Apple's Grip On iOS Browser Engines Disallowed Under Latest Draft EU Rules (theregister.com) 74
Europe's Digital Markets Act -- near-finalized legislation to tame the internet's gatekeepers -- contains language squarely aimed at ending Apple's iOS browser restrictions. The Register reports: The Register has received a copy of unpublished changes in the proposed act, and among the various adjustments to the draft agreement is the explicit recognition of "web browser engines" as a service that should be protected from anti-competitive gatekeeper-imposed limitations. Apple requires that competing mobile browsers distributed through the iOS App Store use its own WebKit rendering engine, which is the basis of its Safari browser. The result is that Chrome, Edge, and Firefox on iOS are all, more or less, Safari.
That requirement has been a sore spot for years among rivals like Google, Mozilla, and Microsoft. They could not compete on iOS through product differentiation because their mobile browsers had to rely on WebKit rather than their own competing engines. And Apple's browser engine requirement has vexed web developers, who have been limited to using only the web APIs implemented in WebKit for their web apps. Many believe this barrier serves to steer developers toward native iOS app development, which Apple controls.
The extent to which Apple profits from the status quo has prompted regulatory scrutiny in Europe, the UK, the US, and elsewhere. [...] Now those efforts have been translated into the text of the DMA, which, alongside the Digital Services Act (DSA), defines how large technology gatekeepers will be governed in Europe. [...] In short, when the DMA takes effect in 2024, it appears that Apple will be required to allow browser competition on iOS devices. "The potential for a capable web has been all but extinguished on mobile because Apple has successfully prevented it until now," said Alex Russell, partner program manager on Microsoft Edge who worked previously as Google Chrome's first web standards tech lead. "Businesses and services will be able to avoid building 'apps' entirely when enough users have capable browsers."
"There's a long road between here and there," he added. "Apple has spent enormous amounts to lobby on this, and they aren't stupid. Everyone should expect them to continue to play games along the lines of what they tried in Denmark and South Korea."
That requirement has been a sore spot for years among rivals like Google, Mozilla, and Microsoft. They could not compete on iOS through product differentiation because their mobile browsers had to rely on WebKit rather than their own competing engines. And Apple's browser engine requirement has vexed web developers, who have been limited to using only the web APIs implemented in WebKit for their web apps. Many believe this barrier serves to steer developers toward native iOS app development, which Apple controls.
The extent to which Apple profits from the status quo has prompted regulatory scrutiny in Europe, the UK, the US, and elsewhere. [...] Now those efforts have been translated into the text of the DMA, which, alongside the Digital Services Act (DSA), defines how large technology gatekeepers will be governed in Europe. [...] In short, when the DMA takes effect in 2024, it appears that Apple will be required to allow browser competition on iOS devices. "The potential for a capable web has been all but extinguished on mobile because Apple has successfully prevented it until now," said Alex Russell, partner program manager on Microsoft Edge who worked previously as Google Chrome's first web standards tech lead. "Businesses and services will be able to avoid building 'apps' entirely when enough users have capable browsers."
"There's a long road between here and there," he added. "Apple has spent enormous amounts to lobby on this, and they aren't stupid. Everyone should expect them to continue to play games along the lines of what they tried in Denmark and South Korea."
Fuck Safari (Score:5, Informative)
Safari for windows was killed so apple is holding (Score:1)
Safari for windows was killed so apple is holding the web back some what now chrome only may be bad but maybe firefox can come back again or maybe apple can make an big push with Safari for windows, linux, android, etc.
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I find something new that makes Safari the only browser that doesn't render it properly.
That's because Apple started holding back on adding more to the browser as it posed itself as a challenge to their app store.
Re:Fuck Safari (Score:5, Informative)
I find something new that makes Safari the only browser that doesn't render it properly.
That's because Apple started holding back on adding more to the browser as it posed itself as a challenge to their app store.
Nah. Look at when Apple started falling behind. It's pretty easy to see why it happened. In the first part of the 2010s, WebKit was at the forefront of web tech. During that period, Apple was sharing responsibility for maintaining WebKit with Google and a whole bunch of other companies. Unfortunately, Apple wasn't sharing that responsibility equally. Although Apple had put in one third of the total commits, that effort was spread through the history of the project. In later years, Apple's contributions had been relatively steady while Google's contributions grew. By 2012 or so, Google was committing two to three times as many changes per month as Apple.
