Anti-innovative effects of Apple's prohibition of alternative browser engines | Hacker News Reader

Anti-innovative effects of Apple's prohibition of alternative browser engines

fosspatents.com

66 pointsnceqs351 comments

"However, apart from Android, where Google leverages the Power of Default, Chrome actually managed to compete on the merits."

"Only on Android does Google leverage its market power in another field to strengthen Chrome."

Oh, only on Android, this tiny ecosystem of 2.5 billion(!) active users. No big deal. And they only leverage Android? It must have been my imagination how they've spammed Youtube, Gmail, Google Search, Google Maps for years to install Chrome. Or to even take it so far as to sabotage other web browsers on their services. Chrome also comes as part of some desktop software, there's a million ways in which they bundle it.

The very idea in itself that browsers compete on merit is false. They are same enough for no normie user to care. They use whatever got installed as default, what they see their friends use, they barely have an idea what a browser even is.

Still, you have the choice to uninstall chrome and use Firefox which uses its own engine. On IOS you can't, its just a reskin.

So chrome market dominance is not comparable to a bad browser existing because its just the only choice, that's more like IE.

You're right when framed within the context of the Apple ecosystem. I was merely making the point that Chrome's dominance is not based on merit (alone).

It's a lie, and a very relevant one. If Apple were to open up browser competition on iOS, Google can/will use their enormous reach to destroy the "last man standing"...Safari.

I'm not at all defending Apple, I'm merely pointing out that even if for selfish reasons, iOS Safari truly is the last browser in existence that acts as a counter force against Google doing whatever the hell they want regarding the web and web standards. It's a perverted dynamic, but a lack of competition has an upside here.

The downside is that this reduced competition means the gap with native apps can't be closed. I consider that to be a massive stake too. Even within Google there's friction between the Android and Chrome teams regarding this matter. The incentives are really complex.

Thank you. Look, I get everyone is afraid of Chrome; I don’t use it either. But Safari is a case study on why competition is good: MobileSafari still railroads you into patent-encumbered codecs, whereas Safari on macOS, where Apple, certainly begrudgingly, must compete on a somewhat even playing field, magically supports WebM and other things they will never do on iOS.

You ever wonder why Opus isn’t used more often considering how much better it would be for bandwidth, the fact that it’s not patent-encumbered, and the fact that Google dominance has absolutely jack shit to do with it? Check the notes on the funny green-yellow columns and you tell me.

https://caniuse.com/opus

WebM is supported in the most recent version of iOS, FWIW.

I think so, but I haven't found anything online. Do you mean iOS 16?

As is WebP. But it did notably take a while.

Someone told me this earlier, but I can't find any information about it.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31803078

I am literally dying to be wrong, so please let me know if I am. I will install whatever beta or preview iOS version tonight.

I’m on the latest production iOS, not a beta version, and the video on this page loads fine: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebM

I believe Wikipedia has resorted to polyfilling it using this:

https://github.com/brion/ogv.js

That's great and all, but it has limitations, and obviously, is ludicrously less efficient than it should be.

Sorry, I'm not following what you're hinting at. Can you explain?

If I had to speculate why Apple wouldn't bundle a unencumbered and popular codec, my first guess would be concerns over power efficiency. But I don't know codecs, and your comment reads like you have more specific insight.

Opus is kind of supported, but only in an Apple proprietary container format (specific to CoreAudio) that actively defeats the point. I don't even know if they did that intentionally or if it was just an incidental side-effect of adding Opus support to something else.

(Notably, Opus can not be used in HLS streams, or in video files. No other browsers support CAF, so you either need to re-mux on the fly or store two copies. It defeats a significant benefit of having a single codec, because Apple won’t support Opus in MKV or OGG. Remuxing is also not all that simple, since this is a proprietary format. Even if your ffmpeg command appears to have worked, that does not mean it will play on an Apple device.)

Power efficiency is possibly an explanation, but it's difficult to really treat that as a charitable argument anymore. As far as I know, they don't have arbitrary limitations that require audio decoding to be hardware accelerated, and both iOS and macOS devices will happily fallback to software decoding whenever it's needed. That's actually fine, since even Opus decoding with an optimized decoder is not really computationally expensive at all. It could run at a very low frequency using only one processor core and still decode realtime. Given that streaming audio over HTTP probably isn't fully accelerated off the application processor anyways, this doesn't seem like a huge ask.

I wouldn't consider myself an expert in audio at all. However, I have been bickering about this for years and I haven't seen any coherent argument why Apple shouldn't support Opus. Every other browser engine, desktop and mobile, has long figured it out, and it certainly doesn't seem to be a huge issue.

Or just use AAC-LC instead?

Or just support Opus, the IETF standard?

(To be fair, they technically even do support Opus… just in a way that makes it incredibly unusable.)

AAC-LC has wider support than Opus, and is patent free?

