54 ms·

Apple is not defending browser engine choice

267 points by bertman 4y ago

Linda703 4y ago
[dead]
_the_inflator 4y ago
My take: By only allowing WebKit, Apple keeps its walled garden. It simply allows only Apple code in its platform. Apple Apps are build on top of Apple's ecosystem and the same goes for Web Apps: build on top of Apple's WebKit.
- 5350-uiop-1130 4y ago
  also crippling the browser so it does it not eat into app store profits.
  - cyberpunk 4y ago
    I play nvidia GeForce now through safari. Added to my Home Screen it has no browser chrome, and it supports my Bluetooth controller pad no problem. What is crippled?
    - the_gipsy 4y ago
      Safari iOS, nobody is talking about macos. Edit: my bad. Well, I just want to be able to install another browser on the phone that I payed for.
      - girvo 4y ago
        They are talking about Safari iOS. I stream games from Gamepass semi-regularly (the Backbone One is excellent) on my iPhone 12 Mini
      - cyberpunk 4y ago
        I’m talking about my iPad.
    - makeitdouble 4y ago
      https://firt.dev/notes/pwa-ios/ https://firt.dev/notes/pwa-ios/
    - cowtools 4y ago
      The ability to freely run programs on your own damn hardware! Congratulations, you played a AAA video game on your personal surveillance device by streaming it from someone else's (useful) computer. Very cyberpunk of you! I guess that's why they call this place "hacker" news.
    - nicoburns 4y ago
      The two keys things: - There is no persistent offline storage that isn't at risk of getting wiped every 7 days (even for apps added to the home screen). - No push notifications (although these are coming). Which is somewhat frustrating precisely because Safari is otherwise so capable.
      - spullara 4y ago
        Both of those sound like positives for users. Maybe they aren't your customer.
        makeitdouble 4y ago
        I'd hate to have a note taking PWA which data's get wiped every 7 days. Solutions to this is to sync the data with a server, which then requires an account and user management, privacy considerations, keeping the server alive, backing up data, GDPR fun etc... Any simple applications becomes a maintenance nightmare very quick.
        nicoburns 4y ago
        They'd only be available with an explicit opt-in, so I don't see how. They'd probably only be available for webapps added to the homescreen too, so websites wouldn't even be able to spam the permissions request.
        dento 4y ago
        Positives like not having "save" ability on documents? Or not having push notifications so messaging applications, calendars and such is not possible? Both of these can be abused of course, but not having them forces many categories of apps to be native.
        resoluteteeth 4y ago
        Users don't want notifications from random websites they browse to, but they need them for pwas they install to their home screen which are supposed to have parity with apps
    - 5350-uiop-1130 4y ago
      I can't comment on cloud streaming, I guess vendors have ways to workaround browser limitations. As a web dev, i find Safari to be the jankiest. Just opening the dev tools has become problematic recently.
    - ThatPlayer 4y ago
      While there's no browser chrome, it's still not fullscreen like native games can be, without the iOS status bar at the top: https://caniuse.com/fullscreen https://caniuse.com/fullscreen Also their Gamepad API implementation doesn't do rumble: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/GamepadHapticActuator#browser_compatibility https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/GamepadHapt...
  - madeofpalk 4y ago
    This doesn't follow when you realise that apple also neglects it's own native platforms that eats into it's "app store profitss"
throwaway2056 4y ago
There is a very sad hypocrisy with issues like these. Most decision makers (who are non-technical) sport iPhone. Just works (both Apple and the user).
eric4smith 4y ago
That's what you and I would do if we controlled our own wildly popular platform. This is not communism. Corporations want to make money and control their own destiny. Why should Apple, a private corporation be fully open? Seriously. I want diversity as well. But will that happen? Will Apple, Microsoft or Google allow just about anything on their platforms?? Heck no. Ain't gonna happen. Our countries are run by companies which are run by humans with a profit motive.
- the_gipsy 4y ago
  The issue here is systematically working against their own users interests.
  - eric4smith 4y ago
    When has that ever stopped a corporation from making a profit? If that were so, Coke would stop selling their wildly popular drink.
    - the_gipsy 4y ago
      Yes, it happens all the time and profit is of course the goal of a corporation. But we are allowed to call them out when they throw their paying users under the bus, under some disguise or excuse.
  - Someone 4y ago
    Firstly, companies are allowed to make stupid decisions. Secondly, they can’t be doing everything wrong, given that do they still sell zillions of devices every year. I think they aren’t working against the interests of their users at large. There are people who don’t like some of their restrictions, and some of them may even have an iPhone, but I think that’s a fairly small vocal minority of their users.
