OF COURSE this doesn’t apply to the UK, giving me yet another reason to wish kidney stones upon the architects of Brexit.
I’m pretty sure the haunted Victorian pencil that is Jacob Rees-Mogg said that the UK not having universal USB-C was a “Brexit benefit”. God help us all.
Yeah but he only says that sort of thing because he thinks that anything to electronic is voodoo magic.
…THE ARISTOCRATS!
did i do it right?
“So there’s this family of Tories, right, and they walk into a theatre…”
I mean, I’m sure they sell Android phones in the UK. Why do you buy Apple products if you are aware of their monopolistic practices that have to be battled with legislation?
not OP, but for me, using an iPhone and wishing it had a few features android had feels a lot better than using android and wishing it had features iOS does. It’s not like they both don’t participate in monopolistic practices
The fuck would I want to actively give all that data to Google for?
Also, I’ve blagged a couple of fairly old Samsung tablets to use at work, and they’re absolute shit to set up when compared to an iPad. There’s all the stock Google apps, and all the stock Samsung apps that offer the same fucking features, and they keep bugging you to set them up.
Nah mate, fuck using Android. All power to those who do, but it’s not my bag.
That way Firefox has to submit a different app for Europe, splitting its userbase and making it more complicated for developers. They are pulling every trick they can…
True, but Firefox has a loyal fanbase.
I remember the day Firefox came out… It will always hold a special place in my heart.
I remember Phoenix.
If this was worldwide it would be the same amount QA work. The new rendering engine is the only thing worth paying attention to.
Almost no one is going to spend time QAing non-European Firefox. Outside of Europe it is basically just a glorified Safari WebView.
Crapple at it again
I think it will be an interesting experiment to see the impact of allowing other rendering engines. If the sky doesn’t fall, Apple doesn’t have a lot to argue with.
Safari will still have more than 90% of the market share in iOS. Most Apple users don’t care or are fully unaware of this.
Google will shove Chrome ads everywhere and get some users.
True. But that’s irrelevant to my curiosity.
Most iPhone users use Chrome even tough it’s just Safari but from Google. Google will just update the EU version to use Chromium and the in users will notice nothing.
Most iPhone users definitely don’t use chrome
The only way Apple can make good changes is if the EU forces them to make good changes.
Apple can be so laughably pathetic at times
Other than creating the M1/M2 CPUs, when in the last 20 years haven’t they been? Fuck apple.
The unibody MBPs were solid for the most part. From 2008 to 2012 Apple actually made really good, decently priced, upgradeable, virtually indestructible Unix workstations; I’ll give them that.
Too bad they then made the Retina generation of MBPs, which dropped most of what made the unibodies great and turned them from Unix workhorses to overpriced prosumer devices. And that’s where they lived ever since.
They absolutely unfucked it with the 16" M1 though
Except it’s also not upgradable so you’re still screwed when inevitably you find that the six megabytes of RAM they’ve given you aren’t enough
Not in my opinion. The ports are barely adequate and I think neither RAM nor storage are user-upgradeable. The silicon is nice, yes, and they got rid of the touch bar. But I still think it’s forcing too many tradeoffs to be worth it. (And, as usual, their base storage is tiny and their SSD upgrades are way overpriced. Hence the lack of internal slots is a real pain.)
A 4-year period, 14 years ago…? That’s actually pathetic.
The preceding ones (iBooks, MacBooks, and aluminum MBPs) were okay for their time as well but not at the same level as the unibodies. Still, it’s been a long time since Apple hardware was worth getting excited about.
Mind you, this is purely from a computer perspective. I never cared about their phones so I don’t know how their quality holds up. I do acknowledge that they’re unbeatable in terms of duration of support, though.
those CPUs just happen to have a huge marketing budget behind and a very loyal fanbase. They aren’t anything revolutionary. Sure, more battery life. In terms of daily usage, the difference with a high end AMD or Intel CPU is unnoticeable other than having a shiny apple on the back of your laptop.
Well I went from an Intel to m1 (work) MacBook and the difference was quite stark. Even at times feels as fast as my home desktop, which is beefy.