At some point in there, Apple and Google had a fundamental disagreement about some architectural changes that Google wanted to make, and the resulting headaches in maintaining a split code base that could be used in two very different ways grew and grew, until Google decided to fork the code base in 2013. At that point, Google's engineers stopped being WebKit contributors, along with presumably most or all of the engineers from Samsung, LG, Nokia, Opera etc. (because those companies all ended up using Blink eventually instead of WebKit).
That's when WebKit started falling behind. It's not easy to keep up when the developers who were committing 80-ish percent of your code suddenly aren't contributing anymore.
And then in late 2018, things got even more interesting when Microsoft moved their Edge team to work on Chromium/Blink. So for four years, Apple has been trying to keep up with pretty much the entire rest of the tech industry working together, and Apple either won't or can't staff up enough to keep up with that.
Of course, the other thing that makes Safari fall behind is that they're probably building from a relatively stable release train, pulling in only critical fixes, and then once or twice per year, they drop many months' worth of new functionality and bug fixes whenever they release a new major version of Safari. By contrast, with Chrome and Firefox builds, they branch from top-of-tree every few weeks, so new features become available sooner and get bugs filed against them sooner.
Re:Fuck Safari (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't know if it has anything to do with the app store or not since the issue extended to Safari on all platforms and not just iOS. But, and I don't agree with Apple often, I do like that they resist supporting every asinine new feature that web developers mess their shorts over. I'm very against using the browser as a software platform in and of itself. Maybe that makes me a luddite but if so I'll wear that badge with pride.
Re:Fuck Safari (Score:5, Interesting)
something new that makes Safari the only browser that doesn't render it properly.
Is this really Safari non-compliance with official standards or just Safari being different from Chrome? Genuine question. The former is a valid gripe but the latter is just begging to go back to the days when dominance by a single browser allowed one company to set de facto standards.
Re:Fuck Safariq (Score:3)
something new that makes Safari the only browser that doesn't render it properly.
Is this really Safari non-compliance with official standards or just Safari being different from Chrome? Genuine question. The former is a valid gripe but the latter is just begging to go back to the days when dominance by a single browser allowed one company to set de facto standards.
That's the entire problem in a nutshell: Browser compatibility has always come down to "as compared to $OTHER_BROWSER"; rather than "as compared to $STANDARD". And so, the whole question becomes moot.
None of this is helped one little bit by the fact that the so-called "Standards" take forever to actually become ratified; so the major players all scurry-off and implement their best guesses of those nascent "Standards"; and often with "improvements". So it is absolutely no surprise that Pages render different
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The truth is, no Browser can be pointed-to as "The Gold Standard"; which renders every single element on every single Page "According to Standard".
So now what?
Allow people to have multiple browsers. On macOS I run both Safari and Chrome, in the old days on Windows I ran IE and Netscape. Apple is afraid of this on iOS either because it would make Safari redundant or because their OS security is so poor that it can't securely run arbitrary applications like web browsers even without elevated permissions.
Or maybe it's because Apple knows good and well that there is no possible way they could vet anything as complex as a foreign Rendering Library; so they sidestep the issue on Mobile Devices by requiring the use of their own.
A phone or tablet is an Embedded Device; certain restrictions apply.
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Or maybe it's because Apple knows good and well that there is no possible way they could vet anything as complex as a foreign Rendering Library
If your application security sandbox doesn't work then that is the problem, not the applications that are running in it. If your security relies on you vetting and trusting the applications then that is very poor security.
Bullshit.
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In tests Safari does tend to score lower than Chrome and Firefox for standards compliance.
Some of it is deliberate on Apple's part, they have decided not to support certain functionality for privacy reasons. That's exclusively stuff that doesn't affect rendering though, so should not make any websites unreadable.
Some of it is just lack of development to keep WebKit current, which is what breaks layout. Thing is Mozilla isn't exactly pumping resources into Firefox and it manages to do better. Well, it does o
Re: Fuck Safari (Score:2)
Re: Fuck Safari (Score:2)
It's not for privacy, you're an idiot of you think that. They're basically doing it for the same reason that Microsoft did it with IE6: They don't want it to be able to compete with native applications.
