Slashdot Mirror
A French Company is Suing Apple To Open the iPhone To Rival Browsing Engines (recode.net)
A French maker of open-source software said Friday it is suing Apple in an effort to get the company to make iOS more supportive of Web standards. Nexedi is suing Apple under French law in hopes it can force Apple to allow rival browsing engines onto the iPhone. From a report on Recode:Although Apple allows rival browser apps, such as Google's Chrome, on to the iPhone, the'y all have to use Apple's Web rendering engine. That means the ability to draw on the latest Web standards is is limited to whatever Apple decides to include. That means some newer technologies, like the WebM video standard and the WebRTC protocol for real-time communications, can't be made to work in an iOS browser even though they work in nearly all other browsers. "We hope [this lawsuit] will help Apple to sooner support the latest Web and HTML5 standards on its iOS platform -- the operating system used by all iPhones," Nexedi said in a blog post, which also explains the more granular details of how technology works and what needs to change, in their estimation.
You're only allowed to do that to Microsoft, because the rendering engine is NOT an integral part of the OS, until all the other operating systems have one.
They should sue them to make them allow other software to run on the device, ala android.
Just because you want another poorly coded standard as a way to track people, and allow exploit code to run?
No thanks.
Let's assume Apple had the balls to pull out of France. Would other countries be more or less aggressive with them?
Apple has said time and time again the issue is security-- making a sandbox isn't fucking easy. Despite whether that's good or bad, it's hard to do right. There's very little chance with the exception of Mozilla or Google proper making a secure (not massive security hole of a) browser for iOS.
Not gonna happen (for a few years at least). Not in France, not in the us, not anywhere.
Well I could see Apple doing this but on the proviso if you have a security hole that compromises the phone-- you owe them a billion dollars.
Safari sucks. It's not quite as retarded as Internet Explorer and Edge, but it's a burden on web developers.
It works every time.
Interesting. This might turn into a crack in the garden wall. It might even be a harbinger of more cracks. Given its history in such matters, I suspect the French government won't side with Apple.
Apple might end up having to comply, if only under the "you're voiding your warranty and cutting yourself off from manufacturer support" caveat that comes with rooting an Android device. Then again, they might just say "Sorry France, no more Apples for you"...
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
They won't let me rape them, so I'm going to force them to comply even though it's their company.
Well they should... or who doesn't remember the "N" SKU for Windows that prevented the instant bundling of Internet Explorer? Microsoft had to develop a separate version of Windows XP, etc. and beyond to meet this standard that stripped out the "preferred" browser that came with Windows in Europe and other regions. This allowed those users to choose and install the browser(/rendering engine) of their preference instead of being defaulted into the browser packaged with their operating system. Why should Apple be given a golden ticket and allowed to skip over such similar legislation? This is not that much different.
Peace out.
Hey can I sue Toyota for not making it possible to use a Ford engine?
Are the Developers being forced to make web browsers? Are They being forced to make browsers for iPhones? Are They being forced by Apple?
...because you could deploy apps without the App Store.
Let's hope this happens! :)
Loading...
So if the compatient's beef is that WebKit doesn't support the "latest" HTML5, WebM, "whatever is hot today" standard. Why not actually help improve the WebKit engine, since you know, its Open Source. They can first begin by first reading the Getting Started page. And for those individuals that want to know the Licensing WebKit page indicates that "WebKit is open source software with portions licensed under the LGPL and BSD licenses."
Is WebKit the best rendering engine under the sun, not really, but then none of them are. They all encompass a series of compromises that the developers try to balance as they're developing the software. Most of them boil down to simply the number of hours available. Each project can only develop based upon the number of people willing to contribute to the common goal.
If they don't like the pace at which the software is being developed, then either shut-up, or help. No one is making you develop any software for a specific platform. If you don't like it you can always take your toys elsewhere and hope the grass is greener on the other side. :)
Apple are allowing other web rendering engines. They just aren't allowing engines running arbitrary code on their plaform. That includes Java, Flash, JavaScript and emulators. It's the "running arbitrary code" that's the problem, not rendering web pages or showing WebM movies. You are allowed to make such apps.
- Henrik
- when the Shadows descend -
A web browser and universal app platform rolled into a phone OS. Winning was not so much market share but 'keeping the bastards honest'.
But, to summon the app app luddite apps guy, a platform without software is stillborn and the mobile web stagnates...
Perhaps if management at Google loosened the strings, they'd release a spin of Chrome OS as a ROM for Nexus/Pixel devices - a web device with Android app support.
Easy. Microsoft was a monopoly that abused their OS monopoly to enter the browser market. The courts forced Microsoft to unbundle the browser because of this.
iOS? At 20%, hardly a monopoly. Apple can't leverage either WebKit on iOS nor iOS itself to distort any market.
Anyhow, browsing engines are hard - especially keeping them sandboxed. iOS and Safari run in a very low privilege state (lower than normal apps) so Safari can use a JIT javascript engine, while normal apps have teo use a slower interpreted engine to prevent sandbox exploits. Then there's battery life itself - given all the crap that can idle in the background chewing up CPU cycles, I wouldn't be surprised if WebKit on IOS has many tweaks to conserve battery life.
You're kidding, right?
Webkit may be open sourced, but you're deluding yourself thinking patches that don't improve the parent company won't be included in the official binary.
Stuff like webm will never be included, considering how hard they railed against it despite minimal investment.
Apple is one of the world's richest tech companies. They partly built their iPhone empire on HTML5. It's high time they gave back something other than a ton of broken webkit-prefixed shit, and restrictions preventing its users from using a browser that wasn't so far behind that even Edge is about to leapfrog it in terms of capabilities and standards support.
You're completely buying into what Apple wants you to buy into: using proprietary native solutions instead of open ones. If that's your bag, great. But the web was a way out of that rat's nest, and it might actually do so if Apple wasn't part of the problem now.