Since Apple implemented a browser choice screen for iPhones earlier this month to comply with Europe’s Digital Markets Act (DMA), Brave Software, Mozilla, and Vivaldi have seen a surge in the number of people installing their web browsers.
It’s an early sign that Europe’s competition rules may actually … get this … enhance competition – an outcome that skeptics deemed unlikely.
Oh noes! Innovation is being stifled by excessive regulation!
Ayn Rand would be so disappointed. SMH.
It’s good news but the true test will be on if those users are retained. It’s possible the uptick is just a case of iPhone users seeing a new screen they’ve never seen before and trying the browsers out of curiosity.
Which would definitely be a good thing. Anything that gets the average user to even consider the wild notion of trying something other than the default would be a monumental improvement to the entire tech market.
But I still think the actual numbers on new active users will probably not be as high. Higher, yes, but not a monumental shift. Anything is an improvement, though.
I think it’s also possible this is more likely to happen in EU countries than the US. It really feels like European users are generally more willing to use alternative things.
On macbooks Safari is excellent for battery life. Absolutely blows every other browser out the water. If the same optimisation has been done on mobile, then people will go back for that alone. Safari has less add-ons and a less intuitive interface (if your not accustomed to Mac) but the longer battery life makes up for the inadequacy.
I’d wager that the battery life comparison would be essentially negligible in day to day use.
It’s night and day on macos. I wouldn’t be surprised if we start to hear people complain about chrome on iOS in the EU if they implement the chrome engine.
Apple doesn’t have much of a reason to force it’s own browser on iOS. They aren’t involved in selling adverts like Google and Microsoft. They also aren’t players in web technology in the same way as Google and MS. I suspect their big motivation in keeping chrome, edge and Firefox off the iPhone is to control the user experience an aspect of that being the battery life. The WebKit approach lets them have the browser and features like password managers, without sacrificing power consumption. If it want to keep Safaris user share they wouldn’t have allowed them at all in the iOS store.
Google doesn’t bother with optimising chrome performance on any platforms. Even their pixels and Chromebooks. It’s just not a factor for them.
I use a Motorola Edge+ 2023 with a 5100 mAh battery. The iPhone 15 Plus has a 4383 mAh battery which is about as close as I can get in comparisons. I run Firefox as my preferred browser AND for YouTube playback with uBlock Origin for a couple hours a day and it still lasts me a whole day. I normally only need to charge it to full in the morning while I eat breakfast and will normally get a low battery alert at 20% around 8pm. That’s about 12 hours with pretty heavy use.
The iPhone 15 plus was given an active use score of 16.5 hours by gsm arena. So regardless, you’re charging about once a day.
What?? Apple has a huge vested interest in keeping their browser the only option. That’s why it took regulation to force them to do otherwise
If their web browser is too good, they risk losing out on app store money because people will just use web apps when they can. So they intentionally hold back the web, directly for profit reasons. Fuck apple.
Many apps are just web app packaged up in an app. Even on iOS. This wouldn’t work for apple.
It not like people on Android are using web apps significantly more than iOS. Often on android websites are artificially limiting what you can do on the web app to push you to download their app (many of which are this packaging).
The biggest hold on web apps is websites.
Apple had to be forced to allow other browsers to be default because they get billions from Google each year. All because safari defaults to Google search. This is what would motivate apple to restrict the default web browser.
Changing the web engine isn’t rely a factor in web apps. Safari is very capable. Websites generally work on safari, many that don’t work right on firefox. This isn’t because Firefox or safari is bad, but because Devs develop solely for chrome.
I couldn’t even begin to correct every misunderstanding you have. Even if I could it would take minimum of an hour. You shouldn’t be so confident.
I just read your comment again. I don’t think you said one thing that is true. Wow…
Yes I fully agree. Even if other browsers used 5x the battery, most would never notice
… So in your mind people are using web browsers for hours and hours on their phones, enough to notice battery life issues? I question that. Maybe 2% of people would. But my guess is many of those would value features that Safari doesn’t have. As a web developer, that browser is beyond trash. Maybe it doesn’t drain batteries as quickly because it flat out doesn’t support huge swathes of w3c approved features.