It's also worse than Opus, and not an IETF standard. If the web is not supposed to be what Chrome supports, then it's not supposed to be what Safari supports either. I'll take my chances. Safari users can eat polyfills for all I care. (For what it's worth, they already must do so on Wikipedia, except it's even funnier, because that's for video too.)

The EU's Digital Markets Act will stop Apples browser ban.

So hopefully we will get done with the new IE that is WebKIT soon.

https://twitter.com/OpenWebAdvocacy/status/15271019882567229...

More resources on how Safari hurts the web:

https://www.theregister.com/2022/05/23/opinion_column/

https://www.theregister.com/2022/06/14/telegram_safari/

Several institutions talking about Safari's monopoly: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31896281

I don't understand why Apple seems to get a pass for anti competitive behavior.

Microsoft lost that anti trust lawsuit for merely including IE in Windows. Apple not only bundles safari, but they don't let you use any other browser.

Antitrust applies only to companies in a monopoly position. Microsoft is/was a monopoly at the time. Apple is not a monopoly, even today.

Being anti-competitive does not require a monopoly.

That said, iOS accounts for 57% of the US market. Apple is one of the richest companies in the world, and is a market leader by any measure

dahfizz is comparing Apple’s (allegedly) anti-competitive behavior to Microsoft’s anti-trust violations, drawing a false equivalency between to two (possibly by misunderstanding the difference). I’m clarifying the difference. Being anti-competitive is not a crime unless one is doing it as a monopoly.

It doesn’t matter if Apple is a “rich market leader”. 57% does not make them a monopoly, and therefor the legal level of criminal anti-competitive behavior doesn’t apply.

> Being anti-competitive is not a crime unless one is doing it as a monopoly

But as the person you are replying to was trying to explain this is not true. Being anticompetitive is always a crime. Regulators don’t go after small players because it’s hard to show they significantly harm the market but it is illegal at any size.

Apple has monopoly power, and engages in anticompetitive behavior.

Being a monopoly in the US is not illegal. Abusing your market power and being anti-competitive in a way that harms consumers is illegal.

Apple is one of the world's largest companies. They shouldn't get a pass to be anti-consumer just because they don't own 51% of a certain market.

I would argue that "iphone users" instead of broadly "cellphone users" is its own market, but that is really besides the point. A monopoly in the academic sense is not needed for monopoly power to exist.

Fortunately, we have real judges and real lawyers who have argued the case in a real court of law during the Epic trial. Apple doesn’t have a monopoly according to the judge. It definitely doesn’t have a monopoly in the phone market with 60% share.

Epic lawyers tried your argument that Apple had a monopoly on their own hardware and she immediately threw the argument out as nonsensical. Every manufacturer has a “monopoly” on their own product. No one would argue that Spotify is monopolistic because they own their own platform.

The bar to cross to be liable to being sued for anticompetitive behaviour is far lower than being a monopoly. The EU has charged Apple with anticompetitive behaviours multiple times regarding IAP and Apple Pay.

Microsoft did not lose "for merely including IE in Windows."

They lost because they were a supplier to computer manufacturers and tried to interfere with other suppliers. Bundling IE was a tactic in service of the crime but not the crime itself.

Opened comments to ask exactly that - not only they bundle the browser with an OS and make it hard to choose another one, that "other one" can only be a skin atop their limited and completely controlled and proprietary engine, if that skin wants to have access to OS install base. It's definitely much worse than Microsoft / IE.

Does anyone have insight into why is Apple excluded from legal scrutiny here?

There has never been a case where a manufacture couldn’t have what they wanted on their own hardware. That’s like saying TVs can’t bundle their pen apps and must allow any third party app.

There is a gross misunderstanding of what the MS case involved and how little came out of the case.

"Their own hardware" as in the hardware that is owned by the customer who purchased it, or by the manufacturer who sold it? You're writing almost as if you believe the latter.

Their own platform I guess would be a better way of putting it. No one is going to say that Nintendo, Microsoft (XBox), Sony, smart TV manufacturers etc what they can and can’t bundle with the operating system they ship with the hardware.

They did not “lose” based on bundling the browser. They lost because they forced third party OEMs to pay for Windows licenses even for computers that weren’t shipped for windows. They no more lost for bundling a browser than they lost for bundling Solitaire.

They lost the antitrust lawsuit bad... and then got it reduced to a minor settlement a few months later once the Bush presidency came in. The DOJ now knows that even the most spectacular fireworks display won't make a damn difference, and haven't bothered trying since.

Because they can buy the law. What's a couple hundred thousand fee for them? Pay and keep on doing the same.

It could be that legislators and regulators are stuck in the 10 years ago framing, where Apple is basically an also-ran and Microsoft is the big tech company.

Or it could be that the fact that Apple presents their product as "a device" rather than software somehow messes with the mental model.