Oh my god just let me use my fucking Firefox plugins, Apple. 😑
I got so excited for the headline until I saw the parentheses 😭
Same. Overall, I’m happy with my iPhone, but not having an actual browser with an actual ad blocker (uBlock Origins) is really painful. I’ve had to live with ProtonVPN’s ad blocking, but that only prevents sites from loading, it doesn’t hide the actual ad links…
AdGuard is a solid ad blocker for Safari. Not quite uBlock Origin level, but close.
Maybe, but Safari has a dogshit UI and I much prefer Firefox over it. I despise the fact that they don’t let other browsers use their extensions, though (even though they’re forced to reskin Safari). I’d install AdGuard on Firefox if I could.
I actually find the bottom bar pretty great.
But you can actually switch between two layouts in the Settings app. Maybe you like the other option better?
Firefox has a bottom bar as well
I use 1Blocker for which I bought the lifetime license on my iOS Safari, as well as adGuard DNS blocking running on my OpnSense at home (WireGuard automatically connects my phone to my home network via VPN as soon as I leave my WiFi)
It’s amazing how much of the bare minimum they’re doing.
This only in the EU thing is going to bite them in the ass hard. You’re going to get App developers pretending to operate in the EU or moving there just to have more creative freedom.
Users will also find ways of doing the exact same. You can’t have one rule for one group of people and different rules for everyone else.
They may eventually get dragged there kicking and screaming but will milk consumers in other markets for every penny they can before that happens
You can’t have one rule for one group of people and different rules for everyone else.
“In the name of the greatest smartphone that have ever graced this earth, we draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny, and say separate rules now, separate rules tomorrow, separate rules forever.” -Apple, probably
Sounds awfully lot like ‘divide and conquer’. Where have I heard that before?
Just a wild guess, but I think Apple is fully aware of this. They are intentionally keeping it separate to set a precedence that they will not bend over and let EU dictate and for the rest of the world to reap the benefit. Same with their decision to fine users for sideloading. They know it’s a losing battle they are just trying to make it as difficult as possible.
Most developers won’t pretend they operate in the EU because that would likely result in account loss. As for anyone actually moving there for this, I highly doubt it. Most developers who distribute on the App Store are looking for profit, not creativity. Trying to go around Apple for this sounds like risking those profits.
Furthermore the European versions won’t be available outside of Europe so if anyone wants to keep their existing non-European users, they’d have to maintain two versions. That’s extra work and unless there’s some significant profit unlocked by the European changes, the most likely scenario is that developers would stick to whatever’s allowed worldwide. Which is likely Apple’s goal - comply with the regulation, while making it sufficiently undesirable for developers to change anything.
What has the EU ever done for us?
Is this supposed to be sarcastic or something?
Considering it’s a reference to Monty Python’s Life of Brian, I’m gonna go with yes.
Ok, apart from human rights, workers rights, rebalancing funds to poorer regions, free trade, free movement, a voice at the table, straight bananas, peace in Europe, and endless examples of consumer rights, what has the EU done for us?!
The Aqueduct?
What about the straightening of cucumbers? And regulating the amount of cinnamon in baked goods? And the GDPR? And trying to take away the red sprinkles on my liquorice pipes?
What the reasons behind the amount of cinnamonin baked stuff?
The limit is not on cinnamon but coumarin. Which means that if you want to put a lot of cinnamon in stuff you have to use the good stuff (Ceylon), not the cheap knockoff (Cassia), where a single teaspoon of powder can exceed the maximum recommended daily dose of coumarin (for flyweights or just generally small people). If you’re in the supermarket and it doesn’t say which type of cinnamon it is, it’s bound to be Cassia. When buying straight bark (not powder): Cassia will be thick, rolled pieces, while Ceylon is thin pieces rolled up into each other.
In practice it was mostly a seasonal issue, e.g. Zimtsterne contain ludicrous amounts of cinnamon and you try telling a kid it can only have one.
