8 ms·

Apple's Assault on Standards

87 points by freetonik 1y ago

lapcat 1y ago
> Market competition underlies the enterprise of standards. It creates the only functional test of designs and functions as a pressure release valve that enables standards-based ecosystems route around single-vendor damage. Without competition, standards bodies have no purpose, and neither they, nor the ecosystems they support, can retain relevance. This is a strange rant about Apple specifically, because Apple, Google (the author's former employer), and Microsoft (the author's current employer) collectively monopolize both web browser market share and consumer OS market share on desktop and mobile. There is no competition, there are no web standards anymore except what the monopolistic browser vendors decide, and indeed the WHATWG successfully executed a coup d'état against the W3C standards body. Worldwide, Android has higher market share than iOS, Windows higher than macOS. I'm not trying to defend Apple, but I do think the author neglects to mention the essential role of his employers in this monopoly, destruction of competition, and assault on standards. The author calls WebKit a "sham" of an open source project, not mentioning that Google used to participate in WebKit but then abandoned it, forking into a Google-controlled browser engine. Google's dominance of the web is so complete that even Microsoft was forced to abandon its own browser engine and adopt Google's. And we've seen the results of that: websites that only work in Chromium—thereby forcing browser vendors to adopt Chromium, furthering Google's monopolization—and worse, the debilitation of web browser extensions via the deprecation of Manifest V2. And if Apple doesn't happen to implement whatever Google decides, the author complains about it; why doesn't the author complain about how Google is driving all of the so-called "standards"? Why is the author not complaining about the lack of diversity in web browser engines? And even Firefox is ultimately beholden to Google, ironically arguing in court to preserve Google's monopoly so that Firefox can continue to receive Google money, Mozilla's main source of financing, even while Google continues to monopolize and force browser engines other than its own into obscurity. Firefox is a shell of its former self. Again, this is not a defense of Apple. But Google and Microsoft are equally bad. Apple is at worst a duopolist, so how about talking about the other side of the duopoly? The author seems to think that Apple is specifically targeting the web, trying to undermine it, but as a Mac user and developer for almost 2 decades, I don't think this is specific to the web or Safari. Whether it's malice or incompetence, Apple has been undermining the Mac too. Their software quality overall is now atrocious. And their UI is becoming atrocious too with "Liquid Glass", on all of Apple's platforms. If you focus only on Safari and WebKit, you're missing the forest for the trees.
- IAmBroom 1y ago
  Duopolist => triopolist
  - MBCook 1y ago
    Is it really a triopoly? Yeah MS has Egde, but they ditched their own engine and are now yet another Chromium browser. Plus Edge isn’t exactly a force in the market right? So I’m not sure they have the power to count.
    - boxed 1y ago
      Maybe they mean firefox?
      - MBCook 1y ago
        Oh thank you, that would make sense. Since the GP comment had been talking about Google/Apple/MS that was the three I was thinking of. FF fits way better.
  - thayne 1y ago
    Apple is a duopolist, with Google, for Mobile OS[1]. The OP argued that Apple was a monopolist for mobile devices among the wealthy. [1]: Yes, there are linux phones, but those are such a tiny piece of the market, that it's still a duopoly.
- Steltek 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - coliveira 1y ago
    Apple's lockdown of the iOS platform is exactly why people buy Apple products. The day iOS is dominated by Google and MS, is the day I stop buying it.
    - 1y ago
llm_nerd 1y ago
This was a brutal read. It's as if someone wrote a simple thesis and ran it through an LLM to make it so pretentiously over the top it's unreadable. I suspect almost no one who actually upvoted this read the content, but instead just like the title and hit the arrow. "Apple has poisoned the well through a monopoly on influence which it has parleyed into suppression of browser choice. This is an existential threat to the web, but also renders web and internet standards moot." This is patently ridiculous, and sounds like the sort of tired nonsense that was the norm maybe a decade ago. Now, in 2025, to still be railing this off? Apple's influence on the web hasn't been lower in two decades. This is ridiculous. It's one of those "no one likes my PWA, and somehow Apple is to blame" busted logic breaks we see on HN daily. "Apple alone must be on the hook to implement any and every web platform feature shipped by any and every other engine." I get that this is rhetorical bombast to try to make Apple eat crow for their Safari/webkit monopoly on iOS, but it falls apart given how laughably silly of an idea it is. Apple absolutely should be forced to allow alternate browser engines, presuming those browser engines are not Chromium/Blink based. Firefox should have their engine. Anyone else who actually makes an engine should be able to deploy it to iOS. Chromium/Blink? Absolutely no way. And anyone who doesn't understand why has absolutely no idea how Apple's malicious greed has paradoxically protected the web from a "Made For Chrome" world.
