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Comment by samwillis | Hacker News Reader

  > 1. In many ways Apple's anti-competitive behaviour on iOS/iPadOS is a blessing. It's one of the few things that keep Chromium's dominance in check. Of course, it's not great that Apple are stifling innovation like this, but consider the alternative: Chromium dominance on all platforms.

I think it’s worth noting that (at least I believe) the reason apple limit the usage of other browser engines in iOS isn’t (mostly) about maintaining control and dominance. It’s about battery usage, WebKit is heavily optimised on iOS to ensure optimal power efficiency. The number one priority is that the lowest denominator of iPhone user is happy with their device, and battery usage is the number one KPI people care about.

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I don't disagree that is their publicly stated reason for the limitation. Them having the ulterior motive of stifling PWAs on iOS and competition for mobile Safari is a common theory.

Whether they do have ulterior motives or not, the effect is that innovation is stifled.

PWA’s aren’t ‘innovation’. Apps can do far more than PWAs.

I believe the stifling of innovation the parent comment refers to is that of browser engines, not of PWAs.

It’s not innovation if it’s just catching up to what another platform has been able to do all along.

In a walled garden, the ability to for the user to do what they want, where they want is perceived as innovation.

The user can’t do what they want where they want on the web. The web is an adware and privacy destroying machine.

> The user can’t do what they want where they want on the web. The web is an adware and privacy destroying machine.

Sounds like you're setting a double standard when Apple also runs ads on their devices[0] as well as selling their user's private data[1]

[0] https://stevestreza.com/2020/02/17/ios-adware/

[1] https://www.macrumors.com/2021/11/26/apple-italy-fine-user-d...

> Sounds like you're setting a double standard when Apple also runs ads on their devices[0] as well as selling their user's private data[1]

Anyone who claims those are equivalent to what is going on on the web is being dishonest.

Neither of the articles even claims that Apple was “selling user data”, so that’s a straight up lie.

I can’t help you if you are going to post links that don’t say what you claim they are saying.

Really?

Why did Spotify and Pax Labs make PWAs again?

Good question- what innovation did they bring?

No idea about Pax Labs.

Spotify creates native apps for everything. "PWA" aka the web player is there for devices that don't have a native app yet, and for embedding.

And yet: Steve Jobs wanted PWA's (or something similar) in the beginning and begrudgingly made an App Store.

Yes, I know the circumstances are different, but I do think it's ironic.

I guess the grudge went away as the billions started pouring in.

That was just a cover for the fact that the app store infrastructure wasn't ready and they weren't even certain the iPhone was going to take off. They only had so much engineering talent and money, and it went into the phone itself. They had been working on the beginnings of app franeworks and the store before launch. The huge response to the iphone caused them to both lower the price (to widen the potential market once it would be wildly profitable) and increase the speed/budget of the app infrastructure engineering.

> And yet: Steve Jobs wanted PWA's (or something similar) in the beginning and begrudgingly made an App Store.

or it was just the typical double speak from Jobs until they were able to launch their walled garden. Anyone else remember when iPhone users were told they were holding the iPhone wrong during Antennagate? [0]

[0] https://www.engadget.com/2010-06-24-apple-responds-over-ipho...

>Them having the ulterior motive of stifling PWAs

>the effect is that innovation is stifled.

There's no such thing as PWA. There are several dozen of standards, and any combination of them is called PWAs by various people. And quite a few of those combinations work perfectly fine on Apple devices.

What's worse is that too many of those standards are extremely badly designed (service workers) or are pure Chrome-only "standards" rammed through standards bodies (Bluetooth, HID etc.).

Supporting manifests to "install" a webapp to my home screen isn't something difficult for Apple/Safari team.

They just don't get their cut from it, so, not a priority.

According to web.dev, the Chrome propaganda site:

--- start quote ---

Talking about mobile phones and tablets, a Progressive Web App is installable with offline capabilities using the following browsers and app stores:

- iOS and iPadOS

Safari (since iOS 11.3), AppStore (since iOS/iPadOS 14, with some limitations), Mobile Configuration for enterprise distribution.

--- end quote ---

US antitrust law is based on tests of harm to the consumer (though most people do not know this nor about its application due to lack of enforcement). Apple frames everything they do as positive for the consumer to throw up chaff that makes consumer harm harder to quantify for people who don't know better.

Same as https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/2/21161271/apple-settlement-...

Another reason is actually security.

Remember that Apple doesn't allow other web browser engines in any application. Imagine if an Electron application on iOS just decided to ship with it's entire, own browser engine. We would have super-bloated apps like our desktops, and if a security flaw was found, good luck getting all those apps to update.

