> I feel like Firefox might actually regain marketshare if it can ship on iOS. Firefox on Android has a decent claim to be being better than Chrome at this point (largely because you can't run extensions on Chrome).

Firefox is better than Chrome on Android, but it doesn't have the market share to match.

> I feel like Firefox might actually regain marketshare if it can ship on iOS.

Firefox is currently superior to Chrome on Android, yet the market share is abysmal and irrelevant. I don't see why swapping the browser engine would grow market share, other than wishful thinking.

Firefox has supported extensions on Android for several years now. The current state of support is a rather significant step down from where it used to be.

Surprisingly, that's not enough to be competitive with the browser that's already installed on people's phones.

Safari does support extensions on iOS: https://developer.apple.com/safari/extensions/

So you can't innovate on that, at least meaningfully. If you want the browser with best website support, then you'd go with Chrome. If you wanted your bookmarks from your desktop to be in sync with mobile bookmarks, then most likely you are going to install Chrome, because most likely you had Chrome on your desktop (as it is the most common desktop browser).

Also, an apple policy change to lifts the restrictions for non-apple apps to not be extendable, is a different beast entirely from allowing custom web rendering engines.

You can barely run extensions on Android Firefox. The stable version only allows "recommended" extensions, of which there are 18 and no guaranteed path to joining that club for a developer. My perception is that there was an almost-successful internal movement to kill extensions on Android entirely.

> I feel like Firefox might actually regain marketshare if it can ship on iOS. Firefox on Android has a decent claim to be being better than Chrome at this point (largely because you can't run extensions on Chrome).

Let's start with the facts. Firefox market share has been chronically flat with little to no change for years, as the global mobile browser market share [0] has shown even with Android having browser choice for the user.

Hence that, it also suggests that even if Apple did the same thing, it would just further cement Chrome's dominance on iOS. Firefox on mobile is shrinking into irrelevancy.

[0] https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share/mobile/world...

I choose it every single day. I have chrome, Firefox, edge and safari at my disposal. Safari is my day to day for most regular usage. For tech/dev work, Firefox and Chrome are usually in flight at the same time.

EDIT: "Safari doesn't help the web be diverse"

Not sure what you mean by that. Safari existing is diversity, but like FF/mozilla was an antidote to the IE years on Windows.

Multiple implementations help the web be diverse, and there is a long history of features becoming easier to use, more capable, or secure based on feedback from one of the browser teams other than the first to propose something.

It’s also not the case that any current browser is so bad that the web is better off without it. Anyone with web development experience has run into problems or limitations with every browser and depending on what you do you will have different assessments of which one is best at a given time. For example, on the Interop 2022 effort all three browser teams have been coordinating currently Safari is in the lead and that will continue to shift over time.

https://wpt.fyi/interop-2022

> When is the last time you said "I will choose to use safari" or seen apple pushing the bounds of what the web can do?

Firefox and Safari are both noticeably faster and use less memory. If you care about that, or work on battery that’s enough right there.

Firefox and Safari don’t have conflicts of interest preventing privacy improvements or ad blocking.

I haven’t used Chrome as my default browser since Firefox took the performance crown ~5 years ago but I’ve used all of them plenty as a web developer. The idea that Chrome is so far ahead that we should give up on the web having multiple implementations and just let Google run it is completely the opposite of my experience.

I exclusively use Safari for better battery life and I trust their security more and anticipate I will be using Keychain for a long time.

I use Safari and another WebKit-based browser (Orion) on macOS and iOS/iPadOS all the time, because neither Chrome or Firefox compares when it comes to battery consumption or feeling like a proper citizen of the OS it's running on.

It's seriously frustrating how little regard is given to efficiency in both Blink and Gecko. It don't care if the engine supports WebBanana 2.0 if it's destroying battery life.

Many Mac users choose to use Safari because it is by far the most efficient browser.

> When is the last time you said "I will choose to use safari"

The last time I opened a Mac with a battery (i.e., today).

Lifetime windows user, just got a MacBook. I heard safari was better for battery life (haven't tested so can't confirm) so I thought I'd try it. It works fine for all my needs so why change?

