If they were truly legitimate rather than eco-system-poly schemes, Apple would be blocking alternative browser engines on the Mac. Why is the user experience of someone who bought a $1499 MacBookPro less deserving of security protection than that of someone who bought a $999 iPhone?
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Japan Law Will Require Apple to Allow Non-WebKit Browsers on iPhone
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Is iOS so poorly designed that Chrome would destroy an iDevice's battery life? Because I still get over 2 days a charge on my two-year-old Samsung. Sounds like a typical Apple problem.
Mac has 100m users. iOS has between 1-2 billion. The average MacOS user is significantly more technically savvy than the average iOS user. And, MacOS has existed for over 40 years at this point.
There’s a reason Apple disables JIT on its lockdown mode, even for Safari. It’s not because they’re anticompetitive, it’s because browser engines are a huge attack vector.
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Technically speaking, Google had incentive to make Chrome kill iOS battery life. Make users unhappy, because users will never blame Chrome for that, they’ll blame the phone and get people to switch.
If you and maybe one other company sold 99% of the world's toilet paper and a major percentage of customers were forced to buy toilet paper only from you, then yes, regulating toilet paper packaging would be potentially legitimate.
Or perhaps a more real-world example would be a law that says toilet paper should not contain certain substances - like uranium, elemental mercury, crystal meth....
Or maybe a law that says your burger must be cooked enough to kill foodborne pathogens. Or maybe a law that says your raw ground beef must be stored in a specific type of box that keeps its temperature below a certain threshold...
Or that says your chicken wings must be handled and stored a certain way....
You're talking about the same Google that is currently fighting the US government to continue paying Apple something like $20B per year just to steer their customers to their search engine?
Riiight....
Your argument is Google doesn’t want Apple’s users from iOS to Android? Really? Now I’ve seen everything on MacRumors 🤣
You realize that search deal isn’t a flat $20b, it’s a share of search revenue on searches made in Apple’s platforms, right? So Google absolutely has incentive to try to get users to switch: fewer iOS users, less money they pay out.
I am fine with government regulating for health, safety, the environment, actual monopolies (not made up ones), etc. That’s proper use of government regulation. “iPhones can’t be radioactive” - regulate away. “Apple can’t dump toxic waste” - sign me up! “Apple workers have to be paid fairly and have safe working conditions” - all for it.
“I want an open ecosystem but don’t want to use Android” - not a proper use of government regulation. That’s government picking winners and losers.
I'm not really arguing anything. Your original comment was some pretty nutsy conspiracy theory nonsense, so there really isn't anything to argue against except maybe a brick wall.
I was merely asking why iOS is such a poorly designed mobile operating system that you think a web browser using an unusually high amount of battery power wouldn't immediately be caught and reported rather widely. I mean, does it not report app battery usage, or is that a feature Apple still has yet to steal from Android?
How about "I want to be considered the rightful owner of my device."
This is so on point .. I wish more folks would internalize this
Chrome(Chromium) is a memory and battery hog on most OSes. This has nothing to do with Apples OS design but Googles garbage choices. WebKit runs 18-22hrs on Apple Silicon Macs, while Chrome does 5-6hrs. Google is the garbage maker here. Firefox(Gecko) doesn’t have same issues on macOS
As I said, Chrome runs for 2+ days per charge on my 2-year-old Samsung. Maybe my phone is magic.
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No your post is ridiculous.
Let's say that a company, let's take a private racetrack for example, has a questionable safety record. Should the government step in and say that the CEO implement a minimum set of standards to protect people or is that the state telling them how to run their business?
This isn’t about saving lives, it’s about governments pushing laws to force a company into providing third parties onto their platform on the their terms, not Apple’s. It’s more like the racetrack being for a certain type of cars that can safely use the track without issues, but the safetrack owner wouldn’t allow freaks on motorbikes on the track due to the track not being built for that and here comes your government and forces the owner to allow motorbikes and make sure it’s safe for motorbikes and of course on owner’s own cost. Do you get it or not?
I read the list of requirements Apple has for third-party engines linked from the article and they align quite well with the security practices I've seen in medical device software development. Although web browsers are not life-preserving, strong precautions are warranted for a tool that could potentially end up heavily used by a substantial percentage of the population in a given market. As for needing to package your engine within an app provided only to the EU, this is because the EU is currently the only place the allowance of third-party engines is required, and Apple doesn't want to roll this out globally. For now, that's their prerogative. If you are Google or Mozilla, building a specific version of your app for distribution on EU storefronts is not hard; you've already done far more to allow your browser to work with different engines in order to deliver an iOS browser to begin with.
I'm very much in favor of third-party engines being required to be allowed in Japan and elsewhere, but I don't want to see restrictions imposed on Apple's ability to require secure practices in their development. Indeed, they should instead be doing the opposite: requiring companies to implement proper security practices on all mobile device core software. That's what the FDA does with medical devices. They don't specify what practices are required in order to market and sell a device, but they darn well require evidence-based assurance that security is being attended to.
I'm very much in favor of third-party engines being required to be allowed in Japan and elsewhere, but I don't want to see restrictions imposed on Apple's ability to require secure practices in their development. Indeed, they should instead be doing the opposite: requiring companies to implement proper security practices on all mobile device core software. That's what the FDA does with medical devices. They don't specify what practices are required in order to market and sell a device, but they darn well require evidence-based assurance that security is being attended to.
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Yeah, it’s nice that you get such battery life. But still doesn’t change the reality on all other platforms
As in what? What's your counterargument? Like I get you want iOS to be like Android where you can install all sorts of junk, but we don't want iOS to be even remotely close to what Android is.
I cannot find a source for what I said anymore but i'm pretty positive I did see it, ill update you on this if/when I find it
One drawback of the current limitations is that not only can users not choose a browser with different engines than WebKit, they can't even use differnet versions of WebKit. Once an iOS version has fallen into 'no updates' land, its browser falls behind (becoming incompatiable and/or at risk from now published WebKit bugs). Once a device gets dropped from ongoing iOS updates, one has to either replace it or continue acessing the Internet through legacy versions of WebKit.
It also seems an "odd" to just restrict browser engines. If Apple was really concerned about users' security, they would block apps from collecting any device data and sending data to random Internet servers. Some of this blocked but not all (see GasBuddy). It seems the restrictions are just when the user wants to initiate access to receive and parse HTML over HTTP.
It also seems an "odd" to just restrict browser engines. If Apple was really concerned about users' security, they would block apps from collecting any device data and sending data to random Internet servers. Some of this blocked but not all (see GasBuddy). It seems the restrictions are just when the user wants to initiate access to receive and parse HTML over HTTP.
It's your take on it, and defence of a corporation over consumers. Your race track analogy response was to ban all motorcyclists, whereas H2SO4 essentially said there's Health and Safety rules from the government.
No one is forcing you to use chromes engine, or firefox's (both separate), which have much better compatibility than webkit. Heck the main reason I use firefox on my Mac is because half the stuff I need to use for my University course doesn't work properly, yet it does on chrome or firefox. I have to look at (legit) websites on behalf of my GF because they won't load properly on her iPhone (I have a pixel and a galaxy).
Maybe your racetrack response analogy was on the right lines, but it bans cars and motorbikes and only lets bicycles on the track. I say that as a cyclist who would love a bicycle only racetrack near me lol
It’s not a good reason. Saying they can’t secure the platform without limiting engines used is ridiculous.
