Japan: Apple Must Lift Browser Engine Ban by December
108 comments
·August 6, 2025HHad3
I would welcome if this global legislative push would end up in a more open app ecosystem for iOS overall.
BrowserEngineKit is a thin wrapper over XPC and iOS' extension system. The system would be so much better to develop for if XPC was an open API, and JIT for isolated sub-processes was permitted without Apple's blessing.
* Messengers could have separate sub-processes for preprocessing untrusted inputs -- iMessage already does this, third-party messengers are single-process and cannot.
* Applications could isolate unstable components for better user experience and crash recovery.
* Emulators, e.g. for retro systems, would benefit from speedy emulation.
* WASM would become useful in iOS.
* Browser could use XPC without special-purpose API wrappers such as BrowserEngineKit.
But alas, all of this would make it easier to load code that runs at native speed into an iOS app after a store review happened, and as we all know that'll be the end of the world.
yupyupyups
>and as we all know that'll be the end of the world.
I'll enjoy seeing all the accounts on MacRumors clawing their eyes out when that happens.
It would be naive to think that Apple isn't funding sites and narratives on the internet to serve their economic interests.
One of the most outlandish one being that freedom to use your phone however you want would necessarily compromise security and privacy for everyone. It's such a bizarre and indefencible take, and yet it's repeated over and over again on those Apple-worship platforms.
loa_in_
Freedom to use your phone however you like would make bug tracking on Apple's side more complicated and therefore more expensive and therefore it damages their profit bottom line. They would happily freeze development altogether if it was a feasible option.
devinprater
Not only speedy emulation, but more efficient too, since it doesn't have to struggle so much through interpretation. That would help battery life and keep phones from heating up just playing a game from 2008.
TheDong
> the determination is made based on the degree of likelihood that [it will prevent alternative browser engines]
If you interpret that very liberally, doing a region-locked "you can release alternate browser engines but only regionlocked to japanese apple accounts" could be seen as intentionally preventing alternative browsers from existing.
Why would mozilla port firefox when it can only target a tiny fraction of its users?
I know it's not super realistic, but maybe there's a path to global browser choice in there.
dylan604
> Why would mozilla port firefox when it can only target a tiny fraction of its users?
Mozilla is used to only a tiny fraction of users anyway. Why would this be any different? It could also be a chance to release a version for QA by the users before the rest of the market opens up.
TheDong
Comparing all "tiny fractions" as if they're identical is nonsense.
"Why wouldn't apple make an iphone mini even though it only targets a tiny fraction of people? They already only target a tiny fraction of the living animals on earth because they don't make iphones for fish"
The reality is that japan is less than 5% of iphones, and mozilla has to focus it's limited resources.
Also, if mozilla's, mostly US based, developers can't run firefox on ios, they can't even build it in the first place
tempodox
But this would be a tiny fraction of a tiny fraction.
troupo
> oing a region-locked "you can release alternate browser engines but only regionlocked to japanese apple accounts" could be seen as intentionally preventing alternative browsers from existing.
That's one of the things Apple has been doing with EU
TheDong
Partly because the EU law's phrasing wasn't as "I'll know it when I see it", and partly because apple seems to not care about the spirit of the law and just want to exploit its users.
The japanese law's phrasing is apparently better, but I kinda expect apple to still ignore it and then drag whatever comes through court as long as possible
fkyoureadthedoc
To increase their already tiny fraction of marketshare by another tiny fraction?
fidotron
Japan has a funny relationship with Apple. For example, the Felica ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FeliCa ) based ticket system is built into every iPhone globally, making life in Japan significantly easier for foreign iOS users. More surprisingly actually using the tickets does not require any app at all - you just use Apple Pay.
This is all narrowing the scope of what advantages native apps have (they do still have advantages), but it's hard to argue they simply aren't moving gatekeeping to other areas.
Shank
FeliCa Networks support is the direct result of the fact that mobile transit and mobile payments use in Japan predates the iPhone. Mobile Suica and Osaifu-Keitai already existed, and Apple needed to compete. It started with Japanese SKU iPhones but expanded globally.