And while I’m at it, the cucumber saga: Like with many such things it was the industry who asked for a EU regulation as previously there were differing national standards and they couldn’t readily agree on a uniform one. Long story short if growers grow cucumbers straight (not hard) and to a certain size (also not hard), then a certain amount will fit into a standard box, which will have an approximately uniform weight, and a certain amount of those boxes fit onto a standard euro pallet of which a certain amount fit onto a standard lorry bed. Thus, “I’d like to buy a lorry load of cucumbers” is something that makes sense, supermarkets know how many cucumbers they’re going to get and they can sell them by piece, not by weight, and everything works out.
Probably more directly referencing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptfmAY6M6aA
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://www.piped.video/watch?v=ptfmAY6M6aA
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Please let this come to the US. Safari (WebKit) is so far behind.
In what ways?
If safari was a great browser, I don’t think apple would fear competition to the point of fully banning it wherever possible
I haven’t had problems. I would just like to be educated on what I’m missing out on.
Functioning ad block, background video playback, to name two extensions that are very useful on mobile.
I have both of those capabilities right now and I have for a very, very long time.
Ah, I didn’t know that was possible. I don’t think it was last time I used iPhone circa 2019 or so.
When I left android, I was jailbreaking on iOS, so generally had all of those features, but funny enough probably about right when you left extensions, VPN ad blockers, etc. came out. Officially and polished.
Well web developers are the ones typically suffering since are the ones papering over the mess that is safari
Safari is a great browser, especially in terms of performance and energy efficiency. Aside from adblockers what exactly does chrome/ff do better?
Debugging (without a MacBook). Webgl 2. WebXR. Local storage not being completely gimped. I’m glad I don’t work in that industry anymore, Safari was the bane of my existence…
Good web standards are a threat to the app store (particularly anything to do with ARKit) - not like 3rd party browsers are likely to change that much with the majority of users sticking to defaults, but it might apply some pressure
Every other browser except IE has supported web standards more quickly and more fully. Safari is trash.
If I could just use my desktop Firefox Plugins I would be happy.
Ublock Origin, I Still Don’t Care About Cookies, and SponsorBlock make the web far more pleasant on my desktop than on my phone.
Same that’s what I want out of this as well
Which ones are you needing? For Adblock I block using VPN, similar to setting up a pihole. I’ve found replacements for most of what I do use elsewhere. Some working even better then the desktop counterparts.
I have a pihole at home so it’s really when I am out and about but I’ll check out VPN offerings. The last time I used a vpn it really hit my battery hard but maybe it’s better now. Other than that it’s just the plugins to get rid of the cookie screens and additional YouTube ads.
Mostly in everything that has to do with PWAs. It’s gotten better since they introduced Web Push last year, but there’s still a lot of things it doesn’t support, like Web Bluetooth, AV1 (except for devices with hardware decoders like the 15th gen Pro iPhones), and things like mobile sensor inputs.
But also in how bad its rendering engine is. Things that work on every other platform render super weird in WebKit.
Thanks. Do you have an example of the super weird rendering? Also are none of what you’re saying here togglable in the WebKit Feature Flags to mess around with bleeding edge features?
Every time I want to use a new feature of web browsers, if support stops me from doing so, it’s always safari to blame.
What was that last or current feature you’re missing out on and what’s the use case?
I really can’t remember an example off the top of my head. Over the last 5 years it’s probably been an issue more than 20 times.
I’m telling you my experience as a web developer for the last 20+ years. If you want specific examples, you could look online. I’ll tell you my SVG icons sometimes don’t work in mobile Safari and I have no idea why. They work 100% of the time in every other platform. I also have to do weird things to get the safe viewport measurements to work in my PWA, again, only in mobile Safari.
I’ll tell you what, you try asking customers to go toggle a feature flag and tell me how that works out.
Safari is almost always the last browser to adopt a standard, often times years after it’s been standardized. And don’t tell me it’s because they take their time to get it right, because their rollout of Web Push was atrocious.
Sounds like a skill issue xD
Skill doesn’t matter at all if Safari doesn’t support the API.
