The ironic part here is that back in 2007-2013 Microsoft was sued by the European Union [1], and was forced to implement a downloader GUI that offers a randomized overview of available Browsers [2]; and their website/download links.
Back then Microsoft's defense was that an enduser could just install another Operating System on the hardware if they didn't want to be forced to use Internet Explorer.
And now, 10 years later, here we are, where Apple absolutely controls the Hardware _and_ the Software. Yet the European Union does seemingly nothing against it.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Corp._v._Commission
[2] (with screenshots) https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-fined-731m-by-eu-in-...
With Apple you have viable alternatives from Android handset manufacturers: alternatives that are suitable for the average person on the street.
With Microsoft this was not the case. When that case started Apple were basically dead in the water on the desktop... and then you had Linux, which was not suitable for the average user (yes, I'm sure we can all cherry pick a story about somebody's grandparent being perfectly happy with Linux back in the day but these anecdotes, whilst fun and interesting, do not add up to meaningful data).
It used to be a lot easier 10 years ago, federated protocols were more common, websites were forced to be more accessible in a more fragmented browser marketshare. It wasn't until Chrome started doing forced auto-updates (and the other browsers followed) that really pushed to a monoculture and led to more locked down websites. Developers loved that it made their work easier, but there is a cost of freedom.
Windows was the dominant operating system of the PC platform. But the openness of the PC platform wasn’t a problem. On smartphone, you are bound by the hardware to keep the OS sold with it. So it could make sense to consider the « iPhone devices » market instead of the « smartphone » market (same for Android).
That does not make much sense, coming from Microsoft. Users were never forced to use Internet Explorer on Windows* and could always install other browsers freely. No need to switch OSs.
*The only time Microsoft imposed the use of Internet Explorer, as far as I can remember, was back in Windows XP, when Windows Update came as a web application.
I think your parent's history is wrong, but I'm pretty sure you couldn't avoid using Internet Explorer if you were on Windows. You could also use other browsers, but so much crucial functionality passed through IE that you simply couldn't opt entirely out of it. (For example, it couldn't be uninstalled.) I think that, at least for a while, Explorer (the file browser) was basically IE pointed at the local filesystem.
If you actually want stronger competition the best thing you could do is separate Chrome from Google.
I would be A-OK with that if the alternative engines provided the same privacy and security guarantees to me that Mobile Safari does (with penalties for breaching those guarantees.)
Definitely.
Not necessarily - if an app I am required to use for work chooses to use Chrome/whatever as its engine, for example, I don't have a choice there. Same for my bank / doctor / school / etc.
So no, you can't choose. When we say "you can choose" we need to realize that this is only good when you can make an educated, informed choice. If you can't, you need to be protected. And that's Apple's role.
Random choice is not a choice. Would you have your infant "choose" what drugs to take for headache for example? What criteria will they use? Pill shape, color, size and flavor. Well that's basically also our proverbial mom and pop picking a browser engine.
Furthermore browser engines have this peculiar habit of getting into everything. Open any app at all and it's probably using WebKit without you realizing it. What if the app uses some random outdated fork of Netscape, why not? Do you realize what "choice" you made by opening that app?
No.
There is no reason to prevent competition in such a market, and hopefully regulators will become aware of the issue and act on it soon.
Not one reasonable and intellectually honest person expects that the average phone user out there even knows what a browser engine IS, let alone compare two of them, or know where it's used (when it's not even disclosed).
Keep in mind smartphones are even more widely used than "computers" in general. So I guess even 8 year olds now are expected to do a security analysis on the browser engine their game uses before playing.
Delusional.
And drop the ad hominem rhethoric please.
Also you should review what "ad hominem" means. Saying "no one intellectually honest would say 2 + 2 is 5" is not ad hominem.
Ad hominem doesn't mean "don't say bad words about me and my opinions". Ad hominem would be disregarding an opinion not by discussing the opinion, but by discarding the opinion based on WHO said it.
It's in fact very hard to commit ad hominem against an anonymous person online who has said nothing about themselves. If they said "I have a history of delusions" and I said "therefore your opinion has no merit", that's ad hominem.
The fact that despite that you constantly hear people complaining about "ad hominem" online is just that much funnier. Strawman is another one that most people love to say, while having no clue what it means.
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/barrierbreaker/two-misundersto...
I don't know or care who said the above opinion. I care about their opinion and their opinion was delusional.
Thinking the world at large knows, cares, and can make "informed choices" about the browser engines used throughout their phone apps is delusional.
Also, there's nothing "subjective" about whether all smartphone users are web developers, and therefore happen to care about browser engines.
