
Apple broke WebAssembly on iOS and are leaving it broken - skybrian
https://www.scirra.com/blog/218/apple-broke-webassembly-and-are-leaving-it-broken
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mikewhy
"and are leaving it broken".

> Confirmed resolved in iOS 11.3 beta 1.

> 3 days ago

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sp332
That's good, but as the article says, the release date for 11.3 is "Spring".

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lern_too_spel
Why is it that Apple can't manage to update their browser without updating the
whole OS?

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oneplane
Because it's not just the browser, it's WebKit for the entire iOS.

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RobertRoberts
Does it _have_ to be?

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favorited
It would mean shipping 2 WebKit frameworks, once for Safari and one for the
rest of the OS. Even then it could be fixed in Safari, but then sites still
wouldn't work in Chrome, Firefox, or other apps with embedded browsers.

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RobertRoberts
You mean just like Android does with Chrome? How hard is that? Why is this
even worthy of debate? The browser is an application, not a system resource.
To commingle the two makes no sense.

Unless you think it's worth saving a few mbs of storage to have two instances
for security and stability??

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oneplane
It is a system resource to Apple. There are a set of basic "protected" system
resources you are not allowed to touch. You can debate if that is an ecosystem
you want, but that is what it currently is. You cannot replace the phone
dialer, you cannot replace the SMS interface, you cannot modify buttons etc.
It's mostly for two design reasons: maintain a consistent UX, and, protect
users from themselves. And yes, users need that, and no, it's not forced upon
them, you are free to not buy it.

The thing is, that for 99% of the users, the defaults work wonderfully and
allow them to be super productive without having to toy with their device like
they used to have to in the Windows Mobile and Palm days.

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lern_too_spel
While I think it's stupid that I can't use real Firefox or Chrome on iPhone,
GP's point is that it's stupid that even Apple (forgetting third parties)
can't update its browser without an OS update, and he understandably can't
believe that people are defending this.

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oneplane
I suppose the reasoning is that it doesn't matter when you have a WebKit-flaw.
It doesn't matter if the browser gets an update if the average user is using
3-5 apps every day that use WebKit themselves and are still vulnerable. For
example, StackExchange has a built-in browser using WebKit, as do Twitter and
Facebook. Updating Apple's Browser (is it called Safari on iOS as well?)
separately would fix about 20% of the attack surface, totally not enough for
any sensible company.

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lern_too_spel
Then they should update both simultaneously, like Android has done for years.

But not even being able to update even the browser by itself shows an extreme
level of incompetence.

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RobertRoberts
Is this Apple demonstrating nefarious behavior (ie, a battle against webapps),
they don't care about webassembly (who knows why, lazy?) or are they
incompetent?

There may be another option, but in my experience, they want all apps to go
through their store and have been almost belligerent to web devs in their
mobile Safari/iOS development.

Edit: Or is this article inaccurate? The browser as a system update is such an
obviously bad MS style thing to do, how was this repeated by Apple? How come
so many people aren't completely baffled/angered by this decision?

Edit 2: It looks like a comment on the article says it's fixed in an iOS beta
update coming soon...

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sp332
Given the timing, it looks like a Spectre mitigation accidentally broke it.

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wrs
But how could they accidentally release it? WebAssembly has no tests at all? I
don’t get it.

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weego
Maybe it was a pragmatic decision to quickly fix something that effected
everyone at the short term cost of a feature practically no one uses.

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comex
According to one of the comments on the blog post (I haven’t tested this
myself):

> Confirmed resolved in iOS 11.3 beta 1.

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X-Istence
[https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=181781#c4](https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=181781#c4)

