Apple attempting to stop investigation into its practices involving browsers

https://twitter.com/openwebadvocacy/status/1617802614149894144

by samwillis • 3 years ago

275 344 3 years ago

ommz• 3 years ago

Apple will reportedly receive 20 billion USD for having Google as the default search engine. Presumably, this is why they are fighting so hard against having any meaningful competition on iOS.

Dizzying rent-seeking fees

mtomweb15• 3 years ago

It's also 20 billion Apple has to do almost nothing for, except ban the other browsers and set google as the default search engine in Safari. It's a significant proportion of their yearly profit.

steve_taylor• 3 years ago

This doesn’t make sense. There are other browsers on the App Store and, although they have to use Safari’s browser engine, they’re free to prioritise search engine preferences as they see fit.

TimCTRL• 3 years ago

I have a naive question..what would happen if google simply stopped paying this money, and let the user decide?...I guess it wouldn't affect them much, google is still the best search engine.

lillecarl• 3 years ago

Except Google rarely/barely is the best search engine anymore.

yreg2• 3 years ago

Bing was the default 2012 - 2017. Apparently Google found that it is well worth it to them to pay these massive amounts.

pasc1878• 3 years ago

Google is worried that Apple would then release a search engine and that would be worse for them than the somple payment.

xiphias23• 3 years ago

,,In addition, Apple has been underfunding Safari for the past decade leading to missing critical functionality and a buggy experience for Web App developers thus ensuring that Native Apps, another Apple revenue source, are the only viable solution.''

It's not just funding. Apple changed webapps to delete indexedDB periodically even if they are inatalled on the home screen.

There's no way to have a great experience if you can't store data permanently.

mtomweb15• 3 years ago

xiphias2: Are you sure about it deleting IDB data even if they are installed on the homescreen? We've not come across that before.

If so this is something we really need to follow up.

xiphias23• 3 years ago

I'm not sure, I just read it somewhere some time ago, somewhere I read that iOS deletes it weekly or something like that. But I'm happy that I was wrong about it.

saurik2• 3 years ago

https://webkit.org/blog/10218/full-third-party-cookie-blocki...

As mentioned, the seven-day cap on script-writable storage is gated on “after seven days of Safari use without user interaction on the site.” That is the case in Safari. Web applications added to the home screen are not part of Safari and thus have their own counter of days of use. Their days of use will match actual use of the web application which resets the timer. We do not expect the first-party in such a web application to have its website data deleted.
If your web application does experience website data deletion, please let us know since we would consider it a serious bug. It is not the intention of Intelligent Tracking Prevention to delete website data for first parties in web applications.

So, while adding it to the home screen still involves this mechanism, the "first-party"--which I understand to be the website which was actually added to the home screen, differentiating it from all of the third-party websites that it might link you to--is presumably going to be used every time you use that icon on the home screen and since that icon also has its own usage counter it won't ever be counting up when you aren't using it, so you are "good" (unless the user manages to use your home screen added app for seven days without ever ending up back at the "first-party" site somehow, which seems like an oddity and maybe one they mitigated directly).

msh5• 3 years ago

Why should a browser app be allowed to store data permanently? I think that breaks normal ideas about how browser apps work, except for cookies everything is stored server side.

mtomweb15• 3 years ago

We're talking about for installed Web Apps here.

Ask yourself the same question about Native Apps. Why should any Native App be allowed to store data permanently. The answer to that question is the same for Web Apps.

samwillis6• 3 years ago

Browser apps (particularly the concept of PWAs) are the only alternative to the App Store on iOS. Having a way to store data indefinitely is essential, even if that is behind a "install as app" banner.

michaelt• 3 years ago

Some users would like to, for example, dismiss the beg banner on Wikipedia and have it stay gone.

How to balance that desire with advertisers' desire to track users is of course a difficult question.

intrasight4• 3 years ago

I largely agree. I'd also say Why should a native app be allowed to store data permanently?

But it would be nice if the user could make this setting on a per-webapp basis.

pprotas3• 3 years ago

What if you store the data in a back-end, just like native mobile apps?

mtomweb15• 3 years ago

Many (most?) native apps also have a local store which is essential to how they function. Having to rely on stable internet for your app to work is annoying for lots of types of apps.

martin-adams• 3 years ago

Somebody has to pay for that backend, making it hard to build free apps.

