This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Who knows, maybe one day you can run actual Firefox on them too? :p
You could, in the EU. But as the EU is only a small portion of the market (Apple did not succeed as much with brainwashing here), Mozilla said it would be too costly to literally recreate FF from scratch for iOS, only for the EU market.
You know, I hadn't realized this before. Thanks to Apple's decade-long policy, alternative browsers for iOS literally don't exist, they'll have to be ported. It will take years for that to happen, if anybody even bothers. Well, Google will.
And that's how Apple will have managed to shoot themselves in the foot and have iOS fall under Chrome domination too.
At this point if they were smart they would sponsor the ports of alternative browsers that are not Chrome, but I doubt they have it in them.
There is a new one, Orion. https://kagi.com/orion/
WebKit, isnt it though?
I think so. As someone said, safari with another gui.
It is, but it allows you to install many Firefox extensions. Not everything works, but it’s the best option out there I’ve found.
Is there something I’m missing? I have Firefox on my iPhone, I live in India. Is it not “proper” Firefox or is Firefox now available in US App Store?
Any browser on iOS/iPadOS etc. is just a reskin of Safari. It might add new features - VPN, closing-all-tabs-feature, sync - but the underlying browser engine is still webkit, including all its limitations. Those limitations are, for example, limited debugging and no plugin support. Whereas I can install almost all desktop addons on my FF nightly on Android, I can't even have adblock on "Firefox" iOS. And even after Apple opened up the browser stuff, so FF can now be based on gecko, Mozilla would need to create and maintain a whole new App - for the EU, because other countries won't get those possibilities ever.
So FF on my iPad is just a way for me to access website-only stuff. In my Android phone, I also use eg. youtube/piped, deepl, maps in FF. That would be a pain on iOS due to missing Addons.
Ah! I never knew that! Thanks for the detailed explanation
All browsers on iOS are basically reskinned versions of Safari since they all have to use WebKit
I wonder what counted as "an EU iPhone"?
The serial number? GPS location of the phone? IP address?
How could one outside of EU region to have an "EU iphone"?
An European iPhone, aka an iPhone which will get these features, is identified by a background process named countryd, introduced in iOS 16. Its only purpose is to compute and predict the most likely location of the user (as in country/region) and lock down features accordingly.
These are only some of the factors taken into the equation:
countryd takes in all of these and more as input to provide the most likely country of the user. If that country is in the EU, then 💥 Sideloading, Default Apps, etc etc etc goodies
This is disgusting.
It would have been easier to just remove these restrictions for everyone.
$$$$$$$$
It's funny, because I've worked on and off in regulation for some of these companies. Leadership always wants a "scalable regulatory solution" and the answer is always "let's be more open" and leadership is always like "no"
It's actually not hard to be compliant with the laws of 220+ regions. It's just being on the edge of each and every restriction is more profitable.
I was in Corfu last week when the news of the Epic store came about, so tried to install it on my UK registered iPhone. All I got was a notification telling me that my phone isn’t eligible.
So yeah, no Fortnite in my phone for me. Not that I really care about that, I just like fiddling with shit.
Brexit means brexit
The gift that keeps on giving.
Sadly.
IOW, not something that one stuck in Ameristan can realistically override. Damn.
A handful of those factors are fairly trivial, but addressing all of them concurrently sounds like a tall order - especially since presumably one can't talk to countryd directly and feed it the desired data.
Appreciate the clarity - iOS just isn't a platform I have a need or the tools to code in.
I tried fooling it myself several times with the aim of getting satellite connectivity in my unsupported country, to no avail.
Used a German SIM card (where this feature is supported), went in my basement where there’s no cell service so that it can’t read MNC or MCC from any networks nor can it read GPS precisely (the circle spanned almost all of Western Europe, that imprecise I mean), used a Raspberry Pi as a router with country code as DE, disabled Wi-Fi, used VPN, used the Xcode debugging tools to simulate iPhone location to Germany (this usually fools all apps into thinking I’m in Germany, including Apple’s own Find My), all to no avail. And there’s no way to feed countryd any custom data.
