[ladon86]

> Today, iOS users already have the ability to set a third-party web browser — other than Safari — as their default. Reflecting the DMA’s requirements, Apple is also introducing a new choice screen that will surface when users first open Safari in iOS 17.4 or later. That screen will prompt EU users to choose a default browser from a list of options.

Any idea if this means you can actually choose a different browser, or are you choosing a different WebKit wrapper (e.g. the current version of Chrome on iOS)?

[hanshenning]

> To reflect the DMA’s changes, developers will be able to use alternative browser engines — other than WebKit — for dedicated browser apps and apps providing in-app browsing experiences in the EU.

https://developer.apple.com/support/dma-and-apps-in-the-eu/#...

[wlesieutre]

So now European users could be using Firefox with mobile gecko engine, but no one in the US will ever test with that because they're not allowed to have it. Fun!

[kjkjadksj]

You are acting like people today build for firefox desktop let alone the mobile port

[postalrat]

I use firefox for desktop and mobile and dont have problems with websites. Do other people have trouble or something?

[kjkjadksj]

I do with bank and airline (spirit in particular from recent memory) and work internal websites, so I still occasionally reach for safari.

[Diti]

AFAIK, from various interactions I’ve had on here and on Lobsters, Big Tech developers seem to often have Firefox as a target. But people in startups don’t.

[Hugsun]

My startup does.

[s3p]

And European users will have 3000 instances of Chrome now that every app is going to bundle it. I'm all for alternate rendering engines but without giving users a choice the bloat is going to be massive. I don't trust developers to not be bloating their apps and I can almost guarantee we'll see custom versions of Chrome to enhance dev tracking capability on users.

[tech234a]

I don't expect many EU apps to bundle Chrome because they can't use it outside the EU and the benefits of bundling a different browser engine for in-app browsing would be limited for the types of basic browsing that is typically done inside a non-browser app. Additionally, Apple is imposing additional requirements on apps that embed alternative browser engines, including requiring apps to be updated within 15 business days of a browser engine update and requiring the app to only be available in the EU.

As a result, I would expect Chrome/Firefox/Edge/Opera to ship their own browser engines on iOS but am doubtful that many other apps will embed Chromium/Gecko with the possible exception of apps that only operate in the EU.

[Avamander]

You don't need custom versions for Chrome for tracking. Plenty of apps force links to open in-app, inject JS and then you have to make a few additional taps to get it to open in untampered Safari

[nox101]

Apples rules make it clear you can't bundle Chrome. Your alternate browser has to be fundamentally a browser, not something else that happens to have a browser as an extra feature

[ravetcofx]

This doesn't happen on Android really. Most developers use the built in WebView

[albert180]

It's all doom bullshit from Apple Fanboys. It's like they never touched an Android Phone in their live

[turquoisevar]

Can’t speak for other Fanboys™ but I have to help my in-laws with their Pixels weekly, which also happens to coincide with the one time a week I want to blow my brains out.

Luckily I’m extremely close to having them inducted into the fruit cult just by having them play around on my dev iPhone when I’m not working. So fingers crossed it happens before get pushed over the edge.

As an aside: what kind of OS allows apps to create read-only contacts in the Contacts app, ffs…

[reacharavindh]

Oh I don’t mind running iOS wrapper from Mozilla for Firefox mobile - but give me unlock origin, and I’ll thank you for ever!

[afruitpie]

You might be interested in Orion Browser [0] which is WebKit based and can install Firefox and Chrome extensions.

[0] https://kagi.com/orion/

[reacharavindh]

That’s perfect! It is funny that Kagi’s mobile browser allows Firefox extensions on iOS but Firefox for iOS doesn’t?

[the_gipsy]

Maybe it does install but the extensions never really work. Can't explain this otherwise.

[a_wild_dandan]

Oh my god. If Orion supports the SponsorBlock extension, I'll die of happiness.

[user_7832]

Thanks, I'd forgotten about this.

[zshrc]

Please, they could do it even with the WebKit wrapper. Edge managed to get AdBlock Pro and Brave has a content blocker built in.

[abhinavk]

Firefox’s Strict Tracking Protection blocks more ads than Edge’s ABP.

[luuurker]

And neither can block as much as uBlock Origin because of Webkit's limitations.

[ashyaspen]

https://kagi.com/orion/

Orion uses WebKit and has uBlock origin so I'm not so sure it's a limitation of WebKit itself.

[turquoisevar]

Are people still struggling with ad blockers on iOS in 2024?

Just get the Wipr Safari extension, haven’t seen an ad since I got it the year extensions were introduced.

[dleeftink]

I'm sure there are creative ways around that. A fragmented market may even incentivise or inspire other regulators to follow suit.

[ckcheng]

> actually choose a different browser, or are you choosing a different WebKit wrapper

I understand the "WebKit wrapper" for iOS criticism and do want different rendering engines available (e.g. Firefox's) and yet...

