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Soon I will need to use chrome on my iphone just to keep up with webapps that rely on apis not supported by Safari? That's terrible. I already have to use chrom

Soon I will need to use chrome on my iphone just to keep up with webapps that rely on apis not supported by Safari? That's terrible. I already have to use chrome on the desktop to be able to use a hanful of apps and I'm not pleased.

dv_dt 4y ago
Chrome gets closer and closer to becoming the new Internet Explorer in terms of browser interoperability, privacy, and lock in.
- Rhedox 4y ago
  To be fair Chrome is also far ahead of Firefox when it comes to performance and security (not to be confused with privacy). Safari is fast but compatibility is lacking, not just compared to Chrome.
  - olliej 4y ago
    Yeah, but compatibility is already defined as "what chrome does". To be clear I mean quirks, not features. You can easily make objective comparisons on "does feature exist in browser Y" so I'll leave that as an exercise for the reader :D But "compatibility" is things like layout quirks, and before Chrome was the IE of the web, "correct behavior" was "what IE does". A lot of the IE escape was engineering effort devoted to developing IE compatibility. A chrome monopoly is going mean google has functionally complete control of the web, so they can simply state that their behavior is the spec. On top of that they already regularly force the addition of google identity based spying directly into the browser.
    - mmis1000 4y ago
      It 'is' already working in this way. Firefox do support a few WebKit prefixed api due to heavy usage by web developers (also because chrome never finalize them, let them keep prefixed) https://caniuse.com/css-line-clamp https://caniuse.com/css-line-clamp
- SahAssar 4y ago
  Not even close. IE did things like include directx filters (which obviously need directx to work), activex, choose a non-standard box-model (which webdevs might choose these days, but back then there was no choice) and many, many more things. I don't like chrome and especially on the privacy front it's bad but they usually try to make sure that their features are at least technically adoptable by other platforms. We don't have to call a browser "the new IE" to argue against their anti-features.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
kitsunesoba 4y ago
This is what I’m worried about as well. Remember those “Works best in Internet Explorer” badges and having to close Netscape and open IE just to have sites function? That experience is about to have a modern incarnation. It’s bad news for Firefox, too. With Firefox/Gecko marketshare barely hanging on at 3%, WebKit/Safari is the last bastion against a near-Chromium/Blink monopoly at 19%. If devs don’t have to care to test against Safari they definitely aren’t going to bother testing against Firefox. At this point I think it may be prudent to push for Chromium/Blink to be spun out of Google into a non-profit organization. Its overwhelming majority marketshare makes it too prone to abuse by its owning corporation.
- jb1991 4y ago
  > That experience is about to have a modern incarnation. You speak like it's coming, but it's already been this way for years. I worked at a company with an SPA that officially only supported Chrome, and I've since used services by other companies that did not work in Safari or FF only be told by their tech support that I must use Chrome.
  - ocdtrekkie 4y ago
    Line of business apps are definitely already this way, it's why I know the apocalypse is coming for the web when this goes through. My favorite was being told we had to use Chrome on iOS for a site to work... even though obviously it's still just Webkit.
    - mmis1000 4y ago
      Because there are actually bugs in safari's shell (ui) instead of the browser part(engine). Safari on ios do have more bug than chrome on ios. Because not all safari bugs are browser engine bugs.
- Apocryphon 4y ago
  If other browser engines can be allowed, then Mozilla can port Gecko to iOS. Firefox Browser iOS is currently using WebKit.
jeroenhd 4y ago
I doubt it. I use Firefox on my phone (as in, actual Firefox, not the Safari shim available on iOS) and pretty much everything works perfectly fine. Web apps, addons, you name it. Of course, Firefox and Safari lack a completely different set of features, but people actually need to test for Safari because of Apple's iron grip over their customers' phones. Nobody tests on Firefox, especially not Firefox mobile! Sometimes someone here links a fancy new piece of tech relying on Google's weird proprietary APIs, and that's when I switch to Bromite. You'll be fine. I don't know what applications you need to use Chrome for on the desktop, but I very much doubt there'll be an exodus from the app store to the mobile web any time soon.
- lstamour 4y ago
  Things might only work fine now because people are forced to test mobile apps in Safari. If Safari’s market share drops significantly over a 3-5 year period, you might see “Works best in Chrome” start to appear again… I get it though. Every so often I find a site that works well in both Safari and Chrome due to WebKit but doesn’t work in Firefox. It’s pretty rare, but it happens.
  - jeroenhd 4y ago
