into it anyway.
- sangnoir 4y ago
  Have you considered confounding factors?
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
ridiculous_fish 4y ago
Once web apps work properly across all devices and can provide native-like functionality, how many companies will choose to rebuild their app several times (with the vastly increased development and maintenance costs) [for multiple platforms] rather than just build it once [for the web]. This is uncritically presented as desirable.
- mtomweb 4y ago
  Significantly reducing the costs of app development is desirable in so many different ways.
snowwrestler 4y ago
Well if there was any question whether the EU was more focused on personal data protections or kneecapping U.S. tech companies, this answers it. The reason Google and MS want to get their own browsers onto iOS is to get around the data collecting restrictions built into Safari. This will be a net negative for the personal data privacy of EU citizens. But hey, screw Apple right?
- alexvoda 4y ago
  Not at all. It's about time someone did something about Safari. If Microsoft preinstalling IE was bad, Apple's mandating Safari as the only browser ever is worse. Both leveraged their position in a situation to gain dominance in e different situation. Also, Chrome domination is just as bad as IE domination, but it came about differently.
- zamadatix 4y ago
  Safari isn't the best answer for user privacy either so why grandstand for it as the only thing users should be allowed to run if that's your only concern? There is always a worse option to point at but that doesn't somehow mean Safari should be the only option.
  - Terretta 4y ago
    But Chrome should be the only (inevitable) option? Smartphones with ”Google Inside(tm)” should be (effectively) the only option? As a consumer I care quite a lot about not requiring Google inside my phone, or on my desktop. The tendrils they have in sites are quite enough already, I don’t need them on both server and client… Knowing Android gets me Google, I chose a device that couldn’t be consumed by the borg, and spoke with my money on that. And as a result, my bank, my airline, my social media, all have to support more than one browser engine if they want affluent customer share. I have zero trust in this developer community clamoring for an open web simply so they stop having to test in any browser other than the one they install for dev. This site^H^H^H^H app requires Chrome. // Building websites since 1993 — none of this noise is new, just naive.
fingerlocks 4y ago
I’ve always believed that real reason Apple prevented third parties browser engines was to block calls to mprotect(,,PROT_EXEC). Would love to hear a someone chime in on the technical aspects and implications.
lancewiggs 4y ago
Is this not just going to lead to Chromium dominance, and therefore same issues we've seen before?
stjohnswarts 4y ago
This sounds like a win for Europeans. I don't have much hope for similar legislation here in the states.
bni 4y ago
You will get this Electron banking app and you will like it.

170 points by guerrilla 4y ago

Good. Even putting aside the discussion on sideloading, Apple blocking all non-Safari browsers is utterly egregious. To think we considered Microsoft simply bundling IE bad in the 90s — imagine if they had software that actively prevented you from installing Netscape.