In a way, Apple knows that allowing other browser engines means:

1. Chromium-based browsers just increase their monopoly, Firefox continues stagnation by almost all odds

2. The Electron mess on our desktops will claim new territory on our phones and bring security problems with it

Not very appealing. Limiting competition? When your only realistic competition is Chrome with it's 80%+ dominance, I don't think a regulator would have a problem with that.

The ironic part of this is that if Apple allowed alternative browser engines, I guarantee you it is only a matter of time before you see Electron apps bringing their own browser engines with them to iOS. And not long after before Hacker News is screaming and moaning about it (like they do for Electron on desktop) and begging for Apple to stop it.

HN already screams and moans about mobile apps built with PhoneGap/Cordova/Capacitor/Ionic ect. for not being "native" at the same time as promoting PWAs and complaining that apple doesn't support them, ignoring that PhoneGap, Cordova and especially Capacitor give you that functionality (mostly). I think that says more about HN than Apple...

What it says is that people mostly just post when they want to complain about stuff. Some minority of people are outraged over lack of PWA on iPhone, so they post to complain loudly about it. Some other minority of people are outraged over electron apps on Mac, so they post to complain loudly about it. It's not the same people, it's just the same pattern of the loud minority and silent majority.

I'll admit, though, I'm in the "I really want native Mac apps" minority :)

I’m reminded of a chestnut I was once told; satisfied people generally do not post comments, because people don’t go out of their way to say that things are okay, and your everyday person doesn’t even really post good reviews unprompted, because good service is usually the expectation.

People only really get active about bad divergence from expectations.

You never see "Toy Story 2 was ok" spray painted on an overpass.

People do voice very positive opinions, but nobody really voices indifference.

Further, even extremely opinionated people are usually only opinionated about a few things. Most people are indifferent to most things.

I suppose what I'm trying to say is that in the case of positive opinions, it's not super common to leave them unprompted (see: all the popups in apps for "Like our app? Rate us on the app store!") whereas people angry at bad service have no compunctions about finding somewhere to vent, in public if they have to, and are super driven by their agitation.

the difference is the distribution channel. For cordova you still need to use Apple store and pay yearly and share your income with Apple. With PWA, the distribution channel is web, so no commissions for Apple.

Its almost like different people have different opinions or something.

I don't think there's a lot of overlap between folks who are very upset with Apple for not making PWAs work better on iOS, and people who hate non-native apps and wish they'd be banned.

Also security, but different: Apple want sight of all of the native code that's running in your app, because their ABI is also a privilege boundary. JIT that's not controlled by them could be used to call symbols that your app is not supposed to call.

Security isn’t a great argument when Apple only updates safari with full system updates. Sure, iOS has a high update rate compared to Android but it’s still far lower than an App Store update would be.

Plus, security is somewhat less of a concern when the application only accesses a limited site and isn’t for general purpose browsing for untrusted sites.

> Security isn’t a great argument when Apple only updates safari with full system updates.

But they can put those updates out whenever they want, so that doesn't go against the security argument at all.

Users can only get an update by rebooting their devices, so it absolutely goes against the security argument.

Actually, as a tidbit, Chromium is a fork of WebKit, which is Safari's rendering engine, which for some reason started as a fork from Konqueror (KDE Linux desktop's browser). Google did however replace the javascript engine in Chromium. The Javascript engine in Chromium deserves a different discussion, since it also powers NodeJS. Back in the day, WebKit was quite popular as a rendering engine and is also used by Qt.

Ken Kocienda writes about the origin of Safari in Creative Selection [0].

It started as a Konqueror fork mostly because Jobs wanted a browser on OS X and Ken was initially tasked with it (back then the mac had IE for mac). One person writing a browser from scratch even back then seemed an impossible challenge so he took a look to see if he could use most of Konqueror as an initial starting base.

[0]: The book has some interesting stories, but I find it hard to recommend because it's weirdly written for an extremely non-technical audience (using grandma like analogies to explain basic concepts, the analogies are so basic they do more to obscure than explain - e.g. the filesystem is like a 'cabinet for files'). It doesn't often get into the weeds of the interesting technical details - which is disappointing since 90% of readers are probably technical. The stories in it are still good though and Ken has a lot of insight into the iPhone development story since he was there.

KHTML was a pretty viable alternative to the mess that was Gecko at the time. And there were already some (underserved) alternative platform ports in-progress at the time.

Minor correction: Ken Kocienda didn't do the Konqueror port. He was working on getting Gecko to build and a teammate got Konqueror working in X11 before Ken even got Gecko to compile.

Ah you're right I was misremembering (read it a while ago) - thanks for the correction.

