11 ms·

My hope for laws such as the ones Japan and the EU enacted was that companies would see the writing on the wall and change their practices worldwide, if only fo

My hope for laws such as the ones Japan and the EU enacted was that companies would see the writing on the wall and change their practices worldwide, if only for cost reasons (it presumably being more expensive to maintain multiple sets of rules.) However, these companies are now so large that they can choose to absorb any inefficiencies on a country-by-country basis.

crazygringo 10mo ago
There are many things Apple does that have anticompetitive motivations, but the browser engine doesn't seem like one of them. It's genuinely about security and battery life and standardization. So if cost was never the reason in the first place, cost is not going to be the reason to change.
- greiskul 10mo ago
  It is literally done for strategic reasons to put a stranglehold on innovations on the web, so that there is no risk of web app technology developing to a point to threaten the dominance of native apps and the app store. Anybody that thinks otherwise is hopeless naive, Steve Jobs himself envisioned a web app future as the future of technology; before Apple found out the gold mine that the app store became.
  - otterley 10mo ago
    > Anybody that thinks otherwise is hopeless naive This is inappropriate. People can reasonably disagree without being insulting to each other. If you have concrete evidence that Apple is deliberately withholding some essential advancement in Safari or its support for Web standards so that it can sell more apps, by all means, cite it.
    - greiskul 10mo ago
      https://www.google.com/search?q=safari+is+the+new+ie https://www.google.com/search?q=safari+is+the+new+ie Just read the summary that Gemini provides for a good quick understanding, and follow up the multiple articles about it. Then please don't come back and say that there is nothing concrete about this evidence, that is just people speculating about a behavior that Apple has been engaging repeatedly and continuously for over a decade.
      - givinguflac 10mo ago
        Seriously, you expect people to click a Google search link for people who agree with you- and then read what the LLM has to say?? When did HN become a garbage dump where people don’t do their own research and/or thinking?
        otterley 10mo ago
        About 10 years ago, by my reckoning. The less people know about a subject, the more strongly opinionated and certain they are about it. It’s not just HN, though; it’s a very human condition.
      - otterley 10mo ago
        It is you that needs to cite the evidence, not some LLM, and with hard facts coupled with evidence of intent, not just referring to mere opinions. You claim to know something with certainty, so one can reasonably expect you have the expertise and data to prove it. If you come to the kitchen claiming to be a chef, you’d better come with sharp knives, not photos of them.
      - xp84 10mo ago
        Look, I agree that Safari sucks, but with or without the AI overview (which I don’t believe is Gemini, rather that is a very cheap and dumb model that’s been told to summarize a few top results), linking to a search is not a strong debating technique. I could link to a search for “Safari has the best technology” and it would have the same zero value.
  - crazygringo 10mo ago
    > to put a stranglehold on innovations on the web I think that's the hypothetical part, it's not reality. Safari continues to be a fully modern browser. It doesn't release new features quite as fast as Chrome, but it does generally adopt them. If Apple were attempting to put a "stranglehold on innovations on the web", Safari's feature set would look very different. But that's not what's happening. Like I said, Apple does lots of anticompetitive things. I'm not blind to what they do with the app store. I just don't think that the single browser engine policy is motivated by this, or has much effect on it, given how Apple does keep maintaining Safari as a modern browser.
    - aryonoco 10mo ago
      Safari is the modern IE. the fact that PWAs didn’t take off in the last decade js purely due to Safari. The only reason Apple has banned alternative engines and continues to hold back on major web technologies is anticompetitive behaviour.
      - ryandrake 10mo ago
        No, I think Chrome is the modern IE. It has huge market share, to the point where developers often just ignore the other browsers or at best treat them as P2. Just like they did when IE was dominant. I'm torn on this honestly. Safari (particularly mobile Safari) is literally the only thing keeping the web from becoming Chrome-only. While I would love to see Safari-alternative engines on the iPhone, I fear that the "open web" in terms of browser compatibility is cooked the day that happens: Commercial web developers are supremely lazy and their product managers are, too. They will consider the web Chrome-only from that day forward and simply refuse to lift a finger for other browsers. I think when IE6 died, on one hand it was a relief for web developers, who (very quickly) deleted all the code needed to maintain compatibility, but on the other hand, it made the web worse by bringing us closer to browser monopoly.
        xp84 10mo ago
        Chrome is the IE in that it’s all the web devs target or test and the browser that every enterprise just uses as the assumed target. Safari is the late-stage IE that doesn’t add any features or modern standards that its (supposed) competitors add. Although Apple seems to have different and more strategic reasons than MS did. Apple just hates the Web because they can’t effectively tollbooth it, whereas I think MS just didn’t care about investing in IE after 2001 or so.
  - avar 10mo ago
    > Steve Jobs himself envisioned a > web app future as the future of[...] I'm not putting cynical motivations past Apple, but you're reading too much (or too little?) into what Jobs said at the time. His remarks at the time of the initial iPhone release (with the benefit of hindsight) were clearly because they weren't ready to expose any sort of native API's. Pissing on you and telling you it's raining was typical Jobs reality distortion field marketing, and not an indication that he actually believed it was raining.
- gumby271 10mo ago
  The web browser is the singular hole in Apple's grip over the user's device. While there are definitely arguments that can be made about security, I think it's naive to think that Apple is unaware of this and is operating on something other than protecting their app store fortune.
