Comment by leptons | Hacker News Reader

Comment by leptons | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

The reason Apple doesn't allow any other browser engines on iOS is due to them collecting up to 30% of purchases made through the apps from the app store. If a developer can do the same things with a capable web browser, then they won't need to create a native iOS app and that cuts into Apple's app revenue. So Apple purposely hobbles Safari so it doesn't have any advanced browser APIs for stuff like bluetooth or other APIs that apps have access to, forcing developers to create an app, where Apple can then cut into purchases made through the app.

It has nothing to do with people no longer using Safari and Apple being sad about that. Other browsers can technically be installed on iOS, but the underlying browser engine is forced to be Safari, which lacks many APIs other web browsers could implement, reducing the need for a native app. It's purely Apple's anti-competitive greed that drives this situation. And the EU, Japan, and the US DOJ have noticed. So far only the EU and Japan have actually taken measures to force Apple to change this.

Here's the entire DOJ lawsuit which includes many other instances of anti-competitive practices by Apple.

https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/media/1344546/dl?inline

What evidence do you have, other than speculation, that Apple is so motivated? What standard features are missing from Safari’s rendering engine that makes it a less capable browser such that developers are forced to produce apps instead?

WebXR hasn't been supported for 10 years so they control their own AR market.

How does it compare to, say, the experience on Android?

Specifically for me, my company has a product that could use Bluetooth, but Safari will never implement the Web Bluetooth API, where Chrome has for some time on Android. So the workaround is to use Wifi instead (my product supports both bluetooth and Wifi), which drains the phone battery faster.

No, we do not want to write our own iOS app where Apple can then extort us for a percentage of any sales through the app, and we have to pay for the priviledge to develop that app, as well as buy Apple hardware to do so.

So instead we use Wifi, where we can maintain one single codebase - the web application, which works on both Android and iOS, but has to use Wifi. If Apple allowed Chrome to use its own browser engine, we would simply tell users to install Chrome to interact with our device. Then we don't have to pay Apple for anything, nor should we have to.

Apple purposely won't implement some APIs so they can force developers to create an app for their app store where they can collect money from any additional sales through the app. It's all spelled out in the DOJ suit, why won't you just read it??

https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/media/1344546/dl?inline

We’ve responded to this in a different thread. See elsewhere.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com