- jajuuka 1y ago
  Agreed, this post is overly verbose for no real purpose and makes several claims that are laughable. It reads like a the position of someone inside the tempest in a teapot.
- doodpants 1y ago
  It made me feel dumb when I couldn't even understand the tl;dr at the top.
  - rpdillon 1y ago
    The TL;DR at the top is what made me decide to not read the rest of it. It's clearly overwrought writing, designed to sound sophisticated without getting down to the root of the issue as clearly as I would like. Plain language is better when discussing topics like this, I think.
yankcrime 1y ago
Worth pointing out that this was written by the "Microsoft Partner Product Architect on Edge", a product which Microsoft speed-ran its enshittification.
- robenkleene 1y ago
  Summary of the original author's (Alex Russell) background from his about page (https://infrequently.org/about-me/ https://infrequently.org/about-me/) (it seemed odd to me to just focus on his most recent role): > Microsoft Partner Product Architect on the Edge team and Blink API OWNER. It is my professional mission to build a web that works for everyone. > From 2008-2021, I was a software engineer at Google working on Chrome, Blink, and the web platform. I served as the first Web Standards Tech Lead for Chrome (2015-2021) and was a three-time elected member of the W3C Technical Architecture Group (2013-2019) and a representative to TC39 for a decade.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
N_Lens 1y ago
While the article seems to have a histrionic tone, it’s essentially correct that Apple have been unwilling to cooperate on standards (despite overtly signalling the opposite) and have had to be forced by regulation or market forces. There are plenty of examples of this, Safari/iMessage/lightning port etc. - sent from my iPhone
- rob_c 1y ago
  Yep, they cooperate to a point and then decide that they're doing their own thing anyway. This isn't new. When they were small nobody cared about firewire (even if it was better). Then they did it with lightning to keep hold of their devices again. Then there is the whole not supporting USB 3.X but 3.0 and 4 for "reasons". Now they also don't care about software and web standards, same company, same problems. They clearly see "standards" as "competition" at a corporate/management level.
- CharlesW 1y ago
  > …it’s essentially correct that Apple have been unwilling to cooperate on standards (despite overtly signalling the opposite) and have had to be forced by regulation or market forces. That's a strange take on Apple's actual relationship with standards. Like every tech company, Apple has used proprietary technologies when necessary to deliver an experience that meets its (including its users') requirements. But Apple also has a long, well-documented history of adopting, participating in, and pioneering the use of standards. https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/qffbgp/which_standards_have_originated_from_within_apple/ https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/qffbgp/which_standar... If, in your view, Apple is incapable of doing anything Not Evil, you can still frame its contributions to the history of computing standards as "commoditizing their complements".
  - mdhb 1y ago
    Anyone who’s actually being in the room with people from Apple when talking about standards I’m sure would be more than happy to correct you on the fantasy you have constructed here. The author of this post is one of them who actually has a long list of these horror stories which I don’t know he has talked about much publicly but he has very good reasons for making the claims he is making.
827a 1y ago
I dislike Apple's behavior as much as the next guy, but my goodness what a difficult, unfocused piece of reading.
taeric 1y ago
I think a good argument can be made that the standards somewhat move a bit too slowly to add things? (Or, conversely, can be too eager to add some features.) Probably a bit of a struggle between de jure and de facto. It can be frustrating, as many of the more important standards out there were de facto. We try and pass them off as otherwise, but "div/span/XmlHttpRequest" and plenty of others were in practice before they were part of the standard. None of which is to excuse players from not at least accurately advertising what standard they support. There should be consumer protections involved on that. And I think a decent argument can be made that stricter compliance can be expected from the big players.
