News
Abstract
The MaaS360 platform is prepared for Apple's deprecation of UIWebview since 2020. If your company uses the MaaS360 platform to access internal or intranet websites that use the MaaS360 iOS Browser App and has outbound firewall rules, then it is critical to read the details in this article. The final migration rollout is scheduled for 13 October 2022.
Content
How does this impact MaaS360 Products? Any customer that uses the MaaS360 iOS Browser App and the MaaS360 Enterprise Gateway platform to access internal or intranet websites will stop when Apple deprecates UIWebView. The replacement is WKWebView.
To Read full details on WKWebView MaaS360 Mobile Enterprise Gateway(MEG) , click here
MaaS360 Mobile Enterprise Gateway WKWebView Final Migration of all Clients on 13 October 2022
Apple has pushed the deadline for stopping app updates for apps that use UIWebView deprecation from December 2020 to an undetermined date. Apple can give us a new date anytime. To avoid any last-minute rush to move to WKWebView & Newer gateway, we're migrating all the clients to this platform, and are planning to complete the migration exercise by 13th October 2022. We request your cooperation to ensure that this migration happens smoothly.
Refer to the following KB for additional information on this service and prerequisites that need to be taken care. For all prerequisite details, click here
Prerequisites
If a customer has Enterprise Gateway Relay Access Mode configured within firewall rules, then add the new Enterprise Gateway Relay WKWebveiw platform information.
- US Enterprise Gateway Relay
- us03-gw.meg.maas360.com:443
- 169.63.9.67:443
- EU Enterprise Gateway Relay
- eu03-gw.meg.maas360.com:443
- 158.176.92.14:443
- APAC-SGP Enterprise Gateway Relay
- ap03-gw.meg.maas360.com:443
- 161.202.111.232:443
- Tokyo Enterprise Gateway Relay
- ap03-gw.meg.maas360.com:443
- 161.202.111.232:443
- Quad 9 DNS Server Address
-
9.9.9.9:53, 149.112.112.112:53
-
Benefits of moving to MEG WKWebView
As MaaS360 team is rolling out newer gateway service to all the iOS customers who have gateways configured and deployed in their environments, we learned that many of the customers have a question - Why should I move to this newer service. We wanted to elaborate the benefits of moving to WKWebView and newer gateway technology.
Mainly, following are the strong reasons why a client should consider moving to this newer service:
- UIWebview is deprecated officially and Apple will not allow apps to be submitted to app-store if they are built that use UIWebkit in near future.
- WKWebView, the newer web kit used in Secure browser has better stability and performance compared to UIWebview. To take advantage of migrating to WKWebview requires migrating to the newer gateway service along with it to support remote access use-case on mobile devices.
- Newer gateway offers better performance and gives more flexibility to configure MaaS360 SDK, wrapped apps and third-party apps to use Mobile enterprise gateway.
- Unlike the older gateway technology, newer gateway is less susceptible to website-specific issues and adds support for web-sockets and apps, which use long standing connections.
Migration to WKWebview
Apple has deprecated the UIWebView libraries and has advised IBM to move to WkWebview for any issues that have been raised with UIWebview libraries. Eventually apple is going to stop accepting any apps that use this technology to App Store. This deadline was set initially for Dec 2020 but apple moved the date and hasn't set a final date yet. When this happens MaaS360 must remove all UIWebview code from its apps to push an update of the app. MaaS360 secure browser is going to be impacted due to this since it uses UIWebview for rendering web-pages. Once MaaS360 updates its code, customers who haven't migrated will not be able to access their internal websites that use the MaaS360 secure browser if they aren't migrated to newer gateway service.
The use of deprecated technology could mean rendering issues in webpages, poor performance, and security vulnerabilities. Also with every OS release there is a risk that problems are discovered, which may not be resolved at all since UIWebview is deprecated. From MaaS360 perspective, supporting older technologies that are not actively supported by the vendor, makes it difficult in multiple ways to maintain our SLA's.
MaaS360 upgraded its secure browser to use WKWebview as a new and upgraded technology over UIWebview has multiple benefits as given below:
- The WKWebView loads web pages faster and more efficiently than UIWebView, and also WKWebview uses less memory
- Compared to UIWebView, the WKWebView has higher and more efficient performance and is available to the developers all the way from iOS 8
- WKWebView has extra support like IndexedDB and ObjectStore ArrayBuffer, compared to UIWebView
- WKWebView can render ~8500 objects while UIWebView renders about ~3500 objects and WKWebView’s performance is twice good as compared to UIWebView
- The percentage of usage shows that WKWebView uses 25% CPU to render an object, whereas UIWebView uses 90% CPU for the same object
- WKWebView is much stable now and is secure libraries to use in the apps
Newer gateway performance benefits
Newer gateway solution is architected and implemented as a VPN extension much like other VPN solutions but it still retains same simplicity as our older gateway in terms of configuration. Newer gateway performs better and is considered to address several limitations we had in the past primarily around web-sockets and long standing connections.
Newer implementation can take advantage of per app capabilities of an MDM provider and is 20% faster in rendering web pages. It can work without an MDM as well unlike MaaS360 VPN solution or any other VPN Solution. Minimal configuration changes are needed to try out this newer service.
Notice Change History
| September 2020 | Original Notice Posted |
| November 2021 | Update to distribution dates |
| September 2022 | Final migration notice |
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Document Information
Modified date:
12 January 2023
UID
ibm16339223