- bmitc 4y ago
  Wasn't Microsoft hammered with antitrust violations over a situation much less mundane than what Apple is doing?
mod50ack 4y ago
It’s not just WebKit. Devs can’t extent WebKit very much. Orion is trying but they’ve barely gotten anything done on the iOS extension side. There are limitations on what you can do by linking into the iOS web browser API, it seems. I recently switched to Mac with great success. So I decided to try out the iPhone. I hadn’t used one for years and I was sick of Android. I’m still no great fan of Android. And so many little things are better on iOS. However, the SINGLE BIGGEST THING is absolutely broken. Browsing on iOS is unusable if you’re used to uBlock Origin. I can run that on Fennec/Firefox. I cannot do so on iOS. I was hoping the content blockers and extensions might come close. They do not in any way. I don’t even REALLY like FF and I don’t like Android but those are the options if I want browsing that doesn’t suck. Or maybe I’m missing something and someone can enlighten me before I return the iPhone.
- tehnub 4y ago
  I use Wipr on ios (and ublock origin everywhere else) and it works like 99% as well. Costs 2 bucks I think. Have you tried that?
- neonsunset 4y ago
  AdGuard extension for iOS Safari is really good and does the same job as uBlock Origin on desktop.
  - dvzk 4y ago
    If you use uBlock's advanced mode to default-deny scripts or third-party resources then no other extension comes close. (Except for uMatrix, which is by the same developer.)
  - redox99 4y ago
    It's doesn't do the same job, it's more like manifest v3. Which yes, with current ads that's enough for 99% of them. But especially once Chrome drops support for manifest v2, you'll start seeing a lot more antiadblocks and your rule based adblock won't be able to get around them.
- threeseed 4y ago
sascha_sl 4y ago
Just the mere existence of WebKit keeps up Browser diversity. It's probably the one reason most websites have not adopted a "use Chrome or go away" model. Many were happy to adopt a "be in a country without GDPR or go away" model, so would that really be a stretch? I do think Apple should lose their walled garden, but it should be pretty hard to "unlock" an iPhone to keep coersion down. Maybe make it slightly more easy if you only trust one extra vendor, like Epic. They'll do it one way or another. While it's not perfect and AppStore review really needs to step it up, there are still some unique qualities there, especially for people that would never ever "choose" a browser - they just use whatever they have.
- mtomweb 4y ago
  Did you read the article?
  - sascha_sl 4y ago
    I thought I did. But I might not be fully awake yet. I'll re-add this one to my reading list I guess.
tannhaeuser 4y ago
This fake-grassroots propaganda for "browser diversity" (= Chrome monopoly) needs to stop. Apple is literally the last bastion holding up the open web, with everything else - WHATWG, W3C, ga, DoubleClick, AdWords, YT, Mozilla/FF, etc., etc. - being Google/Alphabet or financially dependent on Google/Alphabet.
- mtomweb 4y ago
  How’s it fake grassroots? It literally got started by a bunch of no name developers
  - Kerrick 4y ago
    For one thing, TFA is written by someone whose livelihood is earned at a competing software mega corporation & browser vendor. Their job title is, "Microsoft Partner PM on Edge."
  - dmitriid 4y ago
    No. It wasn't. This is a several-year-long obvious and brash campaign by numerous very loud "developer advocates" and high-visibility developers from Chrome. Of whom Alex Russel (the author of the piece we're discussing) was one of the most visible (he worked at Google for 9 years? More?). Chrome is by far the largest driver behind "Safari bad, Safari no support standards" of these "grassroots no-name initiatives". On top of that, Google owns web.dev. And when Chrome releases another half-baked non-standard it's advertised there as "this great new standard now available" that gullible devs buy line, hook and sinker and flock to HN to demand that "the new IE wisen up and implement those things now".
    - nailer 4y ago
      > Chrome is by far the largest driver behind "Safari bad, Safari no support standards" of these "grassroots no-name initiatives". No Safari is the largest driver of the "Safari no support standards". It's Apple's choices, not Google or Microsofts or Mozilla's, that make Safari not support standards. Edit-reply due to rate limit: my own experience was WebCrypto, which was very much a standard https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Web_Crypto_API https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Web_Crypto_... and ignored by Safari for years. There are many, many others. If there are examples of 'Apple ignoring standards' actually meaning Chrome-only features please tell me one.
daviddever23box 4y ago
The misplaced assertion, "(p)ut differently; there's reason to think that Mozilla would not have suffered layoffs if Apple were an ally of engine choice" just about tells you everything you need to know about this article (and I'm typing this via a Firefox session as it stands).
