iOS allows alternative browser engines in Japan

260 pointsposted 8 hours ago
by eklavya
(developer.apple.com)

171 Comments

MBCook

12 minutes ago

I’m not going to say I think Apple should be able to lock out competing browsers, I know this is going to happen.

But God I don’t want this. The iPhone is basically the only thing stopping a total Chrome/Chromium hegemony from ruling the web the way IE did.

I don’t think Google will practically abandon things the way Microsoft did. But they will absolutely have the kind of power Microsoft did to force any feature.

I don’t want to be forced to use Chrome because it’s the only browser that works on most sites. It’s already bad enough with some sites.

But Apple‘s stubbornness and completely different reasons are the only things accidentally holding back the tide.

herpdyderp

4 minutes ago

I don’t see any reason why Google wouldn’t abandon web features left and right, given how they do that with everything else.

gigel82

a minute ago

I'm sure if Apple keeps innovating and adopting some of the Web standards they'll outcompete other engines. But let's be realistic, they 100% are blocking other engines and not adopting standards in their own because they want that sweet sweet 30% cut when developers can't publish PWAs and are forced into the "app" model.

GaryBluto

2 hours ago

I'm surprised Apple haven't thrown in the towel and opened things up worldwide yet. It's only a matter of time until it becomes too confusing and problematic to try and run the same system relatively openly in one country and walled in another.

overfeed

2 hours ago

> It's only a matter of time until it becomes too confusing and problematic to try and run the same system relatively openly in one country and walled in another

They will continue to do so for as long as it remains profitable. Navigating the complexities of multiple jurisdictions is the bread and butter of MNCs - it's the price of admission into the multinational club. Apple is guaranteed to have lawyers, admins, and executives already on the payroll for this task.

lxgr

24 minutes ago

Or until they’ve successfully “demonstrated” that it always was impossible.

> Apple is guaranteed to have lawyers, admins, and executives already on the payroll for this task.

As both a shareholder and user, I really wish they’d invest their resources into feature development instead of manufacturing obstacles.

valleyer

an hour ago

Lawyers, admins, and executives, sure. But what about the complexity on the engineers who now have to maintain an exploding matrix of modes? I can definitely see that becoming burdensome.

davnicwil

an hour ago

much has been written about the deteriorating quality of iOS.

There's bluntly not strong external evidence that software quality is a driving priority at Apple in recent years, so it most probably follows that concerns about maintainability aren't either.

npunt

33 minutes ago

they make $1b in revenue and $300mm a day in profit

theplatman

an hour ago

Engineers say they want to work on hard problems then complain that they can’t solve something because it’s too complex

MrMetric

an hour ago

The difference is this isn't an inherently hard problem. It's just stupidity. The difficulty is not inherently interesting, because it's all made up.

abacadaba

an hour ago

sounds like a problem for claude to worry about

hypeatei

2 hours ago

I've always thought the same. Obviously there isn't much of a technical hurdle since they have the engineering talent. But, keeping track of all these cross-region rules and training your staff+customers on it has to be quite costly in multiple respects (time, energy, mental models, etc.)

My personal opinion is that keeping the browser engine locked down isn't much of a profit generator, unlike maintaining full reign over the app store would be.

bloppe

an hour ago

Hobbling browser engines is a key pillar of app store control. Decent PWA support would be a massive blow to Apple's bottom line.

gjsman-1000

an hour ago

This is the conspiratorial version.

The more likely explanation is that when every app can bundle their own browser engine, we will not see a competition explosion. Instead, Electron apps will come to mobile, with every app shipping its own browser stack.

You can’t tell me Gecko, which has already failed on desktop, will suddenly be popular on mobile. You can easily tell me every app shipping their own Chromium would be very popular with developers.

wolvoleo

42 minutes ago

Firefox is really good now on android. It's my go to browser now for everything. It just needed full addon support but when that was finally there it was great.

bloppe

an hour ago

a browser is essentially an app store with no 30% cut for Apple. If you can ship a browser, you don't need to pay the Apple tax

gjsman-1000

an hour ago

Has PWA become popular on unencumbered platforms like Android or Windows?

No.

Even if unencumbered on iOS, it will still fail, because PWA is an intrinsically confusing technology. The pitch to non-technical users is terrible. Just like passkeys, which has also been terrible.

judah

16 minutes ago

> "Has PWA become popular on unencumbered platforms like Android or Windows? No."

Yes, PWAs have become popular on these platforms. I work for Microsoft on the Microsoft Store (app store on Windows) and I work with the Edge team, and I work on PWABuilder.com, which publishes PWAs to app stores. Some of the most popular apps in the Microsoft Store are PWAs: Netflix, TikTok, Adobe Creative Cloud, Disney+, and many others.