als0 4y ago
Here's what I don't understand. Microsoft had (and still has) a monopoly on desktop computer software. Like 90% of the market. The anti trust concern was that they could abuse their position to gain dominance in another market, such as the browser market. A very genuine concern, given their install base. Apple doesn't have more than 25% share in mobile or desktop markets. People can switch to Android and get what they want. It's egregious if a monopoly restricts you, but for smaller players where do you draw the line? 25% of the market?
- matthewdgreen 4y ago
  Apple has ~57% of smartphone marketshare in the US.
  - Apocryphon 4y ago
    And gaining https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31136586 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31136586
    - als0 4y ago
      From your link, iOS is at 25% https://stockapps.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/market-dominance-of-smartphone-operating-systems-e1650959646697.png https://stockapps.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/market-domi...
      - guiambros 4y ago
        BRIC countries largely dominate the high volume / low end of the range [1], so the share will change drastically per country and region. iOS is at 22% globally [2], but much higher in the US [3]. [1] https://newzoo.com/insights/rankings/top-countries-by-smartphone-penetration-and-users/ https://newzoo.com/insights/rankings/top-countries-by-smartp... [2] https://www.counterpointresearch.com/global-smartphone-share/ https://www.counterpointresearch.com/global-smartphone-share... [3] https://appleinsider.com/articles/22/02/15/apples-iphone-dominated-us-smartphone-market-in-2021 https://appleinsider.com/articles/22/02/15/apples-iphone-dom...
        paulmd 4y ago
        So why should users in those countries should just be discarded out of hand as far as marketshare concerns? Again, globally, an 87/13 split is extremely concerning and the numbers for actual browser share are even more tilted than that. Firefox and Safari are the only holdouts and they collectively make up about 10% of the market, everything else is Chromium in a wig.
        Apocryphon 4y ago
        The root comment in this thread is about market share in terms of monopoly concerns. Therefore it stands to reason that each local jurisdiction, whether the U.S., E.U., South Korea, etc., will determine monopoly standards based on regional marketshare.
        paulmd 4y ago
        The root comment in this thread is about browser marketshare in terms of monopoly terms. Hardware marketshare is actually a tangent to the actual discussion in the first place. Browser monoculture is the problem that - if you'll read back to the OP - this comment thread is supposed to be about. Forcing iOS to open up is a short-term benefit for user freedom and a long-term downside for user freedom due to the monoculture that will result when that 87% marketshare becomes 100% and we see a return to "this browser is not supported, please view this page using Chrome" and having captchas that are impossible to bypass unless you're feeding Google your personal information. Furthermore, even then, we're only at most talking about a 60-40 split even in the most cherrypicked markets... a 60-40 split is not monopoly power really. And in contrast, in the big picture Android already has an 87-13 majority, which is getting into the territory where monopoly is a concern (hence the concern over monoculture and privacy intrusions), and again that's hardware, looking at software the picture is even more bleak and Chrome/Chromium are over 90% marketshare. Anyway, you may not care about the market as a whole, but you still are affected by it regardless, so it matters, even if a few niches do remain majority (but not monopoly) apple.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- brokenodometer 4y ago
  Substitution and lock-in are also things that the antitrust laws are concerned with as they are relevant to how you define the market in the first place. If the market is for iOS browser engines, Android browsers cannot effectively compete for consumers who are locked-in to the iOS ecosystem due to the switching costs and other barriers that must be surmounted in order for consumers to access those browsers. Almost no one is going to switch from an existing $1000+ phone to a new one solely because of their browser, leading to almost zero cross elasticity of demand between iOS and Android browsers (high cross-elasticity being indicia that products are part of the same market, e.g., mobile browsers). So one way to answer your question would be to say that Apple has complete control over the relevant market, which is the market for iOS browser engines.
  - irrational 4y ago
    But, nobody pays for browsers (anymore). What are they competing for? It is ALWAYS about money. Are they competing to see who can collect your data to see to third parties? Who can show you ads in their browser? Those are both bad things in my opinion, so Apple blocking them is consumer friendly behavior. But, of course, in a country ruled by corporations, this would be seen as bad.
- saurik 4y ago
  If every supermarket in the West half of the country is owned by one company, that is a monopoly even though they only have 50% of the market, as "the relevant market" gets analyzed to mean "the west side of the country". The real question is whether one believes that iPhone vs. Android counts as morally equivalent to West vs. East, due to how: 1) most normal people only have a single phone, and thereby they can't just randomly pop over to Android to buy something the same way they can just pop over to a different supermarket in a market with competing supermarkets; and 2) high switching costs--which are partly born from an active decision by these companies to make purchases be non-transferable--prevents people from even "moving to the other side of the country" (similar to the high switching costs of physically doing literally that) in order to switch markets.
- heavyset_go 4y ago
  > Apple doesn't have more than 25% share in mobile or desktop market This is incorrect. In the US, Apple has over 60% of the mobile OS marketshare[1], and 60% of the market is therefore forced to use Safari and only Safari. [1] https://www.pcmag.com/news/ios-more-popular-in-japan-and-us-android-dominates-in-china-and-india https://www.pcmag.com/news/ios-more-popular-in-japan-and-us-...
  - paulmd 4y ago
    You're singling out one particular market and claiming that represents the big picture, when it very much is an exception. Specific niche markets having a small majority of one or the other isn't concerning, someone is going to be on top and 57-43 is basically as equal as it gets even in your cherrypicked example. Globally, Android has 87% of the market and iOS has 13%. That is far far more concerning than Apple having a small majority in one specific market. And to be clear it's not over 60%, even your own source says that's false - you're backing a literal browser monoculture with 87% global hardware marketshare and 90% software marketshare by wrapping yourself in the language of antitrust and competitiveness, and you still can't do it without using falsehoods and exaggerations.
    - heavyset_go 4y ago
      I'm in the US, and advocate for regulation in the US. I do not care about marketshare in the rest of the world, and neither does the FTC. The only statistic that matters in this case is that iOS has 60% of the marketshare in the US, and what happens in other countries is irrelevant.
      - paulmd 4y ago
        To be clear, the FTC doesn't have a problem with the current situation, so evidently they don't think it matters either.
        Apocryphon 4y ago
        The FTC's current priority under Lina Khan is data privacy regulation, which is already a huge topic. One can of worms at a time.
- dmonitor 4y ago
  Apple's mobile marketshare is much higher in the US, which is where an antitrust suit could reasonably happen. It's above 50%
- orev 4y ago
  > The anti trust concern was that they could abuse their position No. The antitrust concern was that they *did* abuse their position to damage the browser market, which is evidenced by how long IE11 has been around. Luckily the value prop of the web was enough to overcome their strategy. Being a monopoly is not illegal. A company can perfectly legally have a natural monopoly of 100% of a market without being illegal. The problem only comes when they use that position to prevent other competitors from entering the market, or when they use their position to take over other markets.
  - als0 4y ago
    Sorry but where did I say that a monopoly is illegal?
- _v7gu 4y ago
  Anti-trust doesn't care about monopolies, it cares about market power. Apple does have the market power, as evidenced by the 30% rent they extract from developers.

