Hacker News Reader

Comment by wlesieutre | Hacker News Reader

So now European users could be using Firefox with mobile gecko engine, but no one in the US will ever test with that because they're not allowed to have it. Fun!

View on HN

You are acting like people today build for firefox desktop let alone the mobile port

AFAIK, from various interactions I’ve had on here and on Lobsters, Big Tech developers seem to often have Firefox as a target. But people in startups don’t.

My startup does.

I use firefox for desktop and mobile and dont have problems with websites. Do other people have trouble or something?

I do with bank and airline (spirit in particular from recent memory) and work internal websites, so I still occasionally reach for safari.

And European users will have 3000 instances of Chrome now that every app is going to bundle it. I'm all for alternate rendering engines but without giving users a choice the bloat is going to be massive. I don't trust developers to not be bloating their apps and I can almost guarantee we'll see custom versions of Chrome to enhance dev tracking capability on users.

I don't expect many EU apps to bundle Chrome because they can't use it outside the EU and the benefits of bundling a different browser engine for in-app browsing would be limited for the types of basic browsing that is typically done inside a non-browser app. Additionally, Apple is imposing additional requirements on apps that embed alternative browser engines, including requiring apps to be updated within 15 business days of a browser engine update and requiring the app to only be available in the EU.

As a result, I would expect Chrome/Firefox/Edge/Opera to ship their own browser engines on iOS but am doubtful that many other apps will embed Chromium/Gecko with the possible exception of apps that only operate in the EU.

You don't need custom versions for Chrome for tracking. Plenty of apps force links to open in-app, inject JS and then you have to make a few additional taps to get it to open in untampered Safari

This doesn't happen on Android really. Most developers use the built in WebView

It's all doom bullshit from Apple Fanboys. It's like they never touched an Android Phone in their live

Can’t speak for other Fanboys™ but I have to help my in-laws with their Pixels weekly, which also happens to coincide with the one time a week I want to blow my brains out.

Luckily I’m extremely close to having them inducted into the fruit cult just by having them play around on my dev iPhone when I’m not working. So fingers crossed it happens before get pushed over the edge.

As an aside: what kind of OS allows apps to create read-only contacts in the Contacts app, ffs…

My comment will seem a bit rude, but do all of you guys just have idiots for inlaws? My parents are in their 70s now and are by no stretch of the imagination technical in any way, yet I've literally never had to help untangle them like I see people talk about here constantly. Hell, my 97 year old grandpa uses his ancient android phone just fine, what on earth are people doing out there?

Apples rules make it clear you can't bundle Chrome. Your alternate browser has to be fundamentally a browser, not something else that happens to have a browser as an extra feature

Oh I don’t mind running iOS wrapper from Mozilla for Firefox mobile - but give me unlock origin, and I’ll thank you for ever!

You might be interested in Orion Browser [0] which is WebKit based and can install Firefox and Chrome extensions.

[0] https://kagi.com/orion/

Thanks, I'd forgotten about this.

That’s perfect! It is funny that Kagi’s mobile browser allows Firefox extensions on iOS but Firefox for iOS doesn’t?

Maybe it does install but the extensions never really work. Can't explain this otherwise.

Firefox mobile extensions on mobile was basically a graveyard during their mobile overhaul. But it sounds like they are slowly making it easier to support mobile extensions with a metaphorical (or maybe literal) push of a button.

Oh my god. If Orion supports the SponsorBlock extension, I'll die of happiness.

Please, they could do it even with the WebKit wrapper. Edge managed to get AdBlock Pro and Brave has a content blocker built in.

And neither can block as much as uBlock Origin because of Webkit's limitations.

https://kagi.com/orion/

Orion uses WebKit and has uBlock origin so I'm not so sure it's a limitation of WebKit itself.

Kagi is trying to implement the Web Extensions API on top of WebKit, that's why some extensions work: https://kagi.com/orion/faq.html#extensions

Write enough code and you can make these extensions run on IE6. :P

Firefox’s Strict Tracking Protection blocks more ads than Edge’s ABP.

Are people still struggling with ad blockers on iOS in 2024?

Just get the Wipr Safari extension, haven’t seen an ad since I got it the year extensions were introduced.

I'm sure there are creative ways around that. A fragmented market may even incentivise or inspire other regulators to follow suit.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com