you can say that as often as you want, it doesn't make it true. Even if the end user doesn't know they don't have features they could have, that there is entire class of PWA's that could exist but don't, it matters.
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Should Apple Continue to Ban Rival Browser Engines on iOS?
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I just tried submitting that form in Safari Technology Preview for Monterey, and it didn't even warn me that the required fields were blank.
EDIT: and I can't think of a more complicated application to write than a modern web browser. So many edge cases to remediate. Second most complicated is an email client.
That example web page is badly written. As you can see from the markup validation, it is riddled with design errors.
This being the case, you are trusting to luck how a particular browser might interpret the HTML.
That really is a badly-written website! Thank you. Once I figured out the website was at fault, I simply downloaded Firefox and went from there.
I do not trust Google.
Let those who want keep the walled garden.
Let those who want to share their data with the world move to Android.
Let those who want keep the walled garden.
Let those who want to share their data with the world move to Android.
UK's CMA which is equivalent to US FTC has declared Apple's ban on game streaming and force use of Webkit to be anti-competitive.
https://9to5mac.com/2022/06/10/cloud-gaming/
https://9to5mac.com/2022/06/10/cloud-gaming/
If you open iOS to different engines, expect Google to drop support from Safari and WebKit.
I think we should first enforce full compliance with HTML, before enabling other browsers on iOS.
This way other browsers and engines could also rise up.
iOS is on a device with limited performance and battery life. Thinking back to the history of browsers and their flaws, I can remember different browsers sucking up all available memory, consuming all available CPU, leaving parts running or stalled. Getting that on an iPhone is a near death sentence. Possibly Apple is being a little too heavy handed here, but if I had an earlier version of FireFox running that drained the battery and seized it up, I'd be pissed. I WAS pissed when it happened on my pc...
If a developer follows Webkit, and writes something that isn't a hog of any resources, happy days. If they don't, they face the wheel, or the axe. But yes a browser has to be pretty complicated as software to write, and ironically writing for the plethora of browsers in use is a PITA too. Looking at Microsoft Edge, it was so bad/sad, having a browser like that was almost worse than not having a browser. Yikes...
If a developer follows Webkit, and writes something that isn't a hog of any resources, happy days. If they don't, they face the wheel, or the axe. But yes a browser has to be pretty complicated as software to write, and ironically writing for the plethora of browsers in use is a PITA too. Looking at Microsoft Edge, it was so bad/sad, having a browser like that was almost worse than not having a browser. Yikes...
Enforce full compliance?
There's an idea. It seems the only thing that is standard about standards is that they really aren't. Developers have always come up with 'a better idea', and neutered many standards. Microstuff thumbed their nose at hunderds of standards. Writing web pages can be a daunting task depending on what you want to do on your page. I have been lucky, and maybe it's industry wide, but looking at some code for commercial web developers shows the things they do to try to keep the site looking similar on so many browsers. I had to do some of that on a site that I managed. A couple people were using 'exotic' browsers and demanded the fix. (High drama)
I checked the stats from a hosting company of a site I maintained. I was surprised at the number of browsers that hit it. Browsers I'd never heard of, and people STILL using antiquated versions from years (decades) past...
How many browsers are engines that aren't using Webkit and Firefox? I can't imagine that too many are still using Lynx. I wish that there was more engine diversity.
There are several browsers that are non-Chromium but Gecko (most popular Gecko browser being Firefox) is about the only one with any "meaningful" share.
So the net effect of Apple's policy is that you can't run Firefox using Gecko. There is a Webkit-based Firefox that runs on iOS but what's the point? I used to do Firefox development back in 2005-2009.
On a related note, don't you hate it when you call for support and their recommended solution is 'browser shopping' to find the one that works?
I was trying to view information on my utility company page, and it wasn't coming up. I suspected it was due to negative values after installing solar (finally!). It worked two weeks ago and for two and a half years prior to that. Solar was the big change.
I call support to let them know I was having issues. "What browser are you using? If you use Chrome, we recommend Chrome, and think that will fix this issue."
Really? Because it sounds like you are just trying to get me off this phone call rather than solve the problem.
So now my response going forward will be "Safari is a W3C standards compliant browser and will properly display webpages that are standards compliant. Like many browsers, it will do its best when faced with non-compliant, poorly written code. But, one thing Safari will not digest is when your website tries to track me across webpages after I have specifically declined to allow it. This is illegal. Is your website illegally trying to track me, or is it just so badly written that it will not display properly on nearly half the smart phones and 1 in 12 desktops sold in the US?"
