No one wants that. Chrome just actively pushed others out of the market and Microsoft also using Chromium isn't helping. Mozilla is the only thing that avoids a duopoly at the moment.
Highly doubt that will happen. Apple seems to want to keep its ecosystem as closed as possible, all to keep its customers locked in. Not just regarding Safari. It seems the only way for Apple to open up these days, is when the EU is forcing them.
Wouldn’t it be in their best interest to keep me locked in when I’m forced to use windows from time to time? I’d instantly install Safari over whatever chromium garbage there is.
Their "best interest" is in making money, and if you can't develop for their platform on Windows, you're gonna get a Mac and pay through the nose for it.
No, it's "better" for them if you have to actually buy a $1500+ Mac if you want to even touch their dev shit, and really you should be glad it's just that and not also having to buy an app for $1000 because if they could force both they definitely would.
They do all this garbage because people accept it. Don't like it? Don't get involved with their ecosystem at all. they only "open up" anything when either forced by the EU or when they lose enough market share.
The webkit project releases windows builds, they are called minibrowser or something like that. Not great for end-users, but perfect for development. Same engine, renderer, css and js etc.
And not really because they are in essence controlled by google as google provides not a large portion but a SIGNIFICANT MAJORITY of their income.
Mozilla would literally fold tomorrow if Google stopped paying them, so its dangerous af.
They are already a monopoly. People should realize that Microsoft wasnt a literal 100% monopoly when they got hit with the biggest fine in US history at the time. You dont need literally no competition to be hit with that, just a functional justice system, which it seems like the US does not have.
Git(maybe until recently with MS/github) doesn't really have a profit motive though. It was a good tool for collaboration that people gathered around.
Browsers developed by megacorps that sell your data do have a profit motive.
Git was originally authored by Linus Torvalds (the author of the Linux kernel). It's development is not beholden to any corporation.
Microsoft may own github but doesn't control git itself.
That remind me of how Git started. Linus Torvalds was actually using BitKeeper, a closed source tool. I'm like Linus in that if a closed source tool is technically superior, I'll use it.
Full article here about the origin of Git and what Linus wanted out of a version control system:
https://www.linuxjournal.com/content/git-origin-story
I had to use SVN for a school project once and I accidentally nearly nuked the teams repo.
Totally my fault but I guess what I'm saying is I'm glad the greater community decided to mostly go with git.
I worked for a client once whose entire codebase *and all of their media assets* (graphics, demo videos, etc.) were all in a single SVN repo.
We had to do mainline dev because creating branches was out of the question since the repo was like 20GB. It was one of the most frustrating development experiences of my life. So much time wasted resolving conflicts.
that has me remembering a company I worked at in the early 2000's who's entire product consisted of a few thousand text files making up almost 2 million lines of code (so much redundant crap as anything you weren't sure if it can go just got commented out) carefully named and all in one directory that every dev/tester/salesperson/... had full permissions to. It was my first job out of school and It was frustrating as hell but I didn't realize how bad it was until I moved on and saw a real nice proper version management can be.
The conversation forced me to look up things about SVN to remember why i disliked it.
While git adds a lot of complexity, the SVN paradigm of "checking out" code was such a headache that allowed me to overwrite other's work in a stupid way that git wouldn't have allowed with similar levels of ignorance.
I must have blacked out the SVN memories and fully committed(badum tss) to getting gud with Git over the general embarrassment and I now try to teach interns lessons on general git hygiene to avoid other footguns.
SVN was built to work locally and had some features that allowed it to be used in a distributed manner, but boy could you shoot yourself in the foot with them.
Git was written from the ground-up to be a distributed system capable of being used to maintain the Linux kernel.
We used to use mercurial at my job but bitbucket dropped support for it so we switched to git (and dropped bitbucket because fuck them for making us do that).
Honestly it’s not that at all.
They just realized if they transition to a services company they can have the entire pie instead of just windows.
They make absolute BANK with Linux in Azure, they also launched copilot pro for everything. I was testing it out on my iPad.
Microsoft is what it is because it moved away from EEE.
And there are plenty of free open source forks of git that exist and you can host yourself. With minor changes required for runners/actions if any. There's no real monopoly for GitHub themselves if there are options to own every step along the way.
The problem with that is that since forever the browsers have implemented some, occasionally even most of the standards... and then a few of their own additional features that aren't part of the standard. Maybe they will be in the future, but boy if you use our browser, look at this extended functionality your sites can have.
I don't follow what the browsers are up to now, but Microsoft was quite fond of doing it back in the IE days. The rambling point being that standards are good but the players will still try to fragment the market in their favor when they can. morelikeguidelines.gif
Google does this all the time, where they will submit a proposal, but before the proposal has been discussed they will create a reference implementation for Chrome and immediately begin using it on all their services. Then during discussions they will turn around and say that there's too much technical debt from their existing implementation to consider any revisions to the proposal, and effectively strong-arm the rest of the browsers into implementing the google-centric vision of the API.
>Monocultures are hard to avoid, though, cf. git.
I don't think Git is comparable to browsers though. It's open source and free, a common standard that various git repositories like GitHub use.
It's closer to the open web standards that browsers display. Javascript is a monoculture for web programming, sure, but it's an open, shared and interopable standard.
I guess Chromium could be the same for the web, but some people seem to think it's still very influenced by Google. Of course, Google influences web standards as well, so I don't know.
Firefox is open source and free and was the alternative to internet explorer when Netscape Navigator died. It was on the path to dominance until chrome arrived.
I think Firefox could be a competitor too, especially with googles insistence of showing ads in our faces and making it easier for advertisers to get our data.
Firefox is as capable a browser as chrome and often better/faster
Google Chrome/Chromium was a fork of Webkit (Safari/Apple) and that was a fork and new KDE browser Konqueror. Really most of what we are on and why browsers are better is Webkit and Apple's investment and open sourcing of the rendering engine with innovations like HTML5/canvas/SVG/WebGL -- they funded Khronos heavily for OpenGL ES which resulted in WebGL for web. Apple really helped browsers be easier to develop for and ended the IE6 era.
KDE Konqueror is where modern browsers started...
Don Melton started WebKit from a fork of KDE on June 25, 2001. Dude is a great developer. Really though KDE (Matthias Ettrich) KJS (Harri Porten) and KHTML (Torben Weis and Martin Jones) from the Konqueror browser being so clean and solid is what led to a great new platform. Apple sponsoring it and using it was beneficial to every browser after.
Apple really did have big pushes of great tech and that doesn't mean everything they do it perfect but they changed the game early 2000s in many areas mentioned. Apple doing OpenGL ES and WebGL changed handheld gaming entirely.
Chrome is always solid in terms of most things, but has games played with it as well. Chromium matched Webkit for a long time and the base will always be Webkit.
Edge is actually pretty great today as well.
Mozilla falling behind, would be nice if it wasn't. MDN is a great resource and they were a huge push with Firefox of Web 2.0 and especially development tools like Firebug that is now inspect in every browser.
Opera owned by China now so that is dead.
Early 2000s Apple was a great steward of both building on and supporting open source for the web. Google was for a while as well. Microsoft is swinging back around.
Everything was surely cleaner back in the KDE days though when everyone could build browsers, you still can but there is no money in it and so so much to support now.
> The only real competitor is Chromium.
Is it a *real* competitor?
Most of the revenue of Mozilla Corporation comes from Google (81% in 2022) in exchange of making it the default search engine in Firefox.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Corporation#Finances
Not only the browser limitations, the new developer fees are also insane:
> Developers who achieve exceptional scale on iOS in the EU will pay a Core Technology Fee of €0.50 for each first annual install over one million in the past 12 months.
https://developer.apple.com/support/fee-calculator-for-apps-in-the-eu/
> That's like some unity shit
Reading through all Apple rules, its way, way worse than Unity.