jdmoreira 4y ago

Soon I will need to use chrome on my iphone just to keep up with webapps that rely on apis not supported by Safari? That's terrible. I already have to use chrome on the desktop to be able to use a hanful of apps and I'm not pleased.

dv_dt 4y ago
Chrome gets closer and closer to becoming the new Internet Explorer in terms of browser interoperability, privacy, and lock in.
- Rhedox 4y ago
  To be fair Chrome is also far ahead of Firefox when it comes to performance and security (not to be confused with privacy). Safari is fast but compatibility is lacking, not just compared to Chrome.
  - olliej 4y ago
    Yeah, but compatibility is already defined as "what chrome does". To be clear I mean quirks, not features. You can easily make objective comparisons on "does feature exist in browser Y" so I'll leave that as an exercise for the reader :D But "compatibility" is things like layout quirks, and before Chrome was the IE of the web, "correct behavior" was "what IE does". A lot of the IE escape was engineering effort devoted to developing IE compatibility. A chrome monopoly is going mean google has functionally complete control of the web, so they can simply state that their behavior is the spec. On top of that they already regularly force the addition of google identity based spying directly into the browser.
    - mmis1000 4y ago
      It 'is' already working in this way. Firefox do support a few WebKit prefixed api due to heavy usage by web developers (also because chrome never finalize them, let them keep prefixed) https://caniuse.com/css-line-clamp https://caniuse.com/css-line-clamp
- 4y ago

corobo 4y ago

Man I hope this means we’ll be getting Firefox extensions on iOS eventually, that’d be so useful

cardiffspaceman 4y ago
I'm afraid it will mean we have to endure Google extensions.
- emptyparadise 4y ago
  Safari already supports those.
  - ComradePhil 4y ago
    What do you mean? Safari definitely doesn't support Chrome extensions.
    - captn3m0 4y ago
      They probably meant that Chrome WebExtension API is re-used (with some limitations) on Safari. So you can re-pack your Chrome extensions to get them to work with Safari. Of course you can only do this with a Mac.
    - emptyparadise 4y ago
      Safari for iOS supports WebExtensions. Of course Apple has some really weird packaging requirements.
freediver 4y ago
This is already possible, (some) Firefox extensions work in Orion browser on iOS.
- corobo 4y ago
  Aye but the main benefit of using Firefox on iOS is the sync/share with desktop If I was going to break sync I’d probably just use Safari

astlouis44 4y ago

Very excited for this. My team is bringing Unreal Engine to the browser, and it works great on computers but not so much on iOS due to the restrictions that iOS brings. Being able to use a Chromium browser together with WebGPU will enable a whole new distribution path for game developers who don't want to fork over a 30% tax to Apple. The open web allows for direct online distribution with no middlemen, that's always been the beauty of it. Video demo of our platform: https://youtu.be/WSIFyz-2PeY https://youtu.be/WSIFyz-2PeY