It also impacts the UX of the app with more complex caching or having to load things over the network as you use it.

spiffytech• 3 years ago

Safari deletes all of a site's local data after a week of inactivity, including cookies.

This makes users feel like they're never logged into a website when they need it, unless they're using it almost daily.

That high-friction experience pushes users towards apps, which of course are always ready to go.

EDIT: source: https://webkit.org/blog/10218/full-third-party-cookie-blocki...

Back in February 2019, we announced that ITP would cap the expiry of client-side cookies to seven days
...
Now ITP has aligned the remaining script-writable storage forms with the existing client-side cookie restriction, deleting all of a website’s script-writable storage after seven days of Safari use without user interaction on the site. These are the script-writable storage forms affected (excluding some legacy website data types):
Indexed DB
LocalStorage
Media keys
SessionStorage
Service Worker registrations and cache

EDIT 2: That page indicates web apps on the home screen get some variation for this behavior, but the difference isn't clear to me.

DaiPlusPlus2• 3 years ago

Safari deletes all of a site's local data after a week of inactivity, including cookies.

That’s a gross misrepresentation of how Safari ITP works.

zimpenfish2• 3 years ago

apps, which of course are always ready to go.

I wish that were true. But since many apps these days are just slapdash shims over web portals, they time out login sessions and forget things anyway.

skrowl2• 3 years ago

They're intentionally making Safari a bad experience so that you have to use apps for everything. Apps where they can rake 30% on your purchases, of course.

jefftk5• 3 years ago

Apple changed webapps to delete indexedDB periodically even if they are inatalled on the home screen.

Source? I had thought the usage counter ignored days when you didn't open the webapp.

Gunax• 3 years ago

And yet Microsoft is a monopoly just for including IE. Nevermind that they never stopped anyone from installing what they wanted on Windows.

shmde• 3 years ago

including IE

And also making it the default web browser.

girvo5• 3 years ago

And making it such a key part of the underlying OS it was impossible to escape.

BirAdam2• 3 years ago

Microsoft had almost the entire PC market. Apple doesn’t have over 90% in any market afaik.

samwillis6• 3 years ago

iPhone market share in the UK and US is a little over 50%, but in some demographics significantly higher.

The point is though, you can't install an alternative browser engine on iOS, you could on windows. So it's a bit of an Apples to Oranges of a comparison (no pun intended).

There is clear anti-competitive behaviour, even if they aren't a "true monopoly".

2OEH8eoCRo02• 3 years ago

You don't need to have 100% of a market to abuse your size with anticompetitive behavior. The judge mentioned this during the Epic v. Apple lawsuit.

izacus8• 3 years ago

This is a pointless argument for hundreds of millions of iPhone users that cannot exercise their right to free market.

KRAKRISMOTT• 3 years ago

The profitable upper middle class segment is absolutely dominated by Apple.

msh5• 3 years ago

Microsoft had more of a monopoly at that time than apple have now.

The Mac and other platforms at that time was tiny, its not like today where its more of a duopoly with iOS and android.

BirAdam2• 3 years ago

I feel 2 ways about this. If Apple is forced to open up, Chrome will take everything. If Apple can keep Safari in place, there are at least 2 browsers. OTOH, it’s a crap thing to do to your customers, forcing a browser on them.

mtomweb15• 3 years ago

Safari still has very good market share on MacOS so I don't think that is true.

Additionally while Safari remains underfunded and full of bugs it's not placing little competitive pressure on Chrome while ensuring that browsers that actually compete like Firefox are starved of search engine revenue.

Apple's position is bad for the Web, bad for Web Apps and bad for Safari. If they have competition then Apple will be forced to fund Safari/Webkit properly and deliver a reliable/feature rich browser.

gonzo41• 3 years ago

Apple customers don't care. They have money to burn on a luxury good, and the apple cult is just like the Tesla cult. People cannot physically hear the criticisms.

There will be no consequences.

samwillis6• 3 years ago

I used to feel like this, however I think it's more important for consumers to have choice on this rather than not.

I've come to the conclusion that competition is the only way to solve the issues around Safari not supporting all PWA features. Even if that result is a greater move to a Blink as the dominant engine.