    I don't think Safari's market share will drop as much as Firefox's did. Safari brings some features for mac/iOS users that Chrome struggles to emulate. The Apple's laser focus to make their stuff work on their devices and their devices alone makes Safari have some decent value for people who bought into their ecosystem. If anything, I think it'll drive Apple to pay more attention to their browser. They can afford to leave their bug reports open because users don't have a choice in browser, but once they can't anymore, they'll have a reason to use some of their excessive wealth to improve their browser. Also remember that this law only applies to EU sales. Apple will likely still block real browsers in markets outside the EU just like they're setting up different systems for each government that takes action against their walled garden. Big web applications often come from the USA and they'll need to support the American general public.
    - 4y ago
rektide 4y ago
You could run a chromium build or Edge. Perhaps Firefox would work, or one of the upstart new browsers. What apps/sites are Chrome only for you? I tend to think this is a huge non-issue, & outsizedly bemoaned as a convenient way to dock the obvious advantage of freedom. In practice I expect this only to be an issue where it is critical, such as the top current comment's example of running Unreal Engine, which Safari just cant do. The web still has enough collective memory of the bad times that social pressure against favoring specific browsers will be strong. I havent heard actual examples of problems/ outrage yet; if it became a significant issue, I'd expect then we'd see real vocal & concerted pushback. In general I favor not governing technology choices/alignment by fear of the unknown. We dont know yet on tbis one. Insisting on a conservative limited approach, based on fear, without enabling exploration, consigns us to limited sad fates.
smoldesu 4y ago
Nope, soon Apple will be required to compete with Chrome on features. As the largest company in the world, that shouldn't be an issue for them.
- ocdtrekkie 4y ago
  It doesn't matter. Even if Safari is competitive, Google will force everyone to use Chrome on iOS and it won't matter what Safari can and can't do.
  - heavyset_go 4y ago
    Sounds like FUD to me, especially considering nobody is forced to use Chrome on Windows, macOS or Linux, and that I've been using Firefox on Android for a decade now.
    - threeseed 4y ago
      What's the market share for Firefox ? I think that should answer the question about whether it's FUD or not.
    - ocdtrekkie 4y ago
      This is untrue: I regularly deal with companies forcing people and other companies to use Chrome on Windows and such. Your lack of experiencing it doesn't mean it isn't happening. But you're also missing the point: Without Safari, there's no longer further incentive for Google to participate in the web standards process, over just forcing people to use Chrome.
      - smoldesu 4y ago
        > Without Safari, there's no longer further incentive for Google to participate in the web standards process, over just forcing people to use Chrome. Nobody is getting rid of Safari, they're just repealing the idea of forcing any one user to use a first-party browser. Worrying about Chrome's dominance is a completely separate topic from the freedom to choose the browser you want to use.
heavyset_go 4y ago
I've used desktop and mobile Firefox for everything for years and it's worked perfectly well. This sounds like FUD to me. Just because you're scared of Chromium doesn't mean that everyone should be forced to use Safari and only Safari on the hardware they own.
- ocdtrekkie 4y ago
  The fact that Safari is required to support iOS is the only reason site owners can't switch entirely to Google-proprietary standards. As soon as alternative engines in iOS is allowed, web standards are over, and your Firefox will stop being adequate.
  - heavyset_go 4y ago
    Doubt it, considering that Firefox single-handedly defeated the IE monopoly and no one was forced to use it like they're forced to use Safari.
    - ocdtrekkie 4y ago
      This is an entirely fictional history of the world. IE was never defeated on the scale we are currently forced to suffer Chrome. Firefox took some consumer market share (until Chrome took it), but most businesses stayed on IE for an extremely long time, until enterprise apps left Java/ActiveX only a few years ago for more HTML5-based design. Then Chrome took a large chunk of enterprise, and finally Microsoft killed their own child by forcing everyone over to the new Chrome forked Edge. Comparatively, Chrome controls the majority of consumer, business, and mobile, and the sole defense against a completely proprietary web platform is Safari being required on iOS.
      - heavyset_go 4y ago
        > IE was never defeated on the scale we are currently forced to suffer Chrome IE actually had a much larger scale the Chrome does, as IE had 95% of the browser marketshare in 2004. Just because IE existed for years afterwards, despite only having a minuscule amount of marketshare, doesn't mean it wasn't defeated, either.
fomine3 4y ago
iPhone's browser engine barrier is a domination problem, but it (maybe accidentally) helps avoid domination of Chromium.
stjohnswarts 4y ago
Yeah I'm kind of torn on this one too :) . I know web devs hate safari, but I don't care since I'm not a web dev. The open source side of me wants to declare it a big win, but my practical side knows what happens next. A huge ad campaign by google and overnight 70% of people on ios are using google and google's proprietary standards.

dv_dt 4y ago

Chrome gets closer and closer to becoming the new Internet Explorer in terms of browser interoperability, privacy, and lock in.

