Apple announces changes to iOS, Safari, and the App Store in the European Union

Apple announces changes to iOS, Safari, and the App Store in the European Union:

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Unfortunately the UK has been left out!

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I’m eager for it to get to this side of the Atlantic, too!

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We — well some of us anyway — shot ourselves in the collective foot with Brexit.

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Not going to lie, I want some of these changes over here, too. I’m less concerned about the cut Apple takes, but I love the idea of browsers with different rendering engines.

Despite all the promises of Desktop-quality experiences in Safari on iPad, I still run into sites that simply don’t work. Opening it up to browsers with other rendering engines would spark some browser competition, I think!

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I’m excited about different browser engines as I’ll finally be able to use Safari-incompatible websites on iOS. I cannot, for example, use my university’s Learning Management System because the login is broken on Safari, and this is a significant inconvenience at least once a day when I need to do something when I cannot get to a Mac.

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As has been noted elsewhere, this will now complicate things for non-EU web developers, because they won’t be able to test on the non-WebKit iOS browsers. While sticking rigidly to “best practices” is always advisable, there still will always be quirks in certain configurations that one truly must see for oneself.

The obvious solution is for Apple to allow the entire world to have this freedom regarding browser engines on iOS, but I wouldn’t bet on that happening any time soon, especially in view of the apparently deliberate narrowness of this response (some have called it “malicious compliance”) concerning the EU requirements.

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Apple has revealed your options, according to MacStories:

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These are just browsers that will be offered to be picked as a default browser in iOS 17.4, not the browser engines.

What is disappointing is that different browser engines will be available on iPhone only, and not also on the iPad. :frowning:

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I saw somebody mention that it’s awfully nice to have one platform where the chrome rendering engine doesn’t dominate. If Safari gets steamrolled on iOS then Google + Chrome has the same dominance IE had.

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It’s also awfully nice to have a browser that works with the most websites.

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I’m sure all the services like Browserstack are already rubbing their hands together and spinning up EU-hosted services in anticipation.

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Huh, that’s odd. I don’t need Chrome anywhere … Safari works for all but one of the websites I frequent. It works at my bank, with my retirement guys, all my credit cards, etc, etc. However, I do have to use Firefox to retrieve a PDF of my billing statement from the guys who pick up my trash. :slightly_smiling_face:

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I agree and was just about to say this. I just don’t have this problem. There is the edge case for some work related sites; but I do okay with Safari 99% of the time.

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Yup, I would still be forced into the Chrome camp on a PC if I was working. But I’m old and retired and living the Apple life.

And I’m jealous….

About the retired part! :grin:

Unfortunately, it comes with a “being old” part.

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That’s great. But there are enough of us having problems that Apple has a support page.

If Safari isn’t loading websites . . .

When I’m on my Mac switching to a Chromium browser solves my problem, but I can’t do that on my iPad Pro.

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An iPad has never been able to rival a MacBook for doing something useful. I have tried all sizes of iPads. I have a very old first gen iPad Air that I use only as an e-Reader (PDFs and ePubs). It is not much of a factor in my typical workflow.

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still salty eh? there is no way apple can deny this to everyone except the eu…