Hacker News Reader

Comment by planetjones | Hacker News Reader

Why can't someone take Apple to court and argue that developers should be able to build native web browser apps without relying on the Web View component? We have st3fan saying "Firefox Focus" is not ideal because he's had to use the older and slower WKWebView to implement it.

Isn't this similar to Microsoft when they were forced to allow a choice of browser, or do Apple get away with it because they allow alternative web browsers provided they use the iOS rendering system to actually display pages?

View on HN

Apple gets away with it because they don't have a monopoly. There's a large variety of non-Apple smartphones and tablets you can buy.

Microsoft's behavior was restricted because they were a monopoly. There were alternatives to Windows, but the court decided that they were sufficiently insignificant that Windows was effectively a monopoly. That changes the rules.

Windows market share at the time was about 95%, Apple's smartphone market share is in the neighborhood of 15-20%.

Hmm, correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't monopoly law (at least in EU) dependant on the companies market power (e.g. the ability to sway market / damage consumer rights), not market share?

I imagine so, but it's hard to be in a position like that when you have less than 20% of the market.

But Apple had 90% of profits, isnt that a better metric of monopoly?

Monopolies are interesting because they limit choice. Increased profit may be a side effect, but that's it. It's accidental, not essential, to the definition.

it's actually 104% of profits now http://www.forbes.com/sites/ewanspence/2016/11/04/apple-ipho...

Not at all.

As I understand antitrust law, it is legal for a monopoly in one market to expand into an adjacent market. However, if that monopoly stifles competition in the adjacent market in a way that harms consumers, that monopolist’s acts are illegal.

By virtue of Apple integrating the operating system with hardware, iOS has a defacto 100% monopoly on devices compatible with Apple's Ax series chips (e.g. A9 in iPhone 6s). There's nothing illegal about that.

The market for Ax series devices is now larger than the Intel-compatible PC market was at under consideration during the Microsoft antitrust case.

The question then is whether Apple's policies stifle innovation and harm consumers. I think the answer is "yes".

I don't think the law defines monopolies so narrowly that it's useful or interesting to narrow it down to "devices compatible with Apple's Ax series chips."

Back in the MS monopoly days, there were a ton of things people wanted to do where they had no choice but to buy Windows if they wanted to do them. Today, there is very little that people do which requires an iOS device. Apple has many closed features (the App Store, iMessage, iCloud) but open equivalents are available. Almost nobody is buying an iPhone because they need an iPhone in particular to do something. They're buying iPhones because they need a smartphone, and they prefer an iPhone.

I am very much not a fan of Apple's approach here, I just don't see anything illegal about it.

I'm pretty sure Apple doesn't need a monopoly on the entire smartphone market to have monopoly power...

Apple already got in trouble for price fixing - a violation of the Sherman antitrust act. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Apple_Inc.

Related to iOS and competition within it, see

http://fortune.com/2016/06/30/elizabeth-warren-apple-google/

http://www.thehill.com/opinion/op-ed/272399-time-to-prosecut...

Hopefully more to come from me on this topic...my channel here. https://medium.com/@ryanpollock

Apple was in trouble for collusion.

In this instance Apple and the other publishers probably did so specifically because they didn't have a monopoly on ebooks.

> iOS has a defacto 100% monopoly on devices compatible with Apple's Ax series chips

Sure, and equivalently Apple has a 100% monopoly on Apple devices. How does that make sense? One problem with anti-trust laws is that the market is not well-defined. Is the relevant market Apple phones? Smartphones above some price point? Smartphones at a price point? All smartphones? We can always pick and choose to make it seem like a company has a monopoly.

I think markets can be defined in a bunch of ways. I think the litmus test is whether a market is large - and whether people are adversely affected. Hopefully more to come here https://medium.com/@ryanpollock/

Is a monopoly suit the only legal way to instigate change?

i would hope so.

do you want your users to legally force you to change your product because it's not what they want?

We're not talking about "users" we're talking about browser apps that are arbitrarily prohibited from participating properly.

So the "makers" of browser apps should be considered to have a more important stake in Apple's product than the users?

Users of iOS don't have any input over Apple policies governing whom may publish what so how are they relevant?

But if you replace "users" with "Apple executives" and the end result is Firefox, Chrome, Edge, Opera, and anyone who cares to may create an unimpeded browser... then absolutely that voice should carry more weight than "Apple executives" on this occasion.

A new law could do it. Of course Silicon Valley claims that they are so ingenious that it would be a crime against humanity to regulate them.

Don't worry,they'll just create another start-up to inexplicably solve this problem with a new trendy web service.

Voting with your wallet is easier and often more effective. Apple had to be stubborn here because a full Chrome and Firefox (with extensions and apps) could potential hurt their app store revenue.