Side note, last pass on Mac is a pile of hot garbage. I wish I had never gotten my family onto it because switching is going to be a hassle.

I literally don't have Chrome on my Mac. Safari is faster and has less Google shoving their random product initiatives to me. I never have to log into Safari to do anything.

I choose safari every day. It uses less power and it's an overall smoother and better integrated experience. It's also not constantly hounding me to sign into Google accounts.

"Pushing the bounds of the web" specifically isn't a huge goal for me, I want to see the bounds of computing pushed. That doesn't have to be on the web. The web is Rube Golberg-esque enough as is. [edit] To be clear I'm not opposed to it, I'm neutral to it.

Battery life on my Macbook is better using Safari, so I choose to use it all the time. They've also been pulling ahead of Firefox on several occasions when implementing new CSS features.

The "peeking" you can do with the trackpad on a Mac when navigating backwards and forwards between pages is a must have for me in a browser. It's so nice in Safari, I use it hundreds of times a day. It's painful for me when I use other browsers that don't have this feature.

At some point the battery usage on laptop was considerably better using safari. That’s a plus.

I choose Safari as my primary browser on my personal MacBook, it's great

Is "pushing the bounds of what the web can do" something we should value? Given the current direction of the web, a preference for Safari's relatively slow feature rollouts seems reasonable.

precisely. and we see a lot of similar behavior from Chrome now as it helps them replace the good old search form with a url bar as the main driver of their ad dollars.

this unsolvable battle is exactly why I opted for the Brave [1] browser. all the better if they’re able to use alternate engine under the hood next.

[1] https://brave.com/

> or seen apple pushing the bounds of what the web can do?

I get that it's easy to attack Apple these days but anyone paying attention can objectively see that Safari has been kicking ass this year. It's easy to do the "whataboutism" thing and they're late on a few things… but if this is a sign of things to come for Safari (style queries and masonry grids are in the works, for example), this is a Good Thing for the web and should be treated as such.

* first to implement (March) the most anticipated CSS feature that was thought to be impossible to implement for most of the past 20 years, the :has() parent selector [1]. It took Chrome until the end of August and it's still not enabled by default in Firefox because bugs

* first to implement wide-gamut color support [1a](2020)

* first to implement oklch and oklab (and a bunch more) color spaces [2]

* first to implement the open Webauthn standard Passkeys a few months ago; Chrome 108 just announced support

* support for all of the "hot" CSS features like Container Queries, Subgrid, new viewport units, AVIF image format and (as they say) "more" [3]

* Mozilla, Google, Apple and Microsoft agreed to focus on the interoperability of 15 web features; WebKit currently passes 98.5% of the tests the companies have agreed to, leading the other companies [4].

[1]: https://webkit.org/blog/13096/css-has-pseudo-class/

[1a]: https://webkit.org/blog/10042/wide-gamut-color-in-css-with-d...

[2]: https://evilmartians.com/chronicles/oklch-in-css-why-quit-rg...

[3]: https://webkit.org/blog/13152/webkit-features-in-safari-16-0...

[4]: https://webkit.org/blog/13591/webkit-features-in-safari-16-2...

> When is the last time you said "I will choose to use safari"

Every single time I need a browser. On iPhone, iPad and MacBook.

All reasons have been mentioned already, so will not repeat them here.

It's really a stretch to call something that's literally the only option "popular". But I agree, rendering engine is not enough to move any real needle. New browsers need to be able to integrate features that ios doesn't support currently that require hooking into the operating system like PWAs.

> Most iPhone users just use the stock browser and don't know or care what rendering engine it is.

Google will likely turn on the popups with "BETTER ON CHROME! TRY CHROME NOW!" for ios users once it's possible

How'd that work for Microsoft Edge? Firefox usage tanked when Google started heavily promoting Chrome on search, Gmail, Youtube, Docs, etc. and I would be shocked if this went through and every Google app didn't start telling people that they should install Chrome or certain features were being held back for Chrome users.

Safari is just a Webkit skin like Chrome is. The only independent browser is Firefox.

> Well, two wrongs didn't make this a right.

That was basically my point?

> If Chrome does use this as a power grab, then we should expect EU injunction again.