To view the list of PWAs in the Store, on a Windows box you can run ms-windows-store://assoc/?Tags=AppExtension-microsoft.store.edgePWA

I run PWABuilder.com as well, and I can tell you that many, many PWAs get published to the Google Play Store, including some very popular ones.

I agree there is some confusion around PWA installation. There are some proposed web standards with Google and Microsoft's backing to help with that, e.g. Web Install: https://github.com/MicrosoftEdge/MSEdgeExplainers/blob/main/...

kelthuzad

an hour ago

>Has PWA become popular on unencumbered platforms like Android or Windows? No.

Obviously. When a major Gatekeeper systematically holds it back to prevent it from challenging its taxation funnel, then it has no chance of competing and will thus not be chosen on competing platforms either, which will prevent its adoption and any investment in it.

>Even if unencumbered on iOS, it will still fail, because PWA is an intrinsically confusing technology.

PWA is not an "intrinsically confusing technology" and making such an absurd statement without proper elaboration reeks of pure bias.

kelthuzad

an hour ago

>This is the conspiratorial version.

Everything that's inconvenient for your preferred narrative can just be dismissed as conspiratorial thinking, makes the world so much easier - doesnt it? I've compiled some of the evidences that makes clear how one of the Gatekeepers (Apple) has a tremendous conflict of interest, which manifested itself in systematic sabotaging of PWAs over the years: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45534316

wizzwizz4

an hour ago

Every app shipping its own Chromium isn't currently forbidden, as I understand it. They're just not allowed to use their own engines for webviews.

chuckadams

an hour ago

Technically you can even write your own webview, but you can't make it the default, nor will it be able to JIT-compile JS, since that requires an entitlement that Apple never grants. Having no JIT is murder on both performance and battery life.

MBCook

15 minutes ago

I don’t think you understand Apple‘s stubbornness. They DO NOT like being told what to do.

They seem to have gotten a long way better with Japan in this process than the EU, but they’re still not happy about it. So they’re absolutely not gonna just roll over for everyone.

WD-42

an hour ago

Good. The sooner I can run Firefox with the legit uBlock origin the better.

steelbrain

an hour ago

While its not Firefox, you can run uBlock origin with the Orion browser from the Kagi people.

WD-42

an hour ago

That’s what I’m currently doing - it’s barely functional. I’m sure it’ll get there eventually but it misses a ton of stuff the desktop version blocks.

browningstreet

an hour ago

I'm running 1Blocker on iOS Safari, what am I not getting?

nvr219

an hour ago

I'm using wipr and it's great. using vinegar/baking soda for video adblocks.

Imustaskforhelp

35 minutes ago

Okay now that we have come to the topic, How is Orion browser on App store whereas all others aren't?

is there a way to make more innovation in this area and maybe an extension or two developed adding more perms etc or forking Orion or the know-how behind it and replicating it could finally allow PWA on apple iphones?

travisgriggs

2 hours ago

This. It’s computation. Computation doesn’t really “get” geopolitical borders.

I’m so sick of the ever increasing variances between the different “store” offerings in different regions of the world. Seems like every time I push an update (every month or so), I have to answer updated questions and declarations, often relative to different parts of the world.

gjsman-1000

an hour ago

This is a poorly thought through argument, as there is nothing that “gets” geopolitical borders.

Wowfunhappy

5 hours ago

I know this isn't new for Japan, but this requirement caught my eye:

> Use memory-safe programming languages, or features that improve memory safety within other languages, within the alternative web browser engine at a minimum for all code that processes web content

Would Apple themselves meet this requirement? Isn't WebKit C++? Of course, I'm not sure what would be considered "features that improve memory safety within other languages," that's kind of vague.

giancarlostoro

2 hours ago

I do wonder how long before Apple either replaces WebKit with something built in Swift, or starts slowly converting their browser engine to Swift.

rafram

4 hours ago

https://github.com/WebKit/WebKit/wiki/Safer-CPP-Guidelines

hu3

4 hours ago

Documentation to guide devs on safe usage of C++ is enough?

So any language should be allowed as long as they instruct developers to be careful.

creato

4 hours ago

I don't know if they do this, but those conventions could be enforced by a tool.

jjmarr

an hour ago

My work bans raw new and delete, so we only use unique_ptr. It's not as memory safe as Rust's borrow checker but I've never seen a segfault.

dmazzoni

2 hours ago

Yes, in WebKit, SaferCPP guidelines are enforced by a static analysis tool.

concinds

3 hours ago

Yes, they do this, and it's really not an unreasonable requirement.

arcanemachiner

3 hours ago

Of course. It's just a coincidence that they're placing onerous restrictions on competi- I mean alternative browser engines. Restrictions which, of course, they're not obliged to follow themselves.