igrunert 1y ago
The "Chrome Commit Tracker" linked is a pretty interesting set of visualizations that I hadn't come across before. Makes it a lot easier to get a feel for the sizes of the various teams, and how they change over time. https://chrome-commit-tracker.arthursonzogni.com/organizations/commits/ https://chrome-commit-tracker.arthursonzogni.com/organizatio...
- syndeo 1y ago
  That's crazy. I knew Google's would be a lot bigger, but DANG.
JimDabell 1y ago
> The result has been API enclosure; appropriation of commodity capabilities that themselves are standards-based — e.g., USB, Bluetooth, NFC, file storage, etc. — by a proprietary ecosystem and denial of even the safest and most privacy-preserving versions of those features by open, interoperable, and standards-based application platforms. WebUSB, WebBluetooth, WebNFC are not standards. They are Blink-only non-standard APIs. Google employees wrote these specifications and proposed that they become standards. In order to become standards, they need more than one independent implementation. So in practice, this means that they ask their counterparts at Mozilla and Apple for feedback and approval. Both Mozilla and Apple rejected WebUSB, WebBluetooth, and WebNFC on privacy and security grounds. This is what Mozilla has to say about WebUSB: > we believe that the security risks of exposing USB devices to the Web are too broad to risk exposing users to them This is what Mozilla has to say about WebBluetooth: > This model is unsustainable and presents a significant risk to users and their devices. This is what Mozilla has to say about WebNFC: > We believe Web NFC poses risks to users security and privacy — https://mozilla.github.io/standards-positions/ https://mozilla.github.io/standards-positions/ This is not Apple’s doing. The reason these things are not standards is because Google have been unable to convince anybody outside of Google to implement them, even when they pay Mozilla half a billion dollars a year. Perhaps you think that Mozilla and Apple are too sensitive about potential privacy and security issues relating to new protocols proposed by the world’s biggest ad company. Did you know that after Google wrote a spec. for WebMIDI and shipped it in Chrome, porn companies started using it to fingerprint and track people? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23679063 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23679063 > Apple alone must be on the hook to implement any and every web platform feature shipped by any and every other engine. This is basically the author saying “Hey, you know those specifications we proposed that nobody wanted to implement but us? Let’s force Apple to implement them! Now we’ve got two independent implementations and they can be standards now!” Why on earth would he do this? > Hi, I'm Alex Russell, a Microsoft Partner Product Architect on the Edge team and Blink API OWNER. […] From 2008-2021, I was a software engineer at Google working on Chrome, Blink, and the web platform. — https://infrequently.org/about-me/ https://infrequently.org/about-me/ > The sham of WebKit as an Open Source project Chrome was created as a fork of that “sham” open-source project.
- pjmlp 1y ago
pjmlp 1y ago
Chrome folks complaining about Apple not adopting "standards".
- slightlyoff 1y ago
  0 for 2. Impressive.
- cnst 1y ago
  Maybe enough with the character assassinations? The first thing I do on an Android is skip the Google Account screen (bypassing the Play Store), open the pre-installed Chrome browser to install F-Droid, and then uninstall/disable Chrome. You can then install any other browser from F-Droid, or through Aurora Store through F-Droid, without any login credentials for any service. Can you do that on an iPhone or iPad? Can you install any app without having an Apple Account? Can you uninstall Safari and replace it with any other browser? (For those unaware, Chrome and Firefox on iOS in the App Store are simply skins for Safari, having the exact same rendering bugs and issues as Safari; so, there's actually no way to install any other browser besides Safari on iOS.)
  - JimDabell 1y ago
    > Chrome and Firefox on iOS in the App Store are simply skins for Safari They are not. They are required to use WebKit, which means they use the same rendering engine as Safari, but there is far more to a web browser than just its rendering engine. They are not just skins.
    - cnst 1y ago
      It's difficult to have an argument when you keep redefining the words. An app without a rendering engine is not a web-browser, it's far more akin a skin.
  - pjmlp 1y ago
    Not until Chrome advocates stop pretending their proprietary APIs based on ChromeOS features are standards.
cnst 1y ago
