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koolba parent
Does this mean we'll finally have "real" firefox with support for ublock origin on iOS?
modeless
Apple is going to (mostly) obey the letter of the law but they will continue to resist strongly in every way they can. Onerous requirements, arbitrary restrictions, overzealous enforcement, and most of all bad APIs with limited capabilities and no workarounds for bugs.

Shipping a good and complete browser engine on iOS will require more than just developers. You'll also need a team of lawyers to threaten and sue Apple to get their policy restrictions relaxed and APIs fixed.

I doubt Mozilla or Google will be willing to spend the many developer-years and lawyer-years it will take to fully port every feature of a whole engine and properly maintain it in such a hostile environment, just for the Japan market. I expect to see some hobbyist-level ports but not something worth using for a long time. Unless other countries follow suit.

arcanemachiner
> just for the Japan market

Also the EU, no?

modeless
Does the EU also require third party engines to be able to replace the web view in apps systemwide? Or does it only require that single standalone browser apps can use alternative engines?
concinds
> Does the EU also require third party engines to be able to replace the system web view in apps systemwide?

Yes.

modeless
Hmm, actually now that I look closer at the Japan requirements, it doesn't seem to allow replacing the web view systemwide, as I thought, and as Android allows. And neither do the EU requirements. They only allow individual apps to embed an alternative engine on a per-app basis by including the whole engine within the app. And the Japan page includes the caveat "apps from browser engine stewards" which if interpreted zealously (and I expect Apple to) would forbid apps not from Google or Mozilla from embedding Chromium or Gecko.

This is a pretty big limitation considering how much iOS web browsing happens in web views. Having both the EU and Japan as markets may be enough for Google to port Chromium just for Chrome itself, but we will have to wait and see. Actually Chromium development is open so it should be pretty easy to see if Google has a serious porting effort or not.

2 More Comments →
Zak
Probably not, at least not from Mozilla themselves. They cite onerous requirements and the difficulty of having to maintain different apps for different regions.

https://www.theverge.com/2024/1/26/24052067/mozilla-apple-io...

wolvoleo
Yeah malicious compliance :(
nntwozz
There is ublock origin lite for Safari in the meantime:

https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBOL-home?tab=readme-ov-file

(it's great)

viktorcode
Probably not, as the same rules were applied to Apple devices in EU earlier, and no third party browser engines appeared.

But right now you can use uBlock origin lite in Safari. Or any other of multitude of other adblockers.

mrtesthah
You can actually use full uBlock origin in Kagi's Orion iOS browser.
ckcheng
FYI. iOS Safari already supports uBlock Origin Lite. iOS Firefox can do the same anytime but it already has some tracking and content blocking built in too.
aryonoco
As someone who has recently switched from Android to iOS, I can tell you uBlock Origin Lite on Safari on iOS is a poor man’s imitation of the real uBlock Origin on Firefox on Android.
ckcheng
Oh definitely! I know you’re just using the phrase and don’t imply otherwise, but to clarify the word “imitation”, uBO lite is not a fake imitation but actually an official thing from uBO and Raymond Hill: see https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBOL-home
LetsGetTechnicl
How does it compare to 1Blocker? I use that in Safari and also a VPN when I'm away back to my home connection so it uses my NextDNS which also blocks a lot of in-app ads.
mi_lk
are there major sites that don't work for you?
Longhanks
Could’ve happened some time ago already in the EU, so there must be reasons for Firefox an Google not to ship their own engines (yet?).
__turbobrew__
uBO lite works pretty well on ios/safari for me.
swiftcoder
Nope. Apple has successfully made the rules so complicated that we still don't have any 3rd party browser engines in the EU, more than a year later.

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