Comment by SllX
2 years ago
This was more of an issue early in the App Store’s history than later on. Apple’s relaxed on that a lot a long time ago and you can use any number of contacts, calendars, email clients, browsers, camera apps, messengers, maps apps and so on.
But it still exists in their rules. That they don’t enforce it as often as they used to is cold comfort: they still can whenever they feel the need to do so. So if you get too successful they can still very easily chop you down.
not really for browsers, they allow them but they all have to use Safari's engine
Yeah but browser ≠ rendering engine. I know they get conflated a lot in tech, but when I’m using e.g. Arc on my Macintosh, I’m not using Chrome despite using the same rendering engine.
The extension ecosystem of browsers is pretty important though, and that is tied to the rendering engine.
On Android, I can install firefox-for-android and run ublock origin to no longer see ads on websites.
On iOS, that's not possible. Apple prevents mozilla from shipping a browser capable of running firefox addons.
This is a case where Apple's policies are hampering security since, well, blocking ads on the web is the thing has had the single largest positive impact on security for my elderly relatives. Giving them ublock origin stopped them from clicking on a ridiculous number of scammy ads and popups.
Note that the "rendering engine" on iOS also takes care of JS, implementing web standard APIs, etc. And it is tied to the OS version.
So, something like WebUSB comes out? Gotta wait for Apple to implement it, and also for your customers to upgrade their devices.
1 reply →
ehhhh kind of, what's a browser without a rendering engine? just a fancy bookmark manager?
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Not sure why you are getting downvoted.
I also want alternate web tech, WebAssembly, Javascript implementations.
And as a developer, to be able to create tools that use the memory allocation/permissions API for JIT compilation.