- mtomweb 4y ago
  Mozilla’s has publicly stated in document to regulators that Apple’s browser engine ban delayed their entrance by 7 years and significantly impairs their ability to differentiate their browser. It’s not a stretch to tie that to the loss of market share on IOS and thus to their revenue. If you think the assertion is misplaced you need explain why.
  - eitland 4y ago
    Typing from Firefox: Mozillas problem is 1.) thinking they are a activism group that luckily sits on a gold mine of dumb users like me who keeps using Firefox, while in reality they were supposed to continue to provide the worlds best browser as an alternative to the shiny, memory eating, barely configurable spyware that is Chrome. 2.) Competing against one of the worlds largest companies, that actively cross subsidize their nerfed browser and promote for it free at the worlds largest web property with misleading statements like "switch to a better browser"[1], all while regulators have been sleeping for a decade or more. 3.) The tech community who killed IE has not woken up to the dangers of Chrome. Just like IE used to be it looks good, is good enough, works everywhere etc. [1]: I've tried it multiple times and can confirm that it looks shiny but still cannot do TreeStyleTabs, and in general the whole extension system is nerfed to the point that most "extensions" I could find was either canned bookmarklets or canned web sites.
  - daviddever23box 4y ago
    Have you used Thunderbird lately? Or looked at Firefox OS (now KaiOS) from an developer's perspective? Mozilla's issues lie deeper than the browser (again, also a Rust developer here) and belie any sort of leadership, technical or product-focused, over a large number of years. Self-asserting that they believe that they're being picked on, as a reason for rightsizing, is, in my opinion, merely an excuse for a host of other problems.
the_gipsy 4y ago
I wanted to give the iPhone another try. But the web is just so so unusable. No way to install adblockers or real extensions in general. No push notifications. Just one single engine.
- chunkyguy 4y ago
  Push notifications have finally landed with iOS 16
  - agust 4y ago
    iOS 16 is not out yet, and Apple stated that Push notifications won't come before 2023. So no, Push notifications have not landed (yet).
- girvo 4y ago
  You can install Ad Blockers, I use 1Blocker on iOS. It’s not as powerful as uBlock Origin obviously, but it does a more than good enough job by making the web browsable again at least.
- philliphaydon 4y ago
  The ad blockers in iOS work fine. I don’t want browser bloat on my iPhone. And I don’t want to be forced to install shitty chrome cos devs are like “oh we can’t make it work in safari”. Until chrome stops being the IE of the early 2000s I don’t want other browsers on iOS.
  - js4ever 4y ago
    Maybe it's because so many things are either not working (web rtc, push), intentionally broken (PWA), or not available at all on safari. From my point of view, safari is the IE of modern times.
    - masswerk 4y ago
      > So many things intentionally broken (PWA) Mind that PWA are, as it now, as Mozilla has pulled out, pretty much a Chromium-only thing.
upbeat_general 4y ago
One of the more frustrating parts of Safari is that it is tied to the OS version. Besides the obvious security issues, it means a long(er) delay between a feature being available and supported by most users. Even with iOS’s good update adoption it still needlessly handicaps developers.
- AnonC 4y ago
  Yeah, Apple needs to decouple major OS releases from releases/updates to Safari and other Apple apps. Safari is probably the most important here. But then, Apple also wants to keep keynote events filled with enticing news and updates. So while it may never decouple Messages or Mail or Maps from the OS releases (for different reasons), Safari shouldn’t be that big a deal to separate out if the OS is redesigned.
  - rtpg 4y ago
    One of my big motivators for just getting off of OS X was having all the bundling into OSes. Just completely unforced errors meaning that every .0 release would break everything. Y'all know that releasing one change at a time is going to be way easier to debug/fix than 100 at a time yeah? I get that this is their "thing", but as a person who was buying Apple devices on account of them working, I would greatly appreciate them actually doing things that improve how well things work, instead of prioritizing marketing.
