Firefox spokesperson Christopher Hilton tells The Verge that the browser has seen a more than 50 percent jump in users in Germany and a nearly 30 percent increase in France: Brave saw a similar increase in users after Apple started letting users choose their default browsers on iOS 17.4 in the EU la...
Firefox spokesperson Christopher Hilton tells The Verge that the browser has seen a more than 50 percent jump in users in Germany and a nearly 30 percent increase in France.
after Apple started letting users choose their default browsers on iOS 17.4 in the EU last week.
Lol, srsly, why does anyone use apple devices willingly. Like for work I sorta get it if there's no alternative but it really took government action to compell this extremely basic customisation.
… being able to send longer messages, sending high quality pictures, read receipts, typing indicators, GIFs, location sharing, the ability to send and receive messages over Wi-Fi, and improved group messaging.
And you still see folks thinking color is what’s important.”
You need to buy an expensive phone, watch, computer (would you like to spend another thousand bucks for a monitorstand?) to take advantage of it, which is why I don't have and don't want anything apple. But if you have that, their software stack is superb.
No, third-party browsing engines are not a thing that's been implemented yet, and might never be by Firefox. This is about a screen that prompts EU users to pick a browser rather than defaulting to Safari and leaving it up to them to install another.
The only thing new is that the first time it prompts you to pick which app to pick as your default (and installs it). Only the prompt is new, manually installing something and making it default has been an option for a while.
Reading through the replies, I'm amazed anyone went through the effort to install Firefox but didn't bother changing the default browser to it. Something in this story smells fishy.
That’s a valid question, and I have a long answer to share.
short version: suitable balance between convenience and privacy.
Long version: I started with Android, because it allowed me to customize things just the way I like it, unlike iOS where ridiculous restrictions was a reoccurring theme at the time (and still is to a lesser extent). Just using a custom ringtone was convoluted enough whereas many other basic things were completely impossible.
Like, does any car manufacturer sell a car where you can’t adjust the seat, open the windows or change the radio station? Well, Apple makes phone in that same style, and it’s completely absurd.
Eventually, I got tired of the spyware part of Google’s business plan, so I switched to to Lineage OS, which allowed me to get rid of most of that nonsense. I was still bothered by GAPPS, so I reinstalled (again), but completely de-googled this time. For several years, I went back and forth between both styles, to figure out what’s an acceptable balance of convenience and privacy.
This went on for many eyars until 2019 when my bank notified me that the paper code booklet will be phased out in the coming years. I was still using the old-school method of verification because the mobile app refused to work with anything other than stock Android with all the Google bloat still in it.
Some other important apps failed a similar way, and various work-arounds didn’t really work. I came to realize, that in the world of 2010, you kinda could still get away with having reasonable levels of privacy, but in the 2020s the world around me had already changed to such an extent that sticking to the same level of privacy was getting harder and harder. So some sort of change was necessary. Either I’ll have to cut down on features and convenience dramatically, or give up a part of my privacy. I chose the latter.
Around the same time iOS 14 came out, which allowed you to change your default browser. As usual, iOS was many many many years behind Android, but at least one of the obvious basic settings was finally made available. At that point I realized that it’s surprisingly difficult to find the right balance between privacy and convenience. I had only bad options available, so I picked the one that seemed least bad to me.
I mean, iOS is still trash, but now it’s barely tolerable trash. It took Apple like 10 years to make the software just barely tolerable, so switching earlier would have been incredibly frustrating.
I don’t think that’s true. Old people are struggling with every phone OS. My mom has an Android phone and nothing really seems more difficult on it than on the iPhone I have to use for work.
It’s just that there are differences, but saying that iOS is so much easier doesn’t seem true to me.
Just look at how difficult it is to move an app from one app to another file on iOS. I might be stupid but I’m always struggling with that😅
All the elderly people in my family use Android.. and they never complained about it. So what gives? I bet that if I'd give them an iPhone they'd be very annoyed and won't understand how it works.
This change doesn't do anything that you couldn't do before. It's just a prompt forcing you to pick an option before you can access the web vs just having safari and needing to find an alternative. It's the same story as on a PC in Windows.
I use it because I'm tired of Androids shit. I have both an Android phone and an iPhone and I only use the android phone for things that I cannot do on the iPhone. And if I wasn't a massive computer nerd I'd just forgo the second phone entirely.
Care to explain further? Android and iOS do mostly the same BS, except android edges out iOS in side loading, customizability and root access.
Even on Google's flagship Pixels, unlocking the bootloader and gaining root is no problem.
I believe, the behaviour is different, depending on where you're from. In the EU, Microsoft is comparatively well-behaved. In the US, they're extra icky.
It never reset the setting for me either, but it definitely doesn't always respect your wishes. It just goes ahead and opens certain links in edge despite the setting.
Sometimes after an update (luckily I never update my windows because I use it once every 2 months), it will start edge in a full screen window that I cannot close until it stops doing its stupid animation. Maybe I also clicked an I agree button inadvertently, but I never intentionally set edge as default
It's the point of "majority of". It doesn't include all of them.
Historically, we experienced the last 50 years disregulation. We should not confuse disregulation and regulation. What is also the point of "majority of". It only include the regulations.
See: GDPR with massive fines for small companies but almost nothing for tech giants, and the complete lack of any action against non-compliant or maliciously compliant cookie banners.
Now just finish off iMessage and we're done (I'm talking about categorising it as a gatekeeper, since what I've recently noticed is the amount of people who are close to me (classmates, old friends) that switched to apple is growing rapidly, and I'm now waiting for a day someone will be confused as to why I can't use iMessage (mark my words at least here in Czechia iPhone users are going to be a problem, I hope that the situation doesn't end up like in the US)
Huh? I fucking love Safari. Clean layout, integrates with iCloud passwords & OTP (while also cleaning up OTP codes from SMS and Mail.app afterwards), tons of extensions, doesn’t drain the battery on my aging MacBook Pro, supports Profiles, it’s perfect for my needs. I’m also just a huge fan of stock apps, tbh.
That's cool and all, but doesn't the iOS version of Firefox use the same engine as Safari? If so, does changing browsers on iOS amount to anything else than a skin change?
The appearance and how you use it is a very important part of a browser, also there are things like sync of history/bookmarks/etc. and "send a tab to Firefox on another device" functionality.
I'm hoping, the same isn't true for Chrome. Safari on iOS was the only other browser that still had relevance, because of this somewhat shitty tactic from Apple.
Is is weird that I don't care? It seems to me that people choose Apple. I don't get why the EU is targeting Apple. Companies just shouldn't make a ios version of an app if they don't like Apples ecosystem. I for one don't want to use a locked down ecosystem.