I am sure that Apple will make no other efforts to impede others from unwalling the garden. That would be completely ridiculous, and frankly, un-Apple-esque.

concinds

3 hours ago

Both Chrome and Firefox are already compliant, so I don't see it as onerous, but the full context of the list is indeed an extremely loud and clear "FUCK YOU, WE OWN YOU" to regulators and other browser vendors.

rorylawless

3 hours ago

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.

OptionOfT

2 hours 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-sto...

ryandrake

2 hours 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

an hour 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.

mod50ack

an hour ago

There are different levels to these things. The number of SIM card slots or bands varying from model to model isn't that unusual. The average user just needs it to work. In fact, the SIM and band configuration differences have nothing to do with regional legal mimina — they have more to do with the standard practice and available systems in each region (for example, mmWave isn't widely deployed outside the US). The configurations aren't really "worse" in the same way as locking down browser access is worse. Phones have had regional variants going back ~forever for pretty mundane and benign reasons.

More importantly, if a user travels from one region to another, as long as they can use their phone in the place they arrive, having slightly non-optimal bands or a different SIM configuration doesn't matter. The fact that your phone is slightly different from the local model is not really a problem.

But having your charger vary across regions? That's a recipe for disaster. Not only is that another level of variance in your external casing, it impacts day-to-day use. When an American user travels to, say, France, or vice versa, and wants to buy a charger, or share one with someone else, having the same model of iPhone be incompatible would be a major frustration. It would be stupid to engineer a lightning AND USB-C version of the same device for each market.

bsimpson

44 minutes ago

My dad got his phone stolen on day 1 of a monthlong trip. He went without a phone the whole trip, in part because he was nervous he wouldn't have the right radios if he brought a euro phone home.

wolvoleo

40 minutes ago

That's true they are different. It'll still work, but the bands aren't exactly the same so it may lead to coverage issues depending on the network.

ryandrake

an hour 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.

15155

31 minutes ago

Sounds like a market for Faraday GPS spoofer boxes.

viktorcode

2 hours 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

an hour 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

3 hours 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

3 hours 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.

avar

2 hours 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.

crazygringo

2 hours 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.

leptons

2 hours ago

It absolutely is reality. Safari is the worst browser by far, it's been compared to Microsoft's old Internet Explorer browser. But don't take my word for it, lots of people have written about it...

https://www.google.com/search?q=safari+is+the+new+ie

And Apple purposely will never implement lots of APIs that only their native apps allow (which other browsers implement), specifically to force many developers to create a native app to use these APIs, so that Apple can force the developer to give them a percentage of any purchases made through the app. They can't force a developer to give them a cut of purchases made through a web browser, which is why they purposely hobble the Safari browser engine and then force all other browsers to use this engine. If you can't see how bad this is, then you've been taken over by the reality distortion field.

It's spelled out in the DOJ lawsuit against apple, among many other anti-competitive practices.

Microsoft got sued and lost in an antitrust suit for bundling IE with Windows. Apple bundles Safari with iOS but forbids any other browser engine but their Safari engine. Can you imagine if Microsoft forbade any other browser from being installed on Windows? It's time Apple was brought to justice over their abusive anti-competitive practices.

Here's the whole DOJ suit against Apple:

https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/media/1344546/dl?inline

ChadNauseam

an hour ago

I suspect it might have been motivated by antitrust concerns, but safari is really not that bad. Check out Interop 2025: https://wpt.fyi/interop-2025

They generally are pretty caught up on features. They have webgpu, they support the web notifications API (once a PWA is installed), lots of stuff. My main gripe is that they make it too hard to install PWAs, but we're still waiting for an actual API for that. (Maybe in 2027? [0])

> And Apple purposely will never implement lots of APIs that only their native apps allow (which other browsers implement)

Can you give an example?

[0]: https://blogs.windows.com/msedgedev/2025/11/24/the-web-insta...

jauntywundrkind

14 minutes ago

Personally my feel is Safari at least isn't dead in the water any more, does ship some stuff. It's much better than 2 years ago. 4 years ago it was a travesty.

But there's still all sorts of wonkiness they just makes Safari non viable. If you don't PWA install, your storage gets cleared alarmingly quickly. If you do install it's still cleared wicked fast. Notifications seem to have incredibly unreliable delivery issues and require PWA installs to work at all. The features are closer to parity than before but the base functionality is still sabotaged deeply. 'The user is secure' with Apple is amazing doublespeak (the second meaning being securely in Apple's pocket with no where to go).

It's worth noting that Interop participants meet and decide via unanimous consent what they are going to work on each year. The anti-trust case against Apple would be far stronger if they didn't show up & find some stuff to work on, to agree to. And with apologies as I break out the tin foil hat, showing up also gives them some leverage to shape what doesn't get worked on too.

kelthuzad

19 minutes ago

>> And Apple purposely will never implement lots of APIs that only their native apps allow (which other browsers implement)

>Can you give an example?

