Why we are suing Apple for better HTML5 support in iOS

I really doubt you could pass HTML5 compatibility as a "basic internet access".

Currently in the UK there is some controversy about human rights legislation and it being used inappropriately.

I think human rights legislation is fundamental. As such I really, really hope no-one ever uses it for something like this, even worse to win a case. It demeans it to use it to save someone having to write a bit extra code to have their commercial application sell better in China.

There is not a single browser that implements 100% of all HTML standards out there. Lets sue them all for violating human rights.

The browser landscape is complicated. Firefox is ahead in some ways, behind in others. WebKit has fantastic support for some things that Edge does not do. Chrome lacks some things that Firefox does.

Does any browser lack "basic internet access"? Nope. They all provide a solid foundation that lets everyone use the web. Are some experimental standards missing? Sure. It's complicated.

HTML 5 as a human right? How about JavaScript?

This argument is just absurd. Apple isn't denying anyone access to the web. Could we argue that a company forcing IE 6 on employees is violating human rights?

We were suggested for the lawsuit an approach quite similar to what you describe. However, it seemed less likely to succeed quickly.

It's the Chrome version of the apple store also restricted in its html5 features?

From ordinary users, nobody cares about the web platform on mobile.

Native apps are faster, with better integration to platform APIs and features, lighter on battery, and consistent (even if a large part of an app is just a webview in a native app shell).

And for developers, they can actually be monetized and attract paying users, unlike mobile browser-based apps.

Safari on mobile is pretty up to date as mobile technologies come. Google Chrome is hardly any better:

http://mobilehtml5.org/

So I don't really buy the conspiracy theory. People just want all kinds of desktop level HTML5 stuff on mobile browsers that they might or might not be suitable for. The most common HN response to Web 3D demos, advanced SVG/canvas etc is that people's fans started to blaze, CPU jumped to the sky...

Google Cloud Messaging for Push Notification is one great features which iOS stunted support for. It's amazing on Android, users can subscribe through a webpage, receive push notifications for news and stuff after leaving or closing the site. It's as if they have a native app installed and it's great for engagement. Shamefully not easily implementable on iOS like on Android.

Perhaps they should do more about HTML 5 features ( which is holding back the mobile web) instead of js execution.

This just means they can do it, but they won't due to own personal gains

Both can be true.

Speed is an important metric, but only up to a point. Once a browser renders a page faster than a user can interact with it any further improvement has very little impact. Any phone released in the past year or two meets that criteria for a well constructed page (obviously a badly written site is always going to perform badly, even on the best hardware.)

So, while it may be true that an Android phone is 5x slower than a new iPhone, that doesn't make a difference to the end user. They see the website working well on both devices. At that point it starts being about features, so iOS's lack of support for WebRTC, Beacons, Gamepads, Fetch, etc means the experience is worse. Not that Android supports everything, but if you compare iOS Safari to Chrome on Android[1] it's very clear that Safari is behind, even if it's faster.

[1] http://caniuse.com/#compare=ios_saf+10,and_chr+51

How are the two related at all? You point at the performance of Apple's browsers and imply that means they are likely spec-compliant as well.

It's obvious you are not a web developer using HTML5/CSS3/ES6. iOS has became the new Internet Explorer hands down, and now it's the first platform I test on to check for compatibility issues (as it's the one that normally gives those issues).

Isn't it obvious?

If they supported things like PWAs and other mobile web initiatives, people could build applications that run seamlessly on their phone, look like native apps etc, and they wouldn't go through their highly lucrative app store.

As phones get more and more powerful and things come along and mature like webgl etc, the reliance on native apps drops more and more. As does Apple's control.

Maybe I should get back under my tinfoil hat, idk, but that is my guess as to where their reluctance comes from.

If speed is truly the deciding factor, the Links text-only web browser is pretty fast.

I can single handedly can make the faster browser the world has ever seen, by only displaying a white page.

Don't use speed as an argument.

The problem is not hardware speed, as you point out, but software.

It would be lovely to see a real Chrome benchmark on iOS, but alas, Apple doesn't want that to happen.

Isn't bringing up security a red herring in this case?

Desktop operating systems are arguably less secure than iOS, yet Google and Mozilla have already finished it and Microsoft is close to finishing it.

Yet Apple can't even confirm they'll eventually try it? How is that a security limitation?

