Finally firefox + extensions will be able to reach ios.
I find it a bit puzzling and amusing how so many people in the other threads are acting like this is the end of safety on apple and yada yada, while 1 - you're free to stay well within the walled garden if you so desire, stepping out is a personal choice (but now is a choice for the user, instead of banning him from doing something apple doesn't like), 2 - we have the example of android to know apps won't each flock to their own little store, 3 - the whole pretense of "the curating of the store allows them to ensure high quality safety" is frankly not in line with reality, the app store being full of crap and spam while blocking updates to apps that apple don't like (spotify for example).
I'm flabbergasted at "tech oriented users" ability to forget what they know when it come to certain brands they like.
And finally, Chromium will be able to become the dominant browser engine on yet another platform.
I don't like Apple's restrictive policies. But the fact that Safari (or any non-Chromium browser) has 25% of the mobile market share is a good thing.
We'll see how effectively Google will manage to convince users to switch.
EDIT: As for the "you have the choice to stay within the walled garden" thing... no, you don't really. Developers have the choice to publish their app to the walled garden, but if I need a certain app, I don't have the choice to get that app through the walled garden. I will be forced to get the app where the developer of the app publishes it, just like I am currently forced to get the app through the App Store.
So that means you think microsoft should be allowed to force users to edge on windows ?
You do not fix a tech monopoly issue by imposing a duopoly, especially not with each one in their own little garden with no cross over.
And you don't fix the issue of one way too big tech company having full control over the web through their browser by giving it or some of it to another way too big tech company, especially if that other company has already shown its propension to use its control of the stack to protect its own interest.
The solution here is to do what we did in the early 2000s, and educate people about firefox + ublock. On desktop after a large growth notably in europe, Firefox stagnated in speed and that's how Chrome take its headstart, but on mobile with google insistence on no extensions the game is still open.
No, I don't want Microsoft to force people to use Edge on Windows. I also don't want Apple to force people to use Safari on iOS; but even then, the argument for why one of the outcomes of this change is bad (i.e it will make Chromium even more dominant) doesn't apply to Edge, since Edge is Chromium.
I agree that nothing about the current situation is ideal. These changes won't take us from a good situation to a bad one, it will just take us from a bad situation to another situation that's slightly differently bad.
I hope you're right that uBlock Origin can get people to switch from Chrome to Firefox on mobile... but proper Firefox has been on Android forever, yet Firefox's market share on mobile is pretty much non-existent. Why hasn't the "educate people about firefox + ublock" strategy worked there? Why do we think it would work better on iOS?
> So that means you think microsoft should be allowed to force users to edge on windows ?
While this is a good question, It is not relevant to the point because Edge is still Chromium. So this still gives Google the dominant place it wants to take and monopoly on web standards.
This is a non answer imho. Are you saying if Microsoft goes back to their own engine, they should now be allowed to do it ? Microsoft using blink is a technicality that could be reversed as quickly as it was implemented.
I didn't provide an answer because I think while the question is good, it is irrelevant to the point the GP was raising. And no, I'm not saying what you are attributing to me.
>So that means you think microsoft should be allowed to force users to edge on windows ?
Arguably they're already doing that. There's a shockingly high number of times that I click on something in Windows and it opens up Edge instead of Firefox, my default browser. Even Apple manages to respect my default browser on macOS.
I agree, they're pushing hard toward that, our only saving grace being that they still must keep it decoupled at the low level due to existing regulation. The only thing that will stop them is some pushback, but threads like these scare me that the very people who should lead that pushback and now getting complacent to it ...
Whatever one might think about Chrome on desktop, fact are that 1 - people install it on purpose, because they want to, not because they're forced, and 2 - it's supremely easy to replace, which is why google tries hard to tie itself into more (password manager obviously, but chrome apps at one point).
Chrome is open to competition, it's just that this competition is as much marketing and mind share as it is tech merit. What Edge and Safari are doing or trying to do is not open to competition.
(this does not mean chrome should not be reigned it, I believe it should)
> You do not fix a tech monopoly issue by imposing a duopoly, especially not with each one in their own little garden with no cross over.
You don't fix it by cementing a monopoly either.
> The solution here is to do what we did in the early 2000s, and educate people about firefox + ublock.
This was a much smaller tech-enabled population, and even that was moving mountains. I'm not saying it can't be done but it's important to recognize it's a very uphill battle since Chrome is not a bad browser and IE was.