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You don't have privacy concerns over websites being able to read your battery status?
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Every time I write some CSS/HTML I find something new that makes Safari the only browser that doesn't render it properly.
Just start checking if the browser is Safari and display a page explaining to the user that your sight doesn't work and why. Maybe you'll get enough people to start complaining to Apple so they may think about considering to possibly fix it.
Re:Fuck Safari (Score:4, Funny)
Just start checking if the browser is Safari and display a page explaining to the user that your sight doesn't work and why.
Why single out Safari users if your sight doesn't work? You'll be more likely to get a hit from an optometrist if you display a page for users of more popular browsers.
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I once used Safari to read /.
Viola! Most of /. started to make sense.
/sarcasm
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Give the EU enough time.... (Score:1, Troll)
Reminds me of Microsoft and Internet Exploder.
Good, they came at the same conclusion than (Score:2, Insightful)
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Apple's argument is always the same, which is that their OS is so crappily engineered that allowing 3rd party software like this would completely compromise its security. In the lawsuit with Epic, Apple's own execs referred to iOS as an operating system usable safely by children and infants [cultofmac.com], that is the level of user they are targeting and desperate to protect. They even threw the Mac userbase under the bus and said that the Mac has too much malware and is too insecure, clearly its Mac userbase lacks the in
Re: Good, they came at the same conclusion than (Score:2)
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Did you got brain damage and forgot the part that M$ was forced to "de-integrate" IE from Windows itself, i.e make it possible to uninstall.
And yes you're completely right: Apple did not threaten oem and retail partners, or make websites not work, because there is no need to do so: no other browser can work on iOS to start with. Which is worst.
Plenty of other Browsers than Mobile Safari exist on iOS. They just all need to use WebKit for their Renderer. Not exactly the same thing; and if those other Browsers didn't think they could still differentiate themselves in iOS, why would they expend Development Resources on their own Free (as in beer) iOS Browser Product?
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Alternatively stated: you can write your own browser as long as it's a window-dressing UI on top of Apple's browser.
Wrong.
You can write your own Browser, with any arbitrary features you wish; but it needs to use WebKit for rendering, other than on macOS; where you are free to use the Renderer of your choice.
The "lock-in" you are insinuating could apply to any number of situations in any OS where you have to write an Application that calls OS-Supplied APIs.
Renderer != Browser.
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but it needs to use WebKit for rendering
WebKit != Renderer. It does have to use WebKit for rendering but it also has to use it for layout, DOM processing, Javascript JIT/execution, WebGL, SVG, WebGPU, etc.. i.e. Your iOS browser cannot be any more web-standards compliant, for example, than Safari. You cannot introduce any new features from the W3C specifications in your iOS browser because your browser can only be a UI over the WebKit browser engine.
The "lock-in" you are insinuating could apply to any number of situations in any OS where you have to write an Application that calls OS-Supplied APIs.
Yes, it seems you are actually beginning to understand it. It is just like if Microsoft required all browser developers to use Trident.
I understand fine.
But remember, no matter how powerful, we are talking about a limited-functionality embedded device; not a general-purpose computing system. By contrast, MacOS has none of these limitations; because Apple recognizes the difference between a well-endowed Appliance and a Computer. Too bad if you, or anyone else for that matter, don't agree with their product classifications. Buy something else.
We neither need nor want some Nanny-State bureaucrats to decide for us Users what it is we want. We
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So AC was right - you have to use WebKit which covers just about everything in the browser. In other words, you get to skin Safari, and that's about it. And most tech types recognize that phones today are more powerful than laptops/PCs of 10 years ago, so your argument about "limited functionality" is quite bogus.
Actually, if there was any validity to the argument, one could point to a Published Standard, and say "Safari doesn't render $THIS_TAG and $THAT_TAG" which everyone else does.
Also, my TV likely has at least as much processing power as a PC of 15 years ago, and a Game Console of today likely has more processing power than entry-level PCs being sold right now; but that doesn't give customers the right to demand that you must be able to run Adobe Photoshop or FireFox on it.