- jeroenhd 4y ago
  I have an old iPad laying about. iOS 9, with the ancient Safari 9 browser. HN seems to be the only websites that render correctly. The device itself is snappy enough and I'm well aware of the RAM limitations Apple puts in their mobile devices. However, the entire thing is now useless. And old Android tab from the same year is slow as molasses (always has been) but runs Android 7 through custom ROMs which lets it use a modern version of Bromite. When it finally boots, it works well enough for casual browsing, especially on lighter web pages. The old iPad has no such luck. There are no newer browsers available for it, not even after jailbreaking the thing. It's a waste of electronics, really. I accept that Apple won't make a newer version of iOS for such a device, it's received support for much longer than its Android counterpart, but if you're going to abandon a device, at least free it! Open up the sources so people can develop new things for devices you no longer care about!
einpoklum 4y ago
Apple are the vendor-lock-in kings, in pretty much everything. For this reason, try avoiding using their computers and operating systems in favor of more flexible and configurable systems.
shmerl 4y ago
The fact that Apple are still not yet blasted by anti-trust for their anti-competitive browser polices shows how diluted and dysfunctional that law became.
red_admiral 4y ago
I lost interest in the article at the heading > Apple's Long-Standing Policies Are Anti-Diversity "Diversity" has become such an applause light (https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/dLbkrPu5STNCBLRjr/applause-lights https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/dLbkrPu5STNCBLRjr/applause-l...) that it conveys no useful information anymore except "I'm part of the cool kids group". What the writer means is "this policy is BAD", which is a defensible opinion, but for all the effect they're getting here they might as well call the policy "heretical" or "un-American", as those terms were the equivalent in previous eras. But using "anti-diversity" to mean "I don't like" id trying to divert moral outrage at the subject, and this is about Paul Graham's DH0/DH1 level of argumentation (http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html), more commonly known as "ur a fag". Less of this, please.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
nemothekid 4y ago
The article does an incredible job as painting Apple as a dystopian corporation that is strangling the web with forced WebKit, but spends so little time actually refuting the statement "if WebKit weren't mandated, Chromium would take over". It pretty much comes down to "if Apple were forced to open their platform, they would spend money improving Safari, and user's wouldn't switch because Apple has a gorillian dollars". The author seems to ignore that Google also has a gorillian dollars, plus the added inertia of Chromium itself, plus the pervasive network of Search and YouTube that would shove ads for Chrome down the throats of users. Money alone, even billions, cannot create a competitive browser engine. Microsoft tried. I'm not sure that, if you actually cared about browser diversity, that forcing Apple to open up iOS and then hoping they don't mismanage Safari trying to compete with Chrome is a losing bet.
- dwaite 4y ago
  It appears the author works for Microsoft, a trillion dollar company that gave up trying to compete against Google and finally just started bundling a Chrome fork.
  - CyberNoodle 4y ago
    Actually before that he worked at Google. He has made it his life mission to get chromium everywhere.
    - jacobolus 4y ago
      Before that he made the Dojo JavaScript library (jQuery precursor / competitor). Alex Russell’s position has always been that web developers (especially library authors) need as many browser features as possible to help them build the most flexible / capable web applications possible. He has consistently pushed for browsers to ship new features ASAP, with the idea that developers can paper over the differences or work around a buggy API, but can’t turn nothing into something. My impression is that he joined Google because he thought that was the best way to further that pre-established goal; it’s not fair to say that he’s just promoting this because he thinks it is in Google/Microsoft/Chrome’s interest. By contrast, Safari developers’ position has long been that new browser features should be carefully evaluated and then implemented at leisure, because this is a long game and we don’t need rush jobs. Their focus is more on client-side resource use (it’s shocking how far behind Chrome is on this one), correctness of the features they do decide to implement, performance, and user privacy (Google’s whole business model is ubiquitous surveillance). These two positions are both defensible, but are at odds with each-other. For Safari developers, Chrome trying to ram big piles of half-baked new features down every browser’s throat ASAP is just a recipe for churn, and getting developers to adopt them right away so that users then come complain that “Safari is broken” is endlessly annoying. For Chrome developers (or web developers who want to build on new shiny features right away instead of waiting 2+ years for cross-browser adoption), Safari lagging behind is “holding back the web”.
dwaite 4y ago
Since its not clearly stated otherwise, this blog post appears to be written by a manager working for Microsoft on Internet Explorer Edge - which puts a lot of the points under a peculiar light.
- smcleod 4y ago
  Why am I not surprised. Nothing like pushing for a chrome base only web....
- CyberNoodle 4y ago
  He is an Ex-Googler as well
athrun 4y ago
To me, I felt this take was so disconnected from my reality as a user that I didn't even know where to start. Looking at the author bio, I can see he's very invested in the Blink project so it's difficult to shake the feeling that by arguing for "browser diversity", he's simply pushing for increased Blink dominance. If one truly wanted to get more diversity in the Browser space, the number one objective should be getting Google to divest from the Chrome project. This would finally create space for other players to come in and have real influence over the future of the web. As it is today, everything Web-related gravitates around what Google wants. Apple is not playing ball, and so Google is getting the community to push regulators to intervene and make them kneel. Well, that's my view at least, maybe I'm too cynical.