I used to think it was better to have Safari for browser engine diversity. However Apple develop Safari with such appalling negligence that it's changed my mind [1]. Having a single browser engine dominate is not a perfect situation and will have downsides. However it is still better than having to put up with Apple's negligence towards Safari.
I think it depends entirely on what your goals are. If you think diversity is gonna improve the browser engines, then yeah, Apple isn't gonna be much help with that.
However, if your goal is to prevent Google from having complete and total unilateral control of the web standards, simply the existence of WebKit as a prominent browser engine is enough. Its quality pretty much doesn't matter in this regard. This is pretty much my perspective.
Reading through these complaints, all of them seem to be your fault. It’s akin to the bike fall meme [1].
Firstly, you complain of a third-party dependency being broken in a preview build of Safari, and that you had went on holiday the week the stable version was published, meaning you couldn’t guarantee the problem was fixed in the stable release. Plainly, that’s an organisational problem on your end—the Safari team fixed the problem on their end. I’ll come back to your complaints re. release schedules.
Your second complaint is, in your own words, “we accidentally relied on a Chrome bug that meant our Service Worker was broken in Safari 16.4.” You go on to rehash your initial complaint, which is that Apple doesn’t publish a release schedule for Safari. I don’t inherently disagree with this complaint at face value.
Finally you move on to your third complaint, but to me it seems like yet another problem on your end. You made the observation that a given feature was supported and made the assumption that it was supported fully, with no other logic in place to test functionality or fallback to another rendering method. By your own admission again: “We detected OffscreenCanvas merely by seeing if it was defined. I never expected a browser to ship it with some contexts but not others - I assumed it would have parity with the standard canvas element.” I can understand the frustration and panic of being caught out here, but the pitfall is in your application logic. Your arguments afterwards with regard to supporting existing content are well said, but don’t generalise in this case. Just because something broke for you doesn’t mean everyone made the same flawed assumptions you did.
You then go on to list a random assortment of historic instances of Safari having flaws, as if that isn’t true of all browsers across the board.
I think you've misunderstood the point of the post. Of course bugs happen and things go wrong, including on our side. What makes it so much worse is Apple's opaqueness: no communication on bugs, no release schedule, no public plans. So we have no idea what will ship or when or whether catastrophic bugs will go to worldwide release or be fixed. For example how am I supposed to avoid booking a holiday when Safari's stable release happens, when the release date is an Apple secret right up until the very moment it begins its worldwide release? You can't blame me for messing up my planning there, because it's simply not possible, and it can result in a great deal of stress for developers like me.
All other browsers have enough communication and transparency to avoid this. Towards the end of the blog post I outline what Apple need to do - which all other browser makers already do - to make it at least vaguely tolerable to develop for Safari.
Maybe Apple should just make good browsers if they want to compete, not just restrict people from installing other browsers.
I want to get a native Firefox iOS version if it means that I can get uBlock Origin on it. If I could get it on Mobile Safari, then I'd have basically no reason to download Firefox. But no, they'd rather not have me use it on desktop or mobile, since no version of Safari supports proper adblocking.
It's also a good time to remind people that the reason why you can't get a proper version of Firefox from the walled garden is because Apple explicitly doesn't allow Firefox to release it there. The walled garden very much prevents you from leaving it, and unwanted developers like Mozilla from entering it.
Browser market share has very little to do with the quality of the browser after a certain point. Safari is a pretty good browser, but it has a decent market share due to Apple's policies. Google Chrome is a pretty good browser, but it has crazy market share because everyone uses Google services for everything and Google pushes Chrome incredibly hard, to the point of intentionally breaking their websites and/or arbitrarily disabling certain features in non-Chrome browsers.
Browsers don't really compete on their merits.
FWIW, I'm also looking forward to having proper Firefox on my phone.
Browsers do compete on merit. I use both iOS and Android. My Pixel 6 has an inferior processor compared to my iPhone 14. Even a 5 year old iPhone would smoke my Pixel 6 in benchmarks. But my day to day use Chrome on Pixel 6 is faster for JS heavy apps, scrolling and faster network loading. On a flaky network for sites with http3 the difference is day night between Safari and Chrome android. Chrome’s heuristics based rendering is far more advanced than Safari. I would say Safari a very good JS engine but Chrome has found other ways to make pages much faster.
The thing is that Google has made Chrome really good that, there is less reasons for people to leave it for another browser. The only cons are privacy and fear of Chrome being the monopoly. I think other browsers should also compete on technical merits to stop haemorrhaging users.