IOW, it is not the "Processing Power"
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So, what can a "General purpose computing device" from 2006 do, that a modern cellphone cannot? Phones of these days emulate full computers (look at Samsung's DEX for example). Stop being pedantic, and use your common sense.
As I said, as an Embedded Designer with four Decades of experience, I very well know what a modern Embedded MCU/SoC is capable of.
But the fact that your Printer/Scanner/FAX machine has a Web Server in it for Configuration/Operation, or that your car's Infotainment System runs full-blown Embedded Linux, is of no moment. They are Gadgets. They have Features. That is all.
Go buy an RPi and tinker to your heart's content! Hell, fire up the CAD, start ordering some parts, and really show us what you've got! Or do
Re: Good, they came at the same conclusion than (Score:2)
Apple is the sole arbiter of which applications can even run at all. Why would they even need to do any of that when they can simply ban competitors?
Google with Monopoly Browser Engine will be happy (Score:4, Insightful)
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Unfortunately there are only so many things you can do to try and protect people from their own stupidity.
Personally, I'd love to have honest-to-goodness Firefox on my iPad.
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Judging by Firefox on Android, it might not be what you were hoping for.
The main issue seems to be a lack of developers working on fixing bugs. There are a lot of very long standing ones that have not been addressed. On top of that, the Firefox code base is huge, a pain to compile, and a pain to work on, so it doesn't get much support from developers interesting in fixing their issues. The Android version is even worse in that respect, it's even harder to work with than the desktop version.
Re: Google with Monopoly Browser Engine will be ha (Score:2)
Firefox for Android is my daily driver. It works pretty well, actually.
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It's broken on Pixel devices (all of them) and presumably others. There is a bug in the scaling code that makes lines too long to read without scrolling, and fonts far smaller than they are set to on many sites.
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It works fine for me, and I'm using a Pixel 4a 5g. I think the thing I like the most about firefox on Android is the addons available effectively allow you to have youtube premium without actually paying for it. You get to block ads AND play in the background, screen off, etc. Also having Bypass Paywalls is super convenient.
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It's open source, so how is it a monopoly? Microsoft uses it for Edge too as Edge is based off open source Chromium. There's also nothing stopping you from installing Firefox on Android / Windows / MacOS / Linux / etc. which uses Gecko instead of Blink.
Well it was based off Chromium, which was based off WebKit, which was based off KHTML. All these are open source, it is just that Apple is only allowing their "production approved" version of WebKit to be used on iOS.
On one hand I can see Apple wanting to ensure "security" and on the other "engine choice". Also, Apple's stance is what helped kill off Flash, so I suppose their is a silver lining, even if that is now oxidising pretty badly.
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The difference is that people adopt the Chromium engine by choice. Apple does not give users a choice at all.
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Google with their browser engine (Blink) holding monopoly marketshare on everything but iOS / iPad will be very happy with what the EU is doing for them here.
Precisely!
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Bullshit and stupidity, Please show proof of this "Google monopoly".
Just as soon as you show me any Apple Monopoly.
FOOLS (Score:1)
They should be going after App Store and iMessages instead of the stupid browser engine. The browser engine does nothing in terms of monopoly and opening markets. Allowing other browser engines won't make things any better for consumers. And how would those browser engines make money other than from ripping people off?
Re:FOOLS (Score:5, Insightful)
apple better not lockdown NFL ticket if they get i (Score:2)
apple better not lock down NFL ticket if they get it as there are people in the us government who may just use that to stop apples lock in.
Re: apple better not lockdown NFL ticket if they g (Score:1)
As long as they also remember the other issue (Score:3)
Apple at least at one point blocked JIT compilation of JavaScript in non-Safari browsers. WebKit would only do JIT compilation when run from Mobile Safari.
Apple claimed it was for "security purposes."
What this accomplished was making non-Safari browers on iOS far slower than Safari, despite the fact that they were using the same engine.
You can bet if Apple is forced to allow working - er, I mean, non-WebKit - rendering engines on iOS, they'll block JIT compilation, and then use that to show how much "better" Safari is.