It started as a fork of Konqueror because it was the highest-quality codebase available, probably because it was open-source from the ground up and written in a higher-level language rather than the l33t h4x0rs at Netscape with their 4 different memory allocators.

#1 reason, and, think back to when iOS came out, was security. The knock off effect was it ensured that ios/webkit gained defacto marketshare for each device since there was no other option - as the thread starter mentions. I disagree with the contention about innovation - keeping IOS from being a minefield for 99.9999% of users I think was the right course. And killing off flash.

> I think it’s worth noting that (at least I believe) the reason apple limit the usage of other browser engines in iOS isn’t (mostly) about maintaining control and dominance. It’s about battery usage,

I disagree with this word gymnastics, it is Apple-ogism. It takes just a brief look at other decisions they've made to easily see that it is about user lock-in which fits in with their general philosophy. It is not great that they are stifling innovation at all, conflating it with browser dominance is a separate thing.

This is a specious argument. Allow competitors to deploy apps causing lousy battery life, and Safari should win easily on that basis. Apple's battery app makes it obvious when apps use a lot of energy.

It doesn't matter if Safari "wins" if all other players "required" Chrome browsers.

Apple sets the rules for its own products. Why didn't "open" win? Why for whatever reason is Apple still #1 in the mobile space?

Perhaps users agree with Apple.

Users are easily duped by marketing. Even technologists. You can see how easily technologists buy Apple's bald-faced lies that its actions are not about user lock-in throughout this comment section.

I can write a browser using WXWebView that wastes battery outside the rendering code, and Apple won't stop me. I can write a maps application that wastes battery, and Apple won't stop me. But if I write a web rendering engine that wastes battery, I have crossed a line? A line that is so important not to cross that Apple won't even let me try to write a rendering engine that uses less battery than WXWebView? I cannot believe that anybody would buy that argument without marketing distorting their thoughts.

> Users are easily duped by marketing. Even technologists.

Ah yes. Everything can be explained by marketing, and marketing alone. Poor, poor Google, and Samsung, and so on, who are struggling to find the money and the power to make people buy Android phones through the power of marketing.

Perhaps, just perhaps, I'm going on a limb here, Apple actually makes a phone that people want?

We are, in this very thread, discussing a reason why Apple's phones are worse that people have been duped into putting in the pros column. They are also worse for privacy, yet Apple markets their devices' privacy. They are worse for security, yet Apple markets their devices' security. The shoe fits.

Apple has been a marketing-driven company for decades now and is better at it than any other tech company by a country mile. It's why they bought Beats, not for their technology, but for their marketing prowess. The other companies you listed pick features that are better on their devices to market. Apple's marketing department figured out long ago that no such restriction is necessary.

> We are, in this very thread, discussing a reason why Apple's phones are worse

Right now, in this very thread I see no such discussion.

> They are also worse for privacy

> They are worse for security

Worse than what?

> The shoe fits.

It doesn't fit, not really. It's gross incompetence and ignorance to explain everything by marketing and people being stupid.

Because what you're saying, is that a good chunk of people on HN are stupid and are "duped by marketing". That I am stupid and am duped by marketing. However, I've seen and tried the alternatives, and I found them lacking.

> Right now, in this very thread I see no such discussion.

Look at the first comment you replied to. It's about how Apple restricts how you can browse the web for user lock in but has convinced people it is for the sake of their battery.

> Worse than what?

Worse than Pixels, Android One devices, and ChromeOS devices currently. There are several open source focused devices in the pipeline that have better security design than iOS devices as well but are not yet ready.

> That I am stupid and am duped by marketing.

I did not say you are stupid. I said that people are duped by marketing, and I gave examples. I even pointed out that technologists can be duped, and they are smart in the field they were duped in. Apple's marketing department is smart, and Apple's other employees are smart for supporting their efforts, though when they get caught parroting marketing talking points that are clearly false, it can be embarrassing.

> Look at the first comment you replied to. It's about how Apple restricts how you can browse the web for user lock in but has convinced people it is for the sake of their battery.

Ah yes. That comment is obviously wrong, and your comment is obviously correct because you are right, and the other person is wrong. Is that how this works?

> Worse than Pixels, ... and ChromeOS devices currently.

So. Pixels and ChromeOS are made by Google. You know,

- 80% of Google's money comes from online advertising. And this advertising relies on far-reaching privacy invasive tracking

- Google's own employees admitted that they have no idea how to turn the various methods of tracking off. Among others location tracking is so intertwined in Google's products that it's impossible to turn it off at all

Yup. These devices are surely worse for privacy than iPhones which go as far as limit tracking at the OS level.