Conan_Kudo3• 3 years ago

There are no cross-platform WebKit based browsers anymore anyway. When QtWebKit was eliminated, the last remaining ones switched to QtWebEngine (Blink/Chromium).

For there to be effective competition, there needs to be WebKit based browsers on all platforms (Windows, Android, macOS, Linux, iOS). Otherwise, it's a non-starter.

summerlight3• 3 years ago

If Apple is forced to open up, Chrome will take everything.

This won't happen. The platform default is one of the most decisive factor for the market share and Apple has a full control here. Unless they do a critical mistake at IE6 level, Chrome won't likely have above 10% iOS market share.

ascagnel_• 3 years ago

The platform default is one of the most decisive factor for the market share

That statement is much, much less true than it once was -- some quick searching puts Chrome at about 66% of desktop market share (despite neither of the two dominant desktop OSes shipping Chrome as a default), and the two default options (Chromium-based Edge and Safari) combining for about 25% of desktop market share.

cactusplant73743• 3 years ago

Apple should be forced to show users a screen where they select the browser they want to install when purchasing or upgrading iOS. There are more browsers than Safari and Chrome.

hbn2• 3 years ago

For god's sake NO, that would be the final nail in the coffin of Google owning web standards. 99% of users would choose Chrome because it's what they recognize most, and I assume in this scenario you're imagining this is actually different browsers using their own rendering engines.

I don't understand why in this world of Google's near monopoly on the web, people are more focused on government intervention to prevent Apple's pithy 9% marketshare for holding back poor Google.

xlii• 3 years ago

I’m truly scared of Chrome.

It pushes proprietary features, from what I know it starts enforcing some analytics/ads without possibility to block it out and there are other thing too, but since I’m not really an user I don’t track them deeply.

Based on my personal experiences with IE, ActiveX, Adobe Flash and not being able to fill my taxes without Microsoft license (that was around 800$ back then for me not adjusted for inflation) I am afraid the same will happen with Chrome once it gets enough ground.

“Hey, sorry but we can’t sell you toothbrush because you’re using Safari/Firefox/Vivaldi/whatever. Please switch to Chrome and continue with your tracked and dissected purchase route.”

Is there any other anti-Chrome bastion than iOS’ Safari?

Old E2E runner installed Google Chrome on my machine (didn’t even ask but that’s user space on dev machine so whatever) which grew into my MacOS machine. It cannot run in background but there is another daemon that constantly updates it. Multiple times a day I get notification that new service has been installed to run in background.

I’m not sure if that’s something I want to fight for.

onli2• 3 years ago

Fighting Apple's monopoly behaviour around Safari is not fighting for chrome.

Since you asked, Firefox is the browser to use if you do not want chrome.

kristiandupont2• 3 years ago

As a Firefox user who is very upset with Apple for (clearly intentionally) lacking support for PWA features, I am still happy that Safari exists as a counter-weight to Chrome. Any contribution counts.

lelandfe4• 3 years ago

https://gs.statcounter.com/

Firefox is not a serious competitor at this point and its tiny 4% of the market has already slipped to 3% in the last year.

That’s inching close to the “can we please drop IE11” sort of numbers from some years ago.

kivle• 3 years ago

I tried to switch to Firefox as my main browser, but sadly the blocker for me was the absolutely horrible battery life on my Macbook Pro M1. It's like it's continuously running a spinning loop or something. It reduced my battery life to somewhere between 4 to 6 hours. I have since switched to Vivaldi (which is based on Chromium unfortunately), but I will probably switch back to Firefox if those battery issues are ever resolved.

boxed• 3 years ago

I mean.. not intentionally maybe.

Gorbzel• 3 years ago

It functionally is.

Many of those who have not learned from history are so anti-Apple (or possibly subpar webdevs) that they completely ignore the lessons we've previously learned about why browser monoculture is dangerous.

Even more worrisome, these people often ignorantly call Safari "the new IE", meaning they're aware of the history and problems and choose to pursue their own broken interpretation.

