iOS 14 will let you change your default email and web browser apps
9to5mac.com
9to5mac.com
I still dream of the day you see an actual Mozilla Firefox browser with its own rendering engine and addons support.
Recently switched to FF on a 6 year old mac, only complaints so far are small ui quirks
https://mozillagfx.wordpress.com/2019/10/22/dramatically-red...
Let me be clear: I like Firefox. I've committed patches to Firefox on iOS. I'd use Firefox on any other platform, but it is not a good citizen of macOS. I don't believe it'd be good on iOS given the room to use its own rendering engine.
I don’t think any third-party browser can hope to compete with Safari on macOS, though. I don’t know how level the playing field is there.
The bug in question: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1429522
A blog post breakdown: https://mozillagfx.wordpress.com/2019/10/22/dramatically-red...
This does make a difference, but macOS is in many respects a "death by a thousand cuts" platform due to the UI/UX bar being fairly high. It notably clips in many areas where Chrome and Safari simply don't, which leads to a jarring experience. Scrolling and resizing is still not smooth, even after tweaking it behind the scenes - although to be fair, the post above calls out that they're aware they can make this smoother with CA.
Firefox on macOS also still has issues with hardware acceleration. Comparing the following URL across browsers I can achieve 60fps, no drops, on Safari. Firefox on my Mac averages 45fps.
https://webglsamples.org/aquarium/aquarium.html
I love Firefox (and the associated lineage) - I really do. I've kept it installed since the Mozilla Suite days. I still check every damn release to see if I could switch back. I'm sad every time I find I can't.
Chrome is slower and sends more telemetry to Google.
Firefox is more trustworthy, but also slower.
I accept that there better options for many people than Apple Mail.
iOS is behind android in terms of features, the top comment on the ios14 post points out that ‘it’s all just catchup to Android’.
Clearly Apple isn’t trying to kneecap iOS as an alternative to Android, so why would be conclude that they are doing this with Safari?
Their strategy has never been about rushing.
Marketing a device as private or secure gets customers who don't verify the claims. Marketing a device like a luxury fashion item gets customers. Marketing a device as having a browser that supports PWAs does not. Once it has the buyers, it's better for Apple's bottom line to milk them by blocking out competition for the App Store.
Furthermore, while this is a point to be debated... the thread here is not about Firefox on macOS, but on whether it'd run fine on iOS.
Given the performance of Firefox on Macbooks in general, I maintain my position that it would not fare well. The iMac has little to do with this. Given that they'll eventually need to have this running well on Apple Silicon, though, I'd be happy to eventually be wrong.
However, in terms of iOS, I am not certain how either of our experiences (both on macOS) would really be relevant at all to how Firefox would perform on iOS. As much as Apple has tried to make them similar lately, they are still different worlds.
Given that Webkit is available either way, why? If you prefer Webkit you can use Safari independent of whether actual Firefox is available or not. Having the choice doesn't force you to choose it.
But it gives other people with different priorities an option. And then more people use Firefox, and it gets better, and Mozilla ends up with more support and resources to address your concerns even before you actually start using it.
What if Apple released APIs that let you write an all-new, high performance browser engine and let you publish your own browser on iOS, but the APIs weren’t compatible with Firefox or Chromium, so a rewrite would be required?
Other browsers on iOS just wrap Safari's WebKit in a different UI.
Disclosure: I work at Google, formerly Chrome team, never worked on this.
Many sites only need light JavaScript usage and would not run significantly slower. wasm is not supported in jitless mode. Link pulled from twitter link in sister comment by rictic.
The ability to dynamically generate code is not "security privileges"; security should be enforced by the platform sandbox and not by the ability to JIT code.
The existing adblockers for iOS are OK but they aren't comparable, it's mostly OK since I use my iPad's at home and control the network but it's (one) of the reasons I won't be buying an iPhone SE even though it's price (~£400) makes it almost interesting to me.
