Apple limits third-party browser engine work to EU devices
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."
Just one more reason to make laws that enforce similarly fair competition in other countries. Don't let companies get away with this shit!
Can they do that? I'd love it, but I don't think they can really force Apple, or any company to do something globally can they? (USB C was probably managed this way because of logistic and pricing matters).
they can make whatever laws they like really - the EU punishes corporate infringement with percentage of global revenue for example
whether they can enforce them or not is questionable in most cases, but unless apple wants to pull out of europe, the EU can kinda do whatever it likes
Not entirely. There still exists trade agreements, and diplomatic pushback.
Forcing companies to make products to a certain specification, would mean the EU is attempting to regulate other markets. Markets it has no direct governance over. While it may come from good intentions, it still invades the authonomy of the governments that should have governance over these markets.
Much better would be to work together with other countries, and help these countries implement similar rules, and enforce them together. Like, pretty much that the EU is doing for its members in the first place.
trade agreements likely don’t cover this though
and sure there might be diplomatic pushback, but… is that really going to happen?
the EU already forces companies to make products to certain specifications if they want to be sold in the EU… as does the US and most other countries, and California in the US tends to set the standard that everyone else lives by
countries “invade” the autonomy of other countries’ markets all the time. the US is the worst offender. this is kinda the reason the EU exists: to have the power to force things to happen that is “outside” their jurisdiction
apple doesn’t have to comply. they don’t have to sell iphones in the EU. they’re making a choice
What you are mentioning is forcing companies to comply when selling inside the EU or California. The EU does not force companies to comply with their specifications outside of the EU. Companies simply do so because it is convenient.
The EU cannot decide how cars should be made that are sold in California. If they tried, I bet the US government would have something to say about it.
What the EU can do, is exert influence to get other governments to adopt the same rules. This already happens with a lot of countries surrounding the EU. But asking another government to adopt rules, is wildly different from forcing companies to adhere to those rules inside the borders of another government.
i understand that of course, but the EU can, for example, force products that are sold in the EU to have no developer restrictions that are not compliant with EU law
… just like it can (try) to regulate the sale of of things like conflict diamonds
I could be wrong, but I believe he meant that other countries themselves should pass similar laws; not that the EU should make laws mandating what Apple does in other countries
Oh, that would make more sense, but if this was a per country decision I'd be fucked here in Mexico lol.
enforcing fair competition is certainly not very American
freedom TO vs freedom FROM
And people ask me why I de-appled...
So who did you go with? Because stock android ain’t much better privacy wise.
I'd recommend using GrapheneOS. (i'm using it, and it is a breath of fresh air)
On what phone?
What phone I have? Pixel 8 Pro (I bought it specifically for GrapheneOS, otherwise I wouldn't have bought a Pixel, als the original Pixel ROM is laggy as fuck)
Supported Devices are all Pixels since the Pixel 5a. https://grapheneos.org/faq#supported-devices
My Pixel 4a is slower with GrapheneOS than stock. Disabling GrapheneOS' Secure App Spawning helps noticeably.
With newer hardware it's likely not noticeable. (The 4a is old and even only receives security updates by GrapheneOS (no firmware updates by Google), so I really should replace it at some point.)
So a 4 year old phone isn’t supported by Google anymore?
Yeah, only starting with the Pixel 8 they promised 7 years of support
Let's see how that will go in 4 years...
Yup it's not noticable on the Pixel 8
no, but on android you have firefox.. and you have f-droid with tons of OSS applications - and a lot of them are really good, so you can ignore everything made by google.
GrapheneOS running on Pixel phone.
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.
Apple scummy once again.
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.
Wow making it as pricy as possible for developers to add features thanks Apple.
Only after getting around 20 billion of fine, these old timers will understand how tech works.
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
I guess they'll have something at firmware level identifying the registration location.
That's one way to stop outsourcing to India and create EU jobs.
Seems like this is just delaying the inevitable - just like using USB-C connectors.
I'm sure Google would love to point out the hypocrisy to get Blink in the US.
This is worse that USB-C connectors. They did launch Lightning first and it wasn't significantly worse that USB-C for a long time. Sure, they dragged their feet for longer than they probably should have (I think the iPad switched at a relatively reasonable time) but making their users switch connectors is a big change and it made sense to make sure that USB-C was here to stay and whatnot.
This is just 100% user hostile. They are doing more work to keep features from their users. Features that the user can just not use if they don't want them.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Apple's designation under Europe's Digital Markets Act (DMA) as a gatekeeper for the App Store, iOS, Safari, and just recently iPadOS forced Cupertino to make concessions.
Parisa Tabriz, VP of engineering and general manager of Chrome at Google, dismissed Apple's rule changes earlier this year.
When Apple announced its plan to make changes in response to DMA in January, developers expressed concern that supporting a separate EU browser might be a problem.
"The contract terms are bonkers and almost no vendor I'm aware of will agree to them," lamented one industry veteran familiar with the making of browsers in response to an inquiry from The Register.
In March, the European Commission opened an investigation into Apple based on concerns that Cupertino's "steering" rules and browser choice screen fell short of DMA requirements.
Asked about Apple's geofencing of devices for development, an Opera spokesperson replied that it hadn't heard about the issue – but that's not surprising given that the organization is headquartered in the EU.
The original article contains 817 words, the summary contains 165 words. Saved 80%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
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?
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'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.
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.
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.
Google has infinite money to throw at shitty projects, and the more marketshare they control the better for them since that just means more data that they can sell, so I can see that happening. I don't think Mozilla has the same luxury. I'd sooner stick to Safari than use Chrome.