If these people will ignore a browser with 50% market share on mobile and 20% overall due to their own shortsightedness, clearly they're going to ignore Firefox or others hanging out in the single digits.

vehemenz2• 3 years ago

If you are in favor of Chrome on iOS, then you are in favor of a Chrome monopoly, or you don't understand how browser monopolies work. Or maybe you weren't around during the browser wars (a lot of < 30s on HN).

amelius2• 3 years ago

Perhaps we should prepare for this by building nice, user-friendly sandboxes that run Chrome inside it.

mistrial9• 3 years ago

no, Canonical is doing this with Ubuntu desktop and a default Firefox in a snapd container. Tragedy and comedy ensue .. not fun, don't like it

samwillis6• 3 years ago

If Apple was forced to compete on iOS for the dominant position that Safari holds, it would receive greater investment, add support for vital missing PWA features and potentially as a result grow its desktop market. I believe competition in the long run would break Blinks dominant position, and be better for both consumers and developers.

microtonal• 3 years ago

If Apple was forced to compete

It is not a fair market since the maker of one of the browsers also owns a significant portion of the websites that people use daily. Now Google has to play nice with Safari to some extend, since the don't want to miss out on the lucrative iPhone market. Once Google can offer Chrome on iOS, they will destroy Safari with the same underhanded practices as they did to Firefox (a pattern of subtly breaking Firefox with Google products).

nine_k• 3 years ago

Vital missing PWA features are indeed vital for Apple to stymie PWAs and force all iOS software through App Store which they fully control. PWAs is a territory where the Apple tax (30%) cannot be enforced.

dickersnoodle• 3 years ago

"Vital missing PWA features" are really only vital for devs who don't want to do native mobile apps. For the rest of us, they're a yawn.

acdha8• 3 years ago

Here's what Safari users don't get. Can you be precise about which ones are vital?

1. Install prompt (the user has to start with the "Add to Home Screen" command)

2. Link interception (i.e. browsing in the normal browser switching to the PWA rather than continuing normally)

3. Shared storage between the normal browser and the PWA

4. Ability to start fullscreen

5. SVG icons

6. Background sync

7. Push notifications

The rest of that is largely a list of things like "Web Bluetooth" which are non-standard Chrome features which Firefox also doesn't implement and often have significant privacy or security concerns.

amq• 3 years ago

I'm using Firefox on my Windows, Mac and Android, and I don't remember when was the last time that I had to open Chrome.

Larrikin2• 3 years ago

I've used Firefox for twenty years.

It's not everyday but I have to open Chrome, or recently Brave, atleast once a month to deal with shitty frontend developers that only test their latest code in chrome, awful security captchas that only work in Chrome, and just total shit show foreign/non American sites that went from worst practices in IE to worst practices in Chrome because some old man/men in their government/company decided it needs to be done in a certain way because it works best on their ten year old laptop.

I just open tickets, complain, limit interaction with offending sites, because as someone who lived through AOL and internet explorer I know how awful it will be if a mega tech company is allowed to dictate web standards because they don't have to interoperate. Most sites can just be cordoned off until they fix the issue or be forgotten about but banking sites often intersect total shit programmers and by the book regulations that are poorly written sadly.

Also Firefox is the only cross platform browser that lets me control what I see and doesn't force me to waste time in my life by seeing ads without jumping through hoops.

skrowl2• 3 years ago

Chrome and Safari have nothing like Firefox containers. I can't imagine switching to Chrome or Safari.

summerlight3• 3 years ago

You don't need to worry about Apple. You don't need to underestimate Apple's engineering team. It has the most well-funded and competitive engineering team on the planet and they can afford fighting for browser market share against Chrome. Safari was falling behind the competition for a while not because Chrome is a unbeatable monstrosity but Apple doesn't have to compete against it.

pmontra4• 3 years ago

Whatever they'll do, company policies will only let Safari run on Apple hardware where they want developers create apps to make Apple profit from. Any improvement to Safari is less profit for the Store. However maybe the EU will really force Apple to let other browser engines run on their devices and they'll have to let go a part of the Store. We will see.

On the other side, Chrome runs on any hardware and people using Safari on their iPhone are likely to use Chrome at work or on their PCs. The competition is almost one sided and can't be won by staying inside the closed world of Macs and ìPhones, especially ìPhones because of the internal competition from native apps.

emsy• 3 years ago

Hey, sorry but we can’t sell you toothbrush because you’re using Safari/Firefox/Vivaldi/whatever.