Since this is behaviour Google is already doing and has been doing for a decade, it seems like the EU could just skip to the part of actually doing something.

>If Chrome does use this as a power grab, then we should expect EU injunction again.

I'm not sure what the EU could do here; it's not like Chrome is coming pre-installed on iPhones or on Windows. Can the EU breakup Google?

I hope you aren't trying to say that's what I wrote? My position is that if we're doing consumer choice, we should do it all the way: iOS is required to allow other browser engines (with any security requirements applied evenly); Google is not allowed to use unrelated business units to advertise Chrome in ways which Apple, Microsoft, or Mozilla cannot; and Google is required to test their applications in other browsers and promptly fix compatibility issues which are not due to a browser not implementing an approved W3C/WHATWG standard[1].

1. I mention “approved” because of things like the way YouTube used to be faster in Chrome because they shipped a draft of the Shadow DOM API and then took a long time updating to use the standard version which other browsers implemented, during which time those other browsers were served a slow polyfill instead. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17606027

On Mac, Safari is the only browser to respect battery drain and preserve power in any real meaningful way. I'll take some bugs for that win. I use Chrome or Firefox and my battery noticeably dies faster.

> It's so bad that most video chat services don't even support it.

All of the major services support it and the only one which I’ve ever had problems with is Google’s, which shockingly had issues with every browser other than Chrome. Do you have links to bug reports?

I switched to Safari primarily a while back because it used the least battery and memory (Safari & Firefox were close, Chrome is a distant gluttonous third place). I’ve noticed very, very few cases where a compatibility issue forced me to switch browsers. As a web developer I use all three, of course, and using Chrome doesn’t feel notably better so halving my energy usage is an easy trade.

> It's [Safari] so bad that most video chat services don't even support it.

Which ones? I've used Zoom, Meet, Teams, and Whereby in Safari with no problems. I've never encountered a video service _not_ work in it.

So you think poor support for an optional technology is sufficient to call Safari the worst browser "in existence"?

Let's work on that argument a bit more before posting hyperbole.

Sorry, trying to insinuate that WebRTC is basic technology just disqualifies your opinion. It has an enormous specification describing a privacy and security snakepit and definitely is not basic technology.

I was just on Teams and Webex video calls using Safari.

No. They’re slow to shut down ad tracking but that’s a very different thing and there’s no evidence even remotely supporting your claim.

Look everywhere else: heavy promotion on some of the most popular web properties in the world (Google Search, Gmail, YouTube, etc.) has put Firefox into a death-spiral and Microsoft gave up on their own engine in favor of a Chrome derivative. There is little reason to believe that the same would not be true on iOS were it possible for Google to get users to switch.

I think that matters because while Chrome has a number of great engineers, it's a single team at one company and the web should be bigger than that. We've seen many examples of a Google-proposed spec which became better with feedback from Mozilla or Apple engineers, and that makes the web healthier overall. One really interesting example here has been with tracking where every browser which Google does not control has a better privacy stance because none of those companies make their money by tracking people.

> Why hasn't the world coalesced around WebKit?

iOS is not the entire ecosystem. Blink dominates everywhere else.

Hey Siri is a hardware feature: https://machinelearning.apple.com/research/hey-siri

It's likely that third-party assistants will only be accessible via the side button.

I fully agree. This isn't a doomsday scenario for anyone.

You will be pleased to discover that the Digital Markets Act doesn't permit any of those.

Edit: I'm not sure if the third point has been edited or I simply misread it, but the DMA would not prevent Apple from moderating their own App Store. It would prevent Apple from moderating apps on iOS, iPadOS, and macOS.

I don't get this logic. I've bought 4 iPhones and the biggest frustration I have is that I can't use real Firefox like I can on Android (particularly my favorite variant, Fennec F-Droid.) Not all iPhone users are the same. I'm not forcing you to side-load apps, or switch off Safari. What about this is so bad?

>> Why do so many people want to force Apple to make them an Android phone?

It's because they want to "Think Different" than the way Apple wants them to.

It's your phone. Shouldn't you be able to run the software you want on it?

> A lot of us buy them BECAUSE of the software, not despite it.