Lots of dismissive comments just because the author works in the industry, but who else will be able to shed the light on these things if not the people in the know? BTW, consider this: on Android, you can install any browser with any rendering engine. The only reason you cannot install Safari, is because Apple won't make it for Android. On iOS, the only rendering engine available is Safari's WebKit. Apple won't allow any alternatives. It wouldn't be a problem if Safari was perfect, but it's clearly not.
cnst 1y ago
> Both fear and fervour about these proprties developed against a backdrop of libertarian1 attitudes toward regulation and competition. > The internet's most consequential designs took competitive markets as granted. In the old days, you'd stop reading the article if it had typos or obvious grammatical or other mistakes. Today, we're more intrigued to read one, simply because it's an indication that it wasn't blindly written by AI?
TheTon 1y ago
The author doesn’t attempt to address the issue that Apple and iOS are the only remaining effective bulwark against Google’s complete control of the web. Think about what Google’s end game looks like if they are able to convince lawmakers and regulators around the world to force Apple to allow Chrome on iOS. Google will continue to spam standards proposals and implementations that Apple or Mozilla will be unwilling to adopt for various reasons. Google will continue to advertise Chrome heavily, and push users of its other services to install and use Chrome exclusively. Google search will prioritize sites that use Chrome specific technologies. Google Gemini will generate code that uses Chrome specific APIs. When Chrome reaches sufficient market share, Google will start to use Chrome to disadvantage computing platforms that they do not control completely. New features will come to Android and ChromeOS first. Bugs may go unaddressed on other platforms. I realize it’s frustrating as a web developer to have to deal with browser specific issues, or to be unable to take advantage of necessary APIs or platform features from your web app. It is also frustrating to be blocked from the App Store because Apple wants to avoid competition in some area. The current situation is unfair and far from ideal. Apple are not the good guys here. But, framing the issues as being entirely about Apple and not addressing the situation with Google doesn’t work. And, unfortunately, many commentators (including the author of this article) as well as regulators (including the EU), don’t seem to get this. If these folks get what they are asking for, we aren’t going to enter a golden age with a single web platform that is feature rich and open to all equally, we are all just going to get crushed by Google.
- slightlyoff 1y ago
  The author here. It wasn't addressed in this post because it was treated separately several years ago in the same series (linked at the top): https://infrequently.org/2022/06/apple-is-not-defending-browser-engine-choice/ https://infrequently.org/2022/06/apple-is-not-defending-brow... TL;DR is that the premise of the argument is false, or at least almost entirely so, and deprives Apple of agency, when in fact it has all the power in the equation.
  - wtallis 1y ago
    That article also does not appear to have anything to say about the validity of "standards" that are nothing more than Google's feature creep for web browsers. At some point, you need to actually defend the idea that a web browser should be able to enumerate what Bluetooth and USB devices you have connected. Dancing around such issues is what's making your "Assault on Standards" claim sound so hollow. You need to justify how your position doesn't simply boil down to "Apple should follow Google's lead".
arbirk 1y ago
While the article rightly critiques Apple's strategy of kneecapping the web to protect its App Store, it overlooks the user-centric view of these "crimes." Many users don't want websites having deep hardware access like Bluetooth; they see it as a necessary security boundary. The "Lightning frustration" was also largely a tech-media narrative, not a pain point for those invested in the ecosystem. We also can't ignore Apple's massive open-source contributions (LLVM, Swift, WebKit), and in many regards the most faithful adopter of the USB and Thunderbolt standards. Ultimately, it's a security trade-off. There's a reason iOS exploits command millions more than Android's. That best-in-class security is a direct product of the walled garden. For many, that's a more valuable feature than the total interoperability the author champions.
- privatelypublic 1y ago
  Why bring up lightning? It's a dead issue, and I searched and don't see it mentioned in the article.
  - arbirk 1y ago
    Nice catch. I rarely respond to anything without research and in this case my research lead to the off-topic but twin issue of hardware standard adoption. You caught me. It looks silly. Sorry. I'll be better :-)
alex_suzuki 1y ago
I kind of agree with the author, I just wished his writing were more to the point, and less sprinkled with pseudo-sophistication.

