Submitted 2 months ago by ForgottenFlux@lemmy.world to technology@lemmy.world
Firefox spokesperson Christopher Hilton tells The Verge that the browser has seen a more than 50 percent jump in users in Germany and a nearly 30 percent increase in France.
Brave saw a similar increase in users after Apple started letting users choose their default browsers on iOS 17.4 in the EU last week.
But… But… But… We are Apple and we know best. Our users don’t want choices!
I can’t live without Firefox on my android phone
Unfortunately, I had to decide for Opera instead. It’s much better for larger screens: It properly scales desktop websites and has desktop-style tab switcher.
Analytics nit:
30% of increase in daily installs ≠ 30% increase in users. It might lead to that, but only they maintain the increased install rates and maintain active users.
If I my sandwich shop sells 30% more sandwiches one day, that doesn’t mean I’m certain to make 30% more money at the end of the year. I might make more, I might make less.
30% of increase in daily installs ≠ 30% increase in users.
True. But the article doesn’t say that (though the Lemmy headline does). Still 30% is a substantial jump and will eventually turn into a bunch more money for FireFox - a good thing if you ask me.
If I my sandwich shop sells 30% more sandwiches one day, that doesn’t mean I’m certain to make 30% more money at the end of the year. I might make more, I might make less.
It costs money to make sandwiches. Mozilla doesn’t even pay for bandwidth (Apple has that covered) - so the FireFox iOS app essentially only has overheads. Which means more users equals substantially more profits.
Yes, and I’ll add that 30% is nothing is still nothing. Firefox and brave share on iOS are very small. This is great for customer choice but until there is real chromium and blink browser available there won’t be any real intensive to switch. Firefox already said they are not that interested, now it’s up to Google and then we can maybe have brave and other chromium clone.
If I my sandwich shop sells 30% more sandwiches one day, that doesn’t mean I’m certain to make 30% more money at the end of the year. I might make more, I might make less.
That analogy only works if you buy the sandwich once, and it stays in your house forever no matter how much you eat it.
Apples users could not pick a default browser? Wtf?
I learned the other day that macOS cannot turn mouse acceleration off without going into the terminal, but apparently macOS is user friendly and desktop linux is “only for developers”.
Usability is not just about customizability. Compatibility and ease of troubleshooting and remedying issues are also majorly important, arguably more so than customization.
Eww!
Livakavi 🙌
Am more surprised you expected this to be a thing. When it comes to Apple users choice is always what Apple chooses. Otherwise they might hurt themselves.
Everything I’ve ever used gave me a choice, so I just assumed it was universal. Now I know.
Haven’t used an apple device personally. I remember struggling when I was trying to copy a file from a friends iphone. Everything was so different.
I remember a long time ago, I worked with a lot of apple users and one had come to look at my unix machine. It had a then standard 3 button mouse which he found amazing. So I explained the whole copy and paste in X11 thing, and all the stuff you could do with several buttons depending on where you clicked.
He said that it was great but he regularly managed to miss the mouse button on his Mac so it probably wasn’t for him.
And I suppose that’s why apple does things that way.
Historically, if you used a browser other than Safari, it was required to just be the UI, the renderer still has to be Safari.
I have iOS 15.4 and I have a default browser that isn’t Safari. This is more in reference to a new popup on first time bootup that asks you to pick a browser. You could pick a default one before this, you just had to go download it first like on a computer.
Okay that makes a lot more sense.
It just works
It looks people just needed to know what choices they had. I love Firefox.
Yeah, I switch browsers like I change my clothes, and Firefox has been awesome compared to Brave, Edge, and other chromium browsers.
I enjoy Firefox for the most part but unfortunately some websites just plain don’t work on it so I end up using Brave still frequently.
Aren’t they all still WebKit under the hood though? Until they allow other web engines this is still just the illusion of choice.
I believe part of the DMA means that they’re allowed to use their own engines. Whether they have that ready right now I’m not sure, but I’m sure it’s in the works.
Browsers can now run their own rendering engines, which are sandboxed at the app level.
System-level HTML, like web apps on the home screen, are still using WebKit.
Which is how it should have been from the start.
So are we allowed to use all extensions on Firefox? Is it same as Firefox on Andriod?
Yes they can but for now they are all still using WebKit.
Apple does allow other engines (in Europe). Wether or not FireFox chooses to create one remains to be seen.
I kinda hope they don’t - because the FireFox engine sucks.
There’s nothing wrong with WebKit
Weeeeeeelllll… actually yes, because Chrome is based on an ancient WebKit version, and Firefox is the only independent remaining browser.
Aren’t they all KHTML under the hood? Yes, they are. Except firefox.
Firefox uses Gecko and someday, it will use Servo. Brave uses Blink, which is Google’s WebKit fork.
*on desktop
Could someone add an image of this setup screen?
I dont get why Apple would actively advertise other browsers.
Android is completely open and people still use Chrrome
From the Brave PR account:
Also I believe it was legally required by the EU. List is randomized.
Fucking onion browser??? Damn
Chrome isn’t necessarily the default. Samsung Browser is a thing
Samsung browser is just chrome in a jacket.
The biggest threat to an free and open internet is chrome. Chromium the base of chrome is open source and used by many other browsers as the engine (and most of the features). Everything else is clothing. Chrome, edge, brave, Vivaldi etc are all chrome in a mask.
Since chromium is developed and controlled by Google they have defacto control over how these browsers work, operate and display web content. This gives Google massive leverage in control how the web and it’s standards develop.
There is only two other web browser. Firefox and safari. These are the only other operations cable of building and maintaing a modern web browser currently. Chrome took apples safari open source core WebKit to build chrome. They then forked it. Because Google chrome is so powerful, apple will need to follow to keep inline with Google. Google also pays them billions every year. Likewise Firefox is funded by Google through default search.
Google is trying to control the web. Use Firefox.
Lol right, people use whatever they get fed. I cant believe how people use phones as products, what came with it MUST be perfect
At least for Android, you can pick your default browser from a selection in the installation when you first setup your phone. So no, Chrome is not necessarily the default on Android.
What? I never saw such a selection on setup, and I set up some Nokia Android, LineageOS, GrapheneOS and Google Pixel OS
I can’t add it as I already used it. There was a list of browsers and Safari was the last one.
Crazy, this is crazy. And extremely good!
The list is randomised. Sometimes Safari is first, last, middle.
That’s wrong, android actually advertises to switch the standard browser and search engine. But tbh only recently.
Maybe on setup but not on factory reset it seems.
I have ever only gotten factory reset phones… and one that was in arab but I could find the settings by comparing menus to grapheneos, pixel os is luckily close to AOSP
without translation of the web pages, on ios it is still one of the worst web browsers I have ever tried, I only use it to send web pages on desktop
D_Air1@lemmy.ml 2 months ago
So as it turns out, if you give people a choice. They will pick something else.