this post was submitted on 26 Jan 2024

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Mozilla says Apple’s new browser rules are “as painful as possible” for Firefox (www.theverge.com)

submitted 10 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 332 points 10 months ago (62 children)

smells like legally actionable monopolistic behavior. apple clearly needs to be broken up... when was the last time we did that?

[–] [email protected] 59 points 10 months ago (5 children)

That was literally the point of this ruling. The EU only has the power to enforce things in the EU and they can't force Apple to act differently outside of it.

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[–] [email protected] 282 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (40 children)

When a company' website doesn't work on Firefox I don't get angry at Firefox, I just don't use the site. When a company makes their cookie popups are a pain in the ass I don't get angry at the EU, I get angry at the company that made the popup. I use Firefox as a Canary that dies when a website is a piece of shit.

Maybe it's a win-win, I don't have to deal with Apple's bullshit and Apple doesn't have to waste resources on me, for me to block all their shady shit.

[–] Eezyville 29 points 10 months ago (3 children)

I feel the same but I also cannot avoid some sites. Ohio's unemployment and job board only works with Chrome based sites and I have to use those when I'm in between jobs.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 10 months ago (10 children)

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..

[–] [email protected] 13 points 10 months ago (2 children)

If the government cared at all about accessibility, then you'd be able to do your taxes in an HTML form.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 10 months ago

Pretty sure the old fuckers in the legislature aren't writing that into the contracts. If you ask them what browser they're using they'll probably say "internet."

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 10 months ago (1 children)

There's an extension called Consent-O-Matic that will deal with the popups automatically for you.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 10 months ago (2 children)

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?

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[–] [email protected] 256 points 10 months ago (15 children)

I absolutely love how Mozilla has been calling out Apple, Google, and Microsoft. So good.

[–] [email protected] 65 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Sad thing is they don't have enough pull to make people listen.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 10 months ago

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

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[–] [email protected] 110 points 10 months ago

Of course, they want to make it as complicated as possible so that people don't actually do it.

[–] [email protected] 91 points 10 months ago (2 children)

This is why I support Linux and open source stuff whenever I can. Always used Firefox. Linux on the server and desktop. Doesn't work for everyone but it's the last free open thing we've got. What's been great about Linux is now that basically everything is a Web app Linux is the perfect OS. But now we are dealing with bullshit browser wars. Uhg. Firefox will be the Linux if browsers in no time.

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[+] [email protected] 58 points 10 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (8 children)

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[–] [email protected] 24 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (4 children)

I feel like of a group of dedicated Firefox engineers should fork the source code and start their own company.

If they would focus on adding really useful features at a rapid pace, people would be willing to pay for it.

Similiar to Kagi, if you make a really good software, you will get a group of dedicated people to support you.

Just a tech company without these super expensive CEOs that are not needed in a smaller company.

[–] [email protected] 30 points 10 months ago

Servo is a fork of a Mozilla research project, it's moved to the Linux foundation.

They are rebuilding a web engine built for the internet today, rather than adapting the older web engines of yesterday. Mozilla already uses some of their components in Firefox.

But they are only building a web engine, for other people to turn into browsers, we views, electron alternatives etc.

[–] [email protected] 29 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Aren't there already a bunch of forks of Firefox already? How will one more help anything?

[–] [email protected] 19 points 10 months ago

There is a difference between forks made by other people to tweak a project/do something specific for it, and the base project's dev team moving away from whatever it became.

I'm usually not in favor of such fork because the reason for moving away is sometime dubious; some project just rename themselves to "start fresh and drop legacy compatibility issue". But in the case of Firefox, Mozilla is the thing holding back features while adding bloat. Since it can't change to a saner structure with more long-term sustainability plans, devs/engineers could move into a fork to not be bound to that anymore.

Of course it's not that easy; for all the bad Mozilla (foundation or other, I don't care much that they are two entities at this point since one is owned by the other) is doing to the actual software, they do provide salaries. At least, for now.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 10 months ago (4 children)

Lol. Firefox cost of development is $500 milions a year. Stop bs. No one can develop a browser anymore, even Microsoft. And the salary of CEO is not the problem.

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[–] [email protected] 27 points 10 months ago

This is the best summary I could come up with:

Apple’s new rules in the European Union mean browsers like Firefox can finally use their own engines on iOS.

Although this may seem like a welcome change, Mozilla spokesperson Damiano DeMonte tells The Verge it’s “extremely disappointed” with the way things turned out.

“We are still reviewing the technical details but are extremely disappointed with Apple’s proposed plan to restrict the newly-announced BrowserEngineKit to EU-specific apps,” DeMonte says.

In iOS 17.4, Apple will no longer force browsers in the EU to use WebKit, the underlying engine that powers Safari.

“Apple’s proposals fail to give consumers viable choices by making it as painful as possible for others to provide competitive alternatives to Safari,” DeMonte adds.

Epic CEO Tim Sweeney called the new terms a “horror show,” while Spotify said the changes are a “farce.” Apple’s guidelines are still pending approval by the EU Commission.

The original article contains 285 words, the summary contains 142 words. Saved 50%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

[–] [email protected] 25 points 10 months ago (5 children)

Bro legit question, why can't all the app developers pull their app from apple store. Within no time apple will change its tune

[–] [email protected] 48 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Because app developers have to jump through a lot of hoops to get into the app store, and even if every single app was pulled then the developers would have to jump through all those hoops again. And this time, Apple won't make it easy. Meanwhile, they are hemorrhaging money for every minute their app is not on the app store. On the other hand, Apple would give incentives to new applicants to replace everything that was pulled, and the app store returns to relatively normal within 24 hours since there are tons of apps out there that just aren't popular enough to be on the app store at the moment. Would you want to be the first developer to pull their app?

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[–] [email protected] 38 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Would you pay for the missed income then? Who would?

[–] [email protected] 16 points 10 months ago

Apple only has this power because its users are a major source of income for developers.