This makes it extremely hard to get any sort of antitrust leverage against Apple. We can keep screaming at them until we're blue in the face and nothing will change.
Simple solution: require all OS vendors to permit opt-in, off-by-default sideloading.
Curate your app store all you want, but don't prevent your users from running whatever software they want on their own computers.
That would solve this.
Jailbreaking it and installing it via Cydia would be easier.
Such a policy hasn't destroyed Mac OS X's security model and it wouldn't destroy iOS'.
Well, unless you're Taylor Swift. Then Apple will do what you ask within 24h.
I know there's no Taylor Swift of the iOS software ecosystem, but I think that's attitude is defeatist. If more people complained about a lack of real browser choice on iOS, including developers and users, Apple would eventually have to cave.
Oh, and I don't think Apple had more than 20% of the U.S. ebook market, yet DoJ still sued them for price fixing - and Apple lost. So if we can find the will (political or otherwise), I think we can get Apple to allow other browsers.
In the U.S., where this case would be tried anyway, Apple has over 40% market share.
The publishers wanted bigger profits and Apple wanted a larger market share of eBooks. If anything they were attempting to break a monopoly.
Nope. Don't you remember just a few years ago, when everyone was screaming at Apple for years to put Flash on its mobile devices? Apple never caved. Apple doubled down, because Apple was smart enough to figure out that Flash was a battery-sucking, security-ruining disaster.
Gee, kinda like allowing third parties to control the web browser on a mobile device would be. Fancy that!
Apple doubled down because Apple was never going to concede to ANY party that might take their control away ever again.
Apple is never going to concede on this either because eventually people would then use the browser to escape the App Store.
You can scream until you are blue in the face and Apple will ignore you because unfettered Javascript is an existential threat to their walled garden.
I really miss Chrome's multi-profile support, but it's just so much heavier. Last time I used Firefox (admittedly ~3 years ago) it was even worse. System-wide beachballs. Much worse than having Eclipse open. That's what got me to switch to Chrome for a time, after being a FF user since the Phoenix/Firebird days.
That's not surprising, considering it's the only product not forced to use the public web view object in iOS. It's like Microsoft Office, which has always used private MS apis that other products running on Windows were not allowed/supposed to.
Apple also owns the app store and the default configuration of the OS is moving towards only allowing app store software (has it already finished that transition)?
They can and will reject anyone who uses private apis that they themselves use.
In addition, because they own the OS they can require that a private API is only accessed by software signed by them.
It also could cause firefox to break on OS updates and would require firefox to keep abrest of those changes.
Here's a couple references:
Apple does use private APIs: http://www.wired.com/2008/02/firefox_developer_uncovers_appl...
Apple rejected firefox from the app store at some point for using private apis:
Apple is dominant in the sense that they command an outsize portion of developer/consumer mindshare. So issues like this just get drowned out in all the fawning.
You don't get to throw anti-trust at Apple because you can't be bothered to switch to a different type of smartphone, just like you can't throw anti-trust at Ford because you don't want to drive a Chevy. The notion is absurd.
Which could (in a formal logic, not juristic logic, sense) lead to an argument why anybody should be allowed to install any software they want on their devices - a demand that I, as a hacker, fully support.
So, rather than fix a real problem, people start complaining about something a lot smaller: "18% of the world's phones run in a walled garden with a relatively modern browser."
Also, Linux works fine for plenty of people, sure miniscule in proportion, but it hasn't failed.
When you have 90% market share, you have a monopoly. It hinders innovation.
https://html5test.com/results/desktop.html
https://html5test.com/results/mobile.html
Sure, Apple has made Microsoft a little better but the monopoly that Microsoft has really means that they don't need to compete.
http://appleinsider.com/articles/15/07/02/apples-iphone-gain...
Apple's mobile market share in the US: 43.5% Samsung: 28.7% LG: 8.2% Motorola: 5.1% HTC: 3.8%
It always makes me laugh when people still, in 2015, try to pretend that Apple isn't dominant and getting more dominant with time, in the mobile space.
And the reason they are is because they put user experience before developers or dogma.