I think human rights legislation is fundamental. As such I really, really hope no-one ever uses it for something like this, even worse to win a case. It demeans it to use it to save someone having to write a bit extra code to have their commercial application sell better in China.

But to my opinion, everyone here knows Apple is blocking HTML 5 somewhat and there is almost nothing we can do about it.

PS. General public/buyers don't know and i already changed from iOS, because "add to homescreen" doesn't work as well as on Android

Don't buy their devices. Apple is not a government that can coerce you into submission.

I know it's not the same scale, and i'm not trying to compare poverty and human suffering to a web browser, but IMO there are some similarities.

Switching to an entire other OS which many believe to be less secure, that in many cases doesn't have many of the same applications, and significant changes to everything you do on your device (which for many is their ONLY device connected to the internet), for a web browser?

People won't do it, and I (as a web developer) don't think they should give up everything for a few web features. But when one party is purposely holding the ecosystem back, something should be done. They need to improve, or open up the playing field to others that will improve.

IMO forcing "operating systems" to be more inclusive would be a good thing, and could really improve not only iOS, but Android and Windows as well.

I don't know how this would look legally, i'm pretty far from a lawyer, but the discussion is at the very least worth having without hand waving any complaints away with "just buy an android"

Apple has a monopoly on iOS devices. There is no competition. And if somebody would built a better or freer iOS device, Apple would use the full force of the state to stop them. So, in a very narrow fashion, Apple does use their government-granted rights to coerce you to buy it's devices, if you want an iOS one.

Of course, nowadays Android devices are more than adequate replacements for many users, so most people do have the option to buy outside of the Apple world, as you suggest.

And if you were complaining as a developer, that wants to distribute your software around, you'd have a point.

But the GP is complaining as a user, that has complete freedom to choose the phone he is buying. He just want the shinning locked-up one, but don't want the consequences of the locking-up. He has all the right in the world to complain about it, but if he won't do anything about it, why would anybody care to listen?

But no one can sell me e.g. an iPhone 7 with audio jack. And I can't build one on my own.

Sure we can! Vote with your wallet and don't buy Apple's products. Or at least write a complaint to one of their support centers..

There's a saying; "What you don't know can't hurt you", and that can be applied for these users - whom make up the majority of iOS device users - since they don't know what they're missing out on. While you and me on the other hand knows what we're missing out on, both as programmers and users, we at least have the chance to vote with our wallets. I do, perhaps even you do, but as you can clearly see it's still not enough to even make a dent in Apple iOS device sales.

To be fair, they also don't care at all.

I think we have different definitions for "everyone".

The browser landscape is complicated. Firefox is ahead in some ways, behind in others. WebKit has fantastic support for some things that Edge does not do. Chrome lacks some things that Firefox does.

Does any browser lack "basic internet access"? Nope. They all provide a solid foundation that lets everyone use the web. Are some experimental standards missing? Sure. It's complicated.

I mean, what level of compatibility should you have with a document that says:

> Implementors who are not taking part in the discussions are likely to find the specification changing out from under them in incompatible ways.

> Apple has no reason to "not" include it, except financial gain.

The reason they have not to include it is that they have different priorities than browser vendors who want to jam mobile browsers full of every unripe API under the sun (like those that dangerously leak user's real connection info even when behind a VPN).

I'm not saying that it is though.

/sarcasm

- broadband

- a browser

Broadband is by ISP's and a browser is in this case by Apple.

And yeah, i don't buy Apple ( obviously). "Add to homescreen" is probably my most used functionality :p .

In fact I can't think of any HTML5 content which you would not be able to view, it might not be formatted properly but it will be accessible.

This has gotten beyond absurd. I can't remember when I voted to make HTML 5 a human right. I can think of a lot more important things that might ought to be addressed (and enforced) first.

This argument is just absurd. Apple isn't denying anyone access to the web. Could we argue that a company forcing IE 6 on employees is violating human rights?