Apple kills many browser games in the EU: unprecedented affront to regulation | Hacker News Reader

Apple kills many browser games in the EU: unprecedented affront to regulation

gamesfray.com

36 pointsagust52 comments

Apple sure has a lot of money, but this doesn't mean they can be allowed to think that they can do whatever they want.

EU can and should tighten the screws. Exponential fines. It is free money for the EU.

Apple is doing exactly what the EU required them to do.

Not the spirit of the law, which matters in the EU.

In this instance I’m pretty sure it is the spirit of the law. The spirit of the law was to allow competing browser engines to be on an equal footing.

Apple is made up of the kids who when told to stop touching their sibling, holds their finger a mm away.

People keep saying things like ‘affront to regulation’, but the regulation wasn’t written to make iOS more open. It was written to enable certain other middlemen more access to specific parts of iOS.

If the EU wanted to force iOS to be an open platform, they could have written a law to that effect.

I wish people would realize that just because the EU is regulating Apple and it’s fun to see power be brought to bear against Apple, it doesn’t mean the EU is actually competent to regulate the market.

> it doesn’t mean the EU is actually competent to regulate the market

The EU has done more to improve consumer choice in the mobile app industry than any other region in the world. They can go even further, but their progress so far certainly demonstrates competence.

What are you talking about?

USB C comes to mind. I think that's an example of a successful regulatory measure.

What will happen with the DMA is still to be seen. So I wouldn't judge it until we've seen if the intended effects of the regulation come to pass.

USB c hardly makes a dramatic difference to consumer choice, not that it’s bad.

You obviously don't remember the situation with mobile phone chargers before the EU mandated usb charging.

Every manufacturer had a prorietary connector, voltage etc. Even different models from the same manufacturer often had different charging standards. Complete wasteful mayhem.

Browser Choice, forcing Microsoft to Unbundle Edge again from Windows and making their crap uninstallable...

Are there really still good browser based video games out there? It seems like after flash died the only things out there are based on mobile games with very frustrating time based mechanics. There's no adventure or story in them. There's very few platformers if any. The vast majority are the cursed idle game.

The problemare the walled gardens. I believe if people could own their hardware, as in install the OS and bootloader they want, all of this wouldn't matter. Just make this and common interfaces for hardware mandatory and let companies create their own ecosystems compete with the preinstalled ones.

It looks like this is just in a beta version of iOS.

I’ll worry if/when ios gets released like this.

it's the third version of the beta, with the final version coming in March[1].

[1]https://www.macrumors.com/guide/ios-17-4-beta-features/

I have some sympathy for Apple here. The EU required Apple to offer the option of multiple browser engines. PWAs cannot integrate with iOS without using iOS's engine. So there's no way to legally offer that feature.

That’s nonsense.

Why should anyone give Apple sympathy for restricting PWAs to Safari in iOS? There is no valid reason for Apple to prevent PWAs from opening in the default browser selected by the user.

You know as well as everyone else does that PWA’s require the browser to be able to integrate with the platform at the level of the OS which would break iOS’s security model.

You might want the EU to force iOS to be an open platform, but I don’t think that was their intent when they made the requirement to allow alternate browsers.

> which would break iOS’s security model

And how is that exactly? Can you please elaborate?

It's all so familiar: just a year ago Apple would have had us believe that "You know as well as everyone else does that third party browser engines must integrate with the platform at the level of the OS which would break iOS’s security model."

Well, that obviously wasn't true, but there's still sheeple who will take the bait again and again :-)

Preventing other browsers from implementing PWAs does not improve security in iOS. This is a self-serving restriction intended to discourage users from switching away from Safari.

How exactly does it discourage users from switching away from safari?

With these changes, Safari is the only browser allowed by Apple to implement PWAs on iOS, which gives Safari an advantage over the other browsers that are not allowed to implement PWAs on iOS. Anyone who uses PWAs on iOS must do so via Safari. PWA users who prefer a non-Safari browser on iOS must switch between their preferred browser and Safari for their web browsing needs. The additional burden of maintaining two web browsers discourages these users from switching away from Safari, and the entire setup prevents these users from leaving Safari completely.

That’s not what’s happening here. PWA’s are disabled altogether in the EU to avoid exactly this favoritism.

According to the article, the latest iOS beta prevents non-Safari browsers from adding PWA icons to the home screen. These changes retain iOS's favoritism of Safari.

Not just non-safari browsers.

From TFA:

> PWAs can’t be linked to alternative browsers. Apple simply doesn’t allow it anymore at the operating system or launcher level. Users in the EU are forced to open them in Safari, if they want to open them at all.

Read it more carefully. PWAs are no longer supported, even in safari. Any old PWAs that were already in the launcher just become web links. They happen to open in safari, but they are not PWAs, and no new such links can be created.

This is just a way to not delete the old links from the user's launcher until they have had time to create new bookmarks in the browser of their choice.

If you are going to argue the this somehow advantages Safari, you aren't being serious.

> no new such links can be created

The article doesn't say that. It says that Apple is changing iOS in the EU so that PWAs can't be linked to alternative (non-Safari) browsers.

The article doesn't mention any changes to other PWA features like notifications for PWAs/links added to the home screen via Safari. It only says that, in the EU, Apple removed full-screen mode for PWAs from Safari while restricting non-Safari browsers from adding PWA icons to the home screen.

https://www.perplexity.ai/search/6a34e8f6-362a-45de-9c8b-3fc...