Many apps are just a web page packaged into an app. So safaris engine is being used their as well. So it’s impact is bigger than just browsing.
And you think this somehow prevents apple from taking a 30% cut?
I bet, assuming users are never shown the browser selection screen again, they’ll only go back to Safari if there’s something they hate about their new browser.
I hope autofill, iCloud keychain, Apple Pay, and automatic confirmation code insertion from text messages are all supported. Apple is a professional degraded experience implementer.
Explain why Chrome is the #1 free app in germany. Them people just jump to the next big bully
Firefox is on #52, Edge #63 and brave #191
Huh
Can I help you sir?
If you could explain your comment, yes
Sorry sir. No can do.
I assume they’re saying it’s not helping people get away from Big Tech if folks are gonna use Chrome, a bunch tech product.
Well they refused to answer, but I don’t see how choice is bad just because some choices are worse in some ways
Have they actually made non-Webkit versions though, or is it still just WKWebView? A part of me thinks Apple has already kind of won this. They started allowing plugins and such a while ago, and at this point it covers my needs. Safari is really well-designed for phones as well, and the times I’ve tried using Firefox it just feels awkward and clunky - not because of the engine, but because of the general UX.
I’m sure opinions differ, and I really do hope more people will swap over to Firefox (Brave and Vivaldi can fuck themselves), but it doesn’t really feel like a big win unless you get more tangible benefits; different engines, plugin support, etc.
I use Firefox on all my machines and I enjoy having my Sync account available everywhere. If I were to get an iPhone, I’d absolutely choose Firefox again.
Yeah this is the one thing I’ve considered myself. I just can’t get over how much better Safari’s UI is on iPhones. It’s a bit whatever on iPad, but on the iPhone it’s just so intuitive. I think the two things I like the most are
The bottom of the screen UI Chrome, because that just makes so much sense. Sure iOS has that accessibility feature (which I really hope Android adopts soon) where you swipe down on the bar at the bottom to bring the top of the screen down, but that’s one extra gesture I have to use to access the URL bar. Other than preference there’s no real reason to keep it on the top - which there’s a setting for in Safari, so you could have either way.As I wrote this I was like “but what if there’s a setting for it in Firefox as well?” and there is, so consider that point moot!
It also lets you navigate tabs without having to open the tab switcher. Swiping left takes you to the previous tab, and right to the next, if there is no next tab it opens a new tab. It’s also really snappy so it’s easy to navigate between like 2-8 tabs or so.
So as a bonus thing; I really like the transparency effect. It’s super superficial, I know, but it makes the view feel bigger somehow, and it fits with the overall native UX which is something I as a developer generally consider a good thing. Though honestly it’s not a dealbreaker for me.
If the tab switching was implemented, and they swapped over to Gecko I’d probably consider switching to Firefox altogether on my mobile devices.
Firefox has tab switching exactly like you describe. The only exception is that i don’t think it will automatically open a new tab.
Oh, nice! Where do you enable that?
⋮ --> Settings --> Customize --> Scroll down to gestures --> Swipe toolbar sideways to switch tabs
At least this is for android. It may be identical for iOS?
There’s no Gesture section at all on iOS, checked both in the in-app settings as well as the app settings in the Settings app. Honestly the settings page is a bit of a travesty in terms of UX design. There’s a “Theme” section that when clicked, takes you to an on/off switch for “Use system theme” and nothing else. Why not just have the switch directly on the main settings page? Maybe under its own subsection, but not a completely different page?
I installed Firefox on my Pixel 6 (work phone, pretty much only use it for Teams and two authenticator apps), and it’s a completely different experience.
The iOS version wastes a lot of space, and there’s a lot less room for customisation.
On Android the setting was under
Settings > Customisewhich by itself has a decent amount of settings.
And the iOS settings page, slightly scrolled down to hide my email address, looks like this (imgur link).
As I wrote this I was like “but what if there’s a setting for it in Firefox as well?”
This is every interaction I have with Apple fans. Except often there’s also a “and it’s had this option for years”. And it’s not just Firefox, it’s every other option for every other software and hardware.
