You're looking at one extreme where the OS must hold the user's hand to get them to install alternatives. But that's not what users deserve. They just deserve to have the ability to choose to install what they want, rather than it being blocked, or deceptively hidden.
See this from the article:
> Operating systems regularly design their systems to undermine rather than facilitate consumer choice: they can make it difficult to change default settings; they can make it hard to install new browsers; they can deploy nudges and deceptive messaging to push consumers to their own products.
Why would allowing more browser engines have even the slightest impact on that? Those are APIs available to all native apps they have literally nothing to do with underlying browser engines.
> Those are APIs available to all native apps they have literally nothing to do with underlying browser engines.
Except that Safari doesn't expose them while Chrome wants to (or already does), offering Google more fingerprinting capabilities. Native apps don't send data to Google, Chrome does.
The problem is that Apple is slow to implement useful web standards. I don’t think the battery API is all that useful either but WebRTC is incredibly useful and it took Apple years to catch up. If they had meaningful competition in the iOS browser space they’d have more incentive to try.
Allowing more browser engines would require granting those engines your battery and gyroscope data in order for them to display per-site permission dialogs.
This problem is unique to browser engines and no other kind of app, as browser engines are uniquely the only kind of app that needs this sort of permissions-granting per-site passthrough.
Apple likely does not consider it interesting or relevant to their users to invest in validating the security models of third-party browser engines for their adherence to App Store standards, nor in providing a public API for third party engines to do so, and so closes off the entire problem space by refusing third-party engines altogether.
...a process which could be reviewed as part of the App Store review process.
There isn't really any difference here. If your app reads gyroscope data App Store review will (theoretically!) make sure you're not doing anything nefarious with it. They could just as easily verify whether a browser passes data through correctly.
(I’m aware of what drawbacks result from it, but that’s been explained to death in a thousand replies in a hundred posts about this already, so no need to derail into them here.)
Apple did issue a fix after a few weeks but with no alternative browser engines the only alternative was “don’t use the web on your iPhone”, which is absurd.
Other user benefits might include better performance, more capabilities (it took Apple years to implement WebRTC, for example) and in general more competition that might spur Safari into becoming a better browser.
> What benefits to their users result from that choice?
But now we've gotten to
> I expect a better case will need to be made to convince Apple
Those aren't nearly the same things. Of course it's difficult to convince Apple, it isn't in their interests.
You may choose here to strengthen your argument, but your declaration that it’s hopeless to do so is of no help in that regard. If you wish to continue, I’m willing to listen.
If you're not asking rhetorically, that's one of the primary subjects of this report.
One takeaway that is important, IMO, is this one:
> Without browser diversity, a single company’s influence can shape the internet.
That would be a problem if iOS accounts for a large majority of all http traffic. That, however, is not the case. If there's one platform that accounts for the large majority of http traffic, it is Chrome. It's estimated market share is 65%. Its derivates take 10% more.
Allowing Chrome on iOS will slowly but surely obliterate Safari. Firefox' market share is a joke to begin with (and I say this as a lifelong Firefox user; I even use Firefox on iOS). Browser diversity ends when Chrome arrives on iOS, and it would end the limited privacy we have on iOS, unless Apple would really tighten the rules.
Are you perhaps thinking of iOS?
Or are you trying to make some point I'm missing?
They seem to treat "professionals" and "users" the same in iOS. Maybe there is a counterfactual world where Apple does even better by treating "professionals" differently? If anything people, "professionals" or not, have long pulled iOS into enterprise contexts despite lagging and lackluster IT management support and Apple coop with corp IT.
if you couldn't install cs suite or final cut or whatever, because apple comes with its own default stuff, no one would use osx.
I can't install my own browsers, my own antivirus, my own file explorer, my own shell, or my own applications in iOS as I see fit. but they do allow this on osx.
Pro:
1. MS Office is basically completely a web app now. No binary install needed. iOS binaries are already present and optimized.
2. Adobe subscription software is not far behind and iOS versions are present.
3. Antivirus what? in the iOS model.
NB. You can install your own iOS shell (if it connects to something other than localhost).
Con:
1. Apple has a relatively small business selling FCP etc.
2. Apple has a larger business/ecosystem selling App Store shovels/lotto tickets that need dev environments.
3. Apple's high end use is a halo for lower end Mac sales. If restrictions cripple high end use and they lose the halo, then the aspirational crowd goes.> If Apple treated their bundled calculators, text editors, email software, photo viewers and PDF viewers like they treated their browser, nobody would use MacOS.
Clearly some words must be missing.