Time to force Apple to do it everywhere. Very long overdue.
I’m sure some devs will love this. But equally, some may worry about the monoculture implications.
Unfortunately I don't think we will see if this is how it plays out until Apple has to allow other browsers globally.
> Use memory-safe programming languages, or features that improve memory safety within other languages, within the alternative web browser engine at a minimum for all code that processes web content
Would Apple themselves meet this requirement? Isn't WebKit C++? Of course, I'm not sure what would be considered "features that improve memory safety within other languages," that's kind of vague.
So any language should be allowed as long as they instruct developers to be careful.
I am sure that Apple will make no other efforts to impede others from unwalling the garden. That would be completely ridiculous, and frankly, un-Apple-esque.
And heres a nice video about it: https://youtu.be/Gv4sDL9Ljww?si=Z4riPMKAKcIKaU0s
I guess the requirements are pretty onerous, but they all seem like table stakes for a browser these days (Firefox or Chrome should have no problem with them, for instance.)
They are the ones allowing the alternatives because they are the gate keepers. They have "the keys"
https://developer.apple.com/documentation/bundleresources/en...
https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/media/1344546/dl?inline
Who knows if this will actually move forward now that "Tim Apple" gave the current leader a meaningless golden trophy.
At this point, Apple and Google devices are nothing more than instruments of coercion and mass surveillance.
https://tailscale.com/kb/1106/taildrop
look at all of that, lol. iDevice is literally copy and paste any file or text. the end - you don't even have to set it up.
Installation: Install the tailscale client
Sharing: Click on the share menu and select tailscale
It's a beta feature so there's also a switch you have to flip for now.
Similarly with Linux, the sheer number of rough edges, papercuts, and quirks is still too high (regardless of if I’m using a big name DE or hyper minimal tiling WM or somewhere in between) for them to serve as my main desktop environment.
Freedom and privacy exist on graphene.
Coercion and surveillance problems are pretty far down the list of complaints most people have with their personal devices.
Shipping a good and complete browser engine on iOS will require more than just developers. You'll also need a team of lawyers to threaten and sue Apple to get their policy restrictions relaxed and APIs fixed.
I doubt Mozilla or Google will be willing to spend the many developer-years and lawyer-years it will take to fully port every feature of a whole engine and properly maintain it in such a hostile environment, just for the Japan market. I expect to see some hobbyist-level ports but not something worth using for a long time. Unless other countries follow suit.
Also the EU, no?
https://www.theverge.com/2024/1/26/24052067/mozilla-apple-io...
Anybody that thinks otherwise is hopeless naive, Steve Jobs himself envisioned a web app future as the future of technology; before Apple found out the gold mine that the app store became.
It reminds me of when I asked for my account to be deleted from some online learning site (Udacity maybe?) And they're response was: "Nope, we only do that for European users." Like they went through all the effort of implementing a proper way to delete your data, but they just... don't do it if you're not in the right geographic area.
It specifically bans actions that make it unlikely for browsers to adopt alternative engines.
And they mandate no sharing of login-state with any other app from the same developer, despite violating that themselves (Safari sync is turned on by default, no encryption by default). Funny. And they mandate blocking third-party cookies, great but completely inappropriate for an OS to impose.
IlikeKitties•2h ago
There's a chair in every hotel room for iOS users. You can't even chose the software that runs on devices you bought (i don't even say "own").
vbezhenar•42m ago