Comment by alwillis | Hacker News Reader

Comment by alwillis | Hacker News Reader

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>There are literally zero browser engines allowed on iOS, other than Safari/webkit, with a purposefully depleted feature set, to force developers and users to the app store.

Apple is clearly moving towards a more secure set of operating systems and that starts by reducing the attack surface.

On macOS, Apple is deprecating kernel extensions; the boot partition on macOS Catalina is read-only so that it can’t be modified by malicious software: https://wccftech.com/macos-catalina-runs-on-dedicated-read-o...

Even Safari on iOS doesn’t support browser extensions.

>instead of simply allowing an open-market to thrive on iOS.

The App Store paid developers $34 billion in 2018; I would say the market is thriving: https://fortune.com/2019/01/28/apple-app-store-developer-ear...

>Safari/webkit, with a purposefully depleted feature set

Just checked html5test.com from my iPhone 7 running iOS 13.2.2; Safari scores 463 and Firefox 48 mobile scored 468 out of 555 points. And this is without enabling a bunch of experimental work-in-progress features: https://imgur.com/a/Y5NHwct

So there's no meaningful difference in capability of these browsers when it comes to features.

Of course, Safari is faster, requires less RAM and consumes less power, which should count for something on a mobile device.

This response literally proves fanboys and employees will offer circuitous logic to substantiate Apple. iOS Safari W3C non-compliance is well known, a little googling will lay out the (intentionally) missing features.

You go to lengths to defend Apple, but do not have the guts to let the consumer pick a Google/Mozilla alternative engine. What is Apple so scared of, if not a level playing field.

This is the same company that retroactively modified it's store policies to substantiate booting steam off the app store. Courage in the face of competition, not!!

I was a bit surprised to learn a year or two ago that the browser makers have pretty much divorced W3C:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/WHATWG

>iOS Safari W3C non-compliance is well known, a little googling will lay out the (intentionally) missing features.

The illogic here is a little scary: Firefox and Safari on iOS basically have the same level of web standards compliance according to html5test.com, yet one is intentionally not implementing features?

No fanboyism; just the facts.

It's not that surprisingly that the one making the decisions about the browser engine is blamed, not the one forced to use the browser engine instead of their own, is it?

To be clear, the html5test.com numbers for Firefox are for Firefox on Android.

Quote:

  YOUR BROWSER SCORES
         491
  OUT OF 555 POINTS
  You are using Firefox Mobile 68.0 on Android 8.1.0

Not 468.

The numbers I quoted were from Firefox 48, not 68.

> >instead of simply allowing an open-market to thrive on iOS.

> The App Store paid developers $34 billion in 2018; I would say the market is thriving: https://fortune.com/2019/01/28/apple-app-store-developer-ear....

They said open market. Apple's closed market is thriving, but the open market doesn't exist on iOS.

browser extesions are a privacy feature. my browsing is much more private on Firefox with ublock origin then on no extension safari.

As for Safari using less power and ram on mobile there is no evidence that Firefox would uae more of either since Apple doesn't allow it to run. As far as we know if other browsers were allowed to run some might compete on power and ram.

As for security, chrome on desktop has a superior track record. The CVE list proves this, so by denying competition Apple denies users more secure browsers.

> As for Safari using less power and ram on mobile there is no evidence that Firefox would uae more of either since Apple doesn't allow it to run. As far as we know if other browsers were allowed to run some might compete on power and ram.

Firefox is slower, requires more RAM and uses more power on macOS now; it’s highly unlikely that essentially the same engine running on iOS would run significantly differently.

Of the mainstream browsers on macOS, Firefox has always been the slowest.

>browser extesions are a privacy feature. my browsing is much more private on Firefox with ublock origin then on no extension safari. All things being equal, you shouldn't have to rely on extensions in 2019 to protect your privacy.

The goal is to preserve privacy by default--no extensions required. The vast number of users don't install them or wouldn't know which ones to install.

Brave is secure out of the box and doesn't require extensions to protect your privacy: https://brave.com/features/

Safari also doesn't require extensions to protect your privacy: WebKit Tracking Prevention Policy—https://webkit.org/tracking-prevention-policy/

Apple first shipped Intelligent Tracking Prevention in June 2017, long before Firefox or any other browser had anything similar: https://webkit.org/blog/7675/intelligent-tracking-prevention...

I know this false based on all the ads I see in webpages in Safari that I don't see when in Firefox with UBlock Origin. Every ad I see was served by the ad company. Safari might be blocking cookies but it's not letting me block the ads which is all that's really needed to track.

Safari doesn’t block ads currently; that’s true.

Safari’s Intelligent Tracking Prevention stops the cross-site tracking, fingerprinting, etc. by ad companies.

The ability to block content is built-in to macOS and iOS for 3rd parties to use.

Regarding performance, here’s a detailed article on benchmarks for the various Javascript engines; Firefox is the slowest: https://webkit.org/blog/8685/introducing-the-jetstream-2-ben...

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