- toast0 10mo ago
  If browser F is worse at battery life than browser S, people will figure that out and adapt for themselves. If it's a big difference, it's self-evident; and small differences should show up in the battery life tool and computer press. Security-wise, the sandbox should limit damage to within the browser, and if it doesn't that's not the browser's fault. Maybe restrict access to password filling and such though / figure out how to offer an API to reduce the impact. Standardization, eh? Forcing Safari on iOS and not making it available on the mass market platforms (Android and Windows) makes it a pretty wonky standard. I guess there's a claim to be made for the embedded browsing engine, but IMHO, that should be an app developer choice.
  - crazygringo 10mo ago
    > people will figure that out and adapt for themselves No they won't. People on HN will. Not the average person. > Security-wise, the sandbox should limit damage to within the browser The problem is, arbitrary code execution vastly expands the risks. Your "should" is doing all the work there. > Standardization, eh? Forcing Safari on iOS and not making it available on the mass market platforms Huh? Apple follows web standards. Why the heck should it make Safari available on Android and Windows? Safari isn't a standard, web standards are.
    - leptons 10mo ago
      >> people will figure that out and adapt for themselves >No they won't. People on HN will. Not the average person. Yes they will, Apple has made it very easy to see. To check iOS app power usage, go to Settings > Battery, where you'll see a breakdown of battery consumption by app for the last 24 hours or 10 days, showing usage time and background activity, allowing you to identify power-hungry apps and manage settings like Background App Refresh to improve battery life. So yeah, it's easy to see which app is taking the most power, and users can do this easily, unless you think Apple's UX is so bad that users won't know how to read it? >The problem is, arbitrary code execution vastly expands the risks. Your "should" is doing all the work there. If that's a problem for web browsers, then it's a problem for every single app in the app store. There's nothing really unique about a web browser app that makes it more risky than any other app. Javascript is already very much sandboxed. And there have been plenty of exploits that already target Safari. So saying other browsers are the problem is like blaming the victim (of Apple's anti-competitive practices). >Huh? Apple follows web standards. Why the heck should it make Safari available on Android and Windows? Safari isn't a standard, web standards are. If web standards are standards, then let other web browsers on iOS. The real reason Apple disallows other browser engines on Safari is so they can force developers to create native apps where they can get a cut of any purchase made through the app. The problems with Apple's anti-competitive practices have been spelled out in the DOJ lawsuit against them: https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/media/1344546/dl?inline https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/media/1344546/dl?inline
- 8note 10mo ago
  why wouldnt they just drop safari and switch to firefox with ublock origin included in that case? adtech is the big security and performance drain and allowing ads and making them hard to block is a big security and performance gap
OptionOfT 10mo ago
At a hardware level it seemed to work. Looking at USB-C on iPhones for example. Software wise? Fail. EEA gets to disable start search in Windows 11. RoW does not. Interestingly EEA membership is decided at install time based on your selection, and is not changeable afterwards. iPhones on the other hand have a daemon running that checks your location. It's not based on where you set up the phone. So traveling from Europe to somewhere else can actually prevent you from updating apps that you got via an alt-store: https://www.macrumors.com/2024/03/06/alternative-ios-app-stores-eu-grace-period/#:~:text=macOS%20Tahoe-,Alternative%20iOS%20App%20Stores%20Only%20Work%20for%20'Grace%20Period'%20When,marketplace%20you%20downloaded%20them%20from. https://www.macrumors.com/2024/03/06/alternative-ios-app-sto...
- ryandrake 10mo ago
  Yea, unfortunately with software, using enough granular feature flags, they can make their software "maximally bad" for each given region. They lose a battle in the EU and are forced to make the software better? They will make it better only in the EU. Lose another one in Japan over a different issue? Just make a "japan" flag and only make it narrowly better for that use case in that region. Lose further battles in other regions, just add more flags. They will never deploy the "better" feature worldwide if they have the opportunity to limit the better code to a particular region. 1: And of course, by "better" I am always referring to "better for the user" not "better for Apple."
  - gjsman-1000 10mo ago
    Even in a hardware level, this is easily obtainable, and Apple already does it. Chinese iPhones? They have 2 physical SIM card slots and no eSIM. EU iPhones? 1 SIM card slot, and 1 eSIM. US iPhones? 2 eSIM card slots and no physical SIM. US iPhones also have mmWave when other countries do not. If Apple wanted to, keeping a Lightning US iPhone was easily on the cards. The EU’s role in forcing the issue in the US is exaggerated.
    - ryandrake 10mo ago
      You make an excellent point. I would guess that it is orders of magnitude more expensive for Apple to create a new hardware configuration than it is for them to add software feature flags, though. But, assuming the cost of making the hardware change worldwide exceeds the cost of reconfiguring their factories for new hardware, you're right that they would not choose to make the hardware change worldwide. Almost certainly someone (or an entire team) carefully crunched the numbers and deliberately decided not to keep a Lightning US iPhone.
viktorcode 10mo ago
And what's your opinion if the law would oblige the companies to remove features their products have like tracking transparency popups? Two countries' courts already fined Apple for enforcing a popup that warns users about tracking across third party apps (a feature Apple themselves do not use)?
- rorylawless 10mo ago
  My prior POV was that Apple would jettison the feature globally, but the discussion elsewhere in this thread suggests that salami slicing at the software-level is a cost larger companies are willing to bear.