Don’t buy there. This has nothing to do with chrome.

asddubs2• 3 years ago

individual solutions will never fix systemic issues like that.

reitanqild2• 3 years ago

How Google hasn't even got a slap on its wrist yet for how they have massively abused their market position to push Chrome is beyond me.

Which reminds me it is about time to send one of my approximately twice-a-year reminders to competition authorities around here and remind them about it.

If anyone else feels the same, please do, maybe if letters start arriving from other persons than old grumpy reitan they will actually care?

sprkwd• 3 years ago

That would be something I would do. Do you have a template you send?

kaladin-jasnah• 3 years ago

Thankfully I've noticed an uptick in younger Firefox users due to memes on Reddit about how using Firefox is cool.

nobleach4• 3 years ago

My son uses Opera! He keeps telling me (an engineer) I should use it. I'm like, "do not cite the deep magic to me kid, I was there when it was written.

It does give me hope that not all folks are lemmings. Just like during the IE6 days, there was a nice ground-swell of Firefox (or "Fox-fire" as some of the older folks called it) users.

rs_rs_rs_rs_rs2• 3 years ago

Is there any other anti-Chrome bastion than iOS’ Safari?

What an insane take, I don't believe you are serious, there's no way you're not a troll.

Safari is not an anti-Chrome bastion, Apple does not care and does not want Safari to be a better browser than Chrome. They just care about controling from where you install the apps on your phone.

yamtaddle• 3 years ago

Insane? Regardless of Apple's intentions, Safari's iOS monopoly is the only reason web devs test on two browser engines rather than one.

Klonoar2• 3 years ago

They’re not a troll and this is an increasingly commonly held take. Chill.

grishka3• 3 years ago

The first thing we need to do is to limit the scope of the web. Make the web tech finite. Stop evolving it. Throw away all the wannabe-app-platform crap and anti-user features like service workers, PWAs, DRM, WebUSB, WebBluetooth, WebSerial, WebMIDI, then declare HTML, CSS, and JS immutable. Third party cookies also need to be abolished, yesterday, with no replacement.

Then we could possibly have new, from-scratch, independent browser engines that could compete with the status quo.

kbrosnan• 3 years ago

That would mean the web is dead. The things you mention would result in more app only experiences.

Sargos2• 3 years ago

The web is the only credibly neutral platform humanity has. If you get rid of the web then all software that humans interact with will be controlled by one of a small handful of giant corporations which I think I can speak for nearly everyone here would be a Very Bad Thing.

No more porn. No more innovative experiments. No more kids making dumb little things to learn programming. No more freedom to set your own app policies.

The web is the only platform keeping user and dev freedom alive and it's imperative that hackers like us fight for it.

charcircuit2• 3 years ago

That would just result in Web 2.0 being created and everyone moving to that.

Gordonjcp• 3 years ago

You should probably just not use the Internet any more.

tdy_err• 3 years ago

Well it is still open source and in that case you would be able to access the site with the same browser features just using Chromium instead

simonebrunozzi• 3 years ago

once it gets enough ground.

I think that Chrome is way past that, being at ~70% browser market share.

xkcd19633• 3 years ago

Safari is way faster than Chrome on iOS

knolan• 3 years ago

Chrome on iOS is just a skin on top of WebKit.

parasubvert7• 3 years ago

Try to build a web browser with WebKit. I assure you it’s a lot more work than a skin.

sccxy2• 3 years ago

Chrome on iOS is Safari but with Chrome skin.

Apple does not allow other browser engines or does not even allow most Safari features to other browsers...

parasubvert7• 3 years ago

Chrome and Firefox may use WebKit but have very different looks and feels and some different functionality. They’re not just “skins”.

ezfe• 3 years ago

See, if you had said that Safari was way faster than Chrome on macOS, you would have an argument...

xkcd19633• 3 years ago

Y just wait until I get 500rep Ive ur name now :p

Edit: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34501173#34504508

mikymoothrowa• 3 years ago

Browser vendors are free to choose their own default search engines and get paid for it just like how Brave search is the default search on brave private

This tweet thread is unnecessarily confusing the two. How does restricting browser engine to webkit decide what browser engines they use?