Seriously, it isn't that hard to make a webpage work, even with Javascript, PHP, and Python. If the people writing the pages would stick to showing us content instead of worrying about what else we were looking at, we could save a ton of bandwidth AND their pages would display correctly across multiple browsers (maybe not IE, as that one was never standards compliant, but you can't have everything).
I think one of the arguments is that requiring Apple to open iOS to other browser engines could encourage the use and/or development of other browser engines and may lead to faster or greater innovations/improvements to all browser engines if the market was more open and competitive.
The world has moved in the opposite direction in the PC world; I don't think that there's motivation to reverse that.
It's simple economics for the companies and organizations that build browsers. It's too much work and expense to develop the engine unless you have a way to make money to do the development and maintenance work.
I don’t necessarily disagree with you but I think the goal of regulators is to try to keep markets as open and competitive as reasonably possible. They may view a company that has a dominant position in a particular market (as Apple has in mobile OS) as being anticompetitive if that company restricts certain features, products, etc. (like Apple does with browser engines) allowed in that market. The regulator's responsibility is to try to prevent companies from getting or having too much market power and stifling potential competition. Whether or not antitrust actions result in more or better choices for consumers or encourages companies to enter a market or innovate more is ultimately up to the market. Regulators are just there to reduce or eliminate "unreasonable" barriers, restrictions, market power, etc.
I completely understand being in the Open Source world. But the OS world depends on unpaid contributors and paid contributors from donations and a lot of those donations are corporate. If you look through the code of an open source browser engine, you'll see that it's massive and that's a daunting task for anyone interested in building one from scratch.
If you want another player in the market, it has to get funded from somewhere and you're not going to have a product that can generate revenue for a couple of years. If government wants to fund that, then fine. I don't think that you're going to get a lot of interest from the venture capital folks.
A really good example is Brave - Brendan Eich started up a browser company and he was in beta pretty quickly. But it was built on Chrome. In-depth view of the browser market and history from earlier this year:
Transcript:
The Browser (with Brendan Eich, Chief Architect of Netscape + Mozilla and CEO of Brave) | Acquired Podcast
The history of the web with the person who invented Javascript and now Brave.
www.acquired.fm
Video Interview:
The problem is, if 70+% of internet navigation is powered by Chrome, what can compel a non-mega-sized company to support a 3% browser?
Especially if that browser relocates resources from Chrome.
Even Microsft had to give in and abandon an autonomous Chrome.
I'd like the EU to regulate more such areas as inter-compatibility.
P.s. before anybody asks, my opinion is Apple had to introduce the type C into the iPhone when they started using it on non-smooth iPads.
As I had stated, I don't necessarily disagree with your browser engine assessment. My point was that a regulator's role is more about keeping markets as free and competitive as possible and not controlled by "unreasonable" or "artificial" barriers, restrictions or other things that may discourage new competition, hamper innovation in the existing market, impact pricing, and so on.
If a company was required to open their OS to other browser engines and little ended up changing, that would be fine as the broader open market would've determined that without undue control or influence by one company with monopoly power unitizing anticompetitive practices.
Fortunately you can just use another device if you want to use a different browser engine. I think that it's important to have multiple players, but, if Apple wants to restrict stuff on their platform, then that's fine with me.
Yes, there is always Android but having an alternative doesn't mean there can't still be the existence of antitrust issues. There were other desktop OS options in the 1990s besides Windows yet that didn't stop the DOJ from pursuing antirust charges and monopoly power claims against Microsoft.
But it wasn’t just the Internet Explorer that got the attention of Janet Reno, it was a build up of other things. Developers were complaining that Microsoft would have developers build apps for them, incorporate it into MS-DOS as a core app then with a future release of Windows, Microsoft would build their own and discard the developer. A prime example was Disk Defragmentor from MS-DOS and use that a similar version in Windows 95. Another was a disk compression tool sold independently for MS-DOS that was later included in Windows.
They also tried to put the makers of Lotus 123 out of business with Word, Excel and Powerpoint. It became pretty glaring when Microsoft tried to put Netscape out of business with a free version of Internet Explorer. Microsoft had built a case against itself that made it an easy target for the DOJ.
So in other words, another browser that just uses the same engine as FireFox.