crazygringo 10mo ago

There are many things Apple does that have anticompetitive motivations, but the browser engine doesn't seem like one of them. It's genuinely about security and battery life and standardization. So if cost was never the reason in the first place, cost is not going to be the reason to change.

greiskul 10mo ago
It is literally done for strategic reasons to put a stranglehold on innovations on the web, so that there is no risk of web app technology developing to a point to threaten the dominance of native apps and the app store. Anybody that thinks otherwise is hopeless naive, Steve Jobs himself envisioned a web app future as the future of technology; before Apple found out the gold mine that the app store became.
- otterley 10mo ago
  > Anybody that thinks otherwise is hopeless naive This is inappropriate. People can reasonably disagree without being insulting to each other. If you have concrete evidence that Apple is deliberately withholding some essential advancement in Safari or its support for Web standards so that it can sell more apps, by all means, cite it.
  - greiskul 10mo ago
    https://www.google.com/search?q=safari+is+the+new+ie https://www.google.com/search?q=safari+is+the+new+ie Just read the summary that Gemini provides for a good quick understanding, and follow up the multiple articles about it. Then please don't come back and say that there is nothing concrete about this evidence, that is just people speculating about a behavior that Apple has been engaging repeatedly and continuously for over a decade.
    - givinguflac 10mo ago
      Seriously, you expect people to click a Google search link for people who agree with you- and then read what the LLM has to say?? When did HN become a garbage dump where people don’t do their own research and/or thinking?
      - otterley 10mo ago
        About 10 years ago, by my reckoning. The less people know about a subject, the more strongly opinionated and certain they are about it. It’s not just HN, though; it’s a very human condition.
    - otterley 10mo ago
      It is you that needs to cite the evidence, not some LLM, and with hard facts coupled with evidence of intent, not just referring to mere opinions. You claim to know something with certainty, so one can reasonably expect you have the expertise and data to prove it. If you come to the kitchen claiming to be a chef, you’d better come with sharp knives, not photos of them.
    - xp84 10mo ago
      Look, I agree that Safari sucks, but with or without the AI overview (which I don’t believe is Gemini, rather that is a very cheap and dumb model that’s been told to summarize a few top results), linking to a search is not a strong debating technique. I could link to a search for “Safari has the best technology” and it would have the same zero value.
- crazygringo 10mo ago
  > to put a stranglehold on innovations on the web I think that's the hypothetical part, it's not reality. Safari continues to be a fully modern browser. It doesn't release new features quite as fast as Chrome, but it does generally adopt them. If Apple were attempting to put a "stranglehold on innovations on the web", Safari's feature set would look very different. But that's not what's happening. Like I said, Apple does lots of anticompetitive things. I'm not blind to what they do with the app store. I just don't think that the single browser engine policy is motivated by this, or has much effect on it, given how Apple does keep maintaining Safari as a modern browser.
  - aryonoco 10mo ago
    Safari is the modern IE. the fact that PWAs didn’t take off in the last decade js purely due to Safari. The only reason Apple has banned alternative engines and continues to hold back on major web technologies is anticompetitive behaviour.
    - ryandrake 10mo ago
      No, I think Chrome is the modern IE. It has huge market share, to the point where developers often just ignore the other browsers or at best treat them as P2. Just like they did when IE was dominant. I'm torn on this honestly. Safari (particularly mobile Safari) is literally the only thing keeping the web from becoming Chrome-only. While I would love to see Safari-alternative engines on the iPhone, I fear that the "open web" in terms of browser compatibility is cooked the day that happens: Commercial web developers are supremely lazy and their product managers are, too. They will consider the web Chrome-only from that day forward and simply refuse to lift a finger for other browsers. I think when IE6 died, on one hand it was a relief for web developers, who (very quickly) deleted all the code needed to maintain compatibility, but on the other hand, it made the web worse by bringing us closer to browser monopoly.
      - xp84 10mo ago