Rhedox 4y ago
To be fair Chrome is also far ahead of Firefox when it comes to performance and security (not to be confused with privacy). Safari is fast but compatibility is lacking, not just compared to Chrome.
- olliej 4y ago
  Yeah, but compatibility is already defined as "what chrome does". To be clear I mean quirks, not features. You can easily make objective comparisons on "does feature exist in browser Y" so I'll leave that as an exercise for the reader :D But "compatibility" is things like layout quirks, and before Chrome was the IE of the web, "correct behavior" was "what IE does". A lot of the IE escape was engineering effort devoted to developing IE compatibility. A chrome monopoly is going mean google has functionally complete control of the web, so they can simply state that their behavior is the spec. On top of that they already regularly force the addition of google identity based spying directly into the browser.
  - mmis1000 4y ago
    It 'is' already working in this way. Firefox do support a few WebKit prefixed api due to heavy usage by web developers (also because chrome never finalize them, let them keep prefixed) https://caniuse.com/css-line-clamp https://caniuse.com/css-line-clamp
SahAssar 4y ago
Not even close. IE did things like include directx filters (which obviously need directx to work), activex, choose a non-standard box-model (which webdevs might choose these days, but back then there was no choice) and many, many more things. I don't like chrome and especially on the privacy front it's bad but they usually try to make sure that their features are at least technically adoptable by other platforms. We don't have to call a browser "the new IE" to argue against their anti-features.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

kitsunesoba 4y ago

This is what I’m worried about as well. Remember those “Works best in Internet Explorer” badges and having to close Netscape and open IE just to have sites function? That experience is about to have a modern incarnation. It’s bad news for Firefox, too. With Firefox/Gecko marketshare barely hanging on at 3%, WebKit/Safari is the last bastion against a near-Chromium/Blink monopoly at 19%. If devs don’t have to care to test against Safari they definitely aren’t going to bother testing against Firefox. At this point I think it may be prudent to push for Chromium/Blink to be spun out of Google into a non-profit organization. Its overwhelming majority marketshare makes it too prone to abuse by its owning corporation.

jb1991 4y ago
> That experience is about to have a modern incarnation. You speak like it's coming, but it's already been this way for years. I worked at a company with an SPA that officially only supported Chrome, and I've since used services by other companies that did not work in Safari or FF only be told by their tech support that I must use Chrome.
- ocdtrekkie 4y ago
  Line of business apps are definitely already this way, it's why I know the apocalypse is coming for the web when this goes through. My favorite was being told we had to use Chrome on iOS for a site to work... even though obviously it's still just Webkit.
  - mmis1000 4y ago
    Because there are actually bugs in safari's shell (ui) instead of the browser part(engine). Safari on ios do have more bug than chrome on ios. Because not all safari bugs are browser engine bugs.
Apocryphon 4y ago
If other browser engines can be allowed, then Mozilla can port Gecko to iOS. Firefox Browser iOS is currently using WebKit.

jeroenhd 4y ago

I doubt it. I use Firefox on my phone (as in, actual Firefox, not the Safari shim available on iOS) and pretty much everything works perfectly fine. Web apps, addons, you name it. Of course, Firefox and Safari lack a completely different set of features, but people actually need to test for Safari because of Apple's iron grip over their customers' phones. Nobody tests on Firefox, especially not Firefox mobile! Sometimes someone here links a fancy new piece of tech relying on Google's weird proprietary APIs, and that's when I switch to Bromite. You'll be fine. I don't know what applications you need to use Chrome for on the desktop, but I very much doubt there'll be an exodus from the app store to the mobile web any time soon.