Not an Apple fan. I enjoy the general hassle-free and polished experience that is their products, but Apple themselves can go die in a fire. I don’t “like” any companies.
There have been rumors that Apple would open it up for iOS, but I wasn’t sure if they still require Webkit, so I looked it up.
Apparently, in the EU, they can use their own tools as of 17.4 (which just released) but I guess US still uses WebKit.
Yeah, I’m in the EU so it’s been decently big news here. That said I’m having a hard time believing that they’d make separate versions of their browsers for the EU and then the rest of the world. That’s a lot of work for a potentially very small market.
Um what did Vivaldi do wrong? Is it just cause it’s Chromium?
Yeah, it’s just because it’s Chromium. I don’t know anything about the company so I don’t have any opinion there.
I used to be of the opinion that it’d be nice if the web unified under one platform. Honestly, I still hold that opinion, but the caveat there would obviously be that no single company should control that platform. Google does control Chromium. All Chromium based browsers will see Manifest V3, and that’s just one thing. Google can do more or less what they wish, and the rest of the web will just kind of have to take it.
They’re in a similar position that Microsoft was in back when Internet Explorer was an actually good browser, but unlike Microsoft I don’t think Google will rest on their laurels. It’s really worrying to me that Google essentially owns the internet.
2021: “The rendering engine doesn’t matter that much because everyone ends up seeing the same internet”
2022: “How much can google really do with a monopoly on the back end?”
2023: “They still don’t control the underlying structure of the internet.”
2024: “well shit.”
I was foolishly hoping that there’d be some sort of regulation where Chromium ended up being democratised. Fools hope, pipe dream, whatever. It obviously won’t happen because I don’t think the powers that be quite realise how dangerous it is; it’s too technical for them to grasp.
It’s really worrying to me that Google essentially owns the internet.
Lemmings, please Get Firefox (.com) if you haven’t already!
I was asking because they’re generally fairly anti Google in terms of all the tracking changes and such, and while manifest v3 can’t be blocked by them the built in ad blocker shouldn’t be affected.
That’s fair, and you should absolutely not feel bad for asking.
Like you say, they can’t really block Manifest V3, which in this case sure, their built-in adblocker will still work, but what about the next unblockable change? I’ve no idea what that might be, but Google isn’t our friend, they’re a massive, hungering corporation.
I’d honestly be all for these alternative browsers if they decided to adopt Gecko instead, honestly. Until then they’re just “Google Chrome But…”
Chromium and proprietary.
That is not the complete source code. The UI components are proprietary.
It is what’s called “open core software”
an outcome that skeptics deemed unlikely
More like “an outcome that denialists deemed unlikely”.
Skeptics actually think things through and draw conclusions about likely outcomes based on actual real reasons, hence might very well conclude a claim that something will work if all indications point towards that. It’s not about refusing to believe a positive outcome, it’s about checking the logic behind the argument being made, and not just for positive outcomes, also for negative ones.
Denialists simply refuse to admit something can or did happen or work as intended, no reasons necessary.
It’s highly unlikely that a real skeptic will conclude that people having freedom to choose in a user friendly way when previously they had no user friendly choice at all, will not enhance competition, whilst a denialist will just claim “it won’t” work with no actual logical reason backing that conclusion.
Yeah nobody is on the other side of this issue. They literally FORCE you to choose a browser, how would that ever result in anything but a bump for alternative browsers?
Bigger issue is, how many people just went right to Chrome? Mobile Safari and its massive chunk of e-commerce sales is about the only thing causing businesses to not just code for Chrome and call it a day. You don’t want more mobile or desktop Chrome users, period.
There was no genuine competition on browsers before in iOS, now there is.
It’s quite irrelevant for the subject of competition if the reduction of the market share of the browser that had no competition due to artifical barriers (Safari) goes mostly to the browser with the most overall market share (Chrome) or not as long as it happens via competition.
Your point only makes sense if this was about “diversity” in the browser market (in which case it’s absolutely valid to think that this might very well reduce it), however competition-wise, any consumer choice always means more competition than no consumer choice.
That said, on the competition side this does raise a question about user-friendly browser selection in Android.
Advertising works, is more like it.
