this post was submitted on 13 Mar 2024
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Aren’t they all still WebKit under the hood though? Until they allow other web engines this is still just the illusion of choice.
I believe part of the DMA means that they're allowed to use their own engines. Whether they have that ready right now I'm not sure, but I'm sure it's in the works.
I thought Firefox said that they were going to have to write two different browsers so they weren't going to.
They are still exploring options. They’ve told the press that all the iOS gecko work is still being researched.
https://www.theregister.com/2023/02/07/mozilla_google_apple_webkit/
Why would they? They already have a Mac build, I can't imagine it'd be that huge of a difference, but maybe iOS is a lot more different than I realize.
The new browser option iOS exposed is a very strict and limiting custom API to make a browser engine. It’s purposefully obtuse to be terrible but compliant.
They should be fined for this too. Deliberately obfuscating the solution isn't compliance.
Despite Apple's lies, iOS and macOS are still pretty different beasts with their own quirks. And iOS is way more tightly locked down and under Apple's thumb than macs.
I suppose I'm not surprised. Typical Apple shenanigans.
Uh, no they're not. They have the core operating system.
The only real difference is the security model (as you say, tightly locked down), but MacOS has been gradually adopting a lot of that over time. For example / used to be an ordinary volume - these days it's mounted read only and can't be written to even with sudo. iOS has always been like that.
They are different operating systems, but only because it's easier to make a change on one of them, then port that change to the other one later. Possibly years later. In general, they're pretty close. The main difference is the hardware, not the operating system.
The APIs are similar but the hardware requires a different appraoch.
For example touch screen input is very different to mouse input - you need to decifer imprecise user input... and then provide precise input to webpages that are designed assuming the user has a mouse. There are touch APIs on the web, but developers tend not to use those APIs because dealing with imprecise input sucks. For example press a link with your thumb, it will highlight. Lift your thumb, it will go to the link. But if you press, then move your thumb, then release... instead of clicking the link it scrolls the page. Unless you move only a little bit - then it does click...
And the only way to get "all day" battery life out of a 10Wh battery is by keeping the CPU powered off most of the day. Figuring out how to maintain the current state of the webpage, so it can be restored if the CPU is powered off and back on again, without breaking things like JavaScript timers/etc.
FireFox has solved those issues (and others) on Android. But while Android has similar hardware, that operating system is nothing like iOS.
All the work to get Gecko working on Android made sense back int he day, when Android didn't have a good rendering engine. It would have also made sense back in the early days of the iPhone when WebKit was nowhere near as good as it is now. But today, when someone else has already figured out solutions to every problem? Is it worth reinventing all those wheels?
Browsers can now run their own rendering engines, which are sandboxed at the app level.
System-level HTML, like web apps on the home screen, are still using WebKit.
Which is how it should have been from the start.
So are we allowed to use all extensions on Firefox? Is it same as Firefox on Andriod?
Mozilla would have to update the iOS app to both run their engine and accept their plugins.
But it will never be like the Android app because the iOS app will still be sandboxed and not allowed to run code outside of itself.
Yes they can but for now they are all still using WebKit.
Apple does allow other engines in Europe. Wether or not FireFox chooses to create one remains to be seen.
There's nothing wrong with WebKit, so not much incentive for FireFox to do all that work.
Weeeeeeelllll... actually yes, because Chrome is based on an ancient WebKit version, and Firefox is the only independent remaining browser.
Aren't they all KHTML under the hood? Yes, they are. Except firefox.
You could already run Webkit Firefox on iOS - I have for years - it's how I keep tabs synced between devices
I'm pretty sure this is Firefox with Gecko (is gecko still the engine? My memory ain't workin too great right now).
iOS shows a dialog for choosing a browser option in the EU now. Nothing to do with engines.
Firefox uses Gecko and someday, it will use Servo. Brave uses Blink, which is Google's WebKit fork.
*on desktop