It’s insane.
I heard somewhere they'd require a European bank card tied.
It's already trivial to get local banking details from many countries, (e.g., 'multi-currency' debit cards) but as far as I'm aware there's not a practical way to get a foreign debit card without the usual hoops that the full account would require.
Probably because demand for such a thing is low - I can generate disposable card numbers on the fly, but only from my home country. Can't imagine (aside from this specific edge case in question) generating foreign card numbers would be all that useful most of the time.
End-user support for such a thing would also be a challenge - I'm very accustomed to entering the usual data points with my card, but users would forget the associated postal code, or any number of other things, and then call support whining that it's 'broken'.
Ah... Yet another half-assed middle finger from Apple. What a truly dogshit company.
Every other company envies Apple's position, and if they had the same power they'd build the same walled garden. Companies do whatever is most profitable. Believing otherwise shows a complete ignorance of capitalism.
Unregulated capitalism is guaranteed monopolistic tyranny.
I’d love to be able to delete iTunes from the Apple TV OS. How long has that been?
itunes has been gone for like 5 years.
you'll also be able to switch to a different default for phone calls, messaging
Whoa, this is interesting tbh. I don’t think calls/messages is something they really expose at the moment for developers, do they?
Personally I don’t really care, the default apps are good and I don’t even know what you would want to replace the dialer for, but it’s nice that you can.
Imagine iOS getting the capability to have third party RCS messengers before (non rooted) Android though. Lmao
As a developer, you don’t really get access to any of that.
Mainly, you can’t access any history of calls and messages at all, nor can you automate sending one. All interactions with calling or texting has to be done with user interaction. Namely, calling requires the user to confirm the call, and sending a message requires the user to confirm, and they can also edit the message beforehand.
I don’t think that’s bad, given that messages are some of the most private things on our devices, and personally, I never had to use any of these or required more access. But more choice is always appreciated.
Sure, it has to be done with user interaction, but that doesn't mean it has to be through the stock apps, which is what the article says you will be able to replace here.
What I'm saying is, for this to actually work, they do have to expose these APIs to allow developers to write a custom dialer and messages app. I think the only thing remotely related there is right now is CallKit which is kind of the other way around (integrates non-phone calls into the stock dialer).
Was always curious why there was an extra step to confirm when making a call through the GV app. Not using it anymore, but I see the logic behind requiring that confirmation.
Google Voice, with built-in dialer, voicemail, etc., was useful once upon a time, from when they acquired GrandCentral (original company) up through a few years ago.
Not so much anymore, just recently ported out the last couple of numbers I was using them for. I don't see much use case for replacing the dialer, except insofar as the ability to do so has value in terms of freedom and open markets.
This increase competition a lot. I like it. Sure people using iPhone may not like options, but at least some can now.
AFAIK, browser choice is still limited (as usual with Apple) because every browser on iOS needs to use Apple's WebKit engine. That means they only differ in UI.
Not in the EU.
Even though that's true, I think no one has made their engine for iOS yet.
yeah, its such a small market that it isnt really viable.
Additionally, based on the way Apple implemented it, the dev would have to resign in Europe.
Maybe that has changed as they keep making changes. Either way they are being huge dicks and have turned me off from their platforms and services.
My sarcasm detector isn’t going off, so I’ll bite.
A small market?! 450 million afluent consumers not enough for you?
What's the market here? People don't pay for browsers and the way it's monetized is via ads... which is problematic in the EU thanks to GDPR. So here this would mean a free browser without being able to use ads.
I personally do want it, and would pay for it, but I'm rather convinced the other 450 millions (which clearly don't all have iPhones) are not.
It’s the same market as there is in the US or the rest of the world for controlling browser market share.