The only option would be to VPN into my home network and filter that way but yeah that seems silly when I can just install Firefox on Android which I like well enough anyway.
There are a tonne of technical solutions to the above if I could be bothered to set them up on the linux mediaPC but honestly, I don't watch a lot and most of what I do is on Netflix and Prime anyway.
And I'm an iOS user and the ads on the websites I visit are unbearable and have tried many content blockers. Nothing worked until I switched to DNS blocking. Not perfect but better than what Safari can do.
Workaround: use Tweetbot
And Firefox on iOS does block trackers out of the box which is pretty cool too.
This combination doesn't get rid of all ads, but it does get rid of a lot of them and the egregious cases are covered.
I had set up one PiHole and was trying to decide whether or not to do another Raspberry Pi or on a Mac since the router wasn't happy with just 1 IP for DNS. Decided to try the AdGuard route and it just works.
It just tends to regularly forget that I told it to save my choice of Safari.
iOS GMail App > Settings > Default Apps
You cannot choose Firefox or Brave but you certainly can choose Safari.
This shady behavior (calling a web view "Safari") is one of the reasons I gave up on Gmail.
The pros for bringing more features to PWAs: a small subset of users care, and an even a smaller subset of them care enough that they might leave the platform.
The cons: a direct competitor to the app store (imagine Hey as a PWA), undercutting their 30%. For the independent developer, sure, the app store may be great distribution, but I can imagine paying for your own marketing beats the 30% you lose to Apple.
Till then, they're probably not going to do it.
Hold down on the link and choose to open in a new tab. It will remember the behavior and stop opening the link in the app, until you hold down another future link and choose “open in Amazon” or the equivalent.
Not very discoverable but it does exist.
oh, also auto previews of links are evil.
all of this kind of stuff should be opt-in.
What about my default maps app? That would be nice too.
2. You can run de-Googled Android and still do the important 80% of things that a smart-phone is good for.
2. I beg to differ. A completely de-googled phone is not only extremely difficult to achieve but about as useful as a 2009 blackberry. Yeah it runs and will maybe let you check your email with 5+ hours of work just to get push notifications running but it is so completely impractical for anyone that doesn’t want to devote serious amounts of time to it. With Apple you a good balance of privacy and utility imo.
1. There is nothing legally binding here, as far as I can tell. Apple software is almost entirely closed source. Zoom told us they were encrypting our stuff, too. I know that Apple can't get away with too much because of their size, but I have a very strong distrust of big tech companies that I'll likely never shake because of the disgusting track record silicon valley has toward privacy and short-sighted profit-making. Take this text for example: "Apple can’t read your iMessages while they’re being sent between you and the person you’re texting." What does it mean that it can't see them while they're being sent? Can they see them once they're at rest? Is this just innocent vagueness of the English language, or sneaky shit? Similarly, they say they can't see your location in Maps. They make no promise with the browser. In fact, they don't promise they aren't snooping on 100% of the stuff in Safari- they only say they try to protect you from other companies tracking you.
2. I don't disagree with you. And I'm just kind of a Luddite because I just don't care if I can run SnapChat or whatever on my phone. I can browse the web with a solid, privacy-respecting, browser (Firefox) with all of the privacy addons I want. I can use that browser to access the things I care about. I do use a closed-source navigation app, unfortunately, but it isn't Google and doesn't require Play services. I lock down its permissions as best I can. I use Signal for most of my messaging needs, which works fine. The one thing I actually do miss is ride-sharing apps when I travel. That's a major inconvenience. But some shitty game or social media app whose entire purpose is to track you (whether you use/trust Apple/Google's OSes or not...)? No thanks, anyway. In fact, I think there's another point in here that most of these apps are tracking the hell out of you, regardless if you trust your phone's OS.
They use simple language to make it not seem like legalese - If you want the tech details see the white papers they have linked.
> What does it mean that it can't see them while they're being sent? Can they see them once they're at rest?
