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Ask HN: Does Apple violate anti-competition laws by disallowing other browsers?

3 points by osrec ↗ HN
I am aware that Apple allows other vendors to wrap their browsers around a Safari component on iOS, but they do not allow them to use their own rendering engines.

Firstly, why do they do this? And secondly, does this violate antitrust laws in a similar way that Microsoft did with IE?

3 comments

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greenyoda
> does this violate antitrust laws in a similar way that Microsoft did with IE?

The issue with IE was that Microsoft was using its monopoly in the operating system market to unfairly drive out competition in the browser market.[1] Apple, on the other hand, has only 45% of the smartphone market in the U.S. today,[2] so nobody has a monopoly in that market.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor....

[2] https://macdailynews.com/2019/03/13/apple-grows-iphone-marke...

osrec
I suppose that's a fair point.

I just hate how Apple are holding browsers back in terms of PWA support. If they allowed Chrome or Firefox to have their own engines, we could at least have push notifs on iOS with PWAs. Not to mention the Safari bugs; to a developer, targeting Safari can sometimes feel like targeting IE in the early 2000s.

chatmasta
As an iOS user, I'm happy that apps are forced to use JavascriptCore for all scripting work, not just in browsers. I like to know that any code running on my device has been through app review, or is sandboxed in JavascriptCore. It makes it much harder for apps to sneak malicious behavior past reviewers.