- cowtools 4y ago
  From my perspective as a firefox user, chrome/chromium is the most successful browser because it's the best. Apple needs to resort to cheap tactics to hold onto their market share and create vendor lock-in for their users, which is profitable for them.
  - salzig 4y ago
    are you really afraid of a mobile browser that is only used by ~13% [0] of Global Mobile Devices? ~87% of Mobiles Devices run Android (so potentially use Chrome). Besides that, do you believe that there is any money for apple to earn by "forcing" safari to its iOS users? I would like to see other browser too, but right now it looks more like Google is forcing Chrome in every corner so they can make money out of it. I personally don't like Chrome everywhere, it's the same shit we had with Internet Explorer. After some features where added to IE you couldn't use Netscape everywhere anymore. It took us quite a while to getrid of IE again. Chrome is IMHO kind of going the same direction, adding more and more features to let other browser look bad -> and thereby improve/increase market share. But are we really benefiting of a single browser engine? We call Browsers Operating Systems of the Web. Why would it be good to have a single OS? 0: https://www.statista.com/statistics/272307/market-share-forecast-for-smartphone-operating-systems/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/272307/market-share-fore...
rocqua 4y ago
> Past swings away from OS default browsers have hinged on the superior features, better performance, improved security, and superior site compatibility. Marketing and distribution play a prominent role but have been indecisive in recent browser battles. The leads of OS incumbents are not insurmountable because browsers are commodities with relatively low switching costs. Better products tend to win. The point that people pick browsers for "superior site compatibility" is not a minor thing. And it arguably undermines the statement that "better browsers tend to win". Because "superior site compatibility" is affected by what browsers the majority uses. This can build a moat for a bad browser (IE6) or it can hijack web standardization (chrome). The second point, hijacking of web standardization, is a more topical problem. Chrome is doing this, and chrome is developed by google. This is allowing google to push changes to how the web works unilaterally. This is bad.
iasay 4y ago
One reason I choose Apple is because of this. I know there is one possible egress browser on the platform which goes through the same control channels as anything else whether it’s embedded in an app or standalone. The moment it’s open then every app will ship their own embedded engines which circumvent the controls. Controls being screen time (whitelisting) and centralised blocking lists. If anyone is not happy they should perhaps go and use Android? Ah no we banned Android because despite all the security controls it was possible to just browse anything on a kiosk tablet by using the a random link to public internet on the about box of an app which was updated by the vendor.
- FrozenSynapse 4y ago
  Why would anyone want such a closed system? I cannot stand iOS because of this...
  - iasay 4y ago
    Simply because it abstracts away all of the problems I don’t want to care about and enables all the solutions I do care about at the same time. And most importantly it just works.
- Avamander 4y ago
  That's not entirely true though, a lot of apps "embed" Safari which does break things. Such as opening a specific website's links in native app directly. Not all apps allow disabling it either.
  - iasay 4y ago
    Embedded safari is subject to the same controls. I’ve tested it. Also you can open specific links in a browser instead of an app easily. Just hold finger on the link.
    - Avamander 4y ago
      Long tap takes as long as it takes to open the embedded browser and to tap the Safari button. Equally inefficient and annoying.
Devasta 4y ago
Before Opera gave up and became another Chrome reskin, I had plenty of sites that would not work for me until I switched user agent. The exact same thing would start to happen to all non-chrome browsers (and hell, even some chrome browsers) within months of other engines being available on iOS. If doesn't matter whether or not your browser works or is even good, if the devs for that website couldn't be fucked supporting anything other than Chrome you are done. I am sure regulators will eventually mandate other browser engines be allowed, when that happens the most likely course of action from Apple will be to give up too and switch to Chrome, leaving mozilla to be dangled about so that everyone can pretend there is no monopoly.
- moonchrome 4y ago
  I see zero value in Mozilla building their own rendering engine when they abandoned all the potentially innovative stuff when they dumped Servo/Rust. I would switch to Firefox instantly if they chose to replace Gecko with Blink - I'd have a compatible cross-platform browser with decent performance and would be able to install plugins on mobile, etc. This argument about "monopoly" seems misguided to me. Maybe if you're a standards fetishist and you like having multiple implementations duke it out what's the "correct" implementation of whatever random detail. I don't really see anyone actually significantly innovating in browser rendering space - might as well reduce it to a commodity that's packaged up and developed in open source by multiple vendors. The only thing I see from the webkit situation is the whole web being dragged down by Apple protecting their cash cow/making sure web apps can't compete with app store.