87 points by freetonik 1y ago

> Market competition underlies the enterprise of standards. It creates the only functional test of designs and functions as a pressure release valve that enables standards-based ecosystems route around single-vendor damage. Without competition, standards bodies have no purpose, and neither they, nor the ecosystems they support, can retain relevance. This is a strange rant about Apple specifically, because Apple, Google (the author's former employer), and Microsoft (the author's current employer) collectively monopolize both web browser market share and consumer OS market share on desktop and mobile. There is no competition, there are no web standards anymore except what the monopolistic browser vendors decide, and indeed the WHATWG successfully executed a coup d'état against the W3C standards body. Worldwide, Android has higher market share than iOS, Windows higher than macOS. I'm not trying to defend Apple, but I do think the author neglects to mention the essential role of his employers in this monopoly, destruction of competition, and assault on standards. The author calls WebKit a "sham" of an open source project, not mentioning that Google used to participate in WebKit but then abandoned it, forking into a Google-controlled browser engine. Google's dominance of the web is so complete that even Microsoft was forced to abandon its own browser engine and adopt Google's. And we've seen the results of that: websites that only work in Chromium—thereby forcing browser vendors to adopt Chromium, furthering Google's monopolization—and worse, the debilitation of web browser extensions via the deprecation of Manifest V2. And if Apple doesn't happen to implement whatever Google decides, the author complains about it; why doesn't the author complain about how Google is driving all of the so-called "standards"? Why is the author not complaining about the lack of diversity in web browser engines? And even Firefox is ultimately beholden to Google, ironically arguing in court to preserve Google's monopoly so that Firefox can continue to receive Google money, Mozilla's main source of financing, even while Google continues to monopolize and force browser engines other than its own into obscurity. Firefox is a shell of its former self. Again, this is not a defense of Apple. But Google and Microsoft are equally bad. Apple is at worst a duopolist, so how about talking about the other side of the duopoly? The author seems to think that Apple is specifically targeting the web, trying to undermine it, but as a Mac user and developer for almost 2 decades, I don't think this is specific to the web or Safari. Whether it's malice or incompetence, Apple has been undermining the Mac too. Their software quality overall is now atrocious. And their UI is becoming atrocious too with "Liquid Glass", on all of Apple's platforms. If you focus only on Safari and WebKit, you're missing the forest for the trees.

IAmBroom 1y ago
Duopolist => triopolist
- MBCook 1y ago
  Is it really a triopoly? Yeah MS has Egde, but they ditched their own engine and are now yet another Chromium browser. Plus Edge isn’t exactly a force in the market right? So I’m not sure they have the power to count.
  - boxed 1y ago
    Maybe they mean firefox?
    - MBCook 1y ago
      Oh thank you, that would make sense. Since the GP comment had been talking about Google/Apple/MS that was the three I was thinking of. FF fits way better.
- thayne 1y ago
  Apple is a duopolist, with Google, for Mobile OS[1]. The OP argued that Apple was a monopolist for mobile devices among the wealthy. [1]: Yes, there are linux phones, but those are such a tiny piece of the market, that it's still a duopoly.
Steltek 1y ago
[flagged]
- coliveira 1y ago
  Apple's lockdown of the iOS platform is exactly why people buy Apple products. The day iOS is dominated by Google and MS, is the day I stop buying it.
  - 1y ago

llm_nerd 1y ago

This was a brutal read. It's as if someone wrote a simple thesis and ran it through an LLM to make it so pretentiously over the top it's unreadable. I suspect almost no one who actually upvoted this read the content, but instead just like the title and hit the arrow. "Apple has poisoned the well through a monopoly on influence which it has parleyed into suppression of browser choice. This is an existential threat to the web, but also renders web and internet standards moot." This is patently ridiculous, and sounds like the sort of tired nonsense that was the norm maybe a decade ago. Now, in 2025, to still be railing this off? Apple's influence on the web hasn't been lower in two decades. This is ridiculous. It's one of those "no one likes my PWA, and somehow Apple is to blame" busted logic breaks we see on HN daily. "Apple alone must be on the hook to implement any and every web platform feature shipped by any and every other engine." I get that this is rhetorical bombast to try to make Apple eat crow for their Safari/webkit monopoly on iOS, but it falls apart given how laughably silly of an idea it is. Apple absolutely should be forced to allow alternate browser engines, presuming those browser engines are not Chromium/Blink based. Firefox should have their engine. Anyone else who actually makes an engine should be able to deploy it to iOS. Chromium/Blink? Absolutely no way. And anyone who doesn't understand why has absolutely no idea how Apple's malicious greed has paradoxically protected the web from a "Made For Chrome" world.