Stop focusing on just the article and do some background reading.

I found this:

> Now, when a user in Europe taps a web app icon, they will see a system message asking if they wish to open it in Safari or cancel. The message adds that the web app "will open in your default browser from now on." When opened in Safari, the web app opens like a bookmark, with no dedicated windowing, notifications, or long-term local storage. Users have seen issues with existing web apps such as data loss, since the Safari version can no longer access local data, as well as broken notifications.

> Progressive Web Apps are designed to offer a user experience comparable to that of native apps using web technologies, with the potential for users to add them directly to their home screen with no need for an app store. The latest change is particularly controversial because historically Apple has suggested that developers who are unwilling to comply with its App Store guidelines could instead focus on web apps. Now, the company's recent adjustments appear to contradict this stance by limiting the capabilities of PWAs and their ability to compete with native applications in iOS, raising questions about its commitment to supporting web technologies as a viable alternative to the App Store.

https://9to5mac.com/2024/02/07/17-4-beta-2/

Based on media reports like this one, assuming that the website links do open in the default browser selected by the user and not just Safari, it looks like TFA's sentence "PWAs can’t be linked to alternative browsers" is incorrect or at least imprecise.

It remains to be seen whether iOS browsers using non-WebKit browser engines in the EU can implement PWAs independently and make use of PWA links on the home screen. I'll wait and see when the iOS update is released.

> Safari is the only browser allowed by Apple to implement PWAs on iOS, which gives Safari an advantage over the other browsers that are not allowed to implement PWAs on iOS

Thank you for explaining so succinctly why Apple is compelled by regulation to remove the PWA feature from Safari.

To do otherwise would be anticompetitive and risk the wrath of the EC.

Apple is not compelled to remove PWAs from Safari in the EU, because Apple has the option of allowing non-Safari browsers to implement PWAs. Apple chose to remove a PWA feature from Safari and prevent non-Safari browsers from adding PWA icons to home screens, which degrades functionality for all iOS users in the EU while still granting Safari an anticompetitive advantage.

You aren’t making sense. How does it grant safari an advantage if no browser has PWAs?

As the article says, Apple is changing iOS in the EU to prevent non-Safari browsers from adding PWA icon links to the home screen, making this feature exclusive to Safari (and granting Safari an anticompetitive advantage). Apple did not remove PWAs in Safari, but they removed the ability for PWAs to be displayed full-screen in Safari in the EU.

Wrong. They did remove PWAs in safari. The old icons just become links with no special PWA features, and new ones can't be created.

Nothing in the article says that new PWA links can't be created in Safari. Read carefully:

> PWAs can’t be linked to alternative browsers.

If the situation that you think is happening were true, the article would simply say that Apple removed PWA links from iOS, instead of specifically saying that the removal applies to alternative (non-Safari) browsers on iOS.

this one article is not the only source of information that exists

https://www.perplexity.ai/search/6a34e8f6-362a-45de-9c8b-3fc...

They are granting their App Store or Core Technology Bullshit an huge advantage

They worked just fine until now. Also PWA's are sandboxed in the Browser, and Apple still reviews every App, even the 3rd Party ones

Since Apple has to approve every browser anyway (whether on the App Store or not), why couldn't they just enable it only for WebKit browsers? But putting even that totally aside, more engines does absolutely nothing to explain why they've also ended PWAs' ability to run in full-screen mode.

At this point they are begging to be punished. No way the EU can save their face without a reaction after all these Middle fingers from Apple

I am having most extraordinary deja-vu. How have we got to be in the same place 20 years later [0] !

Back then it wasn't even the E.U. but the US Government prosecuting the case. Apple have learned well from the masters, and are claiming the same pathetic, dishonest drivel as Microsoft tried at the start of this century.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft

I read many articles like this, protesting that Apple doesn't do this, Apple doesn't do that.

Apple isn't a monopoly, by any stretch of the imagination. 13% of the US market in Macs, 25% in mobile phones. Starbucks has a markup of 90%. Named brand spices, 100%. Hotel mini-bars, 400%. But Apple, which built the concept of an App Store, built the platform and the payment infrastructure, advertises and delivers the product, is somehow the bad guy for charging for it.

Have you tried asking Walmart how much you would have to pay to sell your product in their store?

I understand. Apple targets the high-end, so their consumers tend to be the well-heeled and hence a truly desirable market. It's like being a goat behind a fence, where all of the best green is on the other side. But, to leave the caprine behind us, what would you pay for access to a customer basis like the iPhones, including billing and distribution?

It's not as if you have to use the App Store. Deliver your apps via your own web page, advertise accordingly, and implement billing, with the attendant security.

Bob is then your uncle.

Or sell to the majority market - 75% of mobile, 87% of desktop. You know it makes sense.

Until you realise that there is minimal protection against wrongdoers, which makes your market skittish. Nor much support in the way of promotion. Still, most studies state that PC and Android are the way to go if you want peak sales.

Just do it.

Where did you get this data?

A quick search shows me in the US market iOS makes for 55% and google for 45%. [1]

Also there's a big generational gap too with younger people in the USA vastly preferring the iPhone to android (most likely due to social pressure rather than free choice).

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/266572/market-share-held...

> It's not as if you have to use the App Store. Deliver your apps via your own web page, advertise accordingly, and implement billing, with the attendant security.

This just isn't true. You cannot implement the same features in a Web app as you can in a native app.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com