Re:As long as they also remember the other issue (Score:4, Informative)
Apple at least at one point blocked JIT compilation of JavaScript in non-Safari browsers. WebKit would only do JIT compilation when run from Mobile Safari.
Apple claimed it was for "security purposes."
AFAIK, they still do for UIWebView. You have to use WKWebView (out-of-process) to get JIT, which severely limits the app's ability control how the web view works (e.g. there's no way to inject URL protocols or use a custom NSURLCache subclass).
So basically, you can either have Safari or you can have Safari with a little bit of custom window chrome.
Re:As long as they also remember the other issue (Score:5, Informative)
Apple at least at one point blocked JIT compilation of JavaScript in non-Safari browsers. WebKit would only do JIT compilation when run from Mobile Safari.
Apple claimed it was for "security purposes."
AFAIK, they still do for UIWebView. You have to use WKWebView (out-of-process) to get JIT, which severely limits the app's ability control how the web view works (e.g. there's no way to inject URL protocols or use a custom NSURLCache subclass).
So basically, you can either have Safari or you can have Safari with a little bit of custom window chrome.
And to be clear, there actually is a legitimate security reason for it. JIT requires being able to write to pages in memory, then clear the XN (a.k.a. NX) bit on memory pages to make them executable. iOS, as a matter of policy, doesn't allow execution of code from pages that aren't memory-mapped backed from a signed executable file on disk. I'm not sure what additional privileges are involved, but the WebKit JIT process is running with elevated privileges to allows it to get around that. Allowing arbitrary processes to do so would at least potentially make it easier for attackers to force those processes to run arbitrary code.
So any bending of that policy would have to be done carefully, on a case-by-case basis. And they would have to either A. require that the browser vendor demonstrate that the code is sufficiently hardened against exploits or B. sandbox the third-party JS interpreters so that they can't do anything but talk over IPC to the rest of the browser engine (or both).
That's not to say that it isn't a solvable problem, but it does require effort, and until Apple is forced to expend that effort, I wouldn't expect them to do so, because it likely isn't a priority for them.
Apple has the advantage of JITting (Score:3, Informative)
iOS is a full W^X OS, and applications are not allowed to make any page of memory executable that has not been signed by Apple. However, Safari is specifically given permission to use JIT. Even if Apple were forced to allow browser developers to use their own engines, Safari would still perform better, because of runtime code generation.
A different take (Score:4, Interesting)
>"The potential for a capable web has been all but extinguished on mobile because Apple has successfully prevented it until now,"
And it is already being extinguished on the desktop by all the Chrom* browsers. I don't see how allowing that on iOS is going to help with diversity/security/privacy at this point because it will just lead to yet-another-Google browser on yet-another-platform. Still, I don't like what Apple did.
And at work, we are now unable to upload a simple payroll ACH file to Truist (a major bank) in the browser of our choice because now some tiny little function in it doesn't work in Firefox (yet it worked fine for many, many years). Why have standards if you can just ignore them and say "F-Off" to the [now] minority? (Sorry, I am a little more than pissed about it).
Karma is a bitch... (Score:2)
Ah, I miss the good old days of rapid innovation on IE10....
Decent browser apps/websites (Score:2)
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Apple earned significantly more revenues in 2021 than Alphabet or Microsoft [statista.com], so your sarcasm doesn't work here.
They also have more than half of the smartphone market in the US, and more relevant to this article around 30% in Europe. You can argue that in Europe and worldwide, Google is more dominant than Apple, but the distance between those two and anyone else is vast, and Apple is the only serious competition to Google in that market, so they are n
Thank god! (Score:2)
As someone with an old iPad 3 (long story, I didn't pay for it) which is still working fine, the lack of browser upgrades is bricking it. Yesterday, Youtube stopped working if you were logged in.
Next step: (Score:2)
owlab (Score:1)
Browsers as a platform/OS/App Store/VM (Score:1)
But... Isn't the main point of iOS and Android to create Apps?
When you browse to youtube, twitter, instagram, etc... Those web sites will hint at you to open them in their own respective Apps.
In these platforms, ( iOS and Android ), makes more sense to spend time developing an actual App for the functionality exposed in the website that is used as an application.
For example, it make