jajuuka 1y ago
Agreed, this post is overly verbose for no real purpose and makes several claims that are laughable. It reads like a the position of someone inside the tempest in a teapot.
doodpants 1y ago
It made me feel dumb when I couldn't even understand the tl;dr at the top.
- rpdillon 1y ago
  The TL;DR at the top is what made me decide to not read the rest of it. It's clearly overwrought writing, designed to sound sophisticated without getting down to the root of the issue as clearly as I would like. Plain language is better when discussing topics like this, I think.

yankcrime 1y ago

Worth pointing out that this was written by the "Microsoft Partner Product Architect on Edge", a product which Microsoft speed-ran its enshittification.

robenkleene 1y ago
Summary of the original author's (Alex Russell) background from his about page (https://infrequently.org/about-me/ https://infrequently.org/about-me/) (it seemed odd to me to just focus on his most recent role): > Microsoft Partner Product Architect on the Edge team and Blink API OWNER. It is my professional mission to build a web that works for everyone. > From 2008-2021, I was a software engineer at Google working on Chrome, Blink, and the web platform. I served as the first Web Standards Tech Lead for Chrome (2015-2021) and was a three-time elected member of the W3C Technical Architecture Group (2013-2019) and a representative to TC39 for a decade.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]

N_Lens 1y ago

While the article seems to have a histrionic tone, it’s essentially correct that Apple have been unwilling to cooperate on standards (despite overtly signalling the opposite) and have had to be forced by regulation or market forces. There are plenty of examples of this, Safari/iMessage/lightning port etc. - sent from my iPhone

rob_c 1y ago
Yep, they cooperate to a point and then decide that they're doing their own thing anyway. This isn't new. When they were small nobody cared about firewire (even if it was better). Then they did it with lightning to keep hold of their devices again. Then there is the whole not supporting USB 3.X but 3.0 and 4 for "reasons". Now they also don't care about software and web standards, same company, same problems. They clearly see "standards" as "competition" at a corporate/management level.
CharlesW 1y ago
> …it’s essentially correct that Apple have been unwilling to cooperate on standards (despite overtly signalling the opposite) and have had to be forced by regulation or market forces. That's a strange take on Apple's actual relationship with standards. Like every tech company, Apple has used proprietary technologies when necessary to deliver an experience that meets its (including its users') requirements. But Apple also has a long, well-documented history of adopting, participating in, and pioneering the use of standards. https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/qffbgp/which_standards_have_originated_from_within_apple/ https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/qffbgp/which_standar... If, in your view, Apple is incapable of doing anything Not Evil, you can still frame its contributions to the history of computing standards as "commoditizing their complements".
- mdhb 1y ago
  Anyone who’s actually being in the room with people from Apple when talking about standards I’m sure would be more than happy to correct you on the fantasy you have constructed here. The author of this post is one of them who actually has a long list of these horror stories which I don’t know he has talked about much publicly but he has very good reasons for making the claims he is making.

827a 1y ago

I dislike Apple's behavior as much as the next guy, but my goodness what a difficult, unfocused piece of reading.

taeric 1y ago

I think a good argument can be made that the standards somewhat move a bit too slowly to add things? (Or, conversely, can be too eager to add some features.) Probably a bit of a struggle between de jure and de facto. It can be frustrating, as many of the more important standards out there were de facto. We try and pass them off as otherwise, but "div/span/XmlHttpRequest" and plenty of others were in practice before they were part of the standard. None of which is to excuse players from not at least accurately advertising what standard they support. There should be consumer protections involved on that. And I think a decent argument can be made that stricter compliance can be expected from the big players.

igrunert 1y ago

The "Chrome Commit Tracker" linked is a pretty interesting set of visualizations that I hadn't come across before. Makes it a lot easier to get a feel for the sizes of the various teams, and how they change over time. https://chrome-commit-tracker.arthursonzogni.com/organizations/commits/ https://chrome-commit-tracker.arthursonzogni.com/organizatio...

syndeo 1y ago
That's crazy. I knew Google's would be a lot bigger, but DANG.

