But God I don’t want this. The iPhone is basically the only thing stopping a total Chrome/Chromium hegemony from ruling the web the way IE did.

I don’t think Google will practically abandon things the way Microsoft did. But they will absolutely have the kind of power Microsoft did to force any feature.

I don’t want to be forced to use Chrome because it’s the only browser that works on most sites. It’s already bad enough with some sites.

But Apple‘s stubbornness and completely different reasons are the only things accidentally holding back the tide.

> 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.

The demand that the application with its alternate browser engine must be a completely new and separate binary from any app already using the built in browser makes it hard for existing big players like Chrome - they would have to manage two apps on the store during any transition to their own engine, which supposedly has been one of the biggest stumbling blocks for them already in the EU.

> Prioritize resolving reported vulnerabilities with expedience [...] Most vulnerabilities should be resolved in 30 days, but some may be more complex and may take longer.

Apple does not comply with this.

At this point, Apple and Google devices are nothing more than instruments of coercion and mass surveillance.

* If Apple allows alternative app stores then the whole ios ecosystem will rot and be foooded with malware, brough up during the Apple vs. Epic cases

* If Apple can’t control the data on their user’s phones, then privacy rights will disappear, a common talking point during the Apple vs. Facebook case for opt-in data collection.

And like, these points are correct — Apple kind of acts like a “benevolent dictator” when it comes to their ecosystem. But shouldn’t there be alternatives between “Apple can control all software on the hardware they sell” and “the moment Apple doesn’t have control of their user’s experience then it’ll be far worse”? Like, we should have more tech companies, more options to pick from between these two extremes. The market needs to be more competitive, and if that isn’t possible shouldn’t there be regulation to protect users and devs better? This constantly feels like a “pick your poison“ kind of deal, where we can only pick between a company locking down their hardware or abuse of users via. software. If Microsoft banned alternative browser engines there’d be riots in these comments. Apple is just better to its users.

Giving companies the power to lock down hardware they sell isn’t a solution that will work when Apple inevitably turns against its users, and is a horrible precedent to set legally. Lord knows John Deere and a million other predatory hardware companies are salivating at the idea of users of their hardware not having control over what they bought, and Meta and Microsoft love the idea of users not having control of the software they run and the data it collects. We can’t just picking between the least worst of two companies.

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.

Time to force Apple to do it everywhere. Very long overdue.

This hardly seems to allow anything.

Now every phone will ship with 2 engines (inevitably chrome is going to be bundled in at least one of your apps). Both are tied to large tech companies. And both have approximately the same feature set.

At this stage, I can't think of any upside for the end user. New CSS crap or obscure web APIs, or proprietary DRM? And the cost is that we're going to get new website badges "only in Chrome", or "only in Safari", like it's 1999.

This is Apple, people know what they get into, and they kind of want that an iPhone is not a PC.

It looks like everyone thinks that this is a good thing. Can anyone explain beyond the "this is a monopoly" argument? It's not a monopoly if the engine is free, and if they need the engine to more or less match all the desktop engines.

I don't feel cornered by Apple on that one.