No messages are end to end encrypted by default
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202303
> they say they can't see your location in Maps. They make no promise with the browser
Apple Maps doesn’t have a browser version, just and iOS and Mac OS app. Additionally see above link, all location and search history is end to end encrypted - maps searches (and other location based events that cannot be encrypted due to server side processing) are not linked to your Apple ID.
> In fact, they don't promise they aren't snooping on 100% of the stuff in Safari
Again see above link, safari history and tab sync is also end to end encrypted
It can, however, be integrated via the JavaScript SDK. DuckDuckGo uses it, for example.
It's great that they claim to end-to-end encrypt their stuff. And after the FBI standoff around the San Bernardino shooters phones, I recommend that my friends and family use Apple because the options for most humans are between Windows and macOS on PCS, and iPhone and (stock, OEM) Android for phones. They definitely talk the talk and appear to walk the walk. We can never truly know, though.
I know there's no point in arguing further. I fully acknowledge that I have less objective reason to believe that Apple is tracking me than you have to believe that they're not. But all of my friends thought I was the crazy tinfoil hat guy in the period between the signing of the U.S. Patriot Act and Edward Snowden. And after that... they still think I'm the crazy tinfoil hat guy. Maybe I'm a broken clock and was right once, or maybe Silicon Valley is full of corporate scumbag liars and maybe companies lie about their encryption (Zoom) and about their stance on privacy (Facebook). Maybe Apple is the lone shining beacon of privacy in SV. Maybe.
So is everything that makes Android, Android -- Google Play Services. Not to mention all of drivers.
But you're definitely letting perfect be the enemy of good if you think that closed-sourced drivers means that e.g., a closed source web browser doesn't increase your privacy attack surface.
Life is full of choices between imperfect options. And security/privacy is always qualified with "from whom". Sure, closed source drivers are not ideal and I am more vulnerable to privacy attacks from state actors. But why should my response to that be to just willingly give all of my personally identifiable information to Google, Inc?
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/07/googles-iron-grip-on...
Today, AOSP is absolutely open source. You're acting like it's not.
You don’t know what the apps on your Android phone is doing because they all interact with Google Play Services. Most phones don’t even use the open source dialer.
I said that we don't know what Apple software is doing because it's all closed source. You then spent the last several replies trying to convince us that the same is effectively true of Android. It's not. You know how I know? I'm writing this reply from a Pixel 2 running LineageOS without Google Play Services. Is it a pain in the ass to do this kind of setup? Yep. Do I miss out on TikTok? Probably (I don't want it, so I don't know if it requires Play Services). Is it closed source? No.
In any case, refuting my claim that we can't trust Apple by arguing that we also can't trust Google doesn't actually refute a thing.
If you wanted to spy on your users, would you honestly risk publishing your source code? Let's be real.
Next obnoxious, low effort, trolling, question?
Location, web searches, app usage etc etc. Try turning all tracking off and your phone becomes a brick. Google Assistant no longer works, google maps can no longer remember where your home and work are (cause that can’t happen on device for some reason). Top it all off and you’ll get constant pop ups asking you to turn it back on.... not fun.
I asked for evidence that Google tracks you in nefarious ways via Android.
Am I being tracked when using their DNS servers, which are otherwise very valuable for people suffering from DNS-level banning of websites?
And what do you mean by "privacy respecting"?
Words are cheap. I hope the privacy respecting apps and services you use can guarantee that either via technology (encryption, open source, reproducible builds), or via contract (and a ToS that can be changed on a whim for a free service isn't a contract that can protect you).
This is what the F-Droid repository is all about. But again, Google has insisted on changes to AOSP that will shortly make it much more difficult for ordinary users (i.e. those who cannot use the command line) to make use of such free and libre offerings.
That's not Android.
Let me repeat the question — how does Android track you?
That’s virtually every android device in existence. Just because someone degoogled an android once as an experiment doesn’t mean it becomes the new definition of what android is.