Web Bluetooth, Web USB, Web NFC, Web Serial...

Of course Apple will uphold its usual charade to claim that it's about pRiVacy & sEcuRiTy to maintain plausible deniability. They could easily implement it and keep it disabled by default, such that users could make the conscious choice to enable it or keep it disabled. Any adequate analysis of Apple's behavior and motivations must mention Apple's conflict of interest, because Apple will be biased against technology that could diminish the value proposition of "native" apps which Apple has been taxing so unchallenged for all these years.

troupo

11 minutes ago

> Web Bluetooth, Web USB, Web NFC, Web Serial

Chrome-only non-standards. Note that Firefox is against these, too.

> Any adequate analysis of Apple's behavior and motivations must mention Apple's conflict of interest

I've yet to see an adequate analysis that doesn't pretend that anything Chrome shits, sorry, ships is immediately a standard that must absolutely be implemented by everyone immediately.

kelthuzad

3 minutes ago

You're right that Firefox also opposes some of these specific implementations in its current form, and that Google often rushes features. However, that doesn't diminish Apple's conflict of interest at all, so sometimes their arguments happen to align with reality just as a broken clock is correct twice a day. Apple applies many double standards e.g. they allow native apps to access these hardware features (where they happen to collect a 30% tax) but block the Web from doing the same (where they collect 0%). If privacy was the only concern, they would work on a safe standard, but instead they block the capability entirely to ensure the App Store remains superior such that their revenue isn't threatened.

givinguflac

an hour ago

You seriously just link to a google search of people who agree with you?? Solid investigation. Hard disagree on safari being even in the same ballpark as IE; what’s your alternative, Google owns the entirety of the browser space?

troupo

12 minutes ago

> https://www.google.com/search?q=safari+is+the+new+ie

Which is of course bullshit

--- start quote ---

The allegation that Safari is holding back web development by its lack of support for key features is not new, but it’s not true, either. Back fifteen years ago IE held back the web because web developers had to cater to its outdated technology stack. “Best viewed with IE” and all that. But do you ever see a “Best viewed with Safari” notice? No, you don’t. Another browser takes that special place in web developers’ hearts and minds.

...even though Chrome is not the standard, it’s treated as such by many web developers.

https://www.quirksmode.org/blog/archives/2021/08/breaking_th...

--- end quote ---

aryonoco

2 hours 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

2 hours 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.

crazygringo

2 hours ago

> Safari is the modern IE.

That's not true. It's not even available on most computers. IE was about Microsoft not following web standards and abusing its monopoly position; Safari is a minor browser by overall market share and is broadly standards-compliant.

> the fact that PWAs didn’t take off in the last decade js purely due to Safari.

So then why aren't PWA's super-popular on Windows and on Android? Since Safari doesn't affect those?

realusername

an hour ago

> Safari is a minor browser by overall market share and is broadly standards-compliant.

It's officially compliant but in practice there's a lot of buggy implementations in Safari and you'll spend lots of time on workarounds and debugging.

It's also the last non-evergreen browser being tied to the OS so it's the slowest to update, compounding that effect.

> So then why aren't PWA's super-popular on Windows and on Android? Since Safari doesn't affect those?

Personally I think that's because it's still not that convenient even on Android even if better.

crazygringo

28 minutes ago

If those are the extent of complaints, then I think Safari's doing just fine. That's nothing like the next IE, and shows that PWA still have their own problems regardless of Apple.

otterley

2 hours 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

an hour ago

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.

otterley

an hour 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.

givinguflac

an hour 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

an hour 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.

toast0

2 hours 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.

n8cpdx

an hour ago

Safari exclusivity is the only reason we aren’t living in a 100% “this site built for chrome” world. I think folks must forget the IE days and how bad that was.

There is zero percent chance developers are wasting a second making sure their sites actually work cross platform if not for iOS (and iOS more moneyed user base).

michaelt

an hour ago

> If browser F is worse at battery life than browser S, people will figure that out and adapt for themselves.

Unfortunately, the makers of a certain browser also control several major web properties, and regularly make 'mistakes' that break compatibility with competing browsers, while releasing a set of apps that 'forget' users' browser selections on a monthly basis.

Personally, I'd much prefer apple allowed a browser engine with proper ad blocking support. But I do worry that the moment they do so, the almost-monopoly browser market would become a total monopoly.

Tagbert

2 hours ago

Safari has long been better for battery than Chrome but people still install Chrome on their MacBooks.

crazygringo

2 hours 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

2 hours 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

swiftcoder

35 minutes ago

> 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?