Mike and others, do you realize how different the web on Android has become from the web on iOS? The gap between the web's abilities on the two operating systems is growing quickly. Grab an iPhone and an Android phone, and visit http://pwa.rocks

You'll see very different behavior in Chrome for Android and Chrome for iOS because the latter is required to use WebKit. There are some really big problems with the present situation. The web's fundamental promise of a cross-platform consistent runtime is basically broken, and consumers, developers, and businesses all suffer significant but mostly invisible harm.

That's a separate question from whether they're doing something illegal. Illegality depends on abuse of monopoly power, not on the technical problems it causes for the industry.

Good reading material here https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/competition-guidance/guide-a...

I'm not sure how that's relevant. Note that I'm not defending Apple, merely explaining why they can legally get away with behavior so similar to what got Microsoft in trouble in the 90s.

For the record, I am more than happy to use Apple's web components. WebKit is great. They just need to open the APIs more. Like WebKit on macOS. Then we can actually build competing browsers and do more innovative things.

The WebKit team is great. Look at all the web standards being worked on. Look at the ES6 progress. They are pushing the state of the web forward on iOS.

Now put some of that same energy in WKWebView. Open it up. We need more than just loadURL()

But why should third party developers forced to use the engine Apple provides, instead of trying to innovate?

The whole point of having different browsers is to have competition (which means better performance/new features), but currently in the iOS world there is Safari and multiple reskinned Safaris.

Because of security, browsers are a huge vector of attack.

> Because of security, browsers are a huge vector of attack.

That's not a valid reason. With per-app sandboxing. At worst a non-Apple native browser that escape the confines of the web page and be subject to app security.

That amounts to using "security" as an argument for not being allowed to do something with the reason as, "Because we're smart and you're not".

There is a sandbox, but to be a competitive third-party browser you also need something else:

Safari has a special permission (entitlement) that allows it to compile JavaScript to native code. This is what their JIT does.

This is something that no third-party app has ever gotten. No JIT means slow JavaScript. No ASM.js, no WebAssembly.

I have mixed feelings about giving third-party applications (browsers) this permission. Bugs can lead to remote code execution, can lead to sandbox escapes, can lead to compromised devices.

This is a really tough one. Specially for apps that load random content from the web.

Then I guess we need to get rid of all the alternate browsers on Android, Windows, Linux, etc because they are all just ticking time bombs waiting to destroy your device.

They are. But Apple was the only company smart enough to control that on their mobile platform BEFORE it became an issue.

Stop talking about 'reskinned safari' please. This is not how it works. It is not what those alternative browsers currently are. You make it sound like we just change the color of the bezel. There are huge amounts of code around the WKWebView, which is the only thing common between browsers.

Sure, but there is also a huge amount in the rendering engine that can't be changed, which is the issue.

My counterpoint is that with better, more open, APIs in WKWebview we would be able extend the current engine with new, unique, functionality. I would be happy with that as a start.

Servo for example cannot come to iOS because of Apple's restrictions. It doesn't matter that YOU are fine with WebKit, some of us want to see dfferent rendering engines seeing how they're kind of core to the whole browser. WebKit is slowly but surely becoming another IE, something I think we can all agree would be a bad thing.

Oh I agree that the ban on alternative engines should be lifted. No disagreement there.

Edit: The following comment is incorrect. I checked the guidelines and they've actually revised it to explicitly say you have to use WebKit for apps that browse the web.

> Apps that browse the web must use the appropriate WebKit framework and WebKit Javascript

Original comment:

AIUI the only real restriction here is against executing downloaded code, but you should be able to still write your own competing engine as long as you use JavaScriptCore to execute JS. That said, you can't do out-of-process execution or JIT compilation, so your engine won't be as fast as WKWebView, which means it won't be competitive and so there's not much reason to go through all the effort of making a new iOS browsing engine if users aren't going to want to use it.

I don't think you can argue that Apple has a monopoly on smart-phone OSes, so it's not really an anti-trust issue like it was with MSFT. If you don't like it, get a different phone.

That was also only one part of the anti-trust case against Microsoft. They, at the time, had a very aggressive policy towards competitors and potential competitors. Going so far as, among other things, threatening to charge OEM PC manufacturers (IIRC, HP in particular) more for their Windows licenses (versus the discounted rate they got, eating into their margins or pushing their prices up) if they sold PCs with non-Windows OSes (such as BeOS, in particular).

They bought out competitors, shutdown development on products afterwards, things of that nature.

Apple's lock on their iDevices is certainly an issue, but they haven't hit half the checkboxes MS pulled off at the time of the anti-trust case.

Not to mention that that was MS imposing restrictions on devices sold by other manufacturers. This is them imposing restrictions on their own devices running their own software. I imagine there's a much higher bar for shenanigans before anything they do in that regard could get them in trouble.

