108
Apple is finally allowing full versions of Chrome and Firefox to run on the iPhone
(www.theverge.com)
this post was submitted on 25 Jan 2024
108 points (100.0% liked)
Privacy
789 readers
6 users here now
A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.
Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.
In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.
Some Rules
- Posting a link to a website containing tracking isn't great, if contents of the website are behind a paywall maybe copy them into the post
- Don't promote proprietary software
- Try to keep things on topic
- If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered
- Reposts are fine, but should have at least a couple of weeks in between so that the post can reach a new audience
- Be nice :)
Related communities
Chat rooms
-
[Matrix/Element]Dead
much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
This is the best summary I could come up with:
With iOS 17.4, Apple is making a number of huge changes to the way its mobile operating system works in order to comply with new regulations in the EU.
One of them is an important product shift: for the first time, Apple is going to allow alternative browser engines to run on iOS — but only for users in the EU.
Apple is clearly only doing this because it is required to by the EU’s new Digital Markets Act (DMA), which stipulates, among other things, that users should be allowed to uninstall preinstalled apps — including web browsers — that “steer them to the products and services of the gatekeeper.” In this case, iOS is the gatekeeper, and WebKit and Safari are Apple’s products and services.
Even in its release announcing the new features, Apple makes clear that it’s mad about them: “This change is a result of the DMA’s requirements, and means that EU users will be confronted with a list of default browsers before they have the opportunity to understand the options available to them,” the company says.
Apple argues (without any particular merit or evidence) that these other engines are a security and performance risk and that only WebKit is truly optimized and safe for iPhone users.
But in the EU, we’re likely to see these revamped browsers in the App Store as soon as iOS 17.4 drops in March: Google, for one, has been working on a non-WebKit version of Chrome for at least a year.
The original article contains 596 words, the summary contains 248 words. Saved 58%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!