It's easy to see, but seeing doesn't mean the user will do anything about it. I guarantee that for the average user, their list goes something like Instagram/TikTok/FaceBook/Twitter, and they haven't uninstalled any of those yet due to battery drain...

crazygringo

2 hours ago

> go to Settings > Battery, where you'll see a breakdown of battery consumption by app

And what percentage of users do you think ever check that, or even know it's there to check?

> If that's a problem for web browsers, then it's a problem for every single app in the app store.

No it's not, the app store disallows arbitrary code execution.

> There's nothing really unique about a web browser app that makes it more risky than any other app.

Yes there is -- JavaScript.

> Javascript is already very much sandboxed.

...by Safari. It wouldn't be if you allowed any developer to write their own JavaScript interpreter as part of their own browser.

> If web standards are standards, then let other web browsers on iOS.

That's a non-sequitur.

gumby271

3 hours 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.

8note

an hour 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

koolba

3 hours ago

Does this mean we'll finally have "real" firefox with support for ublock origin on iOS?

modeless

3 hours ago

Apple is going to (mostly) obey the letter of the law but they will continue to resist strongly in every way they can. Onerous requirements, arbitrary restrictions, overzealous enforcement, and most of all bad APIs with limited capabilities and no workarounds for bugs.

Shipping a good and complete browser engine on iOS will require more than just developers. You'll also need a team of lawyers to threaten and sue Apple to get their policy restrictions relaxed and APIs fixed.

I doubt Mozilla or Google will be willing to spend the many developer-years and lawyer-years it will take to fully port every feature of a whole engine and properly maintain it in such a hostile environment, just for the Japan market. I expect to see some hobbyist-level ports but not something worth using for a long time. Unless other countries follow suit.

arcanemachiner

3 hours ago

> just for the Japan market

Also the EU, no?

modeless

3 hours ago

Does the EU also require third party engines to be able to replace the web view in apps systemwide? Or does it only require that single standalone browser apps can use alternative engines?

concinds

2 hours ago

> Does the EU also require third party engines to be able to replace the system web view in apps systemwide?

Yes.

modeless

an hour ago

Hmm, actually now that I look closer at the Japan requirements, it doesn't seem to allow replacing the web view systemwide, as I thought, and as Android allows. And neither do the EU requirements. It only allows individual apps to embed an alternative engine on a per-app basis. And the Japan page includes the caveat "apps from browser engine stewards" which if interpreted zealously (and I expect Apple to) would forbid apps not from Google or Mozilla from embedding Chromium or Gecko.

mrtesthah

a minute ago

You can actually use full uBlock origin in Kagi's Orion iOS browser.

viktorcode

2 hours ago

Probably not, as the same rules were applied to Apple devices in EU earlier, and no third party browser engines appeared.

But right now you can use uBlock origin lite in Safari. Or any other of multitude of other adblockers.

ckcheng

2 hours ago

FYI. iOS Safari already supports uBlock Origin Lite. iOS Firefox can do the same anytime but it already has some tracking and content blocking built in too.

aryonoco

2 hours ago

As someone who has recently switched from Android to iOS, I can tell you uBlock Origin Lite on Safari on iOS is a poor man’s imitation of the real uBlock Origin on Firefox on Android.

ckcheng

19 minutes ago

Oh definitely! I know you’re just using the phrase and don’t imply otherwise, but to clarify the word “imitation”, uBO lite is not a fake imitation but actually an official thing from uBO and Raymond Hill: see https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBOL-home

LetsGetTechnicl

an hour ago

How does it compare to 1Blocker? I use that in Safari and also a VPN when I'm away back to my home connection so it uses my NextDNS which also blocks a lot of in-app ads.

mi_lk

2 hours ago

are there major sites that don't work for you?

Longhanks

3 hours ago

Could’ve happened some time ago already in the EU, so there must be reasons for Firefox an Google not to ship their own engines (yet?).

swiftcoder

33 minutes ago

Nope. Apple has successfully made the rules so complicated that we still don't have any 3rd party browser engines in the EU, more than a year later.

__turbobrew__

3 hours ago

uBO lite works pretty well on ios/safari for me.

concinds

3 hours ago

The separate-binary requirement makes it completely DOA, so they're still breaking the law. Deliberately. It bans actions that make it unlikely for browsers to adopt alternative engines. And they mandate no sharing of login-state with any other app from the same developer, despite violating that themselves (Safari sync is turned on by default, no encryption by default). Funny. And they mandate blocking third-party cookies, great but completely inappropriate for an OS to impose. The most hilarious:

> Prioritize resolving reported vulnerabilities with expedience [...] Most vulnerabilities should be resolved in 30 days, but some may be more complex and may take longer.