mtomweb15• 3 years ago

Short answer: No market share = no search engine revenue

By: 1. Eliminating browsers ability to differentiate itself 2. Forcing additional costs on the browser vendors to have to develop a second browser specifically for iOS 3. By reserving functionality exclusively for Safari 4. By eroding third party browsers market share by self-preferencing Safari (default install, couldn't set another default browser until recently etc etc)

dmitriid11• 3 years ago

Ah you mean unlike Google which pushed its browser through its dominant search, dominant mail, dominant video hosting etc. Which sabotaged Firefox. Which still conveniently "forgets" user choice of browsers in its apps and defaults to Chrome?

samwillis6• 3 years ago

One of the things the UK Competition Commission is also looking into as part of this investigation is "In App Browsers" (IABs). They need to die in a fire.

In app browsers are designed to lock the user into the app they are currently using, allowing it to track the user after they have followed a link, and coerce them to come back. For the websites being visited (on iOS) this is a separate session, no shared cookies with the main browser. This fundamentally breaks shopping carts on online stores, and I have seen it result in a 50% drop out rate at checkout (users often don't have access to their stored card details).

I frankly can't understand why there has not been more push back from advertisers using platforms such as Facebook, they are only a net negative for them.

djxfade2• 3 years ago

Yeah, it would be nice if we could at least have a system preference that forced the iab api to open the url as a regular browser tab.

Lio• 3 years ago

This is the original link (vs a tweet including the link): https://www.catribunal.org.uk/cases/157661223-apple-inc-othe...

FpUser8• 3 years ago

"I’m truly scared of Chrome."

Then do not use it. I have it only for testing. My default browser is Brave.

sbuk4• 3 years ago

...which uses Blink, which is controlled by Google. And that is the problem. Same as when it was IE.

gunwd• 3 years ago

… which uses Blink

… which is open source and therefore forkable. Google forked Blink from Webkit. What makes you think that Brave and Microsoft can’t do the same?

rejhgadellaa5• 3 years ago

For anyone making the "Apple is the last bastion against Chrome dominance"-argument: Apple is not in it for the web. Quite the opposite, more likely. They are all about control, not letting you choose a browser.

Also, I don't see how fighting a potential monoculture with an actual monoculture is a solution.

For further reading: https://infrequently.org/2022/06/apple-is-not-defending-brow...

forgetfulness4• 3 years ago

Because it's not about what you can run in the iPhone that you may not even buy. By keeping Safari alive this way, web developers, including those at Google, are forced to code against "web browsers" instead of just Chrome.

The mass of iOS users "forced" to use the browser that comes with the device they buy gives you more chances that a given website will work on Firefox on your personal computer.

That link is a blog from a Chrome engineer and shows a chart of Chrome cornerning the browser market with the caption of "Destkop OSes have long created a vibrant market for browser choice, enabling competitors not tied to OS defaults to flourish over the years.", it's ridiculous.

asddubs2• 3 years ago

I think most people making that argument know this. It's just a case of politics makes for strange bedfellows. What apple is doing here is wrong and obviously if google did the same thing on android, it would make the bad chrome situation even worse. But despite that not being what apple is trying to do, it's also acting as a buffer of chrome getting closer still to just having near-100% of the market share, which is sort of the doomsday scenario for interoperability, because at that point the standard people code against will just be "whatever works in chrome, proprietary or not".

I personally do not support apple not allowing other browser engines, just as I do not support them not allowing other ways of installing apps besides the app store, but I also think that them allowing other browser engines will ultimately make the web worse as a side effect.

hbn2• 3 years ago

I don't care what their reasoning is, I know it's not out of the goodness of their hearts. I just like that web developers have to be mindful about making sure their stuff works on a browser that isn't Chromium. Myself and Apple happen to want the same thing but for different reasons. As of now, the effect is still net good for the open web.

I assume they'll be forced to allow other browser engines on iOS at some point in the next few years, at which point the floodgates will be opened for Google to have free rein on web standards and further cement themselves as owners of the internet.

acdha8• 3 years ago

I respect Alex Russell a lot technically but it’s worth noting that as a long-time Google Chrome team member now working on Edge he’s hardly a neutral party. Even in the best good-faith effort, your views will be shaped by what you work on and how that team sees the world.

dmitriid11• 3 years ago

Apple is not in it for the web. Quite the opposite, more likely.