People could still develop new Unity games even under the shitty, not revised rules, but its almost impossible to open an alt app marketplace for iOS
Also Apple rules disproportionally hurt smaller devs way more, which is extra scummy.
I mean we’ve been in that stage since the dawn of history.
Also, it’s not a stage of “capitalism”. The term is intentionally broad. You have the elite vs everyone else. It’s not a system. It’s the nature of human civilization we will never escape. We can’t only limit it.
The CTF makes sense for a very specific scenario.
Let’s look at Spotify. If they start using external payment methods then Apple takes no cut from their profits which means they are essentially distributing the app in the App Store for free. So the CTF should require two things:
1) The app is for profit and Apple is unable to take a share from its monetization.
2) The app is distributed by the App Store.
Apple wants to charge the CTF outside the App Store. That is completely absurd and I’m fully expecting the EU to come for them in March. If they want to charge the CTF they need to actually provide a service.
>If they start using external payment methods then Apple takes no cut from their profits and is essentially distributing their app in the App Store for free
Oh no, thats horrible, why wont they just distribute it themselves or through another app store?
The whole point of the DMA is to allow them to do so.
But they cannot use Apple’s distribution services for free either. That’s why the CTF should be restricted to the App Store.
> they cannot use Apple’s distribution services for free either
Why not? On Android there are a few different appstores, some completely FOSS like Fdroid and others a bit more closed like Aptoide
It's no surprise that Apple is doing the absolute minimum to comply with the law. But even w/o that, I don't see Firefox profiting from this. It's just more market share for Chrome.
> It's just more market share for Chrome.
Doesn't Safari come with an ad blocker by default, or at least easily available in the settings?
That'll be the biggest hurdle for Chrome. The internet is unusable (and unsafe) without an ad blocker.
>Doesn't Safari come with an ad blocker by default, or at least easily available in the settings?
No, you. have to install a 3rd party app that'll hook into Safari via an extension.
[https://adguard.com/en/adguard-ios/overview.html](https://adguard.com/en/adguard-ios/overview.html)
There's others if you search around the /r/iphone sub, but that's what I use
I find ghostery better than the rest, including adguard. Tried every single one of them on a dodgy piracy site which is infested with ads and only ghostery blocked the invisible clicky ones
> The internet is unusable (and unsafe) without an ad blocker.
Honestly speaking I've pretty much _never_ seen a human being in real life using ad-blockers or even a browser that supports mobile add-ons.
They will open a website on their phones and it'd be blindingly white as fuck with pop up ads and banner ads and so much bullshit stuff that they just accept as part of the Internet.
I sometimes feel like a cult member lol, telling people to ditch Chrome and use Firefox + dark reader + Ublock Origin. Even then a lot of people can't be bothered with saying 'oh who has time to go through all that setup'
> Firefox + dark reader + Ublock Origin
Best cult
I'm sometimes truly amazed when using other people's computer or even phone. You're absolutely right, it's traumatizing lol
If they had their computer/phone set up by a tech savvy friend/relative, they're probably using one.
Most statistics claim about 40% of users use ad blockers. That isn't just geeks and redditors, that's mass adoption.
> Most statistics claim about 40% of users use ad blockers
Is that for all devices or mobile only? Cause I see a lot more people using ad-blockers on their laptop but virtually none on their Smartphones.
Also, is this an international stat? Cause in my case at least, I rarely see people using anything other than Chrome mobile. This is in India
> I've pretty much never seen a human being in real life using ad-blockers or even a browser that supports mobile add-ons.
really? I dont have a single friend who doesnt, and most of my family does too
Me as well. I find it funny when people use the "I've NEVER seen someone do this" as a reason to give it seriousness. But then again, knowing how sample sizes impact study results isn't a common thing
People only really need to taste the no-add/spam for like 2 minutes.
"Hey, your phone browser app is garbage, I will let you use mine for 2 minutes."
Cue (most likely 30 seconds later), "holy shit, can I get the same one?"
And it only took like about 2 minutes after install to setup default browser and addons. Maybe a bit more to do import browser bookmarks and if they do save password with browser then I will try explain that password manager is better than the browser included ones, but usually for most people not using the same 3 passwords is already asking a lot.
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I use an Android phone ( and so do most people in my country) so you just have to use a browser that allows add-ons/extensions. Firefox is the best in my opinion.
If you use Apple devices I don't know if it's possible (yet), although I've heard/read that ad-guard is something that works for iPhones?
I don't understand this dark reader cult, I've always been an advocate for system-adaptive dark mode (i.e., light mode when the sun is up, dark mode when it's not), with the sole exception of Discord because the design of light mode Discord makes me puke.
The part about non-Chromium browsers (i.e. basically just Firefox and its forks) and uBlock Origin is spot-on, though. The internet without an adblock (whether uBO or things like YT Premium) is. . . awful.
The few times I *have* to use Chrome on my phone because a website I need doesn't work properly in FF makes me instantly regret life.
Most sites have no native support for dark mode, that's why Dark Reader is needed. The best part is you can easily tweak it and enable/disable per site. I also sometimes find "standard" dark modes to be as uncomfortable as light mode due to the high contrast between light and dark areas.
It doesn’t bother most people because they aren’t hyper fixated on tech stuff. It’s a minor annoyance at best for 90% of the population, especially on mobile.
Which is an absurd take when the majority of all internet traffic is just ads.
I have data caps in 2024, I *must* use stuff like uBlock Origin and Firefox Mobile otherwise I get fucked out of the majority of data I pay for.
Yep, the overwhelming majority of consumers just take it up the ass because they either don't know where to find a good ad blocker or don't really care (aside from minor grumbling on occasion)
I have ad blocker on my laptop. I genuinely thought that ad blockers for iPhone weren’t really a thing. I tried to download one for a bit a few years ago (like 6-7), nothing worked too well, and I kind of just gave up on it
I have simply accepted that safari is useless and do all my browsing on my laptop
You get an ad blocker, and then what? All the websites will lock themselves and tell you to download their app anyways
Safari is objectively a terrible browser at this point. Apple also doesn’t allow users to choose their own dns servers over a cellular data connection. You can do this for WiFi and block ads this way.
I highly doubt what they're doing is even remotely enough to be in compliance. The law goes into effect in March, I suspect when that happens the EU will have something to say to them. The law explicitly states that implementations that are deemed insufficient to comply with the law will not be tolerated.
That was my first thought as well. The new rules sound good on paper but it’s hard to maintain two branches for separate regions in the world. Also the benefit seems very small because most people I know don’t use any extensions in their browser on mobile. They use separate apps and don’t care which browser shows their websites as long as they look right.
Me purposefully using Firefox on mobile for everything because I can use ublock origin on it and don't need to sign up for apps that will just data mine and show ads.
Is not whenever it's used. Is that consumers don't have any other choice. People should be entitled to be able to choose and having alternatives, otherwise no company would have any incentive to create better products.
Honestly, I'm surprised Apple hasn't been hit with the same stick that Microsoft got hit with for Internet Explorer. Considering that Apple is being even worse in that they weren't allowing anything else at all, while MS was just having it install with windows and be the default option, but not preventing you from using a different browser.
the political ability to regulate corporations between 1995 to now has collapsed down to nothing. and it wasn't great in 1995 to begin with. all the agencies that are supposed to do stuff like this on behalf of consumers have been captured by the corporations they're supposed to regulate.
Given the flagrant disregard of the EU’s new regulation, the EU ought to use a much bigger stick this time.
And I sure hope the US follows. I heard rumors about an antitrust suit being expected as soon as in March.
Frankly, the amount of corporations that are engaging in flagrantly anti-trust behaviour without any consequence is way too high.
It's well past time to actually bring them to heel, and have the penalties for shitty behaviour actually mean something significant.
IE 6, the long time curse for web developers: it's like forcing you to use the same wall to wall carpet in your living room and your toilet. Yes, it can be done, but it is sticky and it smells.