Except French law doesn't care about reality when it comes to these kinds of disputes. This is a country that makes it nearly impossible to fire employees despite a company needing to downsize due to reduced revenues or other legitimate business situations. Also France doesn't have much to lose by siding against Apple -- it isn't as if they have a large employee base here and thus a limited number of people available to start fires and throw rocks if the ruling goes against Apple. (See what would happen if the French government had sided with Uber for example.) Also look at how France denied the sale of Dailymotion to a US company and are waging a constant battle against AirBnB and Uber -- even going so far as to fund a series of taxi apps using taxpayer money.

Am I being unfair in this case? Maybe, however, I do own a (very) small business in France and it is fair to say that France is hostile towards business -- and for a company like Apple, the French courts would rule against them just out of spite. A small, insignificant French startup going against 'American' Apple -- it's no contest. Apple has a good chance of losing this fight. If this startup we're going against Peugeot however, the startup would get crushed because the Peugeot constituency is much more politically 'dangerous.'

I admit I am highly cynical but the reality is that there is no upside to a French court siding with Apple in terms of politics.

However I have to ask: what's the desired remedy of this company? Do they actually think a French court is going to rule that Apple must develop technology to support the claims of this company or are they seeking to get paid? Is there actually an injury here? My phone doesn't make pizza, so could I sue to force Apple to adopt pizza making technology assuming such technology existed on Android?

The argument that Android can do it is interesting, given Android's market share, a monopoly argument would be difficult to make against Apple. This company seems mad because their target market uses iPhone -- that sounds like a business problem rather than something that's Apple's fault. If their product were so vital and compelling, customers would switch if they were so inclined -- much how people switched from the ubiquitous Blackberry -- even 'top' executives.

Additionally, more to the parent comment's point -- are consumers being harmed by not being able to use this company's products? Probably not. If fact, it could be argued that consumers are being protected from potentially unsafe situations. So what is the greater good here?

Also what's stopping them from writing an app to do what they want? HTML 5 is a particular technology, however everything they want to do could be done in Swift.

Should we sue Android for not allowing us to use Swift and iOS APIs when building apps?

I do agree that I wish WebRTC could run on iOS Safari (or any Safari for that matter,) because my startup deals with video conferencing, however this certainly isn't the way to 'force' them.

>It seems this concept does not even enter your thinking at all as an explanation for why Apple must be very conservative about adding the types of functionalities you list.

Read the article again -- I don't think they are asking Apple to add more HTML5 functionality, they are asking Apple to allow other browsers which have already implemented the functionality they need onto iOS. Their legal team thinks French law is on their side.

The security thing is a bit of a strawman, you are implying that Google, Mozilla, or Microsoft, who all have better HTML5 support, do not take browser security seriously. That's simply not true.

Yes, exactly my thoughts as well. Good thing you said it first :).

Blackberry CEO back in 2010[0]:

    For those of us who live outside of Apple’s distortion field, we know that
    7-inch tablets will actually be a big portion of the market and we know
    that Adobe Flash support actually matters to customers who want a real web
    experience. We also know that while Apple’s attempt to control the
    ecosystem and maintain a closed platform may be good for Apple, developers
    want more options and customers want to fully access the overwhelming
    majority of web sites that use Flash.

Adobe, 12 months ago[1]:

    Adobe said that it will now "encourage content creators to build with ne
    web standards," such as HTML5, rather than Flash.

[0]: http://daringfireball.net/linked/2016/09/30/balsillie-2010

[1]: https://blogs.adobe.com/conversations/2015/11/flash-html5-an...

Apple bashing Adobe was for much more than standards, but for keeping aspects out of their mobile browser that they felt caused either security or performance issues. I feel that their stance on this is honestly fairly consistant with that.

I remember Google I/O 2010 when Google made a big push to drive Flash support as a differentiator for Android, but every single attempt to demo Flash on a mobile device crashed it.

Some legal comments on the law (in French): http://www.efl.fr/actualites/affaires/contrats-regles-commun...

Basically, if there was a clause in the Apple Store contract that said "to publish your software on our platform, you must give us three fingers of your right hand and your first born son", a judge could declare it void.

I feel that it's fair (at least the bean argument):

Say I ran a couple of farms which grew beans and employed 250 people to work on my farms. What would happen if my main customer Carrefour, one of the biggest supermarkets in France, decided to stop selling my beans and sold only theirs (grown and packed in a foreign country)?