  - kaishin 4y ago
    Are Web apps competing with Android apps where users can use Blink-based browsers? I’m not so sure about that… I’d like to see some data points that’d prove otherwise though.
fbanon 4y ago
TL;DR: ex-Googler Microsoft employee (working on their browsers) salty that they can't push their crap onto people's iPhones. Sorry pal, you're not Commodore Perry, the iPhone won't open up for your trash.
- Joe_Boogz 4y ago
  Trash? Like, for example, a critical security vulnerability that could be patched quickly vs. one that would otherwise be tied to an IOS release?
  - Klonoar 4y ago
    Ah, yes, let’s fix one vulnerability for one app… rather than the current situation, where every app gets the fixes when they go out. Makes total sense. ;P
    - Joe_Boogz 4y ago
      It does make sense, so your okay with EVERY app having the vulnerability then? versus an open market?
      - Klonoar 4y ago
        I'm perfectly okay with every app having the vulnerability and then getting patched, yes. What part of that isn't clear?
porcoda 4y ago
It always strikes me that the angst around browsers comes largely from people who have given up on targeting OS’s for development and use the browser as their OS. You all do realize that if you stop relying exclusively on the JS ecosystem, there is actually quite a bit of choice out there. You know, those native APIs or portable frameworks that some of us talk about occasionally. I get the economic incentive to develop once and run everywhere, and the education problem where we’ve somehow churned out tons of JS-only developers, but that seems to mean we’ve contributed to the problem that the Apple monoculture is revealing. Perhaps a solution to this is to not rely so much on browsers as our exclusive target platform, and take back some control? Nobody’s making us all move to an exclusively browser centric target for all development… I get it: native is more expensive, more time consuming, and excludes developers who don’t want to leave the comfort of their NPM/JS world, but it IS an option that one company and one browser engine can’t control. Even if you don’t go full native, there still are things like Qt, GTK, etc. that are at least decoupled from one OS and one engine. Do people really hate the idea of learning the languages and tools required to use those?
- __alexs 4y ago
  If you're developing for the web you probably care a lot about mobile users. If you care about mobile users your alternative options are even more of a walled garden than the web is.
- EnKopVand 4y ago
  Do you have any evidence that the angst you’re talking about comes from people who build tools on the JS ecosystem? In Danish digitalisation we’ve basically gone the route or having JavaScript (really Typescript) fronts for basically everything and I’ve yet to personally hear anyone working in that area complain about chrome becoming the dominant browser. And why would they? Frameworks like react, angular and vue make the underlying “OS” as you call it unimportant for the most part. Especially now that IE6 is almost dead. And if you do have certain needs that needs to control the environment you can always go the electron route. You sound like you’re not a fan of JavaScript, which is perfectly fair, but why would you go on a crusade for it? There are enough development jobs around that can keep you working with exactly the language you prefer and never care about any other languages.
spullara 4y ago
I hope they never let any other browser on their platform.
ribit 4y ago
I can’t help but think that the article is highly manipulative. It’s hard to argue with the author on the logical points, but they even to go out of the way to avoid addressing the elephant in the room: the fact that Google controls around 90% of the browser technology today. And it’s hardly the “Chrome is a better product” that led us to this situation but rather the aggressive marketing and Googles status as web leader. Don’t get me wrong, Apple shouldn’t dictate which browser the customers are allowed to use, but personally I am more concerned about web standards being controlled by a single company. Regulators should probably have a look there first. Can’t have meaningful choice in a monopoly.
- quitit 4y ago
  I find it hard to believe that Apple with it’s shrinking fractional share is legitimately holding back a web utopia. Android and Chrome are everywhere, if it could happen it just would. It has the market already and that share is growing. The attacks on Apple locking down the browser engine seem obvious: it’s the next largest chunk of users which Chromium can absorb and a way of taking Apple’s platform out from their control. (i.e It’s about money, not idealism or purity or some saccharin tech empyrean). The result would be obvious, less browser engines and more control to Google - I think few would argue that less browser engines are a good thing since the whole point of this argument is supposedly the opposite. As for apple’s security rationale: We frequently see serious security threats across a range of engines, especially Chromium, the argument of limiting that vector on iOS platforms is solid with history on its side. Placing a high risk component in the hands of a different company is beyond foolish, because in comparison to a desktop computer, the smartphone is a figurative treasure chest. “- But what about user choice?” Users aren’t demanding this, and they really do have a choice since picking an iPhone means wading through a sea of Android options at every available price point and screen size. Which brings me to an ignored point: One really needs to acknowledge that users aren’t dummies and their choice of iPhones isn’t blind chance. The apple ecosystem suits a type of user lifestyle with its low-effort approach to technology. What actually needs to happen is we stop asking the foxes what the chickens want.
