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Comment by thunderbong | Hacker News Reader

Google started doing this with their search. And still does, regardless of how many times I say "I'm not interested". And as someone else mentioned here, Safari does the same.

And Microsoft follows suit.

Irritating as all hell, but complaints hit HN front page only when it comes to Microsoft.

I do wish, though, that Microsoft would take the moral high ground.

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I have seen more and more that it is Apple that usually starts these practices, and since their users generally give them unlimited leeway towards these things (happening right now in this very thread!) it becomes the new standard. Then Microsoft, Google and others follow suit. The "try Safari" notifications when opening Chrome or Firefox have been a thing in macOS forever. Same with advertising and upsells built into the OS.

For a while, there would be a macOS notification suggesting that you try Safari after updating. This notification should be gone with the latest macOS. Are you talking about something else?

Don't know about updating, but that notification is also triggered when you open Chrome or Firefox.

I feel like I may have seen this notification once, but there was an easy “no thanks” option. That didn’t seem nearly as bad as this.

Apple may have started the latest round of this. But Microsoft was aggressively pushing their browser clear back in the 90s, and I don't think Apple was.

Well Safari did not exist in the 90s but Apple was bundling Safari with iTunes back in the days (https://www.cnet.com/culture/apple-pushes-safari-on-windows-...). It was auto-selected, so people who quickly click on 'Ok' for updating iTunes would find themselves downloading an extra 20+mb and installing a browser they did not want.

Apple doesn't even allow any other browser than Safari on iOS. All the other browsers are just shells for Safari. And this is the case even in the EU.

Apple has been blocking 3rd party browsers on iOS for 15 years, it's only going to make the front page so many times. Similarly macOS has held a pretty consistent stream and lets switching be easy, limiting it to some notifications which really isn't that unreasonable. Microsoft lately has been on a rampage to go from it being relatively frictionless to it being as scary and inconvenient as possible for the user. At one point even requiring the user to manually switch each protocol and file extension over to the other browser but allowing Edge to automatically change them back for the user!

Google gets similar complaints but it gets stifled because by the numbers people are generally trying to install Chrome so they don't really care the Google page asks them "do you want to install Chrome" when they open it initially. Still scummy but most aren't going to complain about being prompted to do precisely what they wanted to do.

nit-pick: They don't block 3rd party browsers, they just don't allow 3rd party browsers to have full access to the device, so they are less performant than Safari, which does have full access.

Well third-party browsers need to use the operating system’s built-in components for displaying web pages (ie WebKit) so one cannot port a desktop browser with its own backend (say chrome with Blink/V8 or Firefox with Gecko/Spider Monkey) to iOS. You can only create what is effectively a safari skin.

It’s not all bad though; safari is for example quite good at having low power usage.

This is the single thing that has prevented me to acquiring iOS devices. I can't imagine life without FF add-ons.

If I may ask: How are you using addons on mobile?

Firefox for android doesn't allow addons and F-droid Fennec doesn't seem to support them either.

The only browser on android that gives me full devtools and addon support is kiwi browser which has it's own skeletons to contend with: https://www.reddit.com/r/uBlockOrigin/comments/ppygw1/can_i_...

These Firefox statements are severely outdated. As it stands right now:

- Stock Firefox for Android allows a limited set of extensions including the most popular extension uBlock Origin.

- Firefox Nightly allows the installation of any extensions though this is not enabled by default and requires jumping through some hoops.

- F-Droid Fennec allows the same extension loading functionality as found in Firefox Nightly without having to leave stable.

That said there are still extensions that won't work once installed as not every API is covered. Far more work (orders of magnitude more) than the short list in stock stable Firefox though.

My bad. I meant full proper desktop-grade support for addons and devtools like what kiwi does for chromium on android. From your comment, it seems that proper full is still disabled on both stable Firefox and Fennec.

Since I'm not really interested in using nightly or jumping through hoops, I'll just continue using kiwi which is able to support both my requirements just fine.

Thanks for the clarification though.

The only add-on I use on my android firefox is ublock origin.

For my iOS device I proxy my internet and block all ad domains on the proxy $5 DO server . The bandwidth and battery saved alone recovers the costs.

I am surprised why no major VPN provider offers ad-blocking pihole style as a add-on. People will surely pay for that.

It appears it’s built into Mullvad and possibly others

Interesting, this seems recent, they launched iOS app support in June. Mullvad is usually solid . Would be good to know if this be integrated into Firefox VPN client variants

https://mullvad.net/en/blog/2021/5/27/how-set-ad-blocking-ou...

https://mullvad.net/en/blog/2021/6/9/how-were-knocking-down-...

Further nitpick: it’s that 3rd party browsers can’t provide their own JavaScript JIT system, and to use Apple’s, the developer must use the built in WebKit libraries.

You are not allowed to use Gecko with JavaScriptCore either. No alternative renderers are allowed. You must use WKWebView.

Yep. Whenever I search for anything on Safari on my iPhone, the search results page has a static div saying "Fast access to Google. Get the new Google widget. Get the app". Close it with the 'x', and it reappears next time.

So far I've stuck with Google on my phone simply because its local search is better than Kagi's, but I'm this far away from jumping to Kagi on the phone too.

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