Well, it's a guarantee that this change will give Chromium a higher market share on iOS, since the current market share of Chromium on iOS is exactly 0%.
How much of an effect it will have remains to be seen. But Google has shown themselves quite good at overcoming the default browser advantage by making other browsers not work well on Google websites and by pushing pop-ups into people's faces telling them to "upgrade" their browser to Chrome.
> Well, it's a guarantee that this change will give Chromium a higher market share on iOS, since the current market share of Chromium on iOS is exactly 0%.
Yes. Both the real browser engines in Chromium and Firefox are starting from absolute zero on iOS, and Chrome will certainly be much higher than Firefox.
>you're free to stay well within the walled garden if you so desire, stepping out is a personal choice
Not if Chrome gets a huge mobile web broswer share and you end up needing to use it for compatibility.
Or if major third party apps that you want to use (say Facebook or YouTube or whatever) are all moving into their vendor's app stores.
>the whole pretense of "the curating of the store allows them to ensure high quality safety" is frankly not in line with reality, the app store being full of crap and spam while blocking updates to apps that apple don't like (spotify for example).
I don't think it is. It might not have only top tier apps, but it's not full of spam and crap the way the Android store is, and has a much smaller problem with malware.
Just because the bad apps aren't reduced to 0% compared to Android, doesn't mean a 50-80% reduction is not already a good thing.
As the "tech guy", I routinely have to uninstall slow crap stuff that hogs down the whole phone from parents and friends Android phones. iOS? Not so much, if ever.
> Or if major third party apps that you want to use (say Facebook or YouTube or whatever) are all moving into their vendor's app stores.
The major third party apps are still on Google Play though, why should they act any differently on iOS?
Your point on Chrome is indeed an issue, and I am pessimistic. While Firefox has a browser engine, how many can they spare to port/retrofit it for iOS?
> I routinely have to uninstall slow crap stuff that hogs down the whole phone from parents and friends Android phones. iOS? Not so much, if ever.
Your Android parents and friends are lucky. They are at least able to easily uninstall slow crap stuff from their phones. You cannot uninstall slow crap Safari from an iPhone.
>You cannot uninstall slow crap Safari from an iPhone.
Which is irrelevant. You can always not use it. And when you don't use it, it doesn't slow down your iPhone.
In fact it doesn't slow down your iPhone even when you use it.
In Safari's backend is close up there with Chrome for speed and beats Firefox (as seen in macOS, where all three engines are available). It also does so with much less memory and cpu load, to the point that it adds 20% or more of battery life to use it on a laptop.
I find it ironic when this is framed as user choice when it is being lobbied by massive corporate interests for their own benefit.
Epic wants to give you the “choice” to download Fortnite from exactly one place, forcing you to install their App Store if you want to engage in that fairly important social network.
Google wants to give you the “choice” to help create total Chrome hegemony, giving them an absolute monopoly on web tracking once they disable 3P cookies this year. Is the DMA going to step in there and give users the choice to configure their tracking engine in that monopolistic market?
How many recursions of choice will DMA protect? Or was there already choice in the form of Android as people continually point out?
> stepping out is a personal choice (but now is a choice for the user, instead of banning him from doing something apple doesn't like)
The choice is the developer's not the user's, if the app is only available in one app store (which seems likely to be the majority case).
Precisely because it is the developer's choice, users may be forced to leave the safety of the walled garden if they need an app that's not available - I saw another HN comment phrase it well as: if an app you need in order to "survive" is not available, you don't have a choice (for example, a banking app or a government app).
1) More spam on Android by far
2) Spotify not blocked
There’s a bit of religion happening in both directions. iOS has, objectively, fewer problems than Android in these regards and part of that are the policies.
I don't get spam on my phone (well, SMS spam sometimes but that has nothing to do with the OS) and nobody I know does. Also, I keep hearing on HN that iOS doesn't split notifications into channels and you can't block just the ad notifications. Unlike on Android where I block the ads for Uber Eats, the only application that wants to spam me (but doesn't, since I can just disable ads).
I think this would be a better argument if Apple wasn't so careless with what they accept on the App Store. There are scam apps, apps which try to trick users into accepting subscriptions, tonnes and tonnes of "casino for children" games, games which clearly try to trick children into spending their parents' money, etc.
If you think "app store spam" is a real thing, you've spent way too much time on app store.