Even now in Japan, mobile payments are anything but a monopoly. When Apple is forced to compete, they do things like add Suica with Express Transit. PayPay, a made-in-Japan QR code payments app is more prevalent than credit card payments here.
ezfe
Android phones don't support it globally so saying that Apple is "forced" to compete where Android doesn't proves the point that they're doing more than needed.
Shank
Just because you can provision Felica cards outside of Japan doesn't mean that you can actually use them. It's not really global support if you can add Suica in the US and then not use it. More likely is that Felica Networks agreed with this logic and Apple is only paying the license fee for JP devices, or has some side deal about not delineating between regions. If Apple didn't support Felica, it would just move more users in Japan onto physical cards or Android.
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delfinom
FeliCa is simply a patent issue. Apple got some sort of sweetheart deal somewhere.
Every Google Pixel has FeliCa its just turned off on non-Japan phones due to said licensing, though people have rooted the phone to turn it on.
kikkia
Apple having such a dominant hold of market share in the smartphone space gave a lot of leverage when negotiating royalties with Sony who makes the felica stuff. From what I heard it was basically just gifted to them, because if Apple says no we wont support it, then you lose a huge amount of users. Whereas with other manufacturers they pay on a per device basis tracked by the underlying osaifu-keitai stuff. If you are rooted though it is usually just 1 flag or something you need to change. Been using my US Pixel 6 for years daily on my commutes.
agust
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.
Sayrus
From the same website, there are still blocks put in place by Apple to discourage anyone, especially large browsers, from publishing their own engine: https://open-web-advocacy.org/blog/apples-browser-engine-ban...
ChocolateGod
I thought in the UK, the government decided to only weakly enforce the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024.
benoau
Weakly might even be overstating it. Their roadmap has all this ambitious stuff like sideloading and competing app stores and allowing apps to link to their own payments, that they are aiming to have categorized into priority-buckets by the middle of next year. This could take the rest of the decade to actually be implemented on Apple's side.
a_vanderbilt
Culturally, the Japanese aren't likely to care. Take a look at Linux usage in Japan to get what I mean. You will have a small but very dedicated group of users who won't change for anything, and then the masses who just use what is convenient. They don't like tweaking.
rs186
Weird argument. Linux mostly operates in a completely different space (enterprise) from where iOS/Chrome (consumer electronics and technology) lives
nemomarx
is Linux usage significant enough in any country to really make judgements about culture from?
jeroenhd
AFAIK the main reason is that only the EU+UK cared about these rules and their market share is too small for companies like Google or Mozilla to invest into.
Because of the way the App Store works, browser engines segregated by region need to be two different apps. That means maintaining two source trees (EU+UK+JP vs worldwide) and two releases with two reviews.
I expect niche browsers to have a go at porting to iOS at some point (I'd love to see a project like Ladybird be the first non-Safari browser on the app store!) but for the major companies it seems like too much of a hassle at the moment.
agust
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.
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immibis
I thought it was because Apple still put so many roadblocks in the way of browser developers that nobody was able to pass them.
agust
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.
criddell
Don't expect Apple to just open the gates and say anything goes as far as the browser is concerned. Instead, look for an Apple build of Firefox and maybe an Apple build of Chrome that you will be able to install.
charcircuit
I wonder if it would make more sense and be easier for Firefox to switch to Blink, working together with Google making an alternate browser engine for iOS.
reorder9695
It'd probably be easier but not good, diversity in engines is good here. We don't want something like the IE monopoly again.
Towaway69
Hahaha - as a European there is already a monopoly, a US based monopoly. But that's really due to the compliancy of europeans tech industry.
charcircuit
The issue that you bringing up was more of an issue of Microsoft thinking they were finished with the web and the lack of automatic updates. It was not due to lack of diversity of engines, but of market share of a single product. This is very different from having the dominant browser engine invested in the success of the web with automatic updates to ensure that the web platform is able to advance and not stagnate.
troupo
> to switch to Blink, working together with Google making an alternate browser engine for iOS.
How is switching to Blink, a Google-controlled engine, supposed to help creating an "alternative engine"?
ajaimk
Is this a good thing? Doesn't this just expand the marketshare of Chromium?
meibo
Safari is not a good browser, by design, because it's in Apple's interest to cripple the Web as a platform. If they want their browser to be actually competitive instead of forcing people to use it, they should make a good browser. That is markets working as they are supposed to.
tempodox
> markets working as they are supposed to.