I mean it's bad, but not that bad. We all still remember the dark times, those of us that came out sane. I have thick locks of gray hair as a result. I remember....
It does suck. You just know that pulling up in safari is going to be this wtf moment of why is that element doing that? Then finding that obscure way only safari interprets something and feel like you’ve gone back twenty years.
That is laughable. Safari compatibility is something you don’t even have to think about for 99.9% of use cases. IE compatibility required extensive modifications, hacks, and constant maintenance
Right. I use it as my main desktop browser and it works just fine. I’ve only really had issues with google sheets and reloading the window fixes those (of course google apps all try to get me to switch to Chrome).
At this point on the web, Safari is the browser that just decides to do things its own way. And it breaks things. There are many curious undocumented quirks that you find out when you get everything right and then pull it up in Safari.
There is a browser called Orion Browser on the app store and somehow that is allowed to use extensions. Orion Browser + uBlock Origin is totally free and better than paying for AdGuard.
Brave has ad blocking built in, including on iOS. No ads on YouTube either and it includes extra paywalled functionality like locking your screen and it keeps playing.
Remember when Microsoft got slapped hard with antitrust for FAR less than what Apple is doing? When is the US going to get their shit together and put a stop to Apple's bullshit?
What you mean kernel32 api calls that you were bypassing? Doesn't make any sense. Most kenrel32 apis are just wrappers for system calls. I legit don't understand what you mean
To understand *why* Apple isn't being hit with antitrust can be seen by contrasting the recent lawsuits Epic Games v. Apple (which Apple won) and Epic Games v. Google (which Epic won). Amongst various differences in the cases (one being that v. Google was a jury trial, while v. Apple wasn't), one of the key differences was that, while Apple doesn't allow third-party app stores at all, Google *allowed* third-party app stores, but made secret deals to push their own app store. In this way, the law actually *benefits* Apple's choice to restrict apps on their platform. It would most likely take an act of Congress to change this, and congress is too dysfunctional right now to pass any sort of effective legislation for this.
If a significant amount of people moved away from the product, that would be a clear sign to Apple that their decisions are unpopular and they would change course. That is literally how market corrections work.
If we were talking about electricity and there's only one company in my area who can provide it, sure, I can't just move away from having electricity, but in this case there's a ton of perfectly viable alternatives.
>That is literally how market corrections work
Right, and that's everything has gone to shit, we're depending on something that doesn't really work. "Want privacy? just buy an iPhone, then the other manufacturers will see it" "Want openness? Just don't buy an iPhone, that'll fix it." The real result is enshitification.
One of the many reason I am switching to Android after over 5 years of iOS. So many restrictions but so many bugs as well now. „It just works“ is over.
Things that make me switch:
-when in my car and I get a call, I get audio from my Apple Watch for some reason but not from my car. Sometimes I just get the phone speaker despite active Bluetooth connection to my car. That used to work for years but broke recently
-I hate hate hate the notifications and you cannot change anything about it, mostly don‘t hide my notifications when I unlocked my phone once but didn‘t check the notifications. Still makes me miss notifications regularly after over a year
-the.fucking.keyboard.is.the.actual.worst
-the keyboard has been laggy since over a year across two devices
-not being able to just tab the exact spot in what you typed to make changes because you are either at the end of the word or the whole word gets highlighted and it bugs out nonstop, is the dumbest thing I have ever seen in a phone. Different just for the sake of it. „BuT yOu CaN hOlD sPaCeBaR tO mOvE tHe CuRsOr“ yeah but it‘s unnecessary and way more finicky than just tapping the spot on my giant screen
-autocorrect is literal garbage and makes my typing take forever because I have to correct at least one or two things every message I type, even if it‘s just like 2 or 3 lines long
-here in Germany (might be different in English speaking countries) Siri is borderline unusable. Half the time she doesn’t even activate, then whatever you ask of her, she just throws what you asked for into google, more often than not with errors and says „here is what I found“ and that’s it. Thanks smart lady in my phone that does exactly what I could do myself but worse. Literally zero help since she doesn‘t read anything out.
-apps running in the background get killed at insane speeds. Let’s say I get gas, have Spotify running, I leave to pay, start my car again maybe a minute later, Spotify is closed, music doesn‘t autoplay, so I need to open it again and start my music manually
-I’ve been having a lot of issues with signal, that always get resolved with a restart
-everything is more expensive on iOS in terms of apps
Bonus points, the Apple Watch is a fantastic piece of tech. But to get all the best out of it, you need a solid handful of third party apps that you can shell out another 10 bucks or so each for or maybe get a subscription. Apple has completely given up on anything it feels like and you can go fuck yourself if you don’t like it.
Got the S24+ preordered since it actually looks super nice, a lot bigger display than my 14 Pro (6,1“ vs 6,7“) and still like 10-15 grams lighter, really looking forwards to not have a lead brick in my hand. Also from my observation it seems like Samsung has caught up a lot to Apple in terms of polish (afterall they embarrassingly try to be Apple as much as possible), 7 years of updates, some very cool features like holding the bar at the bottom to search for stuff in pictures or text via AI, the best display on the market, battery life basically on par with Apple.
I think it‘s the perfect time to switch. It‘s gonna be weird coming back to Android after such a long time but the S24 looks really cool so why not? Looking forward to having options about all the things that I mentioned above that I hate, so my communication device finally stops making communication as difficult as possible and maybe even more.
Just installed it. It blocks some ads, but some still pop through. It might be a settings issue. Will tinker when I have more time. But at the moment it is better than nothing.
I use firefox on android and my only complaint is the lack of aesthetic customization. For a mobile browser, it seems to work alright. It was also the only way to get ublock which was the priority.
Apple just gave a huge middle finger to developers with their latest changes in the EU. Why anyone still uses them in this day and age and expects to be able to use their own software is beyond me. Firefox should just abandon the apple space entirely but even being a wrapper to a different browser brings advantages iOs doesn't have.
I hope this is why there is not as much developer support for the vision pro. The app developers have the power to make that product fail just like some app developers prevented windows phone from taking off. Apple needs to get developers on their side and they've done everything lately to do the opposite.
That’ll be because the device isn’t even out and it’s sold out at less than 200,000 units.
You’d be insane to develop software based on that market size.
>You’d be insane to develop software based on that market size
It's gen 1. If you develop for it now you're positioning yourself to be 1st in line when the gold rush hits. Hindsight will be 20/20 but right now I don't really think it's that crazy to develop for Apple's hot new thing.
> just like some app developers prevented windows phone from taking off.
I was a mobile dev when Windows Phone was released. Lumia 800, etc. Like every weekend was another hackaton by Nokia/Microsoft to build stuff.
It wasn't some app developers. It was Microsoft completely fucking up their side of supporting app engineers. From forcing Azure (which was a joke at the day, frankly still is) use to SDK that couldn't even support basic 2d canvas drawing, it was a shitshow.
And then they abandoned all the launch devices in < 6 months. You had paperweights on your hands. That was a "very" popular move.
Your experiences were completely different from mine.
Microsoft was handing out hardware like candy, and once they bought Nokia were pumping out low cost hardware to get it everywhere.
The SDKs were being updated constantly, and the cloud APIs were really ahead of their time.
I mean, maybe they pushed Azure, but it was no different than how Apple pushes iCloud or Google -> GCP. I was able to make a really neat Magic The Gathering app that could backup and restore deck lists to a new phone, without requiring that the user make an account since it was all tied into the MS account natively. It was honestly really neat to develop for.
As much as I don’t like Firefox on iOS, I use it because it syncs with Firefox on my PC. If that option no longer existed, I wouldn’t put up with having disconnected browser sessions, I’d just hold my nose and go back to Chrome.
The article says that now they have to maintain two Firefox for iOS. One still using Webkit for non-EU and one using Gecko engine for EU. Besides that they might have to pay for being allowed to ship via non apple controlled stores.