I could try and sell to local shops, but it's unlikely they would buy the same volume as Carrefour. Or I could try and sell to another big supermarket, but they probably already have enough beans from other suppliers.

I'd probably have to let go of a lot of people, or even shut down the business, which would mean a lot of people would be out of work, and most likely relying on the welfare system to support them. So in return for a megacorp boosting their profits slightly, the country has to pay a lot in return to support unemployed people.

(How it applies in this case to Apple I'm not really sure though :P)

>Is this just speculation, or is there actual case law?

France is a civil-law system, so case law is in theory irrelevant. In practice it isn't so irrelevant these days, but it still doesn't carry nearly the same weight that it does in common-law systems (like most of the US, though not Louisiana). On the one hand, this makes it much easier to ignore previous rulings by clearly corrupt judges. On the other hand, it makes consistent interpretation of the law much harder to achieve. It's a tradeoff.

In other words, Nexedi knows that case law is against them in the US, so they cherry-picked a location for the lawsuit that would allow them to circumvent this obstacle.

Definitely a PR stunt, but even so, being sued because you are so behind on standards that it's hurting other businesses certainly puts the spotlight on you.

It certainly appears to be an abuse of one's monopolistic position.

Edit: That is not allowing an alternate browser to be the default.

I think winning in civil court is less likely than triggering a review and fines by the EU. If I were in Apple's shoes, I would fix this now that Microsoft wont distract anyone from their behavior. Any one of these butterflies could land on the wrong desk.

The Law that is being used actually gives power to the French Minister of Economy to cancel the provisions that bring 'déséquilibre significatif entre les droits et obligations des parties'. It can be very fast. It has already been used.

Third party code execution environments seems like a bit of a slippery slope that I can understand Apple wanting to avoid.

The application is sandboxed but Apple does not really want to let third parties to put native compilers on their platform. I wonder if they could allow third party rendering engines but still force people to use Nitro (or how is their javascript engine called nowadays).

If a user wants to use a different browser because of $reasons and is happy with it draining the battery, the user should be allowed to. There is no technical reason for not allowing other browsers to work on iOS, it's purely a ToS/market/profits issue.

I agree that Apple's management of their platform is the underlying problem, but there's no compelled speech here.

Writing code to provide better HTML5 support is only one of the ways Apple could satisfy this complaint. Lifting the developer agreement / Apple App Store restrictions that prevent third-party developers from writing browsers with better HTML5 support is another.

I think they just ask for Apple to let developers publish custom web browsers (not based on Apple WebKit) on the App Store, which is currently not allowed by Apple.

Apple is not that much dominant like Microsoft or IBM in the past.

nobody stops you from using another ERP, they can't use another browser.

They don't own the platform where the ERP runs, apple does.

> If members of W3C don't adhere by the standards set after a lengthy and tiresome process of review

Which standard would that be?

Web workers and Webrtc are not standardised.

Html5 makes no specification about video codecs.

So, what standards exactly are not being adhered to?

Actually, very different from Microsoft.

Apple has plenty of competition and the mobile web has not stalled.

Apple's rendering engine is already open. That isn't what the lawsuit is about. It's about opening the operating environment to other browsers (or rather, other rendering engines).

WKWebView is supposed to fix this issue.

https://developer.apple.com/reference/webkit/wkwebview

I think the point is that they don't have to care, as long as they allow other browser engines than Apple's specific Webkit.

Hard to know. If a court decision forces them to allow other browser (engines) on iOS and people start moving away from Safari Apple may decide that it is in their best interest to make Safari the best web experience if they want to (re)attract those customers. See Microsoft and Edge.

I think it may have more to do with the article being written by a native French speaker than sexism.

One of my friends routinely says things like "a woman has rights to his body" when speaking in English because in French possessives agree with the object not the subject, and the French word for body, "corps", is masculine.

In this case, since iPhone starts with a vowel, in French you'd say "son iPhone", so "his iPhone", perhaps.

Alternatively, in French you also always tend to the masculine form in the general case, so maybe that's it? It just strikes me as extremely unlikely that anyone would think, consciously or otherwise, that women don't have iPhones.

omg, get a life

I just did. 391/555. I ran it against FF 45 and got 429/555. Are we suing Mozilla now for not supporting the standard like we want them to? Obviously not.