Rhedox 4y ago
Sounds interesting. How do you store assets? Unless it's a tiny game (for which UE4 isn't a great fit either) you could be looking at having to download 100MB or more every time you launch the game.
- rektide 4y ago
  Some of the biggest changes in gaming engines is that they have gotten much much more advanced about streaming first low res assets in, starting the game, then continuing to stream high res assets in on the fly. Even if a user doesnt have cached assets (which i think is the main point against your supposition, that assets can be cached after first launch), ideally a modern game could still load very fast at very low fidelity & keep pulling down higher fidelity assets as the user plays.
  - astlouis44 4y ago
    Exactly, this is what we're doing with our asynchronous asset fetching system.
- astlouis44 4y ago
  We have our own asset fetching system which only loads in what is absolutely necessary, for example you don't need the entire game and can often get away with loading the first 5% or so. Everything else (assets) gets streamed in at runtime in the background.

Apocryphon 4y ago

One of the reasons for why Apple disallowed third-party browser engines is because Mobile Safari alone is allowed to use a JavaScript JIT, ostensibly for security reasons. This is why Firefox on Safari uses WebKit, and why Chrome must rely on iOS's stock webviews rather than Blink's own JIT. Mobile Safari has this via the dynamic-codesigning entitlement. Further reading: https://saagarjha.com/blog/2020/02/23/jailed-just-in-time-compilation-on-ios/ https://saagarjha.com/blog/2020/02/23/jailed-just-in-time-co... Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22401146 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22401146

usrn 4y ago
Regardless of the validity of restricting JIT I'm sure many people would be happy having slower JS if they could use different browser engines.
- Apocryphon 4y ago
  It's possible that faster browser engines could be created, if potentially less secure. It would at least introduce more competitiveness into this space on iOS.
- hellisothers 4y ago
  “normal” people would pick a slower browser? Why would they do that, for any normal person reason?
  - usrn 4y ago
    I don't see the word "normal" in my comment but judging by their behavior with Windows and Chrome: yes, they will pick whatever works.
  - postalrat 4y ago
    It's not a "slower" browser if it's the only browser that works on sites not supported by safari.
jsnell 4y ago

makerofspoons 4y ago

Very exciting if this means PWA support on iOS can now reach parity with Android.

lstamour 4y ago
PWA support is improving, though. https://firt.dev/ios-15.4b https://firt.dev/ios-15.4b (that post is based on a beta, it’s possible noted bugs will be fixed already, though this is Apple we’re talking about…)
- dr_spicy 4y ago
  I tried playing around with PWAs the other day, but certain like [0] seem to really jeopardize the "Progressive" part of PWAs which is one of their major differentiatiors. [0] https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=891339 https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=891339
- mmis1000 4y ago
  What pwa support…? safari's fixed element is like bugged forever since safari 11 or 12. You can't even have a properly fixed header or footer without crazy hack (like wrap the whole site into a fixed element). I don't really know. If they aren't actively sabotaging web app, why such a big obvious problem is left untouched like that. See also: https://github.com/w3c/csswg-drafts/issues/6299 https://github.com/w3c/csswg-drafts/issues/6299

marcofiset 4y ago

EU is making some solid moves in the legislation against tech giants. I love it.

Brian_K_White 4y ago

Yet another case of "Ridicule the gdpr cookie banners all you want but I'll take that over the nothing everyone else has even tried." I cheer them on, banners and all. go go go!

asddubs 4y ago

I do support this in principle, and I don't think apple should be allowed to block other browsers, and I also think they should be forced to allow sideloading in general. That being said, in practice, I fear that this will lead to badness. Google already has so much power over what the web is and is not, and this will only strengthen it further.