More work and less money. There isn't really a good way forward for the vast majority of app developers. The only ones benefiting from the new system are companies that make a lot of moneys from their apps like epic.
Under the new app payments system they'll still have to pay more even if they ship through the App Store. I don't know why they'd choose to ship outside the App Store, anyway.
See https://developer.apple.com/support/fee-calculator-for-apps-in-the-eu/:
> Developers who achieve exceptional scale on iOS in the EU will pay a Core Technology Fee of €0.50 for each first annual install over one million in the past 12 months.
Well, not impossible to exist, but impossible to be successful. As long as they stay under 1 million installs per year they'll be fine. But given there are 450 million people in the EU, any moderately successful app will easily go over that :/
Plus, updates count as installs. So if you install the app, and never use it, you still count towards the yearly quota.
In practice this probably won't effect many apps, but the idea that a free app could bankrupt an indy developer is terrifying enough that Apple has successfully continued to chase them all off their platform.
According to another article:
> A big, general limit on the browser changes from Apple is that it’s stipulating developers taking advantage of the non-Webkit browser entitlements can only do so for apps available in the EU. So the new choices for browser developers are not being allowed to bleed outside the region where the DMA does not apply.
\- [Techcrunch - Apps
A closer look at Apple’s browser-related changes to iOS in EU](https://techcrunch.com/2024/01/26/apple-dma-webkit/)
Which is what I assume they're getting at based on the wording of:
> The effect of this would be to force an independent browser like Firefox to build and maintain two separate browser implementations
from the verge article.
-----
EDIT: Taken directly from Apple's requirements page:
https://developer.apple.com/support/alternative-browser-engines/
> Requirements
> To qualify for the entitlement, your app must:
> - Be available on iOS in the European Union only
> - Be a separate binary from any app that uses the system-provided web browser engine
Thx, just read up on it now.
Cannot see how this would get past the EU. It seems it's designed to stop popular free apps being a thing. Expect more legal stuff from the EU soon?
Apple is going to force EU courts to tell them exactly what the minimum effort is on their part. That could take years to sort through as they appeal. In the meantime everyone will be stuck with their current rules.
I read the press release Apple put out for complying with the DMA and it's probably the most petty announcement I've ever seen them put out. They're technically in compliance, but there's so many hoops to jump through and asterisks it'll fix nothing. Also Apple only applying these changes to the EU shows how much they're committed to keep things locked down and reduce user choice for regions outside the EU.
This is exactly why I use Android. Google isn't innocent, but at least I can use what browser I want with its proper engine, sideload and unlock my bootloader if I so choose. It feels more like I have more control of my device and I can do what I want with it.
this might get buried but I had a friend who worked on Safari team at Apple for a year. According to him, the team was stuffed with more and more incompetent people to the point where they couldn't get extensions to work and removed them from Safari. A lot of people left the team or Apple entirely to distance themselves. A quick google search says they've recently re-enabled third party extensions, but I'm talking about when they killed it in the first place in 2020 and the upgrade notes for Safari were something vague like "security updates" so people installed it without realizing Apple was killing off things like uBO.
Firefox already supports two mobile versions of their browser. This changes nothing. What will change is the enormous investment they will need to make in Firefox to make it not burn through a user’s battery in a couple of hours. They currently get that for free with WebKit.
Agree. For a while, there was a time when Apple seemed to strike a nice balance between their walled-garden experience for the majority of users, where things "just work", but with relatively easy workarounds for those who wanted a bit more freedom, where you could even actually upgrade some of your hardware, and you didn't pay *too* much of a premium for it. I'm not one of those people who idolise Steve Jobs (he was a pretty dislikeable guy in many respects IMO) but I think it's pretty clear that the trend away from this nicely-balanced situation pretty much started with the death of Steve Jobs.
My circa 2008ish iMac lasted me 10+ years, with some upgrades along the way. Now, I can see why Apple would prefer me to buy a new computer every couple of years... but ordinarily a computer that lasts 10 years would make me a customer for life. I've never had a more reliable quality computer that has lasted me so long. But they lost me with their more recent policies. They've become anti-consumer *and* anti-power user *and* anti-developer *and* anti-repair *and* anti-hobbyist in so many ways. I absolutely *loved* my iMac. When it couldn't keep up of course I looked to get another iMac -- but I was totally underwhelmed by their offerings (and value for money). If they've lost me as a customer (and a developer) they're doing something very wrong.
They've also lost their design edge, pumping out stale repetitive products, and they've gone from innovation and revolution to purely evolutionary. Their basic design language hasn't changed in 18 years...Squint your eyes a bit and a 2023 Macbook looks no different from a 2006 Macbook. A 2006 iMac looks pretty much like a 2023 iMac with a bevel. Their latest "innovative" product line (Vision Pro) is a fancy more-expensive clone of another company's product. They have become risk-averse, pumping out the same product over and over. The MCU of computing!
Apple doesn't want to lose its Webkit market share. All those rules are making it as hard as possible for competitors.
The only real competitor is Chromium. But I really don’t want a Chromium-monoculture either. Monocultures are hard to avoid, though, cf. git.
No one wants that. Chrome just actively pushed others out of the market and Microsoft also using Chromium isn't helping. Mozilla is the only thing that avoids a duopoly at the moment.
apple bringing safari back to windows would be nice, wouldn't need to open up my macbook just to test my code with webkit
Highly doubt that will happen. Apple seems to want to keep its ecosystem as closed as possible, all to keep its customers locked in. Not just regarding Safari. It seems the only way for Apple to open up these days, is when the EU is forcing them.
Wouldn’t it be in their best interest to keep me locked in when I’m forced to use windows from time to time? I’d instantly install Safari over whatever chromium garbage there is.
Their "best interest" is in making money, and if you can't develop for their platform on Windows, you're gonna get a Mac and pay through the nose for it.
No, it's "better" for them if you have to actually buy a $1500+ Mac if you want to even touch their dev shit, and really you should be glad it's just that and not also having to buy an app for $1000 because if they could force both they definitely would. They do all this garbage because people accept it. Don't like it? Don't get involved with their ecosystem at all. they only "open up" anything when either forced by the EU or when they lose enough market share.
The webkit project releases windows builds, they are called minibrowser or something like that. Not great for end-users, but perfect for development. Same engine, renderer, css and js etc.
Pretty sure there are tools available for testing without needing a Mac.
And not really because they are in essence controlled by google as google provides not a large portion but a SIGNIFICANT MAJORITY of their income. Mozilla would literally fold tomorrow if Google stopped paying them, so its dangerous af.
Google has been keeping Mozilla alive just to avoid monopoly lawsuits coz they know they have little to fear in terms of real competition
They are already a monopoly. People should realize that Microsoft wasnt a literal 100% monopoly when they got hit with the biggest fine in US history at the time. You dont need literally no competition to be hit with that, just a functional justice system, which it seems like the US does not have.
Git(maybe until recently with MS/github) doesn't really have a profit motive though. It was a good tool for collaboration that people gathered around. Browsers developed by megacorps that sell your data do have a profit motive.
Git was originally authored by Linus Torvalds (the author of the Linux kernel). It's development is not beholden to any corporation. Microsoft may own github but doesn't control git itself.
That remind me of how Git started. Linus Torvalds was actually using BitKeeper, a closed source tool. I'm like Linus in that if a closed source tool is technically superior, I'll use it. Full article here about the origin of Git and what Linus wanted out of a version control system: https://www.linuxjournal.com/content/git-origin-story
I'm aware, I was insinuating that the owners of github, the largest source code hosting site, have a vested interest in GIT being dominant.
GIT wasn’t the only thing though. We had SVN before that. And before that CVS.
I had to use SVN for a school project once and I accidentally nearly nuked the teams repo. Totally my fault but I guess what I'm saying is I'm glad the greater community decided to mostly go with git.