Dare I ask what the point is?
---
I am not talking about de-Googled Android. Turning off web/app activity in your Google profile is not equivalent with de-Googling your Android.
I am asking how does Android, Google's Android distribution not anything else, tracks users?
And I am saying it is a pointless thought experiment to separate Google from Android. Next you’ll say it’s the hardware that is android, not the software and ask how the hardware directly tracks users.
Edit: Read my original comment again, you are changing the subject. I haven’t said anything remotely conspiratorial, Google is open about their tracking in android. My point is that Google tracks you on android and if you turn it off your phone becomes crippled and in many cases for no reason except that google wants to make it as painful as possible to turn off data collection. Data collection is their business model after all.
iOS too ships with Google as the default search engine and just like on iOS, you can pick a different default on Android too. In fact Android has always allowed for changing all meaningful defaults, not something you can say about iOS. And in fact the world's leading Android makers, like Samsung, all of them ship with different defaults except for the Search engine (we're talking browser, email application, etc).
And all desktops actually ship with a browser that default to a search engine that tracks your searches, including Microsoft's Edge and their integration with Bing Ads. And Google is in fact the most transparent about what they track.
So if your answer is the Google Profile, which is transparent and can be turned off, then it's a pretty shitty answer. Unless you can point to implementation details in Android proper, all of this is just a conspiracy theory, similar to anti-vaxxing.
This is such a user-hostile product choice. Google will happily let me favourite a place but refuse to create work and home labels.
Here's an actual study: https://www.tomsguide.com/us/android-privacy-vs-iphone,news-...
Your paper also compares the amount of data sent to Google for an Android device using default apps vs. an iPhone using default apps and shows that the latter sends much more. That's not a very useful comparison. If you compare how much each device sends to Apple, the Android device would win by a landslide, though again, that is not a useful comparison.
I think this claim is even more absurd when constrained to "default apps". But I'm listening—citations welcome.
Which part of it my assertions did you have trouble following? I'll quote it below in case you have trouble following the link, but I worry this might violate a repetition rule:
iOS having better privacy is a myth. iOS sends your location to Apple every time any the GPS is used, and you can't turn it off. You cannot install apps on your phone without telling Apple which apps they are, and if you want to develop your own apps for your device without having to reinstall weekly, you have to hand over payment information.
Stock Android devices from nearly any vendor do not suffer from these problems, and reputable vendors do even better (like in this case, where even voice transcription does not send data off device).
I've been on iOS for years and yeah, this is comedy.
Though I'm on samsung so they might have customized useful features right out (they do have the neat notification bubble thing + non-fullscreen apps, but it doesn't seem to be fully developed -- lots of small bugs -- so I'm assuming that's non-standard android).
And they have the audacity to call this the world's most advanced mobile OS.
I think someone just took a picture with their own iPhone and sent it via email.
Nor would you know that swiping down from the battery meter might give you a camera shortcut, or that pulling down on the home screen icons gives you the search box.
So you'd probably be hunting through the home screen icons on a borrowed phone to find where they put the camera app.
But I still don't know how to take a picture on an Android phone. I have no idea what the Android virtual buttons mean or what they do at all. With similar logic, my wife still has an iPhone with a physical home button because she doesn't like my (now old) iPhone with the "swipe up" home motion. She doesn't really want to learn how to use a new (ish) gesture.
And while I'm on a roll... I also don't understand the buttons on Playstation controllers, preferring the direct lettering of the Xbox or Switch.
We are all ultimately creatures of habit.
Huge discoverability hiccup with that camera button on the lock screen: you have to tap and hold the camera button to get into the camera (not long, about 1 second). The first time I picked up my partner's iPhone to take a picture for her, I just about pulled my hair out trying to get that button to do anything. I tapped it about a thousand times before she got frustrated and showed me how to operate it.
By default, quickly doubletapping the power button also opens the camera, screen on or not.