        Chrome is the IE in that it’s all the web devs target or test and the browser that every enterprise just uses as the assumed target. Safari is the late-stage IE that doesn’t add any features or modern standards that its (supposed) competitors add. Although Apple seems to have different and more strategic reasons than MS did. Apple just hates the Web because they can’t effectively tollbooth it, whereas I think MS just didn’t care about investing in IE after 2001 or so.
- avar 10mo ago
  > Steve Jobs himself envisioned a > web app future as the future of[...] I'm not putting cynical motivations past Apple, but you're reading too much (or too little?) into what Jobs said at the time. His remarks at the time of the initial iPhone release (with the benefit of hindsight) were clearly because they weren't ready to expose any sort of native API's. Pissing on you and telling you it's raining was typical Jobs reality distortion field marketing, and not an indication that he actually believed it was raining.
gumby271 10mo ago
The web browser is the singular hole in Apple's grip over the user's device. While there are definitely arguments that can be made about security, I think it's naive to think that Apple is unaware of this and is operating on something other than protecting their app store fortune.
toast0 10mo ago
If browser F is worse at battery life than browser S, people will figure that out and adapt for themselves. If it's a big difference, it's self-evident; and small differences should show up in the battery life tool and computer press. Security-wise, the sandbox should limit damage to within the browser, and if it doesn't that's not the browser's fault. Maybe restrict access to password filling and such though / figure out how to offer an API to reduce the impact. Standardization, eh? Forcing Safari on iOS and not making it available on the mass market platforms (Android and Windows) makes it a pretty wonky standard. I guess there's a claim to be made for the embedded browsing engine, but IMHO, that should be an app developer choice.
- crazygringo 10mo ago
  > people will figure that out and adapt for themselves No they won't. People on HN will. Not the average person. > Security-wise, the sandbox should limit damage to within the browser The problem is, arbitrary code execution vastly expands the risks. Your "should" is doing all the work there. > Standardization, eh? Forcing Safari on iOS and not making it available on the mass market platforms Huh? Apple follows web standards. Why the heck should it make Safari available on Android and Windows? Safari isn't a standard, web standards are.
  - leptons 10mo ago
    >> people will figure that out and adapt for themselves >No they won't. People on HN will. Not the average person. Yes they will, Apple has made it very easy to see. To check iOS app power usage, go to Settings > Battery, where you'll see a breakdown of battery consumption by app for the last 24 hours or 10 days, showing usage time and background activity, allowing you to identify power-hungry apps and manage settings like Background App Refresh to improve battery life. So yeah, it's easy to see which app is taking the most power, and users can do this easily, unless you think Apple's UX is so bad that users won't know how to read it? >The problem is, arbitrary code execution vastly expands the risks. Your "should" is doing all the work there. If that's a problem for web browsers, then it's a problem for every single app in the app store. There's nothing really unique about a web browser app that makes it more risky than any other app. Javascript is already very much sandboxed. And there have been plenty of exploits that already target Safari. So saying other browsers are the problem is like blaming the victim (of Apple's anti-competitive practices). >Huh? Apple follows web standards. Why the heck should it make Safari available on Android and Windows? Safari isn't a standard, web standards are. If web standards are standards, then let other web browsers on iOS. The real reason Apple disallows other browser engines on Safari is so they can force developers to create native apps where they can get a cut of any purchase made through the app. The problems with Apple's anti-competitive practices have been spelled out in the DOJ lawsuit against them: https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/media/1344546/dl?inline https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/media/1344546/dl?inline
8note 10mo ago
why wouldnt they just drop safari and switch to firefox with ublock origin included in that case? adtech is the big security and performance drain and allowing ads and making them hard to block is a big security and performance gap