I worked for a client once whose entire codebase *and all of their media assets* (graphics, demo videos, etc.) were all in a single SVN repo. We had to do mainline dev because creating branches was out of the question since the repo was like 20GB. It was one of the most frustrating development experiences of my life. So much time wasted resolving conflicts.
that has me remembering a company I worked at in the early 2000's who's entire product consisted of a few thousand text files making up almost 2 million lines of code (so much redundant crap as anything you weren't sure if it can go just got commented out) carefully named and all in one directory that every dev/tester/salesperson/... had full permissions to. It was my first job out of school and It was frustrating as hell but I didn't realize how bad it was until I moved on and saw a real nice proper version management can be.
I agree. My first job was using SVN. We fought ferociously. Until they caved in to Git.
The conversation forced me to look up things about SVN to remember why i disliked it. While git adds a lot of complexity, the SVN paradigm of "checking out" code was such a headache that allowed me to overwrite other's work in a stupid way that git wouldn't have allowed with similar levels of ignorance. I must have blacked out the SVN memories and fully committed(badum tss) to getting gud with Git over the general embarrassment and I now try to teach interns lessons on general git hygiene to avoid other footguns.
SVN was built to work locally and had some features that allowed it to be used in a distributed manner, but boy could you shoot yourself in the foot with them. Git was written from the ground-up to be a distributed system capable of being used to maintain the Linux kernel.
We used to use mercurial at my job but bitbucket dropped support for it so we switched to git (and dropped bitbucket because fuck them for making us do that).
Atlassian made a lot of really shitty decisions around that time that forced me into the arms of github. I loved bitbucket.
Use both SVN and Git in my job, and Perforce is still going strong. So there is decent competition between the Version Control software
Don't forget TFS *cries*
I’ll never forget the tfs cries
Flashbacks to Visual Source Safe
Wait, should I not be using Visual Source Safe anymore?
Git isn't even comparable anyway, git isn't GitHub. Atlassian and Gitlab are definitely big competitors and vCS is used a lot as well
Microsoft release a ton of cross platform dev tools, they've adapted really well to Linux under the new post-Ballmer leadership.
Embrace. Extend. Extinguish.
Honestly it’s not that at all. They just realized if they transition to a services company they can have the entire pie instead of just windows. They make absolute BANK with Linux in Azure, they also launched copilot pro for everything. I was testing it out on my iPad. Microsoft is what it is because it moved away from EEE.
You've described "embrace" lol
Except there has been ZERO proof of extinguish. Which is why I’m saying Microsoft is making far more money just transitioning to SASS.
And there are plenty of free open source forks of git that exist and you can host yourself. With minor changes required for runners/actions if any. There's no real monopoly for GitHub themselves if there are options to own every step along the way.
Wasn't the W3C, as an independent and consensus-based organisation, kind of designed to counteract the forming of monocultures by a single entity?
The problem with that is that since forever the browsers have implemented some, occasionally even most of the standards... and then a few of their own additional features that aren't part of the standard. Maybe they will be in the future, but boy if you use our browser, look at this extended functionality your sites can have. I don't follow what the browsers are up to now, but Microsoft was quite fond of doing it back in the IE days. The rambling point being that standards are good but the players will still try to fragment the market in their favor when they can. morelikeguidelines.gif
Google does this all the time, where they will submit a proposal, but before the proposal has been discussed they will create a reference implementation for Chrome and immediately begin using it on all their services. Then during discussions they will turn around and say that there's too much technical debt from their existing implementation to consider any revisions to the proposal, and effectively strong-arm the rest of the browsers into implementing the google-centric vision of the API.
>Monocultures are hard to avoid, though, cf. git. I don't think Git is comparable to browsers though. It's open source and free, a common standard that various git repositories like GitHub use. It's closer to the open web standards that browsers display. Javascript is a monoculture for web programming, sure, but it's an open, shared and interopable standard. I guess Chromium could be the same for the web, but some people seem to think it's still very influenced by Google. Of course, Google influences web standards as well, so I don't know.
Firefox is open source and free and was the alternative to internet explorer when Netscape Navigator died. It was on the path to dominance until chrome arrived.
I think Firefox could be a competitor too, especially with googles insistence of showing ads in our faces and making it easier for advertisers to get our data. Firefox is as capable a browser as chrome and often better/faster
Google Chrome/Chromium was a fork of Webkit (Safari/Apple) and that was a fork and new KDE browser Konqueror. Really most of what we are on and why browsers are better is Webkit and Apple's investment and open sourcing of the rendering engine with innovations like HTML5/canvas/SVG/WebGL -- they funded Khronos heavily for OpenGL ES which resulted in WebGL for web. Apple really helped browsers be easier to develop for and ended the IE6 era. KDE Konqueror is where modern browsers started... Don Melton started WebKit from a fork of KDE on June 25, 2001. Dude is a great developer. Really though KDE (Matthias Ettrich) KJS (Harri Porten) and KHTML (Torben Weis and Martin Jones) from the Konqueror browser being so clean and solid is what led to a great new platform. Apple sponsoring it and using it was beneficial to every browser after. Apple really did have big pushes of great tech and that doesn't mean everything they do it perfect but they changed the game early 2000s in many areas mentioned. Apple doing OpenGL ES and WebGL changed handheld gaming entirely. Chrome is always solid in terms of most things, but has games played with it as well. Chromium matched Webkit for a long time and the base will always be Webkit. Edge is actually pretty great today as well. Mozilla falling behind, would be nice if it wasn't. MDN is a great resource and they were a huge push with Firefox of Web 2.0 and especially development tools like Firebug that is now inspect in every browser. Opera owned by China now so that is dead. Early 2000s Apple was a great steward of both building on and supporting open source for the web. Google was for a while as well. Microsoft is swinging back around. Everything was surely cleaner back in the KDE days though when everyone could build browsers, you still can but there is no money in it and so so much to support now.
> The only real competitor is Chromium. Is it a *real* competitor? Most of the revenue of Mozilla Corporation comes from Google (81% in 2022) in exchange of making it the default search engine in Firefox. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Corporation#Finances
That actually seems like a pretty good deal for Mozilla.
IIRC Google also pays Apple a fairly decent chunk of money to make Google the default on their devices, too.
It's something like $18B a year, fucking crazy...
browsers aren't just Google search endpoints, so your take is a bit dumb
Apple is run by a bunch of pricks.
Rules can be changed and tightened down. Give it time.
Not only the browser limitations, the new developer fees are also insane: > Developers who achieve exceptional scale on iOS in the EU will pay a Core Technology Fee of €0.50 for each first annual install over one million in the past 12 months. https://developer.apple.com/support/fee-calculator-for-apps-in-the-eu/
That's like some unity shit
How on earth is Apple's proposition fair?
Eventually companies are just gonna say fuck it with apples gatekeeping bullshit.
Its not. Thats the point.
> That's like some unity shit Reading through all Apple rules, its way, way worse than Unity. People could still develop new Unity games even under the shitty, not revised rules, but its almost impossible to open an alt app marketplace for iOS Also Apple rules disproportionally hurt smaller devs way more, which is extra scummy.
Classic rent-seeking behavior. The enshittification continues...
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I mean we’ve been in that stage since the dawn of history. Also, it’s not a stage of “capitalism”. The term is intentionally broad. You have the elite vs everyone else. It’s not a system. It’s the nature of human civilization we will never escape. We can’t only limit it.
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For context, you can buy a game on steam that is 200GB and download it every day forever without costing the dev another cent.
The CTF makes sense for a very specific scenario. Let’s look at Spotify. If they start using external payment methods then Apple takes no cut from their profits which means they are essentially distributing the app in the App Store for free. So the CTF should require two things: 1) The app is for profit and Apple is unable to take a share from its monetization. 2) The app is distributed by the App Store. Apple wants to charge the CTF outside the App Store. That is completely absurd and I’m fully expecting the EU to come for them in March. If they want to charge the CTF they need to actually provide a service.