amadeuspagel 4y ago
Incredible how many ad hominem attacks on the author there are here. Wow, someone who cares about the web works on a browser. Totally discrediting.
mediumsmart 4y ago
>Apple Is Not Defending Browser Engine Choice There is no choice to defend in Browser Engines. Safari is as good as it gets. For tracking and Dev tools that help in implementing a timely modal pixelperfectly placed to tell me I can subscribe, Chrome takes the crown. All is good.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
DeathArrow 4y ago
Microsoft was called evil when they packaged IE with the operating systems and used various tactics to promote it's use to the detriment of competition. But Microsoft didn't even wish to do what Apple has done, to force the users to only use one browser. I see people defending Apple's anticonsumer practices and I wonder why.
- xlii 4y ago
  It's an oversimplification. Internet Explorer being bundled with Windows was a different issue back then. Main problem was that a lot of official (government issued) software required ActiveX to run. Since ActiveX was bundled with Internet Explorer and Internet Explorer was bundled with Windows it was simple chain of dependencies that forced people into buying (not as cheap as today) Windows license. There were even some bribery charges in few European countries but usually towards 3rd party sellers so nothing that could stick to Microsoft itself. [1] Still that was in a scenario where IE had 95% market share. Today Chrome on mobile has 65% market share. Safari has 25% market share. Most likely (as there is other comment about it in this thread) if Chrome on iOS would be an option Google would push users towards (as both Google Search and YouTube are dominant product and it's easy to provide extra features there) which would bring us to exact situation where Internet Explorer was in Microsoft vs US case. Funny, though, how the old version of the joke "you either die a hero, or live long enough to become a Microsoft" [1] e.g. http://techrights.org/2010/11/23/microsoft-corruption-of-french-system/ http://techrights.org/2010/11/23/microsoft-corruption-of-fre... If you're interested you could dig more articles like that. Yet, because a lot of those happened around year 2000, searching articles is hard (as DDG for example uses Bing for results, and I can imagine why those aren't showing in bulk) but there are still few that can get you the taste what was the core issue if you're curious enough.
  - badkitty99 4y ago
ubercow13 4y ago
=-0w564r3d2q1
cromwellian 4y ago
Reading these threads is like reading a political debate. “I’m for free speech, but this needs to be banned”, “people have a right to assembly, but I don’t want your parade in my town”, etc Basically, free software zealots supporting super closed source Apple software and DRMed hardware lockdown because of tribalist bias. We’ve been through this before with Win95 IE vs Netscape Navigator and Opera. Why are the arguments for freedom of choice on the desktop suddenly invalidated on mobile?
mensetmanusman 4y ago
Wow, never had any idea that maintaining a competitive browser is a half $1 billion annual expense.
- mtomweb 4y ago
  Minimum cost. That’s for a browser engine though. You can do a soft fork for far less
jmull 4y ago
I agree Apple shouldn’t dictate which browser you can use on iOS. (The way to resolve that is for iOS to allow alternative stores. It’s fine for Apple to control their store, just not my device.) But this article is absolutely full of it. This is part 6 of a 6 part series ostensibly on the importance of browser choice, and there’s not a peep about the long-term problems with the dominance of Chrome and the chromium engine, and Google’s de facto control of web standards. We’re hanging off the edge of a cliff and this guy’s complaining our foot is snagged.
nuker 4y ago
Alex Russel, it was bery hard to read post. Try make more sense with less words next time.
QuadmasterXLII 4y ago
~buy an android~
tomxor 4y ago
> Regulatory mandates about engine choice will take more than a year to come into force, giving Apple plenty of time to respond ! Has some activity in this area happened recently? I found this but it's UK only: https://www.macrumors.com/2022/06/10/uk-to-target-apple-gaming-and-browser-restrictions/ https://www.macrumors.com/2022/06/10/uk-to-target-apple-gami...
ykevinator2 4y ago
NorwegianDude 4y ago
Apple should clearly open for other engines and stop handicapping the web. I've had so many users complaining about Safari on iOS over the years that it's insane. On one of my web apps I've had so insanely many people who tries to get push notifications to work. Despite it being clearly stated in extremely visible red text that push notifications are not supported on iPhones, many users are still contacting me complaining that they can't get it to work, even after installing other browsers. Even more technical users are tricked by Apple into thinking that they have a choice. Users don't understand that Apple is the problem and instead blames the web sites they are using for the lack of iOS features. This clearly needs to stop. Safari is also insane when it comes to bugs. Everything from the keyboard not wanting to open sometimes when a text input is focused, to scrolling sometimes not working without reloading the page, to having to quit safari to be able to press the address bar and even a shorter period where some users had to actually reboot the phone to make the browser work again. These issues seems to be fixed now, but some of them persisted for quite some time(years for some of them). Scrolling is still an absolute shitshow(momentum scrolling animations, switching scroll targets and so on), and that is the most used feature on any browser. Safari is definetly the new IE, at least on mobile.
rafaelturk 4y ago
Maybe is just me.. but I really like safari, mostly because it just works. and is super snappy and CPU and memory friendly.