I install apps that I need -- news, banking, podcast, email, Uber etc, usually from well known companies. A small amount of apps are lesser known but they have good reviews.
I don't think there is any fundamental difference from the Apple app store. Maybe do a check of yourself first.
> There’s a bit of religion happening in both directions. iOS has, objectively, fewer problems than Android in these regards and part of that are the policies.
When you say "objectively" I assume that this is something that has been measured and that there are reliable sources for this statement?
I would be really surprised. Anytime when I’ve searched for a feature (like DLNA sharing), and not for a specific app, I’ve got only very shitty spam apps in both stores. Even when I search for specific app, like GTA, the results deteriorate very quickly, in both stores.
The moment there are more than a very minimal / virtually non existing amount of spam and scam, it doesn't matter who has more, whatever control are in place don't work, at least not to the extant of "you must make massive concession to your rights on your own device to ensure we can do that".
That is my point of view, and to each their own I assume.
As for Spotify, yes technically it's not blocked, probably because they know that's a line they can't cross.
> iOS has, objectively, fewer problems than Android in these regards
You really need to outline clearly what "regards" you mean in that front, and objectively implies fact backed. I would disagree with that statement as-is.
Orion + FF or Chrome extensions already exists for iOS, implementing the extension interfaces on top of WebKit. Which part is the one you want, the extensions or Firefox? ‘Cause if you just want uBO on iOS you already can.
It's the risk of attack through a sidechannel, the ability to install something on your phone, not just through leaving your phone attended, but social engineering etc.
As an example of where your android example is worrying, stalker apps are currently only available for Android.
I was always of the opinion that if you didn't like the walled garden, don't buy apple. That's also a choice. It looks like this was a successful startegy on apple's part, and people want to muscle in.
What you're saying is "If you don't like the walled garden, don't buy john deere", essentially.
When a product start becoming such an important part of its owner life, and has such a huge market share, I believe society should impose some rules on it to ensure it conforms with the ideals of said society. In this case, ability to be in control your non niche computing device.
So I think this is a case where we must agree to disagree.
`When a product start becoming such an important part of its owner life, and has such a huge market share, I believe society should impose some rules on it to ensure it conforms with the ideals of said society. In this case, ability to be in control your non niche computing device.`
But people buy them because of the restriction that you don't like. you're imposing your own standard on something you probably wouldn't even buy. I doubt most users give one single thought to rooting their phone
Reading many of the sibling comments just makes me laugh.
Android has allowed everything from the beginning, and overall it looks... fine? Of course there are all kinds of malicious actors who manage to publish malware on Play Store or trick people into sideloading, but if my mom, a basic Android user who knows very little about how computers and phones work, never got herself into trouble, that says something. You must be either dumb enough or really understand exactly what you are doing to go way out of the safe zone to download a shady app.
And anyone concerned about browser's safety -- if that were a real thing we'd have already been screwed on Windows and Mac. The reality is that most people use Chrome and it is generally safe enough for everyday use. Some people use Firefox, Brave and whatever but most of those are well maintained. If you install a browser that nobody knows, that's your problem.
Reading many of the sibling comments just makes me laugh.
Android has allowed everything from the beginning, and overall it looks... fine? Of course there are all kinds of malicious actors who manage to publish malware on Play Store or trick people into sideloading, but if my mom, a basic Android user who knows very little about how computers and phones work, never got herself into trouble, that says something. You must be either dumb enough or really understand exactly what you are doing to go way out of the safe zone to download a shady app.
And anyone concerned about browser's safety -- if that were a real thing we'd have already been screwed on Windows and Mac. The reality is that most people use Chrome and it is generally safe enough for everyday use. Some people use Firefox, Brave and whatever but most of those are well maintained. If you install a browser that nobody knows, that's your problem.
Anyone that’s actually listening to the other side of this conversation would already know what responses to expect from what you’ve said. By saying what you’re saying you’re really making out like you only seek to throw your opinion over the fence and walk off. There are legitimate cases to be made on both sides, but your comment is not one. Calling this clear a win for user choice is naive and frankly a tad self-centred. For the average iPhone user, a user that mind you realistically wasn’t asking anything of their device that was being stopped by Apple’s rules, realistically has more to lose here than they do to gain. Who the hell uses browser extensions in 2023 let alone ones that weren’t already available in Mobile Safari?