JimDabell 1y ago

> The result has been API enclosure; appropriation of commodity capabilities that themselves are standards-based — e.g., USB, Bluetooth, NFC, file storage, etc. — by a proprietary ecosystem and denial of even the safest and most privacy-preserving versions of those features by open, interoperable, and standards-based application platforms. WebUSB, WebBluetooth, WebNFC are not standards. They are Blink-only non-standard APIs. Google employees wrote these specifications and proposed that they become standards. In order to become standards, they need more than one independent implementation. So in practice, this means that they ask their counterparts at Mozilla and Apple for feedback and approval. Both Mozilla and Apple rejected WebUSB, WebBluetooth, and WebNFC on privacy and security grounds. This is what Mozilla has to say about WebUSB: > we believe that the security risks of exposing USB devices to the Web are too broad to risk exposing users to them This is what Mozilla has to say about WebBluetooth: > This model is unsustainable and presents a significant risk to users and their devices. This is what Mozilla has to say about WebNFC: > We believe Web NFC poses risks to users security and privacy — https://mozilla.github.io/standards-positions/ https://mozilla.github.io/standards-positions/ This is not Apple’s doing. The reason these things are not standards is because Google have been unable to convince anybody outside of Google to implement them, even when they pay Mozilla half a billion dollars a year. Perhaps you think that Mozilla and Apple are too sensitive about potential privacy and security issues relating to new protocols proposed by the world’s biggest ad company. Did you know that after Google wrote a spec. for WebMIDI and shipped it in Chrome, porn companies started using it to fingerprint and track people? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23679063 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23679063 > Apple alone must be on the hook to implement any and every web platform feature shipped by any and every other engine. This is basically the author saying “Hey, you know those specifications we proposed that nobody wanted to implement but us? Let’s force Apple to implement them! Now we’ve got two independent implementations and they can be standards now!” Why on earth would he do this? > Hi, I'm Alex Russell, a Microsoft Partner Product Architect on the Edge team and Blink API OWNER. […] From 2008-2021, I was a software engineer at Google working on Chrome, Blink, and the web platform. — https://infrequently.org/about-me/ https://infrequently.org/about-me/ > The sham of WebKit as an Open Source project Chrome was created as a fork of that “sham” open-source project.

pjmlp 1y ago

pjmlp 1y ago

Chrome folks complaining about Apple not adopting "standards".

slightlyoff 1y ago
0 for 2. Impressive.
cnst 1y ago
Maybe enough with the character assassinations? The first thing I do on an Android is skip the Google Account screen (bypassing the Play Store), open the pre-installed Chrome browser to install F-Droid, and then uninstall/disable Chrome. You can then install any other browser from F-Droid, or through Aurora Store through F-Droid, without any login credentials for any service. Can you do that on an iPhone or iPad? Can you install any app without having an Apple Account? Can you uninstall Safari and replace it with any other browser? (For those unaware, Chrome and Firefox on iOS in the App Store are simply skins for Safari, having the exact same rendering bugs and issues as Safari; so, there's actually no way to install any other browser besides Safari on iOS.)
- JimDabell 1y ago
  > Chrome and Firefox on iOS in the App Store are simply skins for Safari They are not. They are required to use WebKit, which means they use the same rendering engine as Safari, but there is far more to a web browser than just its rendering engine. They are not just skins.
  - cnst 1y ago
    It's difficult to have an argument when you keep redefining the words. An app without a rendering engine is not a web-browser, it's far more akin a skin.
- pjmlp 1y ago
  Not until Chrome advocates stop pretending their proprietary APIs based on ChromeOS features are standards.

