Fabio Manganiello on Nostr: npub1carpg…yg4j0 I understand quite well what’s required to do the job right: Web ...
npub1carpg73ekh6qlv80pwvwxjmxsxfdw7n37wuns8acsalxcnazqa7sryg4j0 (npub1car…g4j0) I understand quite well what’s required to do the job right: Web engines not baked into the OS.
Apple’s arguments are actually quite similar to those made by Microsoft 15-20 years ago or so, when Mario Monti was the EU antitrust commissioner and Windows was forced to unbundle the Media Player from the OS and then provide the browser choice panel. And the scrutiny continues to this day - it’s recently been forced to unbundle Teams from Office suites.
In both cases, counterarguments go against the lines of “bundling these services/engines within the OS provides greater security/scrutiny/privacy/blabla, and unbundling them and opening up is too operationally expensive / poses security risks / blabla”.
Bullshit. A big smoking pile of bullshit.
Bundling within the OS what’s not supposed to be part of the OS only benefits the OS maker by increasing entry barriers towards potential competitors who don’t sell a pre-installed OS to customers, while denying consumers a choice.
I know exactly what Apple is supposed to do to comply with the Web engine constraint: open up iOS APIs (permissions, sandboxing etc.) to alternative Web engines, without assuming that there’s always a specific version of WebKit on the other side. Then other Web engines can simply tap into the OS APIs and have the same level of security and controls of WebKit.
And I understand exactly why it’s dragging its feet so much. It’s only about defending its privileges over the platform. Sure, technically it’s not the kind of thing we expect Apple to do right in a couple of days (unlike flipping a switch and killing the PWA background worker on iOS). But Apple had an official 6 months notice before the DMA kicked in, it already knew even before then that it was likely to be labelled as a “gatekeeper”, and it already clashed with the EU in the past over Web engines on iOS.
Had Apple been genuinely interested in solving this problem the right way, it would already had plenty of resources and time to do so. But Apple doesn’t want to solve this problem, because it greatly benefits from this problem. Thus the PWA move has been malignant compliance to get concessions out of the deal.
Apple’s arguments are actually quite similar to those made by Microsoft 15-20 years ago or so, when Mario Monti was the EU antitrust commissioner and Windows was forced to unbundle the Media Player from the OS and then provide the browser choice panel. And the scrutiny continues to this day - it’s recently been forced to unbundle Teams from Office suites.
In both cases, counterarguments go against the lines of “bundling these services/engines within the OS provides greater security/scrutiny/privacy/blabla, and unbundling them and opening up is too operationally expensive / poses security risks / blabla”.
Bullshit. A big smoking pile of bullshit.
Bundling within the OS what’s not supposed to be part of the OS only benefits the OS maker by increasing entry barriers towards potential competitors who don’t sell a pre-installed OS to customers, while denying consumers a choice.
I know exactly what Apple is supposed to do to comply with the Web engine constraint: open up iOS APIs (permissions, sandboxing etc.) to alternative Web engines, without assuming that there’s always a specific version of WebKit on the other side. Then other Web engines can simply tap into the OS APIs and have the same level of security and controls of WebKit.
And I understand exactly why it’s dragging its feet so much. It’s only about defending its privileges over the platform. Sure, technically it’s not the kind of thing we expect Apple to do right in a couple of days (unlike flipping a switch and killing the PWA background worker on iOS). But Apple had an official 6 months notice before the DMA kicked in, it already knew even before then that it was likely to be labelled as a “gatekeeper”, and it already clashed with the EU in the past over Web engines on iOS.
Had Apple been genuinely interested in solving this problem the right way, it would already had plenty of resources and time to do so. But Apple doesn’t want to solve this problem, because it greatly benefits from this problem. Thus the PWA move has been malignant compliance to get concessions out of the deal.