OK you’re speaking from a completely different point of view then. I was more curious about what I would be missing out on using Safari right now. Definitely not thinking about how a project I paid somebody to create is going to render.
You’re missing out on the things people can’t create because Safari is holding the industry back. Just because it’s not a user facing problem doesn’t mean you’re not affected as a user.
I hear you and understand where you’re coming from now. It just doesn’t help me visualize anything.
How will that work? Firefox is gonna maintain two different builds?
Three, technically:
- Firefox for Android
- Firefox for iOS EU
- Firefox for iOS US
There’s also Firefox Beta, Nightly and Focus.
Not at all the same. These are three outputs from the same build process and code base. Maintaining a build with WebKit and one with Mozilla’s own rendering engine is like running a different team.
It’s almost as if Apple is making this difficult.
same build process and code base.
It’s not the same code base though. They’re all different branches, and also differ in code (although not by much, but it still requires manual maintenance of each branch). I haven’t seen the actual build process but it’s likely to be completely separate CI/CD pipelines, so I wouldn’t claim it to be the “same” build process either. Also, Focus uses a completely different UI with a different/cut-down set of features.
Naturally I’m not saying that maintaining these branches amounts to the same level of effort as maintaining the iOS WebKit and Gecko branches, but it’s not some non-trivial effort either.
It doesn’t have to be separate branches - you can generate different versions of the software from the same code branch, e.g. using compiler/build time switches for those bits of the code that differ between the different target platforms. Then you would have a build pipeline per platform; even here the build pipeline can share a lot of common code, and just be parameterized for the specific platform.
I didn’t realise Focus was a unique feature set. My apologies. I maintain my original comment on Nightly and Beta - if they aren’t using (almost) the same CI/CD pipeline, doesn’t it sort of defeat the purpose of each of these builds being a maturation towards a stable build? I’ve certainly never deployed software with a “daily/beta/stable” branch/feature-flag structure that wasn’t attempting to replicate the build process, with a view to catching issues upstream/pre-stable.
Lets not make this out to be like it’s Kerberos (more complicated than rocket science)… Making available another, region-specific version of your app isn’t difficult. It’s just the developer equivalent of an extra one-time TPS report (you have to setup/modify some build scripts and make some additional tests).
It’s the equivalent of having builds for .rpm and .deb and then adding a .AppImage build. It shouldn’t be that big a deal for the Mozilla Firefox team.
In fact, I bet they’re freaking excited at the prospect of being able to make a real build of Firefox for iOS.
ah yes, there is only iOS EU and US
c/usdefaultism
Misspelled feudalism?
fennce f-droid is also an official build.Edit: it is not… https://gitlab.com/relan/fennecbuild
Not completely official, no. Mozilla may help with it, but since it doesn’t carry the Firefox branding, and isn’t built by Mozilla, it’s not entirely official.
Maybe same, but those outside EU will have some functions/ featlrures deactivated as standard.
Can that work?
The fact chromium based browser are going to be allowed as well makes me nervous.
Isn’t this what everyone wanted though? The freedom to choose browsers? Or are we going to start mandating Gecko because that’s what everyone here believes to be the most ethical?
True, but if we’re have to have a monopoly of browsers, I’d prefer that the monopoly browsers were actually based on a good engine, rather than one based on an engine that falls over if you look at it.
That is a reason that no one on Mac uses Safari
Lol, WTF!
So Firefox gets to run extensions now? Cool! I’ve missed using my iPad for youtube
Apple is kicked and shoved into doing something slightly less restrictive (in EU) (because only EU has common sense and is not corrupt, apparently)
nah, they are just slightly less corrupt. And they like to mess with American megacorps too.
I generally don’t like EU, but one of the things I love them for is how they mess with American megacorps. (The other reason would be creating lasting peace between European nations)
The antitrust office is actually about the oldest part of the EU, with roots back in the ECSC: They saw the need to get rid of internal collusion to actually entwine the national coal and steel industries. Think of it as a bigger bully saying “We’re the cartel bosses around here”.
What a rollercoaster, I was so excited until the last bit :(