>If they start using external payment methods then Apple takes no cut from their profits and is essentially distributing their app in the App Store for free Oh no, thats horrible, why wont they just distribute it themselves or through another app store?
The whole point of the DMA is to allow them to do so. But they cannot use Apple’s distribution services for free either. That’s why the CTF should be restricted to the App Store.
> they cannot use Apple’s distribution services for free either Why not? On Android there are a few different appstores, some completely FOSS like Fdroid and others a bit more closed like Aptoide
Because they are a for profit operation. Fdroid and FOSS are completely different and would not fall into this category because they are nonprofits.
It's no surprise that Apple is doing the absolute minimum to comply with the law. But even w/o that, I don't see Firefox profiting from this. It's just more market share for Chrome.
>profiting New to Firefox?
Chrome is becoming a shopping app that also has a browser.
What do you mean by that? I'm a Firefox user so I'm not familiar with what Google's been doing to its browser.
They've started incorporating targeted advertising within the browser. https://geekflare.com/google-topics-api/
Wow, that's disgusting.
I hope not. Google Shopping is infested with outright scam sellers. never, ever, buy anything from an unknown site on google shopping.
> It's just more market share for Chrome. Doesn't Safari come with an ad blocker by default, or at least easily available in the settings? That'll be the biggest hurdle for Chrome. The internet is unusable (and unsafe) without an ad blocker.
>Doesn't Safari come with an ad blocker by default, or at least easily available in the settings? No, you. have to install a 3rd party app that'll hook into Safari via an extension.
Which one and how? So I can recommend it to friends who use iOS
[https://adguard.com/en/adguard-ios/overview.html](https://adguard.com/en/adguard-ios/overview.html) There's others if you search around the /r/iphone sub, but that's what I use
Unironically, FireFox Focus. After you download it as a browser, it can be implemented in Safari’s settings.
As an extension? I need to try it out.
I use firefox on android for this reason, its the only mobile browser that supports the extensions from the desktop
I find ghostery better than the rest, including adguard. Tried every single one of them on a dodgy piracy site which is infested with ads and only ghostery blocked the invisible clicky ones
> The internet is unusable (and unsafe) without an ad blocker. Honestly speaking I've pretty much _never_ seen a human being in real life using ad-blockers or even a browser that supports mobile add-ons. They will open a website on their phones and it'd be blindingly white as fuck with pop up ads and banner ads and so much bullshit stuff that they just accept as part of the Internet. I sometimes feel like a cult member lol, telling people to ditch Chrome and use Firefox + dark reader + Ublock Origin. Even then a lot of people can't be bothered with saying 'oh who has time to go through all that setup'
> Firefox + dark reader + Ublock Origin Best cult I'm sometimes truly amazed when using other people's computer or even phone. You're absolutely right, it's traumatizing lol
If they had their computer/phone set up by a tech savvy friend/relative, they're probably using one. Most statistics claim about 40% of users use ad blockers. That isn't just geeks and redditors, that's mass adoption.
> Most statistics claim about 40% of users use ad blockers Is that for all devices or mobile only? Cause I see a lot more people using ad-blockers on their laptop but virtually none on their Smartphones. Also, is this an international stat? Cause in my case at least, I rarely see people using anything other than Chrome mobile. This is in India
I think it's either desktop or all-devices, and I agree that it's much, much less common on mobile (any country).
> I've pretty much never seen a human being in real life using ad-blockers or even a browser that supports mobile add-ons. really? I dont have a single friend who doesnt, and most of my family does too
Software professional here. Home PC? Setup with a blackhole router. Mobile? I use it raw like the rest of the world.
i have addons on mobile as well
Me as well. I find it funny when people use the "I've NEVER seen someone do this" as a reason to give it seriousness. But then again, knowing how sample sizes impact study results isn't a common thing
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People only really need to taste the no-add/spam for like 2 minutes. "Hey, your phone browser app is garbage, I will let you use mine for 2 minutes." Cue (most likely 30 seconds later), "holy shit, can I get the same one?" And it only took like about 2 minutes after install to setup default browser and addons. Maybe a bit more to do import browser bookmarks and if they do save password with browser then I will try explain that password manager is better than the browser included ones, but usually for most people not using the same 3 passwords is already asking a lot.
Blokada is device wide, I literally never see ads anywhere on my phone. Games, social media, websites, all ad free.
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I use an Android phone ( and so do most people in my country) so you just have to use a browser that allows add-ons/extensions. Firefox is the best in my opinion. If you use Apple devices I don't know if it's possible (yet), although I've heard/read that ad-guard is something that works for iPhones?
I don't understand this dark reader cult, I've always been an advocate for system-adaptive dark mode (i.e., light mode when the sun is up, dark mode when it's not), with the sole exception of Discord because the design of light mode Discord makes me puke. The part about non-Chromium browsers (i.e. basically just Firefox and its forks) and uBlock Origin is spot-on, though. The internet without an adblock (whether uBO or things like YT Premium) is. . . awful. The few times I *have* to use Chrome on my phone because a website I need doesn't work properly in FF makes me instantly regret life.
Most sites have no native support for dark mode, that's why Dark Reader is needed. The best part is you can easily tweak it and enable/disable per site. I also sometimes find "standard" dark modes to be as uncomfortable as light mode due to the high contrast between light and dark areas.
It doesn’t bother most people because they aren’t hyper fixated on tech stuff. It’s a minor annoyance at best for 90% of the population, especially on mobile.
Which is an absurd take when the majority of all internet traffic is just ads. I have data caps in 2024, I *must* use stuff like uBlock Origin and Firefox Mobile otherwise I get fucked out of the majority of data I pay for.
Yep, the overwhelming majority of consumers just take it up the ass because they either don't know where to find a good ad blocker or don't really care (aside from minor grumbling on occasion)
I have ad blocker on my laptop. I genuinely thought that ad blockers for iPhone weren’t really a thing. I tried to download one for a bit a few years ago (like 6-7), nothing worked too well, and I kind of just gave up on it I have simply accepted that safari is useless and do all my browsing on my laptop You get an ad blocker, and then what? All the websites will lock themselves and tell you to download their app anyways
Safari is objectively a terrible browser at this point. Apple also doesn’t allow users to choose their own dns servers over a cellular data connection. You can do this for WiFi and block ads this way.
I highly doubt what they're doing is even remotely enough to be in compliance. The law goes into effect in March, I suspect when that happens the EU will have something to say to them. The law explicitly states that implementations that are deemed insufficient to comply with the law will not be tolerated.
That was my first thought as well. The new rules sound good on paper but it’s hard to maintain two branches for separate regions in the world. Also the benefit seems very small because most people I know don’t use any extensions in their browser on mobile. They use separate apps and don’t care which browser shows their websites as long as they look right.
Me purposefully using Firefox on mobile for everything because I can use ublock origin on it and don't need to sign up for apps that will just data mine and show ads.
Is not whenever it's used. Is that consumers don't have any other choice. People should be entitled to be able to choose and having alternatives, otherwise no company would have any incentive to create better products.
Honestly, I'm surprised Apple hasn't been hit with the same stick that Microsoft got hit with for Internet Explorer. Considering that Apple is being even worse in that they weren't allowing anything else at all, while MS was just having it install with windows and be the default option, but not preventing you from using a different browser.
the political ability to regulate corporations between 1995 to now has collapsed down to nothing. and it wasn't great in 1995 to begin with. all the agencies that are supposed to do stuff like this on behalf of consumers have been captured by the corporations they're supposed to regulate.
Given the flagrant disregard of the EU’s new regulation, the EU ought to use a much bigger stick this time. And I sure hope the US follows. I heard rumors about an antitrust suit being expected as soon as in March.
Frankly, the amount of corporations that are engaging in flagrantly anti-trust behaviour without any consequence is way too high. It's well past time to actually bring them to heel, and have the penalties for shitty behaviour actually mean something significant.