The worse thing about Firefox for iOS is the wrapper part, not the lack of rendering engine choice part. The UI of Firefox on iOS is inconsistent and buggy, and syncing doesn't sync well, etc. I doubt using FF's own rendering engine instead of WebKit would help the situation, as it'd drain engineering resources away from making the "wrapper" more usable.

I've always used Firefox, on Mac, Linux, Windows, Android, everywhere I can, but I find myself using it less and less on iOS... and it's not because of the rendering engine!

But since this change for the DMA will allow FF to use its own rendering engine (in the EU), hopefully maybe it'll reenergize the development of FF and improve the "wrapper" part more - even for non EU users!

[jerbear4328]

Writing this on FF for iOS, the biggest reason I want to use the Firefox engine is for Firefox extensions. WebKit doesn't support extensions except the App Store ones in Safari, I want to use traditional extensions from AMO. Just let me use uBlock on my phone!

I do agree, the Firefox iOS UI is clunky, but I find it useful for stuff where I want to sync passwords or tabs. I use Safari for browsing the web casually because it's nicer, and the feature of swiping between tabs is so convenient.

[freediver]

> WebKit doesn't support extensions

Just to correct the common misconception. It is browser vendors that need to build web extension API support on top of WebKit. Orion browser [1] did this both for macOS and iOS . The support is still in beta and improving with each new release. iOS support remains limited to what is possible to achieve with a JS wrapper. Nothing prevents Firefox from doing the same and offer at least partial web extension support on iOS.

[1] https://kagi.com/orion

[jerbear4328]

Oh, that's awesome! I'm very glad to be corrected, thank you! I've heard of Orion but didn't realize it could do that, I will check that out. Thanks!

[the_gipsy]

Does uBlock Origin work?

[coldpie]

Firefox with uBlock Origin and NoScript on iOS!! Ahhh!! Yes!!

[albert180]

Don't forget Sponsorblock for YouTube. It makes the experience so much nicer

[madeofpalk]

WebKit does support the same extension API as Firefox - it’s an open standard. How you install them, bundled in a native app from the App Store, is the annoying clunky part.

[madars]

WebKit does not support blocking Web Request, which is what uBlock Origin uses (See compatibility matrix at the bottom of https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Add-ons/Web...) In fact, it is all about blocking Web Request, not say, Manifest V2 vs Manifest V3 (Firefox supports MV3 but adds blocking Web Request support.)

[piperswe]

Orion supports WebExtensions on iOS.

[pier25]

Nitpick but a browser engine is much more than the rendering engine.

[judge2020]

Per Macrumors:

> Apple is giving app developers in the EU access to NFC and allowing for alternative browser engines, so WebKit will not be required for third-party browser apps. Apps will be able to offer NFC payments without using Apple Pay or the Wallet app through Host Card Emulation. Apps can also access field detect, and a default app can be set to activate when an iPhone is placed near a terminal.

Although this only changes things for us developers. Regular users really don’t care what browser is running the web pages they’re looking at, everyone who downloads chrome does so to get their synced bookmarks and history.

https://www.macrumors.com/2024/01/25/ios-17-4-alternative-ap...

[addicted]

> Regular users really don’t care what browser is running the web pages they’re looking at, everyone who downloads chrome does so to get their synced bookmarks and history.

This is ahistorical. Regular users switched to Firefox and Chrome in droves from IE. And it wasn’t to sync their bookmarks. It was because they provided a much better experience.

If Blink or Gecko are able to provide a better experience than WebKit on iOS that would certainly prompt many users to switch to browsers using those engines.

[jahewson]

Seems unlikely given that out in the free world we’ve seen a consolidation around Chromium. The web is mature enough at this point that the choice of browser engine mostly isn’t a differentiating factor.

[pzo]

different browser engine can implement API that safari mobile don'w want to implement or are slacking to implement

- fullscreen on iPhone

- WebBluetooth

- WebUSB

- WebMIDI

- WebSensor

- Web Push notifications - that are less limited than in current safari

- WASM simd

- WASM multithreading

- WebGPU

This will make PWA apps less crippled.

[kmlx]

i can't wait to see what kind of tracking will be possible with these new technologies :) /s

i know these guys https://fingerprint.com use so many of these when fingerprinting.

[noqc]

Um, no. Regular users care about being able to run ublock origin.

[jerbear4328]

Yes, give me my uBlock and Tampermonkey! And many other miscellaneous privacy and convenience extensions that make the web just that much better.

[chinathrow]

Sweet sweet Android.

[mvdtnz]

That's like claiming only mechanics are interested in what engine a car is running - regular users only care about the seat and steering wheel.

Regular users care about the experience of the browser. A superior rendering engine can potentially improve this experience.