As if the worlds largest web ad company is in it "for the web". They are in it as much for control as anyone else.

Also, I don't see how fighting a potential monoculture with an actual monoculture is a solution.

We're already in a monoculture. And that monoculture is Chrome, not Safari which is a very distant second in comparison.

thewileyone• 3 years ago

I don't get the argument as well because Apple already dominates by forcing Webkit to every browser on iOS, making everything effectively Safari.

FpUser8• 3 years ago

I want to move one of my applications to web platform. Guess what, not possible unless I ignore Jesus Phone and I think I will ignore it even though it will hurt sales.

CharlesW5• 3 years ago

There's no need to cut off one's nose to spite one's face. There are literally millions of minimally-wrapped web apps in the App Store, which is where people search for apps.

FpUser8• 3 years ago

I want app to run in a browser and have access to Bluetooth LE. Not possible on iOS.

kgbcia• 3 years ago

We are going backwards in the browser wars. Peek Firefox was the best of times. I heard they restarted the servo project so let's see where that goes.

honeybadger1• 3 years ago

The worst browser experience I have had continues to be webkit based browsers. They just don't work in enough situations for me to justify leaving Firefox.

neonsunset2• 3 years ago

That's the fault of devs targeting Chromium implementation rather than the specification itself. You shouldn't use products that do that if you can help it.

uni_rule2• 3 years ago

How does that relate to WebKit being worse than Firefox specifically if they're both on the same ground of not being Chromium?

IndySun• 3 years ago

Why post the tweet and not the article?

zimpenfish2• 3 years ago

starved several browsers of funding

Do we know which browsers? Certainly not Firefox and Chrome.

fleddr2• 3 years ago

"Apple will reportedly receive 20 billion USD for having Google as the default search engine."

Now there's some easy money. Receiving 20 billion for doing absolutely nothing. To literally keeps things as-is. No product moved, no labor performed, no service provided. Just leave it. And we wire you 20 billion USD.

Simply buying the market in the open, without a care in the world. The things we let companies get away with. Astounding.

CharlesW5• 3 years ago

Simply buying the market in the open…

This is slightly hyperbolic. Google is buying a default¹. It can be changed.

https://appletoolbox.com/change-default-search-engine-iphone...

cma• 3 years ago

Choose from their payola based list of preferences. You can't chose any search engine like on other platforms.

coryfklein• 3 years ago

No product moved, no labor performed, no service provided.

That's a bit of a myopic view. Apple has invested billions in building a platform and user base, and that is what Google is buying.

uni_rule2• 3 years ago

If apple made a homegrown search engine it would be a genuine threat to Google because their diehard userbase would switch to it immediately. Besides that they also pay Firefox for the same. They are clearly just splashing cash to avoid having any sort of competition threaten them.

fleddr2• 3 years ago

Yes, that's what I said: buying users.

xkcd19633• 3 years ago

Safari is way faster than Chrome on macOS

neonsunset2• 3 years ago

I do not care if Apple's practice anti-competitive, as long as the investigation isn't targeting Chromium its efforts are grossly misplaced.

bob10292• 3 years ago

I feel like Apple has been quietly & slowly releasing its death grip on PWA use cases.

We've been shipping a B2B, PWA-enabled web app to iOS Safari users for almost 2 years and it all mostly "just works" now. We even have a customer using hand-written provisioning profiles via Azure InTune to roll out PWA web apps to their iPad home screens automatically.

To be fair, figuring out how to do this is not documented in any meaningful way whatsoever. I had to reverse engineer another PWA that already worked on iOS/Safari in order to figure out the right path.

If anything, Apple should be punished for intentionally obfuscating the capabilities of their products. I feel like this is where they are going to weasel their way out of trouble in court - "Oh look if you do this <performs elaborate ceremony no rational person could conceive> then you can actually achieve an open application ecosystem on apple devices".

CharlesW5• 3 years ago

To be fair, figuring out how to do this is not documented in any meaningful way whatsoever.

Are there resources you can recommend to other PWA developers? It sounds like there are many people in this thread that haven't pieced it together like you've been able to.

bob10292• 3 years ago

The most effective documentation for me was looking at app.starbucks.com in dev tools.