But, "Delusional" is often associated with name-calling, so it sounds more like you're calling the person delusional, rather than what they said. Something like "This sounds delusional to me" would avoid that confusion.
But even if I decided to call the commenter names, that wouldn't be ad hominem (link above on details).
It's rude, it's uncivilized maybe, we can have qualifications like that. But it's not "ad hominem", because "ad hominem" isn't about "you insulted someone".
Probably more than 95% of car owners do not understand how the engine of a car works. So, following your reasoning, it would justify having no competition in the car market?
Thankfully most of the world chose the free-market economy model, of which free competition is a pillar. There is no reason for the web browser market to be an exception and justify obstructed competition like Apple does on iOS.
why do they have to make this choice, why can't they just use safari?
> So no, you can't choose. When we say "you can choose" we need to realize that this is only good when you can make an educated, informed choice. If you can't, you need to be protected. And that's Apple's role.
I'm getting strong deja vu to arguments over authoritarian nanny states in this.
Even if I accept the contentious value judgment that people need to be guided and protected by an entity that has strongly conflicting interests to them, I still don't think this is a strong argument as the default browser would still be Safari. People with little to no understanding of what a browser is are hardly going to download some outdated fork of Netscape.
My 80+ year old grandma made the informed choice to use Firefox on macOS. She can't use Firefox on her iPhone. She wants to use Firefox everywhere. She disagrees with you.
https://www.csoonline.com/article/3243284/firefox-users-are-...
https://www.pcmag.com/archive/google-accused-of-tracking-saf...
Would you give a pass to Apple for how they handled privacy in the past and not to Mozilla who comparatively had only a few hiccups ?
Service providers where mostly in the deal to get user data, and Apple’s push on privacy only started well into Cook’s tenure.
But you have trust in them in their current business position (it only was “the early days”). By that token I don’t think it’s unrealistic to assume at some point you’ll find other companies that are either new or show they changed enough to get your trust.
With regards maps, although what this has to do with your original question is beyond me, Apple informed the user very clearly on where the data is from and what data they were collecting, they still do. It was originally a combination of TomTom and OpenStreetMap, by the way.
Also, Jobs was pushing privacy in 2010 - "Privacy means people know what they're signing up for, in plain English and repeatedly. I believe people are smart and some people want to share more data than other people do. Ask them. Ask them every time. Make them tell you to stop asking them if they get tired of your asking them. Let them know precisely what you're going to do with their data."
I agree that companies can change. Big companies rarely do. I'm concerned that it's only a matter of time before Mozilla make the decision to switch to blink, which would be the end for them and the open web.
Interestingly, of the complaints made in this article, 6 are Editors Drafts, not agreed upon standards, or Working Drafts, again experimental un-agreed 'standards'. I'll concede that a working draft is close enough to being standardised. The rest, bar one, are implemented in WebKit. So the complaint in the article is that the WebKit project is holding up the web by not including Google's experimental features in a bid to say Apple should be allowing other, less secure rendering engines on a platform where users store a ridiculous amount of PII. It's being framed as 'freedom' - I'm sceptical. They'll be caterwauling about 'choice', but by enforcing 'choice', there is very real, and frankly sinister, risk that it will be lost irrevocably along with any semblance of an open web. Careful what you wish for.
Good luck having bunch of lawyers figure out what the impact of a browser "engine" is.
And honestly good luck having regular users care about this, either.
The reason Apple won't have a problem with it is because the whole argument is just in the echo chamber of web developers who want their new shiny.
I don’t remember my parents losing sleep at night because third party ISP couldn’t get the same access to copper lines. Yet we got meaningful regulation of that market.
I think as long as there’s big enough third parties losing money there is hope for change.
Apple monetizes Safari. They sell hardware and subscription services.
Facebook monetizes in part through these browsers. The changes to Safari hurt Facebook revenue.
If Google were to lose android I wonder if they’d also push for more regulation on Apple.
I wish I could just say “Firefox”, but I’m afraid they would be small potatoes in this.
Anti-trust doesn't so much care about competition to improve web APIs. Because it's not really a market, what with no money changing hands etc.
In MS/IE/Netscape times, the idea of licensing browsers was still fresh. And, more importantly, browsers differed In more than just synthetic benchmark scores: IE had ActiveX plugins that weren't available for any browser or operating system, and those were widely used, discriminating against other OS, an actual market.
A similar situation would be Apple intentionally crippling Google Docs, or amazon.com. The changes to ads and tracking are the closest we've gotten in the last decade, and Apple has a pretty good case that they are doing so with the user's interest in mind.