Well the built-in software will still be there. And if you have a use-case that it doesn't support then you'll have the option to install other software that does. Seems like a pure win from a user perspective.

The software you like isn't going anywhere and you don't have to change any of those defaults. The mac allows you to change defaults and install whatever you want and it's still a great platform.

I think part of it, at least for me, is 99.9% of it is perfect, but I want to change this one small thing.

For years, I had the jailbreak installed only for a single feature.

You don't have to change how you use your iPhone. You can keep all your same defaults.

It would all be opt-in, so not much changing unless you want it to.

I agree completely. Having a walled garden forces Apple to focus on the quality of their software if they wish to have a competitive product. (And their software, on the whole, is good because they have control over their vertical integrations.) If you forcibly take away their incentive to compete, the appeal of the iPhone disappears. Every phone's environment becomes a Bazaar; no more Cathedrals.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cathedral_and_the_Bazaar

The EU is innocent, they didn't force anyone to create cookie modals. You need to forgive the digital stalking businesses instead.

The screwed up cookie modals are not Eu's doing:

Eu mandated that the users should be clearly told what would be tracked, they should be given an easy way to accept, reject, and choose which of them they accept.

The corporations - mainly the US - chose to 'get around' these requirements in the undying US corporate tradition: Make it difficult for the user to reject cookies so they will have to give up and just accept. Most modals have only an 'accept' and 'choose' sections, and the 'choose' section includes a gigantic list of 'vendors' which you have to individually turn off one by one. So that you will give up and just click 'accept'. Some of them offer a 'reject all' button way at the bottom of of the list, after listing 30-40 vendors. So basically its the usual corporate trickery to force user to do things they don't want to.

However, this is illegal - Eu works on civil law, and civil law is a clear, well defined legal practice. If it says you have to do some specific thing, there isnt much 'interpret my way around it'. So, per that law, all the cookie modals that do not give the users an EASY way to reject cookies are in violation of that law. It absolutely does not matter zit if the user 'consents' to the terms. Mutual agreements and contract law overriding actual law is a trait of the Anglosaxon common law, not civil law. In civil law, it doesnt matter zit if the other party agreed to something illegal per law.

Therefore, not only all these pesky modals that try to force you into accepting those ~80 cookies from a random website you visit are not Eu's doing, but also most of them are actually in violation of the GDPR law.

The goal wasn't hurting them in the first place, just ensuring that Apple plays fair on their own hardware. You may be totally correct with your second point, if Apple implements things well.

I think it will help some people use apple who were infinitely frustrated by this. But I'm sure Apple has done the calculation and benefits more than it hurts from being a total dick to its users, or they wouldn't be doing it.

Great! Then everyone wins.

I've long said that a USB-C iPhone with Google Assistant as default would be my dream phone.

Santa EU seems to be bringing me the gift I've always wanted.

Music isn't mentioned specifically but I believe any app is covered. Article 6:

> 4. The gatekeeper shall allow and technically enable the installation and effective use of third-party software applications or software application stores using, or interoperating with, its operating system and allow those software applications or software application stores to be accessed by means other than the relevant core platform services of that gatekeeper. The gatekeeper shall, where applicable, not prevent the downloaded third-party software applications or software application stores from prompting end users to decide whether they want to set that downloaded software application or software application store as their default. The gatekeeper shall technically enable end users who decide to set that downloaded software application or software application store as their default to carry out that change easily.

I only see the Apple Music app when I open it explicitly. Are there situations where a 'default' music app might appear?

I've found when talking to Apple-ecosystem users that they aren't even aware of how well Apple Music works. I'm aware there's certain integrations that might not be possible, or a random family member being on Android that would preclude its use, but it really does work great if you don't have any reason to stray from the ecosystem. Lots of people I talk to started using Spotify years ago and just never reevaluated. Similarly, people that only use iPhones and Macs and still use Dropbox. I'm sure someone has curated a list somewhere...

I think there is a good chance it could be applied to Microsoft, if not Sony and Nintendo as well. At least, I see no reason it should not. They satisfy a lot of the requirements as Gatekeepers like market cap and revenue.

