The key distinction is the withholding from your competitors part. WinAPI may have a ton of features labelled "pls no use thx" but MS doesn't block you from distributing a program that uses them anyway.

Yeah, this seems reasonable to me. The better thing to get annoyed at Apple for is being slow to implement web standards. I guess you could make the argument that they are choosing to work on stuff like this instead, but I think that’s a weak argument.

Relative privation fallacy.

“Timmy got away with it. I should get away with it, too.” -Elementary school students

> I wanted to be outraged at apple, but I really can't. Read WinAPI documentation

But this is exactly why you SHOULD be outraged.

Private/secret APIs in DOS/Windows were a prominent part of the US and EU antitrust lawsuits against Microsoft in the 90s/00s.

If you use this CSS liquid glass effect in your app, Apple will reject it from the App Store.

If Apple uses this CSS liquid glass effect in their apps, it'll pass App Store review just fine.

Do you see the issue now?

You can use `-webkit-tap-highlight-color` on your website or PWA and distribute it any way you want. It will just not work in non-webkit browsers like Firefox.

What apple does and what the article talks about: They have a CSS property that ONLY they can use, you can't put that in your PWA, it won't work (no matter the browser).

Bad example since "-webkit-tap-highlight-color" is initially from Apple, not Google

[flagged]

I can install chrome on Windows, Linux and Mac, so I give them a pass. Not to mention that was ancient history.

I don't think it's an improvement, but having a GUI that matches user expectations is undeniably a business advantage.

I'm assuming they don't like that either.

Apple does plenty of bad things, and many are worse than this, but it doesn't mean it's not fair to point out this one is bad, too.

It all comes down to "the vendor can do things with your computer you can't do yourself" in the end.

I'm generally opposed to that as well. Agreeing with Muromec's reply, I don't think it is necessarily anticompetitive in the case where the console vendor doesn't favor its first party games, but of course all three do that in practice. The situation is somewhat mitigated by the existence of a flourishing open market alternative (PC games).

More broadly, and not based on antitrust grounds but on property rights grounds, I am opposed to every kind of DRM. First, it should be legal to circumvent any and all DRM/anti-copying measures. Second, it should be illegal to deprive the next owner of their property rights so that you can exert ownership control over a product past its sale.

If I buy a computer, do nothing but install a keylogging rootkit on it, and sell it on to someone else, I would rightly risk jail time. "The malware is part of the product" is not a valid excuse. DRM is also malware. It should be prosecuted as such, and if existing legislation is found wanting, more specific laws need to be written.

Hey stop bullying the trillion dollar corporation! They are my favourite corporation and their actions are beyond question >:(

Tech was always a business. What this comment is bringing out is the people who see preferred technical choices as some kind of morality play. They aren’t. They never were. It’s childish to believe such things.

This isn't available in the Safari browser.

What do you mean by unified? Strix Halo is "unified". The M series platform isn't the only unified platform out there.

How would exposing this CSS extension impact unification of the platform?

Electron doesn't use WebKit, so definitely not. Not sure about Tauri desktop, but how would you use it for Tauri mobile and React Native?

React Native / Expo apps can get liquid glass via the actual underlying native ui elements.

HN has one of the largest online populations of amateur lawyers with some of the least correct legal opinions in the world. This is one of many, many examples.

No, it says it is restricted. You need to set a private attribute on the webview to enable it. And if you interact with private APIs your app will be rejected in review.

Google or any open source map product. And actually, if we use the SCOTUS approved DOJ v MSFT consent decree as precedent, any app that can't use this private API component would be an impacted party.

I'm an antitrust nerd - 20+ years since I made my first PACER account as a teenager to get documents from interesting cases..

95% of what people call "anticompetitive" or "monopolistic" has no legal bearing. People don't know the legal definition of those words and bandy them about based on vibes.

This however, is a very very clear case of violations of precedent. If we look at Microsoft's final judgement https://www.justice.gov/atr/case-document/final-judgment-133 see F(1)(a), H(2)(b), while these stipulations haven't been applied to Apple, if I were in a market dominant position, I'd be super careful about capricious restrictions like the example undocumented API, and behavior that mimics patterns of activity that were seen as actionably sanctionable to similar market dominant forces

It’s a way they can make their webview-based apps look “native” more easily than a third party can. If you try out a third-party app and it looks less well integrated visually than a similar first-party app, then the latter has a competitive advantage because of that.

Well for starters, no one else is allowed to publish a browser with their own engine on the AppStore, and they've hampered sideloading for years. In a vacuum, it might be reasonable to block any third-party browser engines, or to put something special in their own that no one else can use on the phone, but combining those is just intentional sabotage. And yes, I know that this specific CSS property isn't all that important, but having an argument about how much they're allowed to intentionally sabotage other browsers on their phones is at best a misguided distraction from the point that they shouldn't be doing it in the first place (and not a particularly good defense either; try arguing with a cop who pulls you over for speeding that the law you broke wasn't really that important and see if it gets you out of the ticket).

> With whom is Apple competing on their own web pages and apps?

With every other app using a web view.

> without referring to monopolies

Of course it’s about monopolies. Safari is still “privileged” to be forced default browser. Making an alternative, Apple ensured to be very hard and expensive. So gating any kind of first party feature is a big no.