Stabitha_Christie
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Apple still effectively blocks rival browser engines on iOS despite EU order
The fundamental problem with your argument is that the main premise is that because there isn’t a better engine there will never be one so it doesn’t matter. The idea is just fundamentally flawed. Again, history as our guide. How many Mac users had heard of KHTML the week before Apple announced Safari? The answer is less than 1%. Few people on any platform had heard of it. But it’s the open source project that Apple forked and turned into WebKit. Yes there are a few popular web engines but there aren’t the only three and just like Apple forked KHTML, maybe the better WebKit is a forked WebKit. We don’t know and we won’t know because there is literally no motivation to optimize anything for iOS.davidw said:Stabitha_Christie said:
There is the obvious. We actually don’t know if WebKit is the best on iOS because nothing is allowed to compete with it. For all we know another engine could run circles around it.coolfactor said:How does a competing "browser engine" help me as a consumer when all of the value-added benefits of competing browsers is the rest of the stuff?
Is it the extension support in Firefox? Extensions won't work in Firefox on iOS when WebKit is the browser engine? That seems like a stretch.
Competition is good, but this seems like an odd battle. For years. Firefox had a sub-standard (slow and bloated) browser on Macs. Where was the wolf cry over that disconnect?
There's nothing inherently wrong with WebKit. It is a near-equal engine alongside the other majors. So what are the major issues at stake?We all certainly understood what a better browser meant when Safari came out and we could dump I.E. As a consumer I benefited from that competition. The same thing can’t happen on iOS.But let's be realistic here. There are no "browser developers" that wants to develop another "browser engine" that competes with Blink, WebKit or Gecko. What these so call browser developers, that are bitching about no browser engine competition on iOS, want to do is to develop an iOS browser that uses the Blink browser engine.If there are browser engine developers that wants to develop a competing browser engine to WebKit on iOS, then where are their browser engines on Android? Nearly 100% of the over dozen of different browsers on Android, uses Blink. Why in the name of Hell is the EU so concern about competition in the "browser engine" market on iOS, when there is no browser engine competition on Android? Not even Microsoft wants to develop their own browser engine for Edge (on Windows). They switched to Blink. There is no way that a browser engine can succeed by just being on iOS. It would also have to be on Android, before website developers develop for it. And they would rather not have to, just so that the consumers have more choices of browser engines. Most consumers only care about the choice in browsers.On MacOS, we have mainly WebKit, Blink and Gecko (FireFox). Blink don't come close to "running circles" around Safari or even FireFox, on MacOS. So far, most Mac users prefers Safari. But I imagine that if one was using an Android phone, they might prefer Chrome. Not because Blink runs circles around Safari but because Chrome is the browser Android phone owners are use to using. The same with Chrome on iOS. Even though iOS Chrome uses WebKit, PC users rather use Chrome on their iPhones because it's what they are use to using on their Windows PC. For the average consumers, it makes no real difference. Each has its advantages, along with its disadvantages. Blink enjoy advantages on Android, the same way WebKit enjoy advantages on iOS (and MacOS), vertical integration with the OS, as both (engine and OS) are developed by the same company. It is very hard for any competing browser engine to overcome those "vertical integrated" advantages. (Of course in the EU, they could force Apple to give those "vertical integrated" advantages to competing browser engines.)So far, from what i have read, the biggest crybaby about not being able to develop a Blink browser on iOS is Meta. From what I understand, what Meta want to do is to put a browser inside their Facebook app, so users don't have to exit their Facebook app to get on the internet. Why? Because the browser inside their app would still be consider "first party" and not subject to Apple ATT. They can data mine the Hell out of it, without informing their users. (And Spotify might be thinking along the same line, which is why the EU might be so concern about "browser engine" competition on iOS.) And Meta wants to use Blink because it offers less user privacy and more ways to mine users data. (Though there might be other technical advantages.) After all Blink was developed by Google, as a fork of WebKit.I think you failed to understand why Mac users "dumped" IE for Safari. It was mainly because Safari browser engine was open source while IE had a proprietary MS engine. IE for Macs even had a different browser engine than IE for Windows. Website developers got tire of MS proprietary shit that kept changing with little notice and no choice but to comply as IE had an over 90% market share at the time. Mac users "dumping" IE for Safari came at the same time PC users were dumping IE for Mozilla FireFox. Developers made the difference by jumping at the opportunity to develop for browser engines that were open source.As for your re-write of history. No, users didn’t move to Safari because it was open sourced. Most Mac users likely didn’t know nor care. They moved to it because it was better. Full stop. PC users did dump IE in a meaningful way until Chrome came along.The whole reason we got into the IE mess was because Microsoft used their dominant platform to push their browser while making it difficult for competitors. KHTML based browsers hit the market in 1998 and had no impact. It wasn’t until 2003 when Apple used it for Safari that it started to break through. Apple is using its platform to maintain its browser engine’s dominance in a far more aggressive way that Microsoft. Breaking though was hard enough when there were two computing platforms to account for and one was abusing their dominance. It is even harder now that there are 4-ish platforms and one of dominant platforms has made completely impossible.
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Apple still effectively blocks rival browser engines on iOS despite EU order
On the contrary, the EU is allowed to both legislate and regulate business as it sees fit. You may not like it but your feelings don’t create a sense of obligation for the EU. Sorry to rain on your paradeCesar Battistini Maziero said:The EU is overstepping again.If you don't like how Apple does business, there are another 1300 other brands you can buy, that offer all the engines you want, it's called android devices.
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Apple still effectively blocks rival browser engines on iOS despite EU order
There is the obvious. We actually don’t know if WebKit is the best on iOS because nothing is allowed to compete with it. For all we know another engine could run circles around it.coolfactor said:How does a competing "browser engine" help me as a consumer when all of the value-added benefits of competing browsers is the rest of the stuff?
Is it the extension support in Firefox? Extensions won't work in Firefox on iOS when WebKit is the browser engine? That seems like a stretch.
Competition is good, but this seems like an odd battle. For years. Firefox had a sub-standard (slow and bloated) browser on Macs. Where was the wolf cry over that disconnect?
There's nothing inherently wrong with WebKit. It is a near-equal engine alongside the other majors. So what are the major issues at stake?We all certainly understood what a better browser meant when Safari came out and we could dump I.E. As a consumer I benefited from that competition. The same thing can’t happen on iOS.
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Apple still effectively blocks rival browser engines on iOS despite EU order
The problem is a lack of understanding on your part. The issue isn't that 3rd parties can't develop web browsers for iOS it's the they all have to use Apple's build interface browsing engine. So if you get Chrome on your iOS device it isn't using Chromium like every other version of Chrome, it is using Webkit. That you have DuckDuckGo and don't use google aren't relevant to the issue. And why would the EU talk to other browser companies? Lastly, the EU has talked to other browser companies, that's how the issue came in the first place.rob53 said:I have DuckDuckGo on my iPhone and iPad so what's the problem? I also don't use google for any search engine because there are alternatives. Is this only an EU issue? If so, then the EU needs to talk to browser companies instead of bothering Apple.
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Meta lured AI exec away from Apple with blockbuster $200M pay package
After the disaster that was the whole Metaverse, this just smells of desperation. Disaster is being generous, did anything come of the Metaverse other than the announcement? Anyway, so they are buying all the talent they can get but what is the vision? Their existing platforms, Facebook + Instagram, have become overrun by AI slop. So the plan is to make more slop creation tools? You can't hire your way into great products, you have to have an idea of what you are going to do. Zuck has proven that he isn't the idea guy, everything he has was stolen or purchased.