Developers will package browsers in their code as a way to spy on users with fewer restrictions, not because Safari is unusable.

That being said, I returned my first and last iPhone after realizing that Firefox on iOS couldn't run the NoScript extension.

It is frankly shocking that Apple has managed to go this long while blatantly contravening the precedent set by United States v. Microsoft Corp., and I'm glad the EU is finally taking a stand on that front.

> that people don't go to extremes such as packaging entire browsers with their code.

The app dev will simply use framework X and because of that it includes some version of some browser engine.

> Who is allowed to vertically integrate, and who isn't? Under what principle of free markets and user choice? Should users by forbidden from choosing true vertical integration as a design choice? Why?

Vertical integration related to the central communication system in society has been recognized as particularly problematic for quite some time.

> Who is allowed to vertically integrate, and who isn't? Under what principle of free markets and user choice?

There is no 'free market' in any environment that is 'vertically integrated' by a handful of organizations. The very reason why we abolished feudal aristocracy and even went to the extent of doing revolutions and setting up guillotines was to get rid of that kind of environments - which its owners were totally unwilling to let go.

Technological corporate feudalism is as bad as aristocratic feudalism of the yesteryear. They are both based on the concept of property ownership to start with, so they stem from the same concept of private tyrannies where a private tyrant can do whatever it want with what it 'owns' even if it dominates the lives of millions of people.

Developers do jump from Steam. Last I looked I can buy most games on multiple stores/platforms, and Steam is largely a choice the buyer makes.

Apple could totally sell games on Xbox if they wanted: https://www.techrepublic.com/article/xbox-series-s-and-x-dev...

They choose not to.

> What's the delta between a console and an appliance?

The delta is how large and important the mobile phone market is, and the fact that it is a centralized duopoly.

It is perfectly fine to target legislation towards larger, more centralized, and more important markets.

You are also engaging in whataboutism.

Maybe there really are problems with the console market. But regardless of that, we should still take action on the much more important phone market.

Hopefully so. All I see here is increased attack surfaces for malware. I like the fact that Apple must sign everything running on my phone. I don't want everyone's security thrown away in the name of some idealized perfectly competitive market.

The App Store Guidelines really have two separate groups of restrictions: platform security/privacy, verses use cases/content that Apple doesn't want to be commercially associated with.

My "perfect world" would be Apple retaining strong security/privacy/integrity related controls (on a non-discriminatory basis) at the platform level, potentially through something that looks like the existing Apple Developer Program, while allowing for third party distribution, marketing, and retail. Ideally Apple's own user facing apps would be meeting the same platform level controls as third-party apps.

I don't understand, what's wrong with fdroid? Have you ever used Cydia?

> The kind of developers who’d “jump ship”, especially for developing web apps

It would be to allow you to install chrome or firefox on your iPhone.

Really like Kagi and their web browser but I can't justify the price relative to my location (I'm pretty sure it's reasonable on the US/West cost of living scale).

> > That and a headphone jack, but that was impossible to find on Android also.

There are plenty of Android smartphones, including from major manufacturers, that have 3.5mm jacks; they tend to not be flagships, because that’s not where the demand for them is, but they aren’t hard to find.

> Android decided to compete with apple.

“Android” is a large number of different manufacturers, many of which individually produce many more smartphone models targeting different market segments than Apple.

> They're almost entirely worse at it and by competing by turning off all the features the once had they've just become a worse phone alternative that's cheaper and also lets you install custom apps

I’ve never regreted leaving the iPhone ecosystem for Android, and I’ve pretty consistently been buying Samsung flagships, which aren’t particularly cheaper than Apple. And sideloading or using alternate app stores isn’t a huge part of that, though its nice to have the option.

Apple is chasing profits in the phone market, not raw sales. There will always be people who want Android, or price segments Apple is unable to enter. Anything below USD 500$, anything with technologies Apple does not have (headphone jack, under-the-screen fingerprint reader, etc.).

Dark Reader is available as an extension for Safari on iOS and iPadOS, for what it's worth. I could see why these rules might not apply to iPads, but I don't think they would bother with maintaining that dichotomy for pretty much no benefit.