Can't attest to the devices current security. Given Android's spotty track record of updates, I wouldn't hold my breath for AndroidOne. Oh. And Pixel 3 which was released in the ancient times of exactly three years ago will no longer receive any updates. So yeah.

Meanwhile the iOS 15 which was released this September is available on iPhone SE from 5 years ago.

> There are several open source focused devices in the pipeline that have better ... but are not yet ready.

I yes. Imaginary non-existent phones. In that case I have a phone that's better than any of those, and better than iPhone, and better than Pixel 6. Care to buy one?

> I said that people are duped by marketing, and I gave examples.

No, you didn't. What you did, was make overly broad statements that are either pure speculation, or can be easily refuted.

> Is that how this works?

Read my comment in the context of what it was responding to. You seem to have grossly misunderstood it.

> Yup. These devices are surely worse for privacy than iPhones which go as far as limit tracking at the OS level.

iOS devices do not support end-to-end encryption of message backups, do not support allowing a user to run apps on the device without telling Apple, and do not support getting a user's location without telling Apple. Despite what you may infer about each company's motives, each company's actual actions show a very clear difference in privacy on their devices. Apple is motivated to make money by any means it has available. If it can make money by charging users more for devices and violating their privacy by marketing their devices as being better for privacy, it will do so, and we can see that this is happening right now.

> Meanwhile the iOS 15 which was released this September is available on iPhone SE from 5 years ago.

So you admit an iPhone from 6 years ago is insecure. The fact that only recent devices from either vendor are secure is the same for both, so a user who cares about security will only use a recent device. The difference is that recent devices from Google are far more secure than recent devices from Apple.

> Imaginary non-existent phones.

I was just illustrating that there will be more options in the future. Apple knows about the security features offered by current and future devices but despite that hasn't tried to match those security features and instead contents itself with merely marketing security.

> No, you didn't.

Read my first post. You still haven't refuted it.

> Read my comment in the context of what it was responding to.

I've read the comment an the context. It says "that person is wrong, only my opinion on what Apple does its right"

> Despite what you may infer about each company's motives, each company's actual actions show a very clear difference in privacy on their devices.

Indeed it does. And Google is many magnitudes more invasive than Apple. Including, but not limited to "applications which have location tracking disabled can use location tracking information from another Google application" https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/ne...

> So you admit an iPhone from 6 years ago is insecure. The fact that only recent devices from either vendor are secure is the same for both

It's emphatically not the same for both:

- Apple: support phones for up to five years.

- Google: supports its own "flagship phones" only for three years.

HN poster: see, they are the same.

> I was just illustrating that there will be more options in the future.

Once again: I'm not interested in fantasies and comparisons against non-existent phones.

> Read my first post. You still haven't refuted it.

I mean, your approach to argument is "I'm right just because I say is right", so nothing will dissuade you.

This is pointless. So, adieu.

> I've read the comment an the context. It says "that person is wrong, only my opinion on what Apple does its right"

Where does it say that? I'll repeat the context right here:

"> Right now, in this very thread I see no such discussion."

The context is that I was pointing out that there is a discussion about what you claimed there was no discussion about. Nowhere did I say that I'm right and they're wrong (though it remains the case that none of my points have been refuted).

> applications which have location tracking disabled can use location tracking information from another Google application

Google does this on iOS as well. In respect to what information applications can share on the server, there is no difference between iOS and Android. The privacy differences that do exist between the platforms are the ones I listed, where iOS does a lot of data collection that cannot be disabled, while Android has no such problem.

> HN poster: see, they are the same.

A user who cares about security only cares about which device provides usable security. None of the Apple devices do. All the Pixels that are receiving security updates do. The choice for a user who cares about security isn't between some five year old iOS devices that provide limited security and other five year old Android devices that provide limited security (worse system updates but better application updates) but between any iOS device (including recent ones) that provide limited security and recent Pixel devices that provide superior security. How long they continue to receive system updates (or application updates) beyond replacement time is meaningless.

> I mean, your approach to argument is "I'm right just because I say is right",

I provided reasons why the battery excuse doesn't make sense. Why do you keep pretending I haven't given any reasons?

Battery usage, yes, but if developers could create theirs apps as websites with no loss of functionality and pay zero money to Apple a non empty set of users would use them and Apple would lose some money. I think that Apple ultimately cares about money. Battery, PWAs, etc are all factors they ponder upon to optimize the bottom line.

haha yes, and Microsoft included IE4 into the Windows desktop so that users could have all the benefits of IE for free.