Web engines market share: Chromium - 80%, WebKit - 20%

FOSS patents: "Apple apologists seek to defend the Webkit engine monopoly"

Yes they do. WebKIT is new IE which hinders the Web, not chromium, at least not yet.

https://www.theregister.com/2022/05/23/opinion_column/

https://www.theregister.com/2022/06/14/telegram_safari

And the only safari rule is banned in the EU's Digital Markets Act, so whether Apple likes it or not, Safari monopoly is over.

twitter.com/OpenWebAdvocacy/status/1527101988256722944

I'm curious, what is your definition of monopoly?

You can't use any non-WebKIT engine on IOS, that's a an absolute monopoly.

Is chrome a monopoly? at this point yes, but ignoring safari is not a solution, Safari is universally hated because of its limitations which are made on purpose.

I view Google’s dominance in WC3 discussions and standards settings to be a far greater threat to innovation than Apple limiting browsers on its mobile platform.

I'm curious how this will develop in the future;

Apple will have to follow the law and finally allow other browsers of course, but, based on how they currently handle competition (Spotify, etc.) i would not be surprised if they frustrate the process and endlessly annoy users who "opt out" of the Safari browser and use Firefox/Chrome/* Which would result in most users just sticking with Safari...

Recent and related:

Apple is not defending browser engine choice - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31858413 - June 2022 (436 comments)

Tons of related discussion from a few days ago on the post this article references:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31858413

I am personally much more annoyed at Apple preventing JIT compilation on iOS than the lack of browser competition. I do not really want to give chromium more market share, and it can already compete on macOS.

I ended up writing a huge wall of text for this, but realized it was too much. The article I think makes too many proclamations without supporting a single one with logic or evidence, and I'm not really interested in articles that put the onus on me to justify the author. Most everything from the article seems to be lifted from the following article, but rephrased without nearly as much justification: https://infrequently.org/2022/06/apple-is-not-defending-brow...

And the main thing that stands out to me on the above linked article and the parent article is the focus on WebApps (PWAs) or other restrictions Apple puts on iOS.

To which I say "good riddance, toss it out with the rest of the trash", cause I don't need every single website having that much access to my phone and especially notifications. Even on MacOS, the defaults for what can and cannot send notifications are insane and very frustrating, and the less said about Android the better; I don't even use that many apps on my android phone and I'm tired of the countless notifications to dismiss every morning that are just absolute spam. The lack of granularity means that I can't really pick if my delivery app only triggers notifications for actual deliveries versus just random spam notifications; it's either a few useful notifications during a transaction I care about once or twice a week along with dozens of notifications a week, or no notifications at all. The Calendar app default on my phone tries to spam notifications to get me to use it. Notifications have become heavily abused by developers and I absolutely don't trust them at all to use Notifications responsibly. Apple limiting what developers can do here, even if it's just laziness on Apple's part, is a huge relief for me.

The main issue I have with WebApps is the annoyance factor and the presumption that I have any intention of maintaining constant interaction with a site for more than a few minutes. Websites for me are an information portal and in the case of forums, a slow communication medium. The idea that I want to visit a site perpetually and constantly is really foreign for me, and the software that I might visit frequently such as Instagram or TikTok for just some temporary amusement, it seems that the website version gives exactly what I want pretty fast without the need for a WebApp and its limitations. I _like_ websites because at least with Firefox I can control the content I see with µblock and other extensions. Once it's in a webapp, I'm at the mercy of whatever fancy the developer has. I don't get the benefits of a full app, I don't get the flexibility of a browser and its features/extensions, it's whatever the webdevs decided as best I can tell (accessibility features can pack it up and go home) and you just get a barebones web browser with all of the strength of browsers stripped out.

Funny enough, MacOS had webapp widgets since as long as widgets existed on MacOS (when it was still OS X), and frankly speaking I don't think anyone ever used them. I thought it would be cool when I first saw the feature, but quickly realized how much I missed the browser features that made the web bearable.

'FOSS Patents' aka Florian Mueller is a mercenary blogger, a shill for hire.

He has a pro big tech slant if anything. He is a paid consultant for many of the large tech companies.

He has a pro-whoever is paying him to 'consult' slant. He is not a principled man; he is a mercenary.

> Chrome actually managed to compete on the merits

Uh. Anyone else here remember the constant bombardment of Chrome ads across google's multiple(!) monopolized services? Non-tech-nerd people I know with non-default browsers were either pushed onto it by a tech nerd friend (this was responsible for most of Firefox's early success) or were convinced by an ad to download and install it, possibly not even understanding what it was, just "a thing Google keeps telling me I need".

I switched to Chrome because Firefox was (and still is) slower than Chrome. Simple as. I am not disputing the effects of ads of course.

I was a very avid Firefox user, but after the new design, hot garbage Android broswer, and the apperant security advantages(1) and speed(2) of Chromium also brave building an actual ecosystem alternative focused on privacy(mainstream browser, independent search, de-amp / ad block by default and more) I moved to it, and its been a pretty good experience.

1. https://madaidans-insecurities.github.io/firefox-chromium.ht... 2. On speedometer2 on my PC, brave gets 212, Firefox gets 155.

> Chrome actually managed to compete on the merits

Kills batteries dead twice as fast as the other leading brand!

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