Apple does not comply with this.

lcnmrn

11 minutes ago

Hopefully with AI we will have other browser engines than Chrome and Firefox.

ninkendo

3 hours ago

The fact we still can't get this in the US is atrocious. They have already paid the cost to implement this for the EU and Japan, but simply don't allow it for US users because... spite, I guess? Horrible.

It reminds me of when I asked for my account to be deleted from some online learning site (Udacity maybe?) And they're response was: "Nope, we only do that for European users." Like they went through all the effort of implementing a proper way to delete your data, but they just... don't do it if you're not in the right geographic area.

swiftcoder

31 minutes ago

> They have already paid the cost to implement this for the EU and Japan, but simply don't allow it for US users because...

If by "this", you mean "a set of rules so complicated that no 3rd party will ever ship a browser"...

In practice, they've shipped a whole lot of nothing, and we still don't have any 3rd party browser engines available in the EU

__aru

an hour ago

> The fact we still can't get this in the US is atrocious.

To be honest, I suspect that Apple is purposefully doing this to make alternatives a logistical and legal nightmare vs their own App store.

By having different rules for different countries, different fee structures, etc, Apple is basically making alternatives as inconvenient and painful as legally possible

The US not getting these features is on purpose, it makes the entire idea of "alternatives on iOS" extremely inconvenient vs just using the App store.

mettamage

41 minutes ago

I would love to have a browser that I can use my stylus to scribble with.

drnick1

4 hours ago

2026 should be the year when every tech-minded person dumps Apple (and Google) for good and either starting running either a free Android OS (Graphene, Lineage or a couple of other variants) or a Linux phone.

At this point, Apple and Google devices are nothing more than instruments of coercion and mass surveillance.

yokoprime

2 hours ago

Making "tech-minded persons" dump apple etc does NOTHING to move the needle in terms of what most people use.

For example I'm running a pretty sweet calibre-web automated setup with Kobo readers. Ive changed the storefront on my kobo and have seemless sync OTA of selected shelves. And even I struggle to get my wife to choose that setup over Amazon kindle. The very minute there is a single snag, normies (sorry wife dear) lose interest.

criddell

3 hours ago

Lectures and admonitions won’t change anything. People will move to Graphene and Linux when it’s better for them.

Coercion and surveillance problems are pretty far down the list of complaints most people have with their personal devices.

bsimpson

42 minutes ago

So far as I can tell, Linux phones are still ass.

Linux on mobile is probably even more behind than Linux on desktop was in the 90s.

airstrike

4 hours ago

Unfortunately, I appreciate the deep integration between my phone and my laptop too much to drop either

drnick1

4 hours ago

I don't have Apple devices to compare, but I think KDE Connect can closely replicate this, entirely locally. I wouldn't be surprised if Apple's "deep integrations" rely on cloud components that are privacy-violating by design (even if Apple promises not to look at the data flowing through their servers).

cosmic_cheese

3 hours ago

Most cross device stuff in the Apple world actually works via P2P Bluetooth and WiFi and functions without an internet connection or even a shared WiFi network. Mac and iDevice WiFi hardware is even designed with this in mind and is capable of maintaining P2P connections to other devices and a WiFi network simultaneously without rapidly switching between the two like many commodity WiFi cards have to.

arzig

an hour ago

Unfortunately the integration is really quite weak with Apple. KDE Connect cannot remain active while the application is not in the foreground. It’s possibly a packaging issue but pairing from fedora is also quite flakey.

As absurd as this sounds windows -> iPhone via their phone link is actually almost as good as apples built in ecosystem to the point where I can make phone calls and send texts on my computer. It’s not quite as seamless especially the setup but that is a well done wizard and it mostly works.

cpuguy83

an hour ago

KDE Connect with iOS, while useful, is terrible.

websiteapi

4 hours ago

UX is much worse imo on graphene compared to iOS

drnick1

4 hours ago

I disagree. I had an iPhone in the past and find the minimalist Graphene UI refreshing. It's like comparing KDE on Arch to Windows 11 or MacOS. Nothing gets in your way or distracts you, the OS is what an OS is supposed to be, a platform for managing and launching apps.

cosmic_cheese

3 hours ago

It’s definitely something that varies from person to person. I tried putting Graphene on a secondary Android device (an old Pixel 3XL) and compared to the stock ROM or more typical AOSP fork (e.g. LineageOS or Pixel Experience), I found it rather frustrating. I can’t imagine running it on my daily driver.