Where Apple is doing everything they can to make that “market” work in their interests instead of as it is supposed to from a user perspective. And when you don't have a choice, it's not really a market either.
perfectviking
What is your argument that Safari is not a good browser?
Using market forces to encourage more consolidation into a single engine is *bad*.
cguess
It does indeed. Safari on iOS is the one thing keeping the web from just being "All Chrome Everywhere".
simondotau
Haven’t you heard? The web is dead. It’s now called the Chrome Platform. The standard is defined as whatever Google implements.
betaby
> Chrome Platform.
The West's Internet is just Cloudflare's proxy.
troupo
Yup. That's the downside of it. I am personally quite torn on the issue.
On the one hand Apple must be made to open up iOS more.
On the other hand it just leads to Chrome monopoly.
dcow
Then attack Chrome. There isn’t a moral conundrum here.
sunaookami
If Safari can only survive because Apple has a monopoly on browsers on iOS then it's a shit browser.
fkyoureadthedoc
Firefox is overall a fine browser. Still has 2% marketshare.
There's also the fact that websites themselves need to be mindful of multiple browser engines existing because of Safari. Once users are able to install Chrome on iPhones, developers will just abandon every other engine wholesale.
dylan604
Being mindful of alternate browsers means nothing. If that were true, more people would not be using Chrome on Android or on desktop.
ezfe
Even if Safari was perfect, people would still switch to Chrome because that's what they think they need.
shmerl
You'd be able to use proper Firefox there. And it is a good thing, it weakens Apple's malicious control over Web standards (sabotage of using SPIR-V for WebGPU is Apple's fault).
dylan604
You've missed the point. Once the restriction on which browsers can be used is lifted, people won't be switching to Firefox in vast numbers. They will be switching to Chrome. Just because someone is able to use Firefox does not mean they will use Firefox.
frou_dh
We've got to assume that Google have internally been developing "real" Chrome for iOS for a long time, so that it'll be ready to go immediately, right?
fragmede
(Blink is the Chrome web rendering engine)
> Checking out and building Chromium for iOS
> Building Blink for iOS
> The iOS build supports compiling the blink web platform. To compile blink set a gn arg in your .setup-gn file. Note the blink web platform is experimental code and should only be used for analysis.
> [gn_args] > use_blink = true > ios_content_shell_bundle_identifier="REPLACE_YOUR_BUNDLE_IDENTIFIER_HERE" > ios_chromium_bundle_id="REPLACE_YOUR_BUNDLE_IDENTIFIER_HERE"
> Note that only certain targets support blink. content_shell and chrome being the most useful.
https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/main/docs/i...
Shank
I think this is a net good in the long term. Even if you completely exclude obvious benefits, like being able to support more APIs than Safari, it forces Apple to actually compete with other browsers and implement things if they start getting real market share.
Not that you really should, but Safari has a limit of 500 tabs. Why? It's arbitrary. Safari doesn't support WebRequest in blocking mode, so you can't have real adblockers (just MV3 style content blockers, like uBOL). There are all sorts of edge cases too, like if you want cross-browser sync and extensions. Sure, you can totally run Safari with extension support, but extensions in e.g., Orion are shaky at best.
The biggest claim that Apple made about this whole thing was that web browsers offered an attack surface increase as a result of giving JIT to other browsers, and they could be owned. Frankly, though, I would take a browser without JIT if I had a real adblocker.
daedrdev
Im not sure the Japanese government will survive to December so this could change
KingOfCoders
I found the power of "It can be done" amazing. One country does it, everyone else thinks "It can be done, we don't want to be left behind" after 20 years of this being impossible.
ACCount36
Or terrifying.
Look at all the loonies with "real government ID" laws coming out of the woodwork now that UK has implemented government ID age verification.
zerr
How about smart TVs?
BaardFigur
Hopefully EU can make the same requirements, and hopefully Firefox can port its engine to iOS
Looks like Japan learned from the malicious compliance shenanigans Apple is pulling with the EU. I hope Apple gets served some substantial fines that really hurt when they try to pull the same shit there. And I say, "when", not "if".