Gesture navigation is also better on Android, but this is probably because iOS never had a back button.
Maybe they screwed this up on home-button iPhone models but got it right on the X and newer?
Here's my lock screen: https://i.imgur.com/tyOYZXW.png
I don't see anything resembling a camera icon that I could tap. I can swipe sideways to get to the limited-session camera, but only because I happen to know that shortcut exists.
It's not as if the 4" SE is too small to fit a camera button on the screen, but there isn't one. Unless I turned the button off and forgot about it, but I can't imagine Apple offering that sort of UI customization.
There is though: that side (right) of the lock screen has a tiny camera icon at the bottom on iOS. You can long press that icon directly and open the camera, but it also sort of teaches you that sliding is quicker. (Though it's not entirely consistent because the icon on the other side, for quick access to "flashlight", doesn't help teach you that sliding that side opens the "Today" widget screen.)
https://i.imgur.com/tyOYZXW.png
It's not for lack of space on the screen, but maybe Apple got lazy with designing for older phones and just deleted it. Once upon a time I think the camera was indicated better.
Lots of legit gripes about iOS, but C'mon.
1 - Apple doesn't focus on "first". More often, they are usually focused on a better integration of something than being first. Obvious exceptions include things like 64-bit phone chips, but usually not first.
2 - most Apple users (note that I am saying users, and not developers or power users) prefer it that way. They prefer simplicity over raw power - sort of the revers of a linux command line user.
3 - Even the power users tend to like something that keeps them in the Apple camp. For me, it's the ecosystem an approach to privacy and security - I can help my parents be safe easier on an iPhone/iPad/etc than I could on an Android phone.
4 - For many (most?) people, the apple email app is better than most alternatives. Personally I run gmail, outlook, and apple, and prefer Apple in most situations (not all, but most). Think of this as "I can't believe that Lexus doesn't have an electric car yet" - most Lexus users don't really care because they are happy with the product as is. Would some subset prefer it? sure, but not enough to outweigh the reasons they bought the Lexus in the first place.
5 - I'm not an Android user, but I agree - it is a funny headline in 2020.
I look at OpenBSD and see how long it takes them to do something fairly "simple", and use that as a guideline for security development integration timeframes. Of course, OpenBSD isn't backed by a trillion dollar company either.
Oddly, I fall into the Mac + Linux camp. I love using MacOS (yes, even Catalina works for me), but I love that doing development/server stuff on Linux is so clean. What both do for me is minimize the brain clutter (and that's one reason I can't grok the idea of doing server development in Xcode).
[0] - I don't think you're being naive. Also, being a fan of guys like Krebs on Security makes me realize that doing this right is not so much hard as it is painstaking.
[1] - no, I definitely don't think iOS is totally secure, but I think it's harder to screw up as a user than competitors.
https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/www.google.com/en...
Apple has no such business.
I suggest you have a closer look at the MicroG website where this is explained, too: https://microg.org/
When tracked through apps, Google is equally open. Apple tries its best to combat tracking, but most apps will still do their best to jump through the tracking contention measures.
https://9to5mac.com/2019/02/07/app-screen-record-apps-remove...
I'd say, always be vigilant of the apps you install. I often check my http request logs to see my phone activity.
The problema Is if you stick with Apple hardware there is no OS alternative
you're stuck with what the dictator (benevolent or not) decides
The third parties know how to tie your cookie to your other information through identity graphs.
It is possible that the US government has some snooping contract with iCloud, but they are definitely not the party I am trying to protect myself from. I am trying to protect myself from businesses using my data to influence my politics, lifestyle and purchases. Look into the business of companies like Liveramp, to see the kind of data exchanges that Google helps proliferate.
https://www.iab.com/guidelines/real-time-bidding-rtb-project...
Full disclosure: I work for one of these third parties. Safari/Firefox are the hardest browsers to track. Google extended the deadline for killing cookies which probably netted us another year worth of easy revenue before we have to start start relying on first party tracking.