simion314 4y ago
Apple could actually compete and fix their broken WebGl support, sound API or whatever makes the games not work on their browser. The reason I personally don't support Safari is because I can test it, there is no Safari for Linux and when I tried to use a third party service for testing they were missing the Beta versions and a coworker that had a Mac could not install the Beta because Apple wanted an OS update first. But we support Firefox so if Chrome/Chromium is not on your liking for my stuff you can use Firefox.
- asddubs 4y ago
  Epiphany is a pretty good safari substitute under linux, although I do share your gripe. In the end I did just buy a used iphone 6s to test stuff on mobile safari, but I agree that I shouldn't have to. Still, I fear that if google manages to do to safari what it did to firefox, that it will be bad for firefox as well. Right now safari is realistically pretty much the last hurdle from people just testing exclusively against the chrome API along with all its bugs and proprietary interfaces.
  - simion314 4y ago
    A phone is not enough, you need a desktop too, most of our issues where with WebGl , first they broke it on iOS and we put a check to detect the mobile devices and disable th ee WebGl feature and use a downgraded 2D version , later Apple decided to update iPads browser to pretend it is a desktop(probably to avoid some websites sending iPad users the mobile version) but this broke our detection and this people where getting the webGl feature that failed on iOS. We fixed this iPad issue but later Apple put on desktop same broken WebGl thing and now we had to detect all newer Safari versions and downgrade them all to the 2d slower and uglier thing. I do not control the WegGl plugin I spoke of so I don't know the details why it broke, anyway we had the issues reported by customers because no developer in our team wants to use Apple stuff. I don't think the GNOME browser would have caught this WebGl issues since is probably related with Apple removing OpenGl support for their drivers.

sytelus 4y ago

It is intriguing to see EU’s vs US’s philosophy differences. Such legislation would never fly in US. People will be up in arms about government interference and not letting businesses figure things out. The general sentiment in US is that government is stupid, incompetent and inefficient. They put more barriers to progress and almost always screw things up even when they are well intentioned. This philosophy has worked out well at least considering there in no Apple, Google, Tesla or other thousands of companies in EU and some how all these creative giants almost always born in US. The concerning part is that all EU legislation get automatically applied in US. For example, none of the US companies have to do stupid “accept cookies” things but they are forced into it anyway.

sangnoir 4y ago
Have you considered confounding factors?
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

ridiculous_fish 4y ago

Once web apps work properly across all devices and can provide native-like functionality, how many companies will choose to rebuild their app several times (with the vastly increased development and maintenance costs) [for multiple platforms] rather than just build it once [for the web]. This is uncritically presented as desirable.

mtomweb 4y ago
Significantly reducing the costs of app development is desirable in so many different ways.

snowwrestler 4y ago

Well if there was any question whether the EU was more focused on personal data protections or kneecapping U.S. tech companies, this answers it. The reason Google and MS want to get their own browsers onto iOS is to get around the data collecting restrictions built into Safari. This will be a net negative for the personal data privacy of EU citizens. But hey, screw Apple right?

alexvoda 4y ago
Not at all. It's about time someone did something about Safari. If Microsoft preinstalling IE was bad, Apple's mandating Safari as the only browser ever is worse. Both leveraged their position in a situation to gain dominance in e different situation. Also, Chrome domination is just as bad as IE domination, but it came about differently.
zamadatix 4y ago
Safari isn't the best answer for user privacy either so why grandstand for it as the only thing users should be allowed to run if that's your only concern? There is always a worse option to point at but that doesn't somehow mean Safari should be the only option.
- Terretta 4y ago
  But Chrome should be the only (inevitable) option? Smartphones with ”Google Inside(tm)” should be (effectively) the only option? As a consumer I care quite a lot about not requiring Google inside my phone, or on my desktop. The tendrils they have in sites are quite enough already, I don’t need them on both server and client… Knowing Android gets me Google, I chose a device that couldn’t be consumed by the borg, and spoke with my money on that. And as a result, my bank, my airline, my social media, all have to support more than one browser engine if they want affluent customer share. I have zero trust in this developer community clamoring for an open web simply so they stop having to test in any browser other than the one they install for dev. This site^H^H^H^H app requires Chrome. // Building websites since 1993 — none of this noise is new, just naive.

fingerlocks 4y ago

I’ve always believed that real reason Apple prevented third parties browser engines was to block calls to mprotect(,,PROT_EXEC). Would love to hear a someone chime in on the technical aspects and implications.

lancewiggs 4y ago

Is this not just going to lead to Chromium dominance, and therefore same issues we've seen before?

stjohnswarts 4y ago

This sounds like a win for Europeans. I don't have much hope for similar legislation here in the states.

bni 4y ago

You will get this Electron banking app and you will like it.