Start from the other end – on what basis do you think that someone would be able to take Apple to court? Why do you think that they should be stopped from deciding what the platform they develop will and will not support?

just like there is freedom of speech, there should be freedom of browser choice. either device is browserless, or, it should allow for more than one browser. I'd add this to modern commandments, somewhere between net neutrality, independent DNS and guaranteed free internet access for everyone.

"Freedom of speech" means freedom from government interference with your speech. It's not what you're construing it as.

People seem stuck on reacting to the "freedom of speech" here. However, nowhere did I state that there is a legal obligation for apple or government to provide browser choice. Still, I think that it would be in a public interest, and I hope it becomes a law someday, to protect not only freedom of expression and net neutrality, but also free access to internet, and to require any corporation that sells device connecting to the internet (in browser mode) - to let people choose to use free and open sourse browser to read internet.

It might be because when you say "just like there is freedom of speech" you are making a reference to a legal term of art which isn't "just like" what you compared it to.

The latter part of your response (after "Still") is a sensible statement, and in the future I'd suggest stating that directly, rather than tying it to misapplied legal terminology.

Please go read what freedom of speech means, you definitely seem to have a wrong understanding of it.

You absolutely have no rights to talk here, HN can ban you for no reason and it is not a violation of your freedom of speech in US. Just as HN has the right to ban your ability to use a specific browser to access the site.

Just as Microsoft has the right to limit Xbox games only on their Xbox platform, news network to block you from accessing their sites if they detected ad-blockers and so many valid situations.

You have absolutely no right to anything on any private properties either. Apple owns the platforms that these apps run on, they have all of the rights, not the app developers nor you. You and the app developers agree to Apple's terms when you decide to use their software (EULA and developer program's terms).

By the way, you have no rights to walk in any stores and tell them you want to use a different cart in their store because you think their carts suck.

While it sucks, Apple doesn't have the majority of the market.

This! Without a majority, the concept of antitrust isn't applicable or even on the US justice dept's radar.

Assuming you could sue, what is the motivation for this?

If you dislike the ecosystem so much, jump ship to the #1 mobile ecosystem, Android.

What am I missing? Apple popularity in the US is unusually high?

Apple's devices are hugely popular among higher-income individuals, especially in the United States. Benedict Evans has written that there are 650 million iOS devices in active use globally. According to App Annie, roughly 2/3 of mobile application revenues are through the App Store. The other 1/3 is Google Play.

Considering how much consumers have invested in the Apple ecosystem across multiple devices, it's not reasonable to expect that consumers will switch to Android. Apple's customers are locked in.

The question is whether it's OK for Apple to prevent competition within iOS.

So developers want more money?

> roughly 2/3 of mobile application revenues are through the App Store. The other 1/3 is Google Play.

Are there any indications of how much of that delta is driven by the availability of sideloading?

Not precisely your question, but a company actually is suing them for poor HTML5 support in Safari and iOS.

http://appleinsider.com/articles/16/10/07/french-company-sue...

I'm really curious what French law could actually be the basis for a lawsuit like this. Apple has a platform with users. Companies want to use the platform. But companies don't have an intrinsic right to do whatever they want on the platform, and the platform does not have a monopoly. So why would the law say that someone can sue them over HTML5 support?

A much more productive question would be: Why don't they allow it?

They cite performance and security control, and really, can you blame them?

The web is quite the wild west nowadays, and the WebViews they provide, while not ideal, cover most of the cases while offering a decent level of protection.

And I think that somewhere down the road Apple will open up, when the system is ready.

Kind of an aside but,

If I understand correctly any WebView's contents is completely readable by the app it's embedded in. Which means you should arguably never trust any app that opens it's own WebView for view links. For example if you use the QR-Code Reader App it opens QR codes that leads to websites into it's own WebView rather than just forwarding the link to Safari. So, if the QR code is for anything that asks you to login the QR-Code Reader App could be reading your password.

In other words, WebViews are not adding security they're removing it

Otherwise, Apple can claim perf and security but that's arguably false. Chrome on desktop is faster and more secure than Safari by nearly every measure. There's no reason to believe the same wouldn't be true of a real Chrome (not embedded WebView) on iOS

I disagree. That is only one potential issue (grabbing passwords and info from the web view) and the threat is coming from the app it self, not the content loaded.

A big issue comes from potential 3rd party browsers not being hardened to browser exploits which could circumvent device security. It may not be able to break out of the browser's security sandbox but if the browser has access to your camera, photos, contacts, etc...

The older, slower, more API-rich component FF Focus uses is UIWebView. And it's not at all similar to Microsoft because they were never 'forced to allow a choice of browser'. Apple also doesn't have a market share as dominant as Microsoft did and does not attract the same level of regulatory scrutiny.

Because they have nearly quarter of a trillion dollars to say no with.

Edit for magnitude.

There was an anti-trust case against Microsoft, they also have some money in the bank, so no this is for sure not the reason

Because that would be unfair.

Apple should be able to sell iPhones the way they want.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com