3 ms·

Well, with Internet Explorer the problem was simpler and quite worse. It had around 90% of market share at its peak. So Microsoft had a complete monopoly. The

Well, with Internet Explorer the problem was simpler and quite worse. It had around 90% of market share at its peak. So Microsoft had a complete monopoly. They stopped caring about Internet Explorer since their business was selling Windows XP licences and PCs with Windows preinstalled. As Safari, IE was an afterthought, a nice thing to have to craft a more complete desktop environment out-of-the-box (like Windows Media Player, Microsoft Works...). Luckily Firefox, Opera (Presto[1]), Safari and Chrome shattered the monopoly in the early 2010s. Safari is just the secondary browser in the ecosystem and pretty much the only relevant after Chrome and its derivatives. This days the duopoly has been achieved by fast pacing new web features and vendor lock-ins instead of grinding browser development to a halt (I lived the days of IE6/7 hell). [1] Dang I miss the good old days of Opera Presto, it was great... Vivaldi is the closest thing and I use it everyday.

Leherenn 5y ago
It had a monopoly, but you could use different browsers. I didn't have to throw away my PC and buy a Mac to install one of the better alternatives. And the market talked: Microsoft, your browser is obsolete, I'm going to use something else. With Apple here, it's different. We have a similar set of question as in the days of yore (Is Google bringing much needed innovation to the web, or are they pushing their own proprietary features to control the web? Is Apple the last sane browser vendor preserving privacy and being user-first or are they purposefully holding back the web to maintain their App Store revenues?) but the ability of the market to answer is stunted by the fact the browser is tied to the hardware. If it happens I am not happy with Apple choice, I have to change my $1000 smartphone, my $400 smartwatch, ... just to use a different browser.

Leherenn 5y ago

It had a monopoly, but you could use different browsers. I didn't have to throw away my PC and buy a Mac to install one of the better alternatives. And the market talked: Microsoft, your browser is obsolete, I'm going to use something else. With Apple here, it's different. We have a similar set of question as in the days of yore (Is Google bringing much needed innovation to the web, or are they pushing their own proprietary features to control the web? Is Apple the last sane browser vendor preserving privacy and being user-first or are they purposefully holding back the web to maintain their App Store revenues?) but the ability of the market to answer is stunted by the fact the browser is tied to the hardware. If it happens I am not happy with Apple choice, I have to change my $1000 smartphone, my $400 smartwatch, ... just to use a different browser.