The Register has learned from those involved in the browser trade that Apple has limited the development and testing of third-party browser engines to devices physically located in the EU. That requirement adds an additional barrier to anyone planning to develop and support a browser with an alternative engine in the EU.
It effectively geofences the development team. Browser-makers whose dev teams are located in the US will only be able to work on simulators. While some testing can be done in a simulator, there’s no substitute for testing on device – which means developers will have to work within Apple’s prescribed geographical boundary.
… as Mozilla put it – to make it “as painful as possible for others to provide competitive alternatives to Safari.”
Only after getting around 20 billion of fine, these old timers will understand how tech works.
And people ask me why I de-appled…
I’ll de-apple when we get a viable alternative to Android. As is Google has far too much control over the entirety of that ecosystem to call it workably open, and if I’m going to choose between two proprietary vendors I’m going to choose the more reliable one with a business built around consumer interest instead of ad-company interests.
Try GrapheneOS. It has some quirks but it’s a good alternative. Been using it for two years on a phone and I’m considering getting it on a tablet.
Google still owns the ecosystem. They want to roll a new packaging system that depreciates apks and forces play store installs or Google based certificate pining? They’ll have 90% market capture in a year. It’s like using Opera/Edge/Etc and feeling safe from the decisions Google makes because of it, but they’re writing and designing Chromium upstream so they still own the agency and the choice (See Manifest v3). Given two companies both preventing me from owning agency of my own device, I’ll pick the lesser of the two evils and in my eyes that is currently Apple. I do hope to have a mobile operating system akin to Linux someday, but graphine os or any android dirivitive is not the solution, it just takes away my agency while they further the problem.
So who did you go with? Because stock android ain’t much better privacy wise.
GrapheneOS running on Pixel phone.
I don’t see third party engines making it to the market unless the US also slams down some regulations. How many Firefox users are there in the EU? How many use iOS, and how many of those are likely to use the iOS version of Firefox? Is it worth maintaining two to four separate apps for this?
It’s guaranteed that Google will create a version of chrome of the EU market as well. Yea it’s another big tech, but app devs having the same browser engine working on iOS and droid will be a boon. Since ff has the android app already, it’s also not like they will have a new greenfield development for it.
How many Firefox users are there in the EU?
More than in the US.
Firefox has a 5.07% share of European users, versus 4.21% in the US.
The population of the EU as per January 2023 is 448.8 million, compared to the 2023 US estimate of 334.9 million.
Well I suppose the question really is; how many Firefox iOS/iPad OS are there in the EU and does that amount of users make it worth maintaining another 1-2 apps for the EU market, while dealing with Apple’s shenanigans? Like Firefox Browser for iOS and iPad, as well as Firefox Focus are already 2 apps, if you want to replace the back-end specifically for the EU you’d have to maintain that back-end, deal with Apple working against you, and maintain separate versions of those apps specifically for the EU.
It’s worth noting that Firefox for iOS is already leaps and bounds behind Firefox for Android in terms of UX. There are features missing that they could add regardless of whether they are using WKWebView or not, but they haven’t, either because Apple doesn’t want competition, or because they don’t consider the Firefox browser on iOS to be particularly high priority.
If the latter, why on Earth would they port Gecko to iOS/iPad OS when a vanishingly small subset of users might use it? I am a European Firefox user, but I don’t use Firefox on iOS because the UX compared to Safari is incredibly lacklustre. Switching the back-end to Gecko wouldn’t do anything to fix that.
I think many Firefox users are tech savvy enough to know that Firefox for iOS is just a reskinned Safari. They know that it isn’t the real-deal and so any stats on who uses Firefox on iOS are kind of misrepresenting the situation.
Yeah. The main reason I could think of is if you use Firefox Sync. I actually do have that on my iPad, though it’s rare that I’ll ever open something on my PC and then resume it on my iPad.
does that amount of users make it worth maintaining another 1-2 apps for the EU market, while dealing with Apple’s shenanigans
I’d say that’s a resounding “no”, but I must admit that basically nothing is worth dealing with Apple’s shenanigans in the first place if you ask me.
Especially when it’s likely that they’ll eventually play themselves out of the European market completely with their anti-consumer bullshit and the EU’s increasing courage in protecting consumers from such abuse as is integral to all things Apple.
That echoes my thoughts.
That’s one way to stop outsourcing to India and create EU jobs.
Wouldn’t a vpn solve this?
I assume they are doing checks of other things. Local software is not the same as a web service that is checking your IP for your location.
They could use location services, your registration country for your Apple ID, the sale location of your device, and other things. They could even aggregate indicators and use that.
iOS would have root access to aGPS (or even real GPS) to determine location. There’s no easy way to spoof that against a determined asshole actor.
I have the feeling that it would require a GPS spoof
Just one more reason to make laws that enforce similarly fair competition in other countries. Don’t let companies get away with this shit!
geolocking is immoral. if they’re getting it why the fuck shouldn’t we?
Time to elect better politicians.
Where are they?
And of course with First-past-the-post even if they appear it is harmful to vote for them because you are better to strategically vote for a party that actually has a chance of winning even if they are only marginally better than the other party that is expected to win.
The system is really fucked up top-to-bottom. Very likely on purpose.
Apple scummy once again.