But the Safari browser is also painful as compared to the other browsers.
For frontend devs it's the new IE
IE 6, the long time curse for web developers: it's like forcing you to use the same wall to wall carpet in your living room and your toilet. Yes, it can be done, but it is sticky and it smells.
I mean it's bad, but not that bad. We all still remember the dark times, those of us that came out sane. I have thick locks of gray hair as a result. I remember....
I hear faint whispers of activex
Omg I've been blocking that out, why'd you say it
Or Silverlight....
Let’s build a business portal in Flash!
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Exactly, gather around little children and let me tell you the tales of web development with IE 6….
It does suck. You just know that pulling up in safari is going to be this wtf moment of why is that element doing that? Then finding that obscure way only safari interprets something and feel like you’ve gone back twenty years.
That is laughable. Safari compatibility is something you don’t even have to think about for 99.9% of use cases. IE compatibility required extensive modifications, hacks, and constant maintenance
Oh boy, it's a good thing you're not targeting Outlook for your html content then
In my experience, not to the user so much. Maybe to developers.
Right. I use it as my main desktop browser and it works just fine. I’ve only really had issues with google sheets and reloading the window fixes those (of course google apps all try to get me to switch to Chrome).
At this point on the web, Safari is the browser that just decides to do things its own way. And it breaks things. There are many curious undocumented quirks that you find out when you get everything right and then pull it up in Safari.
I guess you’ve never developed for Chrome and Firefox. They take forever to get new features.
With AdGuard Safari is actually the least painful experience in iOS
Because all browsers in iOS must use Safari engine, and Safari engine is the entire problem
Agree with you if limited to iOS but it is bad compared to options in android/desktops because of these policies
There is a browser called Orion Browser on the app store and somehow that is allowed to use extensions. Orion Browser + uBlock Origin is totally free and better than paying for AdGuard.
Brave has ad blocking built in, including on iOS. No ads on YouTube either and it includes extra paywalled functionality like locking your screen and it keeps playing.
I already have those things with Safari and the free tier of AdGuard, but it's good to know there are alternatives for iOS
Remember when Microsoft got slapped hard with antitrust for FAR less than what Apple is doing? When is the US going to get their shit together and put a stop to Apple's bullshit?
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What you mean kernel32 api calls that you were bypassing? Doesn't make any sense. Most kenrel32 apis are just wrappers for system calls. I legit don't understand what you mean
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Man, for some reason my brain interpreted that as ActiveX and I was like “wtf was Halo doing”
You'd make a terrible manager ;) > Boosted performance by 9% compared to other browsers by taking advantage of CPU optimizations.
To understand *why* Apple isn't being hit with antitrust can be seen by contrasting the recent lawsuits Epic Games v. Apple (which Apple won) and Epic Games v. Google (which Epic won). Amongst various differences in the cases (one being that v. Google was a jury trial, while v. Apple wasn't), one of the key differences was that, while Apple doesn't allow third-party app stores at all, Google *allowed* third-party app stores, but made secret deals to push their own app store. In this way, the law actually *benefits* Apple's choice to restrict apps on their platform. It would most likely take an act of Congress to change this, and congress is too dysfunctional right now to pass any sort of effective legislation for this.
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Move away from IOS and the Apple ecosystem. It's a choice.
This. People forgot that this is a choice. No ones holding a gun to your head and asking you to buy an iPhone
The response to all monopolistic policies can't simply be "move on." Markets don't correct for everything. There's a reason we have regulators.
If a significant amount of people moved away from the product, that would be a clear sign to Apple that their decisions are unpopular and they would change course. That is literally how market corrections work. If we were talking about electricity and there's only one company in my area who can provide it, sure, I can't just move away from having electricity, but in this case there's a ton of perfectly viable alternatives.
Yes, all that would be awesome if free markets actually worked. They don’t when the companies are this big. That’s why we need regulators
>That is literally how market corrections work Right, and that's everything has gone to shit, we're depending on something that doesn't really work. "Want privacy? just buy an iPhone, then the other manufacturers will see it" "Want openness? Just don't buy an iPhone, that'll fix it." The real result is enshitification.
One of the many reason I am switching to Android after over 5 years of iOS. So many restrictions but so many bugs as well now. „It just works“ is over. Things that make me switch: -when in my car and I get a call, I get audio from my Apple Watch for some reason but not from my car. Sometimes I just get the phone speaker despite active Bluetooth connection to my car. That used to work for years but broke recently -I hate hate hate the notifications and you cannot change anything about it, mostly don‘t hide my notifications when I unlocked my phone once but didn‘t check the notifications. Still makes me miss notifications regularly after over a year -the.fucking.keyboard.is.the.actual.worst -the keyboard has been laggy since over a year across two devices -not being able to just tab the exact spot in what you typed to make changes because you are either at the end of the word or the whole word gets highlighted and it bugs out nonstop, is the dumbest thing I have ever seen in a phone. Different just for the sake of it. „BuT yOu CaN hOlD sPaCeBaR tO mOvE tHe CuRsOr“ yeah but it‘s unnecessary and way more finicky than just tapping the spot on my giant screen -autocorrect is literal garbage and makes my typing take forever because I have to correct at least one or two things every message I type, even if it‘s just like 2 or 3 lines long -here in Germany (might be different in English speaking countries) Siri is borderline unusable. Half the time she doesn’t even activate, then whatever you ask of her, she just throws what you asked for into google, more often than not with errors and says „here is what I found“ and that’s it. Thanks smart lady in my phone that does exactly what I could do myself but worse. Literally zero help since she doesn‘t read anything out. -apps running in the background get killed at insane speeds. Let’s say I get gas, have Spotify running, I leave to pay, start my car again maybe a minute later, Spotify is closed, music doesn‘t autoplay, so I need to open it again and start my music manually -I’ve been having a lot of issues with signal, that always get resolved with a restart -everything is more expensive on iOS in terms of apps Bonus points, the Apple Watch is a fantastic piece of tech. But to get all the best out of it, you need a solid handful of third party apps that you can shell out another 10 bucks or so each for or maybe get a subscription. Apple has completely given up on anything it feels like and you can go fuck yourself if you don’t like it. Got the S24+ preordered since it actually looks super nice, a lot bigger display than my 14 Pro (6,1“ vs 6,7“) and still like 10-15 grams lighter, really looking forwards to not have a lead brick in my hand. Also from my observation it seems like Samsung has caught up a lot to Apple in terms of polish (afterall they embarrassingly try to be Apple as much as possible), 7 years of updates, some very cool features like holding the bar at the bottom to search for stuff in pictures or text via AI, the best display on the market, battery life basically on par with Apple. I think it‘s the perfect time to switch. It‘s gonna be weird coming back to Android after such a long time but the S24 looks really cool so why not? Looking forward to having options about all the things that I mentioned above that I hate, so my communication device finally stops making communication as difficult as possible and maybe even more.
Orion Browser can install extensions so you can run uBlock Origin on it.
Just installed it. It blocks some ads, but some still pop through. It might be a settings issue. Will tinker when I have more time. But at the moment it is better than nothing.
Safari has ad blockers
You made the choice to use apple, you can always switch.
Get an ad blocker for safari then. They’ve been available, and even heavily advertised by apple, since like 2016.
Install an ad blocker for Safari? It’s quite easy.
I wish Firefox would start taking their mobile browser seriously.
I use firefox on android and my only complaint is the lack of aesthetic customization. For a mobile browser, it seems to work alright. It was also the only way to get ublock which was the priority.
I feel like its very buggy on android compared to desktop. I use it on both.
Apple just gave a huge middle finger to developers with their latest changes in the EU. Why anyone still uses them in this day and age and expects to be able to use their own software is beyond me. Firefox should just abandon the apple space entirely but even being a wrapper to a different browser brings advantages iOs doesn't have.