Similarly with Linux, the sheer number of rough edges, papercuts, and quirks is still too high (regardless of if I’m using a big name DE or hyper minimal tiling WM or somewhere in between) for them to serve as my main desktop environment.

websiteapi

4 hours ago

UX, not UI. perfect example is you copy something on your laptop and paste it on your phone. trivial on iDevice.

bdd8f1df777b

4 hours ago

Trivial as in it works well sometimes and badly in other times with no explanation for why. That’s my experience anyway.

umanwizard

2 hours ago

It literally always works flawlessly for me unless Bluetooth is turned off.

drnick1

4 hours ago

KDE connect over Bluetooth or WiFi seems ideal for this, so it's definitely possible. I am not sure how the iDevices deal with this, but I really don't want anything cloud-connected.

8note

an hour ago

so you have your file on a laptop running linux, and its just easy to move the file to your iOS phone?

bigyabai

4 hours ago

KDE Connect is more reliable than Continuity Clipboard, in my experience.

hu3

4 hours ago

this doesn't work sometimes. my wife complains frequently

Larrikin

4 hours ago

Tailscale drop is better and works across devices.

websiteapi

4 hours ago

tail scale drop is much more complicated than literally copying and pasting on iDevice. that's literally all you do, no setup, nothing and this is just one example for one type of action.

https://tailscale.com/kb/1106/taildrop

look at all of that, lol. iDevice is literally copy and paste any file or text. the end - you don't even have to set it up.

Larrikin

2 hours ago

How do I copy it from my Mac to my Android?

rendaw

3 hours ago

This sounds like hyperbole. I've never used tailscale, but reading that doc:

Installation: Install the tailscale client

Sharing: Click on the share menu and select tailscale

It's a beta feature so there's also a switch you have to flip for now.

websiteapi

3 hours ago

you don't need to believe me. I use it daily. don't know why you're so defensive lol - it's our own opinion. fyi I didn't have to do anything for this to work (clipboard laptop to phone)

umanwizard

2 hours ago

Meanwhile, for Apple:

Installation: nothing.

Sharing: Cmd+C/Cmd+V

IlikeKitties

4 hours ago

>UX is much worse imo on graphene compared to iOS

Freedom and privacy exist on graphene.

meindnoch

an hour ago

Unfortunately, I prefer smooth animations.

EA-3167

3 hours ago

This is profoundly out of touch with how almost everyone who isn’t a particularly zealous member of certain movements lives their lives.

umanwizard

2 hours ago

> 2026 should be the year when every tech-minded person dumps Apple (and Google) for good

Why? I am a very tech-minded person but simply don't care about running alternative browser engines on my phone. Am I "wrong" in your opinion?

bigyabai

4 hours ago

2026 should be the last year when anyone technical-minded comes around to the realization that Google/Apple are in the Fed's pocket. If you're making the switch in 2027 or 2028, it's probably too late for you.

threethirtytwo

4 hours ago

Why only Japan? Seems like something forced them to in Japan.

leptons

3 hours ago

The US DOJ was attempting to sue Apple in an antitrust suit for many things, including blocking every browser engine except their own Safari browser on iOS.

https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/media/1344546/dl?inline

Who knows if this will actually move forward now that "Tim Apple" gave the current leader a meaningless golden trophy.

guessmyname

3 hours ago

For many Hacker News readers who check the website every day, this is not news:

• (4 years ago) Japan forces Apple to slightly loosen restrictions on ‘reader’ apps — https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28387094

• (3 years ago) Japan pushes for Apple and Google to allow sideloading — https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36393809

• (3 years ago) Japan to open up Apple and Google app stores to competition — https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36368735

• (3 years ago) Japan to open up Apple- and Google-dominated phone apps to competition — https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36370398

• (3 years ago) Apple Japan hit with $98M in back taxes for missing duty-free abuses — https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34156235

• (2 years ago) Japan to crack down on Apple and Google app store monopolies — https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38773429

• (2 years ago) Japan forces Apple and Google to open their mobile platforms — https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40666651

• (2 years ago) Japan enacts law to curb Apple, Google's app dominance — https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40671162

• (5 months ago) Japan: Apple Must Lift Browser Engine Ban by December — https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44810061

• (5 months ago) Japan Law Will Require Apple to Allow Non-WebKit Browsers on iPhone — https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44826077

• (15 days ago) Apple Announces Changes to iOS in Japan — https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46307858

• (14 days ago) Apple and Google respond to new Japan smartphone law, including reduced app fees — https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46310074

… and more here: https://hn.algolia.com/?q=japan+apple

cubefox

4 hours ago

Yes, there is a new Japanese law that forces them.

gumby271

2 hours ago

It's so disappointing to be fed crumbs like this instead of seeing real consumer protection laws put in place. Let users install software on their computers outside of what the manufacturer permits, why focus on browsers and "app stores"?

iqandjoke

3 hours ago

So can people in Okinotorishima, Takeshima, Senkaku Islands use that alternative browser?

zb3

4 hours ago

The title is misleading. "Allows" need to be in quotes - they did everything they could to make sure this won't change anything in practice. Screw Apple.

ninkendo

3 hours ago

Could you elaborate? Other than the "Japan" requirement it seems legit?

