Hacker News: agust

New comment by agust in "Apple's intentional crippling of Mobile Safari"

agust — Sun, 22 Mar 2026 16:51:06 +0000

The security/privacy argument has been debunked many times.

How do you explain that all other OSes, including Apple's own macOS, manage to allow other browser engines?

Do you think the iOS team is that incompetent?

New comment by agust in "Apple's intentional crippling of Mobile Safari"

agust — Sun, 22 Mar 2026 15:15:02 +0000

Worth noting that Apple doesn't just cripple iOS Safari, it cripples all iOS browsers because it also forces them to use WebKit, the crippled browser engine underneath Safari.

It would be fine if they just made Safari bad, that's their choice. But they don't stop there: they make the entire web bad on iOS purposely to promote the native apps they can tax.

New comment by agust in "Japan: Apple Must Lift Browser Engine Ban by December"

agust — Wed, 06 Aug 2025 12:11:53 +0000

Yeah that's why the bigger the market they can reach with a version using their own engine, the more likely they are to invest into doing it.

Now the question is what's the threshold for this market to be big enough? Maybe Japan's joining in pushes it past that point.

New comment by agust in "Japan: Apple Must Lift Browser Engine Ban by December"

agust — Wed, 06 Aug 2025 11:55:14 +0000

Yeah other reasons I've heard of include the obligation to adopt iOS-specific APIs for features like scrolling and text inputs; developing a separate app for these markets and therefore loosing their existing userbase; and signing a pretty crazy contract, among other things.

But the bigger the market they can reach, the bigger the reward, and so at some point it may justify investing resources to work around those roadblocks and accept the drawbacks.

New comment by agust in "Japan: Apple Must Lift Browser Engine Ban by December"

agust — Wed, 06 Aug 2025 10:26:09 +0000

So after the EU and the UK, Japan is now putting an end to Apple's iOS alternative browser engine ban too.

Those are 3 large jurisdictions, I wonder if that's now a market big enough for Chrome and Firefox to invest into iOS versions of their browser that use Blink and Gecko under the hood. From what I heard this was one of the main reasons they haven't done it yet.

New comment by agust in "Apple's Browser Engine Ban Persists, Even Under the DMA"

agust — Mon, 14 Jul 2025 13:47:05 +0000

The likely outcome of alternate, capable browser engines coming to iOS will be to push Apple to invest in Safari so it can compete with them and not loose all of its market share.

Otherwise, yes it's likely web apps will prompt their user to use a browser with a capable engine on iOS if they exist. Nothing to configure, install and use.

Users will then be able to use capable web apps that take up a tenth of the storage of native apps, that are cheaper and portable across platforms — among many other benefits.

New comment by agust in "Apple's Browser Engine Ban Persists, Even Under the DMA"

agust — Mon, 14 Jul 2025 11:10:50 +0000

Browser engines define the capabilities of web apps and websites. When they don't support APIs or have bugs, they impact negatively web software.

Apple's WebKit is renowned to be lagging behind, refusing to implement crucial features and being rigged with bugs, hence limiting the capabilities and quality of web apps, and effectively preventing them to compete with native apps.

Getting other browser engines on iOS would be beneficial for developers, businesses and end user by making mobile web apps viable.

New comment by agust in "Apple's Browser Engine Ban Persists, Even Under the DMA"

agust — Mon, 14 Jul 2025 09:52:24 +0000

Testing mobile interactions such as scrolling and swiping, as well as animations' performance cannot be done through a VM.

Only real devices allow to test these aspects properly.

New comment by agust in "Apple vs the Law"

agust — Fri, 11 Jul 2025 15:56:19 +0000

I didn't say Apple invented mobile web apps. I said Apple invented the ability to install mobile web apps on device.

I'm not 100% sure no other mobile OS allowed this before to be honest, but I'm pretty iOS is the one that popularized it.

New comment by agust in "Apple vs the Law"

agust — Fri, 11 Jul 2025 10:41:30 +0000

The ability to install web apps that open as standalone apps, and not in Safari, was introduced by Apple with iOS 2.1 in 2008. Well before this ability was added to Android.

Apple invented installable mobile web apps.

Link about the needed metatag: https://www.mobilejoomla.com/forum/4-feature-requests/330-ip...

Steve Jobs introducing web apps as the way to develop apps for the iPhone in 2007: https://williamkennedy.ninja/apple/2024/01/30/steve-jobs-int...

New comment by agust in "Apple vs the Law"

agust — Fri, 11 Jul 2025 09:37:02 +0000

Mobile web apps that can be installed on device were invented by Apple.

This was the way developers were supposed to develop apps for the iPhone when it was released, before Apple introduced the App Store.

New comment by agust in "Let's unite the startup ecosystem in Europe with a standardized ‘EU Inc'"

agust — Mon, 14 Oct 2024 12:09:47 +0000

> "EU is already so harmonized that startups can shop for best corporate structure and law, just like they do in the US and run their business smoothly."

It's not harmonized at all, it's fully fragmented.

You can't hire someone working from another EU country. You can't raise capital across the EU. You have many different rules, regulations, taxes, etc depending on the state.

New comment by agust in "Time-Based CSS Animations"

agust — Sun, 05 May 2024 09:45:22 +0000

Just one nitpick: the DOM is not updated by CSS here, only the value of the CSS variable is. (It will indeed cause style recalc and paint though, and result in poor performance as we can see with the demos.)

New comment by agust in "iPadOS Identified as Digital 'Gatekeeper' Under New EU Tech Rules"

agust — Mon, 29 Apr 2024 12:39:29 +0000

So basically Apple managed to delay the application of the DMA to iPadOS by 7 months.

New comment by agust in "iOS404"

agust — Tue, 16 Apr 2024 11:24:25 +0000

So they can make it to work for platform-specific apps that they tax 30%, but can't make it to work for interoperable web apps which they can't tax. How convenient.

New comment by agust in "iOS404"

agust — Tue, 16 Apr 2024 10:35:38 +0000

And what are they suggesting to improve the proposal? Apple, which makes $20B a year with Safari, surely has enough resources to make a counter-proposal?

New comment by agust in "iOS404"

agust — Tue, 16 Apr 2024 10:25:51 +0000

The APIs coming with a security or privacy risk are always gated by a permission prompt on the web (contrary to platform-specific apps). Safari has gone even further by only allowing some of them (e.g. Push notifications) for installed web apps.

These APIs are also much more restricted than their proprietary-ecosystem equivalent.

Overall, web apps having access to these features in Chrome are an order of magnitude safer than platform-specific apps.

New comment by agust in "iOS404"

agust — Tue, 16 Apr 2024 09:52:47 +0000

Why would they belong in a platform-specific app but not in a standard-based web app? Because Apple can't get 30% out of it?

New comment by agust in "Apple Updates App Store Guidelines to Permit Game Emulators, EU Music App Links"

agust — Sat, 06 Apr 2024 01:02:45 +0000

Another very good web app emulator is https://afterplay.io. It also works very well within the browser or installed on the homescreen.

New comment by agust in "U.S. sues Apple, accusing it of maintaining an iPhone monopoly"

agust — Thu, 21 Mar 2024 20:13:09 +0000

Enforcing a single browser engine is in no way a requirement for PWAs, no.

Windows, macOS and Android all support PWAs while also allowing them to be run by different browser engines.