You can see the experience yourself - Grab an iOS device and navigate to app.starbucks.com. Add it to your Home Screen. Open the new shortcut. Observe this desired behavior. Dev tools will explain how to get there. I'd pay special attention to the meta tags.

pjfin123• 3 years ago

On Android you can still install Brave or other browsers.

CharlesW5• 3 years ago

Brave for iOS: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/brave-private-web-browser/id10...

Many other browsers are available for iOS too. (Not to be confused with rendering engines, of course.)

yamazakiwi• 3 years ago

But they're not available in actuality are they? So why even share this information as if these browsers exist in full on iOS when they dont? The pedantry is deceitful in this case.

ChrisMarshallNY• 3 years ago

Eh, I think the article and title are really meant to drive "engagement."

Any company, individual, or government will discourage investigation. Sometimes, because they have something to hide, sometimes, because they want to avoid precedent, and sometimes, just because it's a big fat pain in the butt, and they have the resources to interfere.

I'm not saying that Apple is right or wrong, here; just that this particular thing isn't really something to get all worked up over. The people pushing this, have an agenda (as does Apple, or any corporation). They are framing the matter in terms that will fit their perspective.

pwinnski4• 3 years ago

I am truly torn on this. If Chrome were controlled by an independent company, I would 100% agree. Shame on Apple for dictating the use of the Safari engine on iOS!

But Chrome is not controlled by an independent company. It's controlled by the largest company in the search, video, and advertising markets, and has repeatedly abused that power to degrade functionality for non-Chromium browsers, all while extending Chrome in non-standard non-secure ways.

And this:

In addition, Apple has been underfunding Safari for the past decade leading to missing critical functionality and a buggy experience for Web App developers thus ensuring that Native Apps, another Apple revenue source, are the only viable solution.

That just seems like nonsense. The Safari team seems to be well-funded, they just have different ideas from Google about what PWAs should be allowed to do. This caused Google to fork the webkit project, and is why things like push notifications are not supported today. It's not that they can't, it's that they won't.

rejhgadellaa5• 3 years ago

The Safari team seems to be well-funded [...]

Meh. Safari is owned by Apple, the richest company in the world and they're beaten by a non-profit(!) who spends ~500 million / yr?

Apple only started properly funding Safari and catching up with Firefox and Chrome when regulators started looking into their practices.

pwinnski4• 3 years ago

Safari is owned by Apple, the richest company in the world and they're beaten by a non-profit(!) who spends ~500 million / yr?

How can one of the richest men in the world eat peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches, as Bill Gates did while being interviewed for My Next Guest Needs No Introduction with David Letterman? Shouldn't he be eating something with truffle oil, or caviar? To me, Apple having the highest market value of any company doesn't seem like it should be related to the quality of their free web browser at all. I've never heard them answer a question about Safari with "we don't have the money for that," which would make the relationship relevant.

It seems like the same sort of reasoning as: "Apple is the richest company in the world and their company sweatshirts aren't even as good as this sweatshirt company's?" I mean, yeah, a company devoted to the sole purpose of a single thing, with no shareholders even, should expect to be number one at that single thing. I guess it's pretty embarrassing for the Firefox team that they're considered a number two to Google.

As I said in my first comment, Apple disagrees with some others on what should and shouldn't be in a web browser. They haven't implemented push notification because they disagree with their inclusion, not because they can't afford to do it.

Apple only started properly funding Safari and catching up with Firefox and Chrome when regulators started looking into their practices.

I'm not sure what you're basing this on. Safari was the first browser to achieve 100% Acid3 compliance back in 2008, which was a thing they seemed to care about more than anyone else, although the rest of the browsers caught up soon after. Again, and it doesn't seem I can say this enough: Apple has different priorities than Google or Mozilla do. Those priorities change over time, which might lead you to think they're either pulling ahead of falling behind in the areas on which you're focusing, but they've been pretty steadily developing Safari while keeping memory usage and energy usage low and avoiding what they see as security pitfalls.

They don't deliver the same PWA functionality that Chrome does on purpose, not due to lack of funds or effort.

Apple attempting to stop investigation into its practices involving browsers

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