I guess the requirements are pretty onerous, but they all seem like table stakes for a browser these days (Firefox or Chrome should have no problem with them, for instance.)

catlikesshrimp

3 hours ago

They weren't going to title "Apple forced to allow alternative..."

They are the ones allowing the alternatives because they are the gate keepers. They have "the keys"

shmerl

5 hours ago

Did Japan decide to push proper competition laws?

Time to force Apple to do it everywhere. Very long overdue.

signal11

4 hours ago

I agree with the “enforce competition laws” sentiment, but in this context, enforced naively, all it’ll do is entrench the dominant browser engine, Blink, even more across the mobile ecosystem.

I’m sure some devs will love this. But equally, some may worry about the monoculture implications.

concinds

3 hours ago

The "monoculture" has never been less of a threat. WPT.FYI is driving towards asymptotically perfect compatibility and behavior. And the real web, the long-tail of websites, is too chaotic to be controlled by any entity regardless of browser market share. Chrome can cook up whatever API they want, no website can be forced to adopt it. And if someone can't use some WebMIDI site on Safari, well, they can't complain, they didn't want that site to exist in the first place.

It's simply not a good excuse to defend the iOS browser ban.

dekoidal

4 hours ago

It hasn’t on Macs. Safari is still popular among non-tech folk

cosmic_cheese

3 hours ago

It’s still got popularity within tech-inclined Mac/iOS circles too because it’s easier on the battery than Chrome (+derivatives) and Firefox. Some would like to switch but because neither Google nor Mozilla has much to lose for their browsers being battery hogs, relatively little engineering effort gets dedicated to improving efficiency compared to WebKit (which is similarly efficient under Linux in e.g. GNOME Web, proving it’s not purely first-party advantage).

crossroadsguy

4 hours ago

That’s because Apple adds two extra legs to Safari on OS level and cuts both the legs of other browsers in a manner of speaking by rigging this comparison.

argsnd

2 hours ago

In what way do you think this is meaningfully occurring? I ask because I have not heard of Chrome or Firefox being inhibited on energy efficiency by platform limitations.

Klonoar

2 hours ago

This needs a big ol’ “citation needed” slapped across it.

Spivak

3 hours ago

I think the narrative is that once developers have the option to tell all of their users "we only support Chrome, just install Chrome" then any support for Safari will dry up.

Unfortunately I don't think we will see if this is how it plays out until Apple has to allow other browsers globally.

leptons

2 hours ago

The reason Apple doesn't allow any other browser engines on iOS is due to them collecting up to 30% of purchases made through the apps from the app store. If a developer can do the same things with a capable web browser, then they won't need to create a native iOS app and that cuts into Apple's app revenue. So Apple purposely hobbles Safari so it doesn't have any advanced browser APIs for stuff like bluetooth or other APIs that apps have access to, forcing developers to create an app, where Apple can then cut into purchases made through the app.

It has nothing to do with people no longer using Safari and Apple being sad about that. Other browsers can technically be installed on iOS, but the underlying browser engine is forced to be Safari, which lacks many APIs other web browsers could implement, reducing the need for a native app. It's purely Apple's anti-competitive greed that drives this situation. And the EU, Japan, and the US DOJ have noticed. So far only the EU and Japan have actually taken measures to force Apple to change this.

Here's the entire DOJ lawsuit which includes many other instances of anti-competitive practices by Apple.

https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/media/1344546/dl?inline

otterley

2 hours ago

What evidence do you have, other than speculation, that Apple is so motivated? What standard features are missing from Safari’s rendering engine that makes it a less capable browser such that developers are forced to produce apps instead?

koolala

an hour ago

WebXR hasn't been supported for 10 years so they control their own AR market.

shmerl

2 hours ago

Banning competition can't possibly help increasing competition.

It would be good to see Firefox with its own engine there for example.

d--b

2 hours ago

I'm all for privacy and alternative app stores, but opening browser engines to the competition isn't something I'm keen to have.

Now every phone will ship with 2 engines (inevitably chrome is going to be bundled in at least one of your apps). Both are tied to large tech companies. And both have approximately the same feature set.

At this stage, I can't think of any upside for the end user. New CSS crap or obscure web APIs, or proprietary DRM? And the cost is that we're going to get new website badges "only in Chrome", or "only in Safari", like it's 1999.

This is Apple, people know what they get into, and they kind of want that an iPhone is not a PC.

It looks like everyone thinks that this is a good thing. Can anyone explain beyond the "this is a monopoly" argument? It's not a monopoly if the engine is free, and if they need the engine to more or less match all the desktop engines.

I don't feel cornered by Apple on that one.