lstamour 4y ago
Things might only work fine now because people are forced to test mobile apps in Safari. If Safari’s market share drops significantly over a 3-5 year period, you might see “Works best in Chrome” start to appear again… I get it though. Every so often I find a site that works well in both Safari and Chrome due to WebKit but doesn’t work in Firefox. It’s pretty rare, but it happens.
- jeroenhd 4y ago
  I don't think Safari's market share will drop as much as Firefox's did. Safari brings some features for mac/iOS users that Chrome struggles to emulate. The Apple's laser focus to make their stuff work on their devices and their devices alone makes Safari have some decent value for people who bought into their ecosystem. If anything, I think it'll drive Apple to pay more attention to their browser. They can afford to leave their bug reports open because users don't have a choice in browser, but once they can't anymore, they'll have a reason to use some of their excessive wealth to improve their browser. Also remember that this law only applies to EU sales. Apple will likely still block real browsers in markets outside the EU just like they're setting up different systems for each government that takes action against their walled garden. Big web applications often come from the USA and they'll need to support the American general public.
  - 4y ago

rektide 4y ago

You could run a chromium build or Edge. Perhaps Firefox would work, or one of the upstart new browsers. What apps/sites are Chrome only for you? I tend to think this is a huge non-issue, & outsizedly bemoaned as a convenient way to dock the obvious advantage of freedom. In practice I expect this only to be an issue where it is critical, such as the top current comment's example of running Unreal Engine, which Safari just cant do. The web still has enough collective memory of the bad times that social pressure against favoring specific browsers will be strong. I havent heard actual examples of problems/ outrage yet; if it became a significant issue, I'd expect then we'd see real vocal & concerted pushback. In general I favor not governing technology choices/alignment by fear of the unknown. We dont know yet on tbis one. Insisting on a conservative limited approach, based on fear, without enabling exploration, consigns us to limited sad fates.

smoldesu 4y ago

Nope, soon Apple will be required to compete with Chrome on features. As the largest company in the world, that shouldn't be an issue for them.

ocdtrekkie 4y ago
It doesn't matter. Even if Safari is competitive, Google will force everyone to use Chrome on iOS and it won't matter what Safari can and can't do.
- heavyset_go 4y ago
  Sounds like FUD to me, especially considering nobody is forced to use Chrome on Windows, macOS or Linux, and that I've been using Firefox on Android for a decade now.
  - threeseed 4y ago
    What's the market share for Firefox ? I think that should answer the question about whether it's FUD or not.
  - ocdtrekkie 4y ago
    This is untrue: I regularly deal with companies forcing people and other companies to use Chrome on Windows and such. Your lack of experiencing it doesn't mean it isn't happening. But you're also missing the point: Without Safari, there's no longer further incentive for Google to participate in the web standards process, over just forcing people to use Chrome.
    - smoldesu 4y ago
      > Without Safari, there's no longer further incentive for Google to participate in the web standards process, over just forcing people to use Chrome. Nobody is getting rid of Safari, they're just repealing the idea of forcing any one user to use a first-party browser. Worrying about Chrome's dominance is a completely separate topic from the freedom to choose the browser you want to use.

heavyset_go 4y ago

I've used desktop and mobile Firefox for everything for years and it's worked perfectly well. This sounds like FUD to me. Just because you're scared of Chromium doesn't mean that everyone should be forced to use Safari and only Safari on the hardware they own.

ocdtrekkie 4y ago
The fact that Safari is required to support iOS is the only reason site owners can't switch entirely to Google-proprietary standards. As soon as alternative engines in iOS is allowed, web standards are over, and your Firefox will stop being adequate.
- heavyset_go 4y ago
  Doubt it, considering that Firefox single-handedly defeated the IE monopoly and no one was forced to use it like they're forced to use Safari.
  - ocdtrekkie 4y ago
    This is an entirely fictional history of the world. IE was never defeated on the scale we are currently forced to suffer Chrome. Firefox took some consumer market share (until Chrome took it), but most businesses stayed on IE for an extremely long time, until enterprise apps left Java/ActiveX only a few years ago for more HTML5-based design. Then Chrome took a large chunk of enterprise, and finally Microsoft killed their own child by forcing everyone over to the new Chrome forked Edge. Comparatively, Chrome controls the majority of consumer, business, and mobile, and the sole defense against a completely proprietary web platform is Safari being required on iOS.
    - heavyset_go 4y ago
      > IE was never defeated on the scale we are currently forced to suffer Chrome IE actually had a much larger scale the Chrome does, as IE had 95% of the browser marketshare in 2004. Just because IE existed for years afterwards, despite only having a minuscule amount of marketshare, doesn't mean it wasn't defeated, either.

fomine3 4y ago

iPhone's browser engine barrier is a domination problem, but it (maybe accidentally) helps avoid domination of Chromium.

stjohnswarts 4y ago

Yeah I'm kind of torn on this one too :) . I know web devs hate safari, but I don't care since I'm not a web dev. The open source side of me wants to declare it a big win, but my practical side knows what happens next. A huge ad campaign by google and overnight 70% of people on ios are using google and google's proprietary standards.