- pojntfx 4y ago
  That's great, most people don't, so let them change their preferred browser as the DMA requires it.
cosmiccatnap 4y ago
Safari really is the new IE
fleddr 4y ago
It's hard to pick sides between two of the most hypocritical companies in the world. To start with, Apple. It's very much true that Apple has intentionally sabotaged Webkit's potential. By underinvesting, by neglect (not solving bugs, poor documentation) and by blocking a whole series of promising new web features, all under the disguise of "user privacy". It's not some unfounded wild claim. Somebody like Maximiliano Firtman has been documenting Apple's crappy track record for years: https://firt.dev/tags/ios/ https://firt.dev/tags/ios/ It's also very typical how after years of neglect all of a sudden Safari has substantial and meaningful releases in recent months. A timeline that directly aligns with dramatically increased regulatory pressure. Apple doesn't want the web to succeed. It wants to do the absolute least possible to ensure it's tolerable yet can never compete with native apps. Moving on to Google (Alex Russell is an ex-Googler): "Past swings away from OS default browsers have hinged on the superior features, better performance, improved security, and superior site compatibility. Marketing and distribution play a prominent role but have been indecisive in recent browser battles." I find this statement maddening. To a normie, zooming out across all web users, modern browsers are near-identical. They don't do a deep study to compare web browsers in the way us nerds might do. They use the browser that was already installed, got pushed to them, or what their friends use. Google is able to aggressively push browsers on Android and billion user services like Youtube. Compare this to the reach of Mozilla, which is zero. To dismiss this point and to insist it's mostly "merit" is a lie. "Destkop OSes have long created a vibrant market for browser choice, enabling many competitors to flourish over the years." In the article, this quote is preceded with a chart showing the exact opposite: https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share/desktop/worldwide/#yearly-2009-2022 https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share/desktop/worl... In this "thriving market", we're back at an IE level monopoly. Mozilla has been bleeding market share for 12(!) consecutive years. It has no reach and most new users are mobile, where it has near-zero presence, so it will continue to bleed further. The rest are Chromium clones. It's even a lie to call it a market. As the author illustrates, it would cost 400M+ annually to develop a competitive browser. This would still get you nowhere since you need an OS and billion-user services to push it. So it's not a market at all, since you can't realistically enter it. Anyway, it's still interesting to contemplate which of these two hypocritical companies should win, what would be the best outcome for the web? In a perverted way, Apple's sabotage of webkit makes them the last man standing in keeping Google in check in not doing any funny business on the web. It is the only sizable counter force remaining. On the other end, full browser engine competition on IOS could bridge the gap between the web and native apps. Or, it could just mean Chrome overruns Safari and the open web pretty much ends. In the short term, I prefer the Webkit wakeup call scenario that we now see unfolding. If they continue to lock browser engines yet rapidly change their behavior for the better, this might be best for the web on the short to mid term. It feels very dirty, it's not right, but it might be the best outcome.
wseqyrku 4y ago
Ain't surprising? Apple doesn't support any kind of choice in their platform. Maybe wait until next major update until you can change some color or something.
Xorakios 4y ago
One thing missing in this otherwise awesome discussion among peers is that except for the interregnum for Covid lockdowns, iPhone users are able to walk into Apple stores and get support pretty much on demand and free for any Apple software product. But people (including my mother!) just assume that includes all software on their phone, and sometimes people think it's for hardware as well. The expectation is that the genius bar resources are built into the purchase of Apple products, which makes it harder to support 3rd party browsers or any other 3rd party products that just "stopped working" or "won't let me log into my bank account" -- again both things that happened with my mother 3000 miles away and I couldn't fix long distance, but the genius bar did for free when she walked in. So it's a tough choice on that - better to have higher prices and better service, or options that nobody fixes because there is less of a sense of accountability?

267 points by bertman 4y ago

[dead]

My take: By only allowing WebKit, Apple keeps its walled garden. It simply allows only Apple code in its platform. Apple Apps