This is above all a “win” for companies like Meta who will use their market power to create a more user-hostile experience for the common user. I don’t care if you don’t use Facebook anymore because you don’t like it. The reality is that a lot of people do, and the restrictions put in place by iOS definitely stop the Facebook app from being as bad as Meta would like it to. Now all it’s going to take is Meta to say “Instagram is only available on the Meta store”, or some variant thereof, for things to get a whole lot worse, quickly.
Delusional indie developers see this as a win when in reality it was hard enough to get people to use their apps in the first place.
Just as delusional are the tech enthusiasts that have along the way somehow conflated “cool new iOS features that I’m going to spend some time geeking out over” with “something that will legitimately make the experience better for end users at large”.
Above all, the view that anyone that disagrees with you isn’t a smart utility-belt-wearing techie such as yourself is such an absurd hill to die on and avenue to assert your elitism. I’ve spent considerable time using Android devices and customised them out the wazoo. I know how computers work. Gentoo was my daily driver for a long time. I grew up obsessed with computers and everyone around me knew it. By any of the silly tribal measures that I’m sure you’d use to establish who is a “real nerd”, I’m probably going to quality. Please consider that the fact that you can’t comprehend why supposedly smart people disagree with you may be a sign that you aren’t interrogating your own view enough, rather than it being a sign that you’re the only sane person in a world going insane.
Apart from the EU-only carveout, this is surprisingly more capable than I expected. I thought Apple would have done the bare minimum and continue to disallow JIT and multiple processes, but they have paths to allow other engines to do that.
It doesn't seem anywhere near as petty as the rest of Apple's DMA compliance.
Huge win for Meta, Google and the overall advertising industry.
Fewer Safari browsers equals less ITP and significantly improved user tracking e.g. first-party cookies last only a week on Safari versus a year on Chrome.
yes, this is huge news for advertising, fingerprinting, and tracking. i think we'll see a boom in those markets in the following years (contingent on some factors, but still).
I sense that a lot of iOS users are going to suddenly have their location set as being in the EU. Not sure if they can police this the way they would want.
You vastly overestimate how much iOS users care about this kind of thing. HN is a bubble and not even all of HN is gung-ho on the changes.
Also it’s not as simple as “set your location to the EU”. I’m not even sure if Apple provides the ability to convert an Apple ID to a different region. I vaguely remember reading an article about that resulting in loss of some/all purchases and other oddities.
No regular iOS user cares about Firefox (or Chrome) enough to go through that. Not to mention mobile FF/Chrome (less so Chrome) will be not well supported if the website is made outside the EU (even inside the EU is questionable). Developers barely test on FF for desktop which is easily available, they won’t be able to test FF mobile unless they have a device configured to be “in” the EU and that’s just not going to happen widely.
Lastly is FF’s iOS Safari wrapper is any indication of the quality that FF can provide then I don’t have high hopes for their native engine. Even on Android FF _just_ started opening up extensions after years of having a small whitelist unless you jumped through hoops. Based on that and the direction of FF as a whole on the desktop my expectations are incredibly low.
> Also it’s not as simple as “set your location to the EU”. I’m not even sure if Apple provides the ability to convert an Apple ID to a different region. I vaguely remember reading an article about that resulting in loss of some/all purchases and other oddities.
You can convert (I went moved my Apple ID from US -> EU about 2 years ago). Purchases are transferred, but only where they actually exist in the target region, so you lose access to install any apps that aren't available in that region (although I believe they still run if already installed).
So yeah, any US-only (or rather non-EU) apps you will lose if you converted. Also I’m guessing you’re going to get hit with foreign currency conversion fees by your CC (obviously not a problem if you move and get a bank account in your new region).
This is a US-centric view but plenty of stuff launches in the US first and so you won’t get access to those things until they make their way to the EU.
Sounds like a lot of headache to get a browser (or alternative app/app stores).
Yeah, and the not every app handles the transition very well. For example, Facebook prompted me to install their new Threads social network for months before they actually released in on the EU appstore - presumably because their internal tracking data still thinks of my account as US-based.
You're going to need to do a lot of changes to be identified as EU resident, such as your device's physical location (don't know if it's by GPS, Wi-Fi and/or cell tower data).
Yeah, because Apple is totally privacy-focused, they don't track you at all, until you try to do something they don't like and suddenly you find that things are somewhat different...
Unfortunately, from what I can tell, Apple is only being forced to open up iOS (iPhone), not any other platforms like iPadOS, and they’re not doing a jot more than they have to here.