[asow92]

> That's like claiming only mechanics are interested in what engine a car is running - regular users only care about the seat and steering wheel.

That's probably true for quite a lot of people in those categories.

[mvdtnz]

Let me help you out here. It isn't true as a generalisation. Ever.

[twism]

ha. that claim is true ... most folks don't care if the car is an i4 or v6?

[mvdtnz]

You're missing the point. People can feel that a twin turbo inline 6 drives much smoother and more powerfully than a 1.3L 4 banger even if they don't know the first thing about what's under the bonnet. The engine changes the entire experience.

[halostatue]

And most people don't care at all what's under the bonnet.

They want something that reliably gets them from A to B and back, with occasional side trips to C, D and E. They want something that does that in a way that matches their personal style. They want something that isn't going to cost them an arm and a leg to run.

Forty, fifty, and sixty years ago people cared a lot more. Starting really in the mid-90s, that changed. Nowadays, there are probably as many gearheads as there were decades ago, but as a population they represent a smaller percentage. And there's a tiny percentage of people who care only so that they can mod their engines to run less efficiently so they can pwn the libz.

Inasmuch as people do care about the 1.3 4 banger — they choose it because it generally runs more reliably over time with fewer litres burned per 100km.

[xwolfi]

I think you're wrong: people who buy a shitty second-hand car to go to work and have little money to spare on it: indeed, really 0 interest in the car as long as it runs long enough to generate profit to break even.

But if you are going to spend 10k$+ on a car, then you start caring, A LOT. I've seen the change from when I was a student willing to take any crap on wheel, vs when I had some money to burn on a car and I spent weeks looking at everything to end up buying a 10k$ 20yo Porsche 911 :D See, I didn't even look at the fuel cost: only the engine perf per dollars. And it cost me an arm and a leg to run, in Hong Kong where the fuel cost is the highest in the world !

People don't work as rational machines balancing perfectly cost and profit in a constant manner over time. It's more a constraint compromise game with a repressed desire for luxury that seem to drive us: you'll buy what you can afford and within those boundaries you will choose comfort and design over economic optimization. Like when people buy an iphone, evidently they didn't look at all about cost for performance and choose something economically suboptimal but luxurious.

Accept it and you'll start liking them more I think.

[mvdtnz]

> most people don't care at all what's under the bonnet

> They want something that isn't going to cost them an arm and a leg to run.

Pick a lane.

[twism]

i still think the claim regular car users don't really care about the engine specs holds true ... you'd be hard pressed if you can tell the difference between an inline 4 and v6 these days tho (apart from how many more times you are hitting the gas station; some inline 4s even perform better than v6s)

[mvdtnz]

You're still missing the point. I don't think this conversation is going to be productive.

[e_y_]

That's exactly what I predicted for NFC when Apple announced Apple Pay. Apple kept developers from using any of the NFC APIs until they were ready to roll out Apple Pay, and then only allowed non-payment NFC after that. It gave them 10 years to establish Apple Pay.

Being the system default was obviously very convenient for customers and there would be a very high bar for any other payment app to compete, but Apple wanted to make absolutely sure there was no possible competition.

[wiseowise]

> Regular users really don’t care what browser is running the web pages they’re looking at, everyone who downloads chrome does so to get their synced bookmarks and history.

As a regular user - I do.

[EthicalSimilar]

You’re on HackerNews. Doesn’t quite scream “regular user”.

[wiseowise]

I don’t develop for a browser or use any advanced features.

[twism]

that's the case now but in the future you can now offer regular users features that currently only android chrome can do

[bhpm]

FTA:

The changes include more than 600 new APIs, expanded app analytics, functionality for alternative browser engines

[ladon86]

Ah, I clearly didn’t read it closely enough. Thank you!

[hjnilsson]

Well first version it will be different WebKit wrappers, as they are the only option available on iOS right now.

But they simultaneously open the door to other browser engines, so I imagine Firefox at least will release their app with a new browser engine down the line.

[insane_dreamer]

Wonderful; now devs have to support a plethora of browsers on iOS instead of just one -- the same shit-show as on the desktop.

[lacerrr]

they have to do that anyway, or did you forget all the non-iOS mobile users?

[pathartl]

I would imagine this doesn't open up the opportunity for other engines.

[ryaneager]

They state the exact opposite in the second sentence of the article. Please, at least read the opening paragraph before commenting.

[olliej]

So I'm guessing you didn't read the article then?

[sunnybeetroot]

No need to imagine, the answer is at the top of the article.

[andylynch]

It does, but on closer reading looks restricted to EU, they certainly aren’t suggesting a , say, gecko based browser could be published globally outside the EU.

[fredoralive]

"New frameworks and APIs for alternative browser engines — enabling developers to use browser engines, other than WebKit, for browser apps and apps with in-app browsing experiences."