This is the best summary I could come up with:
Apple’s new rules in the European Union mean browsers like Firefox can finally use their own engines on iOS.
Although this may seem like a welcome change, Mozilla spokesperson Damiano DeMonte tells The Verge it’s “extremely disappointed” with the way things turned out.
“We are still reviewing the technical details but are extremely disappointed with Apple’s proposed plan to restrict the newly-announced BrowserEngineKit to EU-specific apps,” DeMonte says.
In iOS 17.4, Apple will no longer force browsers in the EU to use WebKit, the underlying engine that powers Safari.
“Apple’s proposals fail to give consumers viable choices by making it as painful as possible for others to provide competitive alternatives to Safari,” DeMonte adds.
Epic CEO Tim Sweeney called the new terms a “horror show,” while Spotify said the changes are a “farce.” Apple’s guidelines are still pending approval by the EU Commission.
The original article contains 285 words, the summary contains 142 words. Saved 50%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Apple isn’t that much of an asshole, it only does all the dick moves it is legally allowed to.
I think they’re probably better on privacy than default out of the box Android phones loaded up with Google adware, but that’s such an incredibly low bar.
Can’t think of any worse assholes except Google.
Just because they make nice looking hardware, you give them a pass.
Samsung finally ditched the stupid curved glass, so Androidland now has nice hardware too
Yeah I never understood that. Made me stop buying Samsung phones, also because they added a price premium. Turns out that the best Android phones are Motorola phones like the Edge 30. No crapware at all and fantastic battery time.
Good luck with that. Their phones are filled with ads and Samsung’s crappy software that can’t be removed. Apple and Google do the same thing, but their apps are at least good. As good as Samsung’s hardware is, they mess up the package with their hot garbage software.
Looking forward to the day I have the cash for Fairphone or some other alt to Android/iOS
Oh I didn’t know about fair phone. Thank you for making me aware of this project.
Be aware that their hardware has cross gen problems and their support is very bad. /e/os has implemented tracking id into their update service. They are calling cleanapk, they update OS and Webview extremly slow resulting in a very insecure OS.
they update OS and Webview extremly slow resulting in a very insecure OS.
I’ve recently got monthly updates. The last one from 2024-01-09 containing Android security patches until 12/2023.
Wonder if you could get an eu iPhone in the us, or use a vpn, or something else…
Probably ok with VPN if you never allow the phone to detect its location (gps and cell towers) cause Apple would know immediately.
But that begs the question of what happen to EU users traveling outside the EU region?
Features are locked to the region the phone was designed for so nothing software will work.
Wow, right up front, they’re being disingenuous:
“The effect of this would be to force an independent browser like Firefox to build and maintain two separate browser implementations — a burden Apple themselves will not have to bear.”
…No? Apple won’t bear that burden because they’re going to keep using WebKit. Firefox can keep using WebKit. Not using WebKit is a choice, with pros and cons.
But then you read on and it says Apple is allowing the kit to not be used in the EU only. Outside of the EU, presumably, Firefox will still have to use the Webkit or whatever. So, while Apple uses its own engine in both the EU and the US on its phones, Firefox will be able to use its own engine in the EU, too, but will have to continue using Webkit in the US and other markets outside of the EU.
I’m not sure what disingenuous about that.
It’s disingenuous to act like this is some huge burden. You ship two browsers — one for the EU and one for other markets. Firefox already ships on a number of different platforms. Adding one branch isn’t going to kill them.
Or if it’s such a pain, you don’t bother and just ship the WebKit version everywhere.
Tbf, it would be a completely new & different browser from the ground up since they would have to make it from Gecko and such. And they are already struggling with their Android browser already.
But yeah, they could keep the WebKit version everywhere.
It’s disingenuous to act like this is some huge burden.
Having to double your software engineers, UI/UX designers, QA engineers, DevOps, and localization/accessibility specialists to handle a second browser is a HUGE burden for a non-profit.
If you don’t care about quality, security, or user experience, sure you can just pass a “does it compile” test and push to prod. You’ll quickly find that nobody wants to use this under resourced browser.
Or if it’s such a pain, you don’t bother and just ship the WebKit version everywhere.
This is exactly what Apple wants. They don’t want to give people a real choice because they’re scared of real competition.
