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Comment by echelon | Hacker News Reader

> You do not own an Apple device that you buy.

There's no way to avoid the Apple. It's become the Berlin Wall of computing. No admittance, no escape, secret police, protection racket.

Companies with apps don't have customers. They're unnaturally fenced off, cajoled, and taxed. Apple laughably claims privacy.

Meanwhile device owners can't repair their phones or expect not to be spied on. When they aren't paying $500 for RAM, they're letting Apple define what activities are permissible.

The damn thing doesn't even have a web browser that isn't safari. The Apple is so afraid of runtimes threatening the app store distribution model.

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> The damn thing doesn't even have a web browser that isn't safari.

Why would you claim this? There are no limitations on web browsers.

You are limited to WebKit rendering engine and JavaScriptCore, so practically all non-Safari browsers are more or less just a different skins of Safari.

> Why would you claim this? There are no limitations on web browsers.

All browsers on iOS must use the WebKit browser engine making them, in essence, safari clones with a different look and feel.

They say “the Apple” While it’s true for ios, “the Apple” also makes macos, where you can freely pick your browser

They say "There are no limitations on web browsers.", while on iOS, there are clearly some limitations on web browsers. It doesn't matter that there also exists another platform where that statement may apply; the statement was generic and itself made no distinction.

OK, so "no limitations" wasn't correct. But still, you can use chrome on ios, you get all the ui and behaviours you are used to, no?

No support for Chrome extensions. Not even support for Safari Web Extensions bundled with iOS apps.

Some browsers do have their own extensions (Edge has AdBlock Plus built-in, but that's all; iCab has quite a few Javascript-based extensions) and of course you get things like using another vendor's bookmark and password sync. But that's about it.

Oh really? But extensions are separate from the rendering, right? So is that a separate limitation then?

Not really separate. Many extensions designed for other browsers will still depend on quirks of the respective extension implementations, JavaScript engines, rendering engines, etc.

Of course, there are (supposed-to-be-but-aren't) browser-agnostic WebExtensions — but again, only Safari implements them on iOS (starting with iOS 15), they must be bundled with an iOS app, and non-Safari browsers don't have access to those bundled extensions.

Perhaps those browsers will implement support for WebExtensions by some other mechanism but it certainly won't be the case that Firefox for iOS could run extensions intended for Firefox on desktop, nor would one expect extensions from the Chrome Web Store to work properly on Chrome for iOS.

Perhaps that's an upshot? Better support for browser-agnostic WebExtensions?

Even then, that's up to whether or not Apple permits that in the App Store.

Ok, thanks for the thorough explanation

Apple forces all third party browsers on iOS to use WebKit, so really everything has to use safari’s rendering engine.

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