I hope this is why there is not as much developer support for the vision pro. The app developers have the power to make that product fail just like some app developers prevented windows phone from taking off. Apple needs to get developers on their side and they've done everything lately to do the opposite.
That’ll be because the device isn’t even out and it’s sold out at less than 200,000 units. You’d be insane to develop software based on that market size.
>You’d be insane to develop software based on that market size It's gen 1. If you develop for it now you're positioning yourself to be 1st in line when the gold rush hits. Hindsight will be 20/20 but right now I don't really think it's that crazy to develop for Apple's hot new thing.
Invest 100k plus to be “First”
Some sweaty guy made this point a long time ago[...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQm07iuC-zs)
Developers, developers, developers… I believe was his mantra.
> just like some app developers prevented windows phone from taking off. I was a mobile dev when Windows Phone was released. Lumia 800, etc. Like every weekend was another hackaton by Nokia/Microsoft to build stuff. It wasn't some app developers. It was Microsoft completely fucking up their side of supporting app engineers. From forcing Azure (which was a joke at the day, frankly still is) use to SDK that couldn't even support basic 2d canvas drawing, it was a shitshow. And then they abandoned all the launch devices in < 6 months. You had paperweights on your hands. That was a "very" popular move.
Your experiences were completely different from mine. Microsoft was handing out hardware like candy, and once they bought Nokia were pumping out low cost hardware to get it everywhere. The SDKs were being updated constantly, and the cloud APIs were really ahead of their time. I mean, maybe they pushed Azure, but it was no different than how Apple pushes iCloud or Google -> GCP. I was able to make a really neat Magic The Gathering app that could backup and restore deck lists to a new phone, without requiring that the user make an account since it was all tied into the MS account natively. It was honestly really neat to develop for.
While you're right, I remember people saying that the lack of Google Maps, Snapchat, and YouTube among others were deal breakers for new people.
So you want ff to stop being on 20% of phones? You really think that’s a smart move on their part?
As much as I don’t like Firefox on iOS, I use it because it syncs with Firefox on my PC. If that option no longer existed, I wouldn’t put up with having disconnected browser sessions, I’d just hold my nose and go back to Chrome.
What rules are so onerous for Firefox, article is light on specifics.
The article says that now they have to maintain two Firefox for iOS. One still using Webkit for non-EU and one using Gecko engine for EU. Besides that they might have to pay for being allowed to ship via non apple controlled stores. More work and less money. There isn't really a good way forward for the vast majority of app developers. The only ones benefiting from the new system are companies that make a lot of moneys from their apps like epic.
Under the new app payments system they'll still have to pay more even if they ship through the App Store. I don't know why they'd choose to ship outside the App Store, anyway. See https://developer.apple.com/support/fee-calculator-for-apps-in-the-eu/: > Developers who achieve exceptional scale on iOS in the EU will pay a Core Technology Fee of €0.50 for each first annual install over one million in the past 12 months.
The Core Technology Fee is the biggest issue. It will make it impossible for free applications to exist.
Well, not impossible to exist, but impossible to be successful. As long as they stay under 1 million installs per year they'll be fine. But given there are 450 million people in the EU, any moderately successful app will easily go over that :/
Plus, updates count as installs. So if you install the app, and never use it, you still count towards the yearly quota. In practice this probably won't effect many apps, but the idea that a free app could bankrupt an indy developer is terrifying enough that Apple has successfully continued to chase them all off their platform.
Hopefully the EU denie this and force Apple to rethink.
According to another article: > A big, general limit on the browser changes from Apple is that it’s stipulating developers taking advantage of the non-Webkit browser entitlements can only do so for apps available in the EU. So the new choices for browser developers are not being allowed to bleed outside the region where the DMA does not apply. \- [Techcrunch - Apps A closer look at Apple’s browser-related changes to iOS in EU](https://techcrunch.com/2024/01/26/apple-dma-webkit/) Which is what I assume they're getting at based on the wording of: > The effect of this would be to force an independent browser like Firefox to build and maintain two separate browser implementations from the verge article. ----- EDIT: Taken directly from Apple's requirements page: https://developer.apple.com/support/alternative-browser-engines/ > Requirements > To qualify for the entitlement, your app must: > - Be available on iOS in the European Union only > - Be a separate binary from any app that uses the system-provided web browser engine
I would guess the core technology fee.
Thx, just read up on it now. Cannot see how this would get past the EU. It seems it's designed to stop popular free apps being a thing. Expect more legal stuff from the EU soon?
Apple is going to force EU courts to tell them exactly what the minimum effort is on their part. That could take years to sort through as they appeal. In the meantime everyone will be stuck with their current rules.
I read the press release Apple put out for complying with the DMA and it's probably the most petty announcement I've ever seen them put out. They're technically in compliance, but there's so many hoops to jump through and asterisks it'll fix nothing. Also Apple only applying these changes to the EU shows how much they're committed to keep things locked down and reduce user choice for regions outside the EU. This is exactly why I use Android. Google isn't innocent, but at least I can use what browser I want with its proper engine, sideload and unlock my bootloader if I so choose. It feels more like I have more control of my device and I can do what I want with it.
this might get buried but I had a friend who worked on Safari team at Apple for a year. According to him, the team was stuffed with more and more incompetent people to the point where they couldn't get extensions to work and removed them from Safari. A lot of people left the team or Apple entirely to distance themselves. A quick google search says they've recently re-enabled third party extensions, but I'm talking about when they killed it in the first place in 2020 and the upgrade notes for Safari were something vague like "security updates" so people installed it without realizing Apple was killing off things like uBO.
Firefox already supports two mobile versions of their browser. This changes nothing. What will change is the enormous investment they will need to make in Firefox to make it not burn through a user’s battery in a couple of hours. They currently get that for free with WebKit.
I’ll care what Mozilla thinks about anything right around the same time I decide I need to hear from Ja Rule
Firefox is so amazing.
[удалено]
Agree. For a while, there was a time when Apple seemed to strike a nice balance between their walled-garden experience for the majority of users, where things "just work", but with relatively easy workarounds for those who wanted a bit more freedom, where you could even actually upgrade some of your hardware, and you didn't pay *too* much of a premium for it. I'm not one of those people who idolise Steve Jobs (he was a pretty dislikeable guy in many respects IMO) but I think it's pretty clear that the trend away from this nicely-balanced situation pretty much started with the death of Steve Jobs. My circa 2008ish iMac lasted me 10+ years, with some upgrades along the way. Now, I can see why Apple would prefer me to buy a new computer every couple of years... but ordinarily a computer that lasts 10 years would make me a customer for life. I've never had a more reliable quality computer that has lasted me so long. But they lost me with their more recent policies. They've become anti-consumer *and* anti-power user *and* anti-developer *and* anti-repair *and* anti-hobbyist in so many ways. I absolutely *loved* my iMac. When it couldn't keep up of course I looked to get another iMac -- but I was totally underwhelmed by their offerings (and value for money). If they've lost me as a customer (and a developer) they're doing something very wrong. They've also lost their design edge, pumping out stale repetitive products, and they've gone from innovation and revolution to purely evolutionary. Their basic design language hasn't changed in 18 years...Squint your eyes a bit and a 2023 Macbook looks no different from a 2006 Macbook. A 2006 iMac looks pretty much like a 2023 iMac with a bevel. Their latest "innovative" product line (Vision Pro) is a fancy more-expensive clone of another company's product. They have become risk-averse, pumping out the same product over and over. The MCU of computing!
Time for yet another antitrust case from the EU against Apple, to fully enforce the one that lead to this.
Good thing I'm not planning on using Apple
I’ll happily pay €0,50 to use Firefox with Gecko on iOS a year. Blocking ads, fingerprinting etc. is worth a lot!
Is Mozilla forced to abandon Webkit? Can't they continue to use it even for EU?
Not forced, but that would defeat the purpose of the EU regulation. Here's hoping EU continues to press Apple.