Based on what? Because so far Apple has tried to argue to the EU that Safari on macOS is different from Safari on iOS, which in turn is different from Safari on iPadOS. End result? EU didn't buy it.
>Citing six different issues with Apple's claims, the commission concluded: "Safari qualifies as a single web browser, irrespective of the device through which that service is accessed."
I don’t remember where I read it, admittedly, but apparently the iPad didn’t cross the market share thresholds or something like that; would be happy to be wrong.
Suppose we’ll see in due course whether the European Commission takes them to task on it…
Will this allow Firefox to have extensions now that they’re not limited by WebKit? Or will Apple still axe that as a “third party App Store” or some bullshit?
Be available on iOS in the European Union only
Be a separate binary from any app that uses the system-provided web browser engine
Not have the default browser entitlement
[...]
Orion supports Firefox extensions on iOS while using webkit, so there is an existence proof that it's possible to at least have limited support for them.
Orion is almost certainly going to request the entitlement to ship a custom WebKit, in line with what they do on macOS. This might take a while, though.
The problem is, with the Mozilla CEO trying to reduce their involvement in Firefox for some reason, will they put the effort into having a mobile iOS browser that only works for the EU?
Chrome is irrelevant because ... privacy. All I actually want is to be able to run uBlock Origin on my phone.
Have you tried Orion? From the Kagi search team, it allows you to install both chrome and Firefox extensions including uBlock Origin. Still uses WebKit for rendering of course.
There were full working iOS ports of Firefox 2-3 different times in the past, but it's unclear whether they have one ready to go for this ruling, especially given how poorly Mozilla has been run lately and how much they've cut back in their browser development investment.
It's been reported that Google has been preparing an iOS version of Chrome using the Blink browser engine for a while - as they had assumed this would eventually be allowed.
Had to look it up. They've been doing this publicly for a year now.
> Bug to track creating a content_shell application that compiles in the necessary parts of blink, content, and components on iOS. This experimental application will be used to measure graphics and input latencies by providing traces for analysis.
> Experimental only, not a launch bug for a shippable product.
Things like this reinforce my suspicion that Chrome (including Chromium, advertising, yada yada) is a billion if not multi billion dollar per year effort.
It's so funny to me that to create an alternative browser, you still have to use a blessed framework by Apple to do so, instead of, you know, just using standard UI components, writing your own compositor, etc.
If I were a hostile of any sort—a criminal, a someone with a shady business model preying on PII and fingerprinting, a totalitarian dictatorship, etc.—I would be out there on the frontlines, day and night, urging Apple to open up of iOS to alternative browsers and app stores. Attack surface increasing so dramatically, in an ecosystem blindly trusted by millions, is a godsend.
It's worth noting, for better or wose, that not just anyone can ship browser engines on iOS.
You must apply for an entitlement from Apple, and they must approve you. A part of that approval process seems to require that you stick to similar privacy protections as safari (e.g. third party cookies disabled by default).
> You must apply for an entitlement from Apple, and they must approve you. A part of that approval process seems to require that you stick to similar privacy protections as safari (e.g. third party cookies disabled by default).
Does it apply to third-party app stores (which was part of my more general point)?
Also, I suspect if you just brought a written order signed by a higher-up in the Party, it’d probably help get your browser through to the main app store. Refuse, and get banned in the country.
Yes. Entitlements is a technical security measure of iOS independent of App Store. Your app must have a signed 'bit' from Apple to say it can use the specified APIs.
That is a meaningless distinction to someone who claims to be “a friendly of any sort”.
It could be of interest to 1) a very small group of friendlies with orthodox higher goals that are not aligned with the daily interests of 99% other friendlies, 2) a hostile, or 3) an even smaller group of friendlies who intend to use increased attack surface against hostiles.
I really suspect that group 2 is the most common out there, but that’d be impossible to ascertain. If I were in it, I would sure as hell not self-identify.
I find it a bit puzzling and amusing how so many people in the other threads are acting like this is the end of safety on apple and yada yada, while 1 - you're free to stay well within the walled garden if you so desire, stepping out is a personal choice (but now is a choice for the user, instead of banning him from doing something apple doesn't like), 2 - we have the example of android to know apps won't each flock to their own little store, 3 - the whole pretense of "the curating of the store allows them to ensure high quality safety" is frankly not in line with reality, the app store being full of crap and spam while blocking updates to apps that apple don't like (spotify for example).
I'm flabbergasted at "tech oriented users" ability to forget what they know when it come to certain brands they like.