Mozilla says Apple’s new browser rules are “as painful as possible” for Firefox

Bit the EU could still go nuclear and just refuse to let apple trade I the EU. It's not an EU company and it doesn't make products in the EU.

Financially it doesn't care about apple being able to sell there

Yeah, I don't think they read the article... Sovereignty only applies, well, in the bloc or nation.

I'd say that forcing Apple to make it easy to install other operative systems in their hardware would be a good start. And yes, making firmware available for those.

If Apple were to be splitted, I'd separate the whole iPhone branch from the rest of the company.

The app store? There's only one Xbox store on the Xbox, one Nintendo shop on the switch or Wii. It wouldn't make sense to require supporting competition on your hardware. Did N64 games work on the Sega Genesis?

those had enough competitors and weren't the richest companies in the world. Although if it was my decision, I'd force them to open the hardware up too and allow third party software not approved by the manufacturer.

People are paying for the hardware, they should own it and not be imposed artificial limitations.

Did N64 games work on the Sega Genesis?

No, but Playstation games did https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bleem!#Bleemcast! And Sony sued them but failed

Apple doesn’t have a monopoly they have a platform that a lot of other organisations (including Mozilla) depend on. The EU has legislated restrictions for any platform that is in that position.

They drew a line in the sand for what size a platform needs to be for this new legislation to apply and Xbox isn’t big enough.

It doesn't, the poster just doesn't like Apple (neither do I) and those are apparently magic words for "stop this company I don't like."

Allowing different markets seems like the only alternative to side loading/homebrew. It was easier to develop games back in the day when you didn't have too grovel to the device company overlords, this regulation just takes us back to that (sort of).

if a firm achieves monopoly through predatory or exclusionary acts, then it leads to anti-trust concern

Hey, ChatGPT ...?

Closed Ecosystem: Apple is known for its closed ecosystem, which can limit users' choices. For instance, iOS users can only download apps from the App Store, and Apple tightly controls the app approval process.

Proprietary Connectors: Apple often uses proprietary connectors and cables, such as the Lightning port, which can be inconvenient for users who want more universal standards like USB-C.

Repairability Issues: Apple products are often criticized for being difficult to repair. For example, the company discourages third-party repairs and designs its products with components that are challenging to replace.

you’d usually split like hardware and software, but we have m series chips and macos working so damn well because they collaborated really closely

You don't need to split the OS, it's the App store that needs to be split out, and web browser to be free to choose like in Windows and Android. Microsoft had a judgement on that when they were a monopoly, so they were legally required to offer alternative web browsers equal access on Windows.

Integration between products can be done well through standards and public apis. Apple just doesn't expose this functionality to other developers because they want you stuck in their system because of the benefits of the integration between products.

apple fanboys are horrible.

I mean, yeah, turns out that when you are in a quasi monopolistic position in many different markets and you get to decide the rules for all of your competitors you can absolutely integrate your "ecosystem" very smoothly. Go figure.

Their stubbornness on this makes the software/hardware divide the most obvious and a good place to start. Right now they're keeping the hardware hostage to benefit first party software and exclude everyone else's. That clearly has to change.

Just an opinion, but if they were forced to use open standards between products then it would still be easy to tightly integrate features between the various "companies". The problem is this would also allow everyone else to play alongside them, meaning Apple would no longer have a monopoly on such things, and the open standards might even gasp be used by other operating systems. But what do I know about Apple products, they may already be using open standards?

"Tight integration" means the company's software works well with their other software. It doesn't mean locking out all others, whether they integrate well or not.

This argument is dumb, open up the specs, APIs, etc and allow integration with their products. There's no reason only Apple should be able to write software for these products. The specification makes the product appear seamless, there's no reason it couldn't remain so if others developed or manufactured for the platform.

If there's any company that doesn't need to be broken up, it's Apple. They only really have 3 core functions: hardware, software, and cloud services. And the cloud services really only matter to people using their hardware and software.

A better approach for Apple specifically are pro-consumer regulations. Breaking them up seems unnecessary to me.

I'm fine with Apple retaining interoperability between their first party software products, they just need a way to bypass the walled garden. If they have sideloading (everywhere and without restrictions) and ideally also bootloader unlocking, they provide a sanctioned path around the walls of their ecosystem and now it's up to the user to choose to leave that garden. If the user is comfortable there, they can stay. Trying to fuck over sideloading is the issue here. I'm fine with the App Store being restrictive if there's a way around it, and simply sideloading an app shouldn't break the rest of the OS's capabilities.

separate the phone branch from the desktop computer branch. that'd be a good start.

I understand the logic behind not wanting to separate hardware and software, that's the only selling point Apple has over any other manufacturer. So just make the iPhone a different company.

yep, you have great points. also everythings cloud-y, so no geographic lines to draw ala ma bell. not a ton of diversification.

theyre building a car though?

That doesn't mean jack shit. Just because they have integration, doesn't mean they get a free pass on this shit.

There’s no monopoly. Use an Android.

This brings up an interesting thought though. Should governments and states be able to prefer you to use a certain browser or should they be required to make the website function on all..

can you send fake device headers using a plug in?

Or can you use a stripped down version of Chromium?

Presumably rejecting them? It's the legitimate toggle that gets me though. How do 400 partners require access to my browsing information in order for your site to run?

I use it. Sometimes it can't though, which is my cue to leave.

But, it's the Canary®™... of coal mine fame.

You could have said the same for Internet Explorer some years ago, and they got their lunch eaten despite being free AND the default owned by a monopoly

But you're forgetting something important: Firefox is open-source, meaning that it is literally impossible for it to fail. Even if the Mozilla org goes down in flames tomorrow.

If Mozilla dies, someone else will become a maintainer for the Firefox open-source project. If they are compromised or bought out, someone will fork the project (again). If 100% of websites make some code change that forces them to only work on a Chromium rendering engine, the developers of one of the Firefox forks (or, more likely, all of them) will implement a fix within days that spoofs whatever signal the lock-in code requires. If some form of online DRM is implemented, it will be cracked and the solution will be made available online. Or the relevant chunk of Chromium will be copied and modified to generate that verification key on Firefox without telemetry.

The browser may never achieve market dominance, but it doesn't have to. It's on the Internet, and on the Internet nothing ever truly goes away.

Well they recently got people to get scared of what car manufacturers want to do with all sensitive data they get access to, who knows

Yeah, normies went from IE straight to Chrome.

They'll never admit when they were wrong.

Bluntly, where would Mozilla be without Google's funding?

Gone, probably.

So while I agree that it is poisonous and there is something very wrong with Mozilla corporate structure, it is a necessary evil.

Isn't it just for the default search engine which you change without any difficulty?

It would take a google or a Meta to pull out for Apple to actually care. Which is why they already have special deals around the general rules anyway

I am a Firefox user both on desktop and on my android phone. And not only to support Mozilla in keeping the browser engine competition alive, but also because of some really good features that alternatives are missing (respectively Multi-Account containers on desktop and extensions on Android).

On my iPad, though, I tried using Firefox (even just to have bookmarks and history synced) but it’s really just a reskin of Safari with worse integration with the system and less features. Therefore I moved back to safari.

Why am I telling this? Because for any non tech-savvy user, if their first experience with FF is on their iPhone / iPad (with the WebKit version), they will probably not like it, and eventually associate in their mind “Firefox = bad browser”, preventing them to give it a try on their desktop. So, from a certain point of view, maybe getting rid of the WebKit version would help Mozilla gather some more users on the other platforms in the long term…