>I think it’s worth noting that (at least I believe) the reason apple limit the usage of other browser engines in iOS isn’t (mostly) about maintaining control and dominance. It’s about battery usage

Why would this be a believable excuse? you can install a Firefox skin of WebKit on iOS and this skin could maybe be terrible on battery usage. A good default browser like on laptops is good enough for battery, people who care about it will use Safari, the obvious reason Apple is doing this is to prevent competition, so if Apple fucks with WebGL then you can't have say a WebGL based mobile game that would go around the Apple Store.

Even if battery usage was the reason behind it, it's not good enough. Let the user decide whether or not they're willing to sacrifice battery life if they want to.

A user has no way to know that's the tradeoff. They don't know what tech any given app was built with and they don't understand what the tradeoffs are for different tech.

simply make it easy for users to see what apps are responisble to battery usage. if someone sees that their crappy browser is using all of their battery but safari doesn't they will quit using the crappy browser.

> battery usage is the number one KPI people care about.

I wish all phone manufacturers actually understood that

/me glances at my Pixel 3XL with 3430 mAh batt

Battery capacity != battery life.

I switched to a used iPhone and was bummed my 8+ had a "small" ~2400mah battery compared to my Android phone, which was 3100. Then I actually started using it. Even though the Android phone had an OLED screen, it would absolutely melt the battery.

I have so little "battery charge anxiety" now it's not even funny. I don't even bother to charge it above 80-85% most of the time...and the battery life estimator says the battery is down to 82% capacity.

Idk, I'm a big fan of what companies like Motorola are doing by taking a 4000mah+ battery and pairing it with some of those low end SoC's that sip battery. Androids power usage can be complete trash, but I've managed 4 days of battery out of these cheap Motorola phones while still using discord/twitter/telegram like normal.

If apple actually went up on their battery sizing they could easily achieve Monday to Friday battery life on something like the iPhone SE.

There's also the Oppo/Oneplus way of doing things and pairing high quality cells to a better charge standard (SuperVOOC/WARP) that can throw 65W (or more) at the phone and minimize time spent charging. I can't overstate how much this changes my use pattern when I know I can throw phone on charger, take a shower, and by the time I'm out it's full.

Sure, but enjoy the battery being degraded to ~70% of its capacity after barely a year of doing that.

Considering they use two batteries to manage the charging rate do we have anything showing its destroying the phones after a year? (the 8T is a year old so someone might have some proof)

The 8T (and follow ups) do feel kinda crazy when it comes to charging. Especially considering it has a higher wattage charger than my laptop currently uses. I've also managed to get 2.5 days out of a single charge on my 8T which is impressive considering the hardware.

This might not always work - low end SoCs might also be built on older process node, making them less efficient. A higher end SoC also can complete tasks faster, meaning the device can sleep more of the time instead of crunching stuff on old slow cores and keeping the device fully up.

Well while not the fanciest, the 11nm node in the 2020 and 2021 Moto G Power were still plenty modern enough 8-core SoC's to get the job done. Their main problem lies in being stuck with 4GB of RAM. You end up with apps reloading from time to time as other applications pushed it out of memory. Even with that taken into consideration they still make for fine phones and the person I handed mine down to is still using it as their main phone without much issue.

Current phone has 12GB of RAM which is a bit extreme given I rarely seem to use more than 6GB. More Sub $250 phones are creeping up to 6GB which makes for a nicer experience for those on tight budgets.

Now if only we could solve the lack of updates most Android phones experience.

My BlackBerry KeyOne actually has a smaller battery at 3300 mAh, but I don't have to charge it every day. I still use Maps and GPS, stream music, and stray from wifi, because child commenter is right - there's more to battery life and screen on time than battery size.

That is legit my favorite feature of the iphone 13 pro max, the battery is like 4300 mAh and it never runs out during the day no matter what I do with it.

There are many Android phones on the market with a big battery and fast charging.

Why people think Android=Pixel is beyond me.

Pixels are the definitive Android phones. Outside of the Pixel and Galaxy lines, you're getting into murky waters.

That always sounded like very crude excuse to exert control over Web standards by them. If battery usage with their own browsers is so much better, then everyone would be using their browsers on iOS. Why even ban others?

So I don't buy any of the Apple's excuses when they actively cause anti-competitive harm.

As far as I’m aware the justification is “no executing pages you can write to at runtime” (because it’s a huge security issue). They give safari an exception to that because you can’t make a JIT without doing that, and that’s the most straightforward way to get fast JavaScript.

Even if you give up the JIT, Apple will still not allow your custom browser on iOS.

So why can’t we just choose what we want? All evil actions have some pretext, though in some cases (such as this one) the pretext is quite flimsy.

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