cnst 1y ago

Lots of dismissive comments just because the author works in the industry, but who else will be able to shed the light on these things if not the people in the know? BTW, consider this: on Android, you can install any browser with any rendering engine. The only reason you cannot install Safari, is because Apple won't make it for Android. On iOS, the only rendering engine available is Safari's WebKit. Apple won't allow any alternatives. It wouldn't be a problem if Safari was perfect, but it's clearly not.

cnst 1y ago

> Both fear and fervour about these proprties developed against a backdrop of libertarian1 attitudes toward regulation and competition. > The internet's most consequential designs took competitive markets as granted. In the old days, you'd stop reading the article if it had typos or obvious grammatical or other mistakes. Today, we're more intrigued to read one, simply because it's an indication that it wasn't blindly written by AI?

TheTon 1y ago

The author doesn’t attempt to address the issue that Apple and iOS are the only remaining effective bulwark against Google’s complete control of the web. Think about what Google’s end game looks like if they are able to convince lawmakers and regulators around the world to force Apple to allow Chrome on iOS. Google will continue to spam standards proposals and implementations that Apple or Mozilla will be unwilling to adopt for various reasons. Google will continue to advertise Chrome heavily, and push users of its other services to install and use Chrome exclusively. Google search will prioritize sites that use Chrome specific technologies. Google Gemini will generate code that uses Chrome specific APIs. When Chrome reaches sufficient market share, Google will start to use Chrome to disadvantage computing platforms that they do not control completely. New features will come to Android and ChromeOS first. Bugs may go unaddressed on other platforms. I realize it’s frustrating as a web developer to have to deal with browser specific issues, or to be unable to take advantage of necessary APIs or platform features from your web app. It is also frustrating to be blocked from the App Store because Apple wants to avoid competition in some area. The current situation is unfair and far from ideal. Apple are not the good guys here. But, framing the issues as being entirely about Apple and not addressing the situation with Google doesn’t work. And, unfortunately, many commentators (including the author of this article) as well as regulators (including the EU), don’t seem to get this. If these folks get what they are asking for, we aren’t going to enter a golden age with a single web platform that is feature rich and open to all equally, we are all just going to get crushed by Google.

slightlyoff 1y ago
The author here. It wasn't addressed in this post because it was treated separately several years ago in the same series (linked at the top): https://infrequently.org/2022/06/apple-is-not-defending-browser-engine-choice/ https://infrequently.org/2022/06/apple-is-not-defending-brow... TL;DR is that the premise of the argument is false, or at least almost entirely so, and deprives Apple of agency, when in fact it has all the power in the equation.
- wtallis 1y ago
  That article also does not appear to have anything to say about the validity of "standards" that are nothing more than Google's feature creep for web browsers. At some point, you need to actually defend the idea that a web browser should be able to enumerate what Bluetooth and USB devices you have connected. Dancing around such issues is what's making your "Assault on Standards" claim sound so hollow. You need to justify how your position doesn't simply boil down to "Apple should follow Google's lead".

arbirk 1y ago

While the article rightly critiques Apple's strategy of kneecapping the web to protect its App Store, it overlooks the user-centric view of these "crimes." Many users don't want websites having deep hardware access like Bluetooth; they see it as a necessary security boundary. The "Lightning frustration" was also largely a tech-media narrative, not a pain point for those invested in the ecosystem. We also can't ignore Apple's massive open-source contributions (LLVM, Swift, WebKit), and in many regards the most faithful adopter of the USB and Thunderbolt standards. Ultimately, it's a security trade-off. There's a reason iOS exploits command millions more than Android's. That best-in-class security is a direct product of the walled garden. For many, that's a more valuable feature than the total interoperability the author champions.

privatelypublic 1y ago
Why bring up lightning? It's a dead issue, and I searched and don't see it mentioned in the article.
- arbirk 1y ago
  Nice catch. I rarely respond to anything without research and in this case my research lead to the off-topic but twin issue of hardware standard adoption. You caught me. It looks silly. Sorry. I'll be better :-)

alex_suzuki 1y ago

I kind of agree with the author, I just wished his writing were more to the point, and less sprinkled with pseudo-sophistication.