OptionOfT 10mo ago

At a hardware level it seemed to work. Looking at USB-C on iPhones for example. Software wise? Fail. EEA gets to disable start search in Windows 11. RoW does not. Interestingly EEA membership is decided at install time based on your selection, and is not changeable afterwards. iPhones on the other hand have a daemon running that checks your location. It's not based on where you set up the phone. So traveling from Europe to somewhere else can actually prevent you from updating apps that you got via an alt-store: https://www.macrumors.com/2024/03/06/alternative-ios-app-stores-eu-grace-period/#:~:text=macOS%20Tahoe-,Alternative%20iOS%20App%20Stores%20Only%20Work%20for%20'Grace%20Period'%20When,marketplace%20you%20downloaded%20them%20from. https://www.macrumors.com/2024/03/06/alternative-ios-app-sto...

ryandrake 10mo ago
Yea, unfortunately with software, using enough granular feature flags, they can make their software "maximally bad" for each given region. They lose a battle in the EU and are forced to make the software better? They will make it better only in the EU. Lose another one in Japan over a different issue? Just make a "japan" flag and only make it narrowly better for that use case in that region. Lose further battles in other regions, just add more flags. They will never deploy the "better" feature worldwide if they have the opportunity to limit the better code to a particular region. 1: And of course, by "better" I am always referring to "better for the user" not "better for Apple."
- gjsman-1000 10mo ago
  Even in a hardware level, this is easily obtainable, and Apple already does it. Chinese iPhones? They have 2 physical SIM card slots and no eSIM. EU iPhones? 1 SIM card slot, and 1 eSIM. US iPhones? 2 eSIM card slots and no physical SIM. US iPhones also have mmWave when other countries do not. If Apple wanted to, keeping a Lightning US iPhone was easily on the cards. The EU’s role in forcing the issue in the US is exaggerated.
  - ryandrake 10mo ago
    You make an excellent point. I would guess that it is orders of magnitude more expensive for Apple to create a new hardware configuration than it is for them to add software feature flags, though. But, assuming the cost of making the hardware change worldwide exceeds the cost of reconfiguring their factories for new hardware, you're right that they would not choose to make the hardware change worldwide. Almost certainly someone (or an entire team) carefully crunched the numbers and deliberately decided not to keep a Lightning US iPhone.

viktorcode 10mo ago

And what's your opinion if the law would oblige the companies to remove features their products have like tracking transparency popups? Two countries' courts already fined Apple for enforcing a popup that warns users about tracking across third party apps (a feature Apple themselves do not use)?

rorylawless 10mo ago
My prior POV was that Apple would jettison the feature globally, but the discussion elsewhere in this thread suggests that salami slicing at the software-level is a cost larger companies are willing to bear.