To participate in the auction you don't need to win or even bid; you pay an upfront cost for listening, buy a seat in the ad exchange. The whole thing is dressed as an ad-exchange, but it really is a data exchange. If you win the auction you get to serve your own pixel to tag the user, corroborate the data from the auction, etc.
There is a lot of value in winning and ad impression beyond the ad impression itself, but just by listening you can build advanced models of people's browsing patterns, and if you want tie the data with the information from another identity graph, you only need to win one identifier once and serve both pixels, your party's and the third party (cross cookie syncing). This third party identity sync historically happens at the client level, the browser in this case. However, in the future it will happen at the backend level, first party.
PS: Google is not the only exchange btw. There is APPNEXUS, Rubicon, PubMatic, etc.
That's not a scenario specific to real time bidding though. You could also just buy a regular ad and do that.
> if you want tie the data with the information from another identity graph, you only need to win one identifier once and serve both pixels, your party's and the third party (cross cookie syncing).
How can you associate the data from bids you didn't win to the data you get from ads that you did win and serve? Even with cookie syncing that doesn't necessarily reveal when a past/future bid opportunity matches a user you already know (unless you bid on it and win)
With a regular ads (ad words), you don't get to target based on cookie, geo, or other identifying characteristics in real time. Through programmatic ad exchanges you can do it in real time since every auction contains all the information to perform the targeting and enhance your models; the cookie, the url where the ad was going to be displayed, the browser characteristics, etc (read RTB for that).
> How can you associate the data from bids you didn't win to the data you get from ads that you did win and serve? Even with cookie syncing that doesn't necessarily reveal when a past/future bid opportunity matches a user you already know (unless you bid on it and win)
Associating between auctions and wins is simple, they share the same id. You listen to a different stream for bid result notifications. Moreover, your own embedded pixel will give you the information upon impression.
The key here is that the auction, what you get by just listening, comes already with all the information; if you listen enough, you can build the full browsing history of the cookies you track. Using this information you can build models to predict where these specific cookies will go next, and show them ads or alter the publisher context they are exposed to in order to route them where you want to route them. B2C marketing and political propaganda services are all about that.
- it's bad for app developers with 30% cut
- and bad for users as every app becomes +30% more expensive (like Hey app)
- good for apple.
in apple app ecosystem you're the product as the user.
It's estimated Apple did about $50 billion in App Store revenue in 2019, and $30 billion for Google Play store.
Now consider that about 80% of Apple's revenue actually comes from hardware, not software or people's data.
But 70% of Google's revenue comes from ads. It's insane to me that you think that in Apple's ecosystem you're the product. The product in Apple's ecosystem is their hardware and they charge for access to users.
Google does exactly the same thing, except without the regard for your privacy. Google's entire business model is selling access to its users.
https://www.mirror.co.uk/tech/apples-siri-listens-users-inti...
[1] https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2019/08/improving-siris-priva...
In fact, forget about Android, every OS pretty much ever has allowed for changing default apps. This is strictly about control, and this current move is strictly about throwing EU regulators a slight curve ball.
Btw, the iPhone 6s is still running the latest iOS version.
[] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor....
Same with MacOS. I don't want to pay for a window snapping app so I can quickly send windows to the sides or corners. Windows has done that well for years and upgraded it in 10. Expand that tool, make it built in, and I'll give this old macbook someone gave me another try. Honestly this was a breaking point when I gave OSX a shot last year for a few days. That MacBook is awesome but it just sucks to use coming from Windows navigation, even with Windows search often borked.
I like iOS for the most part and wouldn't throw the baby out with the bathwater.
)f(: just kidding, there are no good VOIP apps in iOS :/
The length to which I needed to go to when I needed to do this recently on a video which was shared with me was mind boggling. I'm not sure if this is because the video was in Files and not in Gallery, but it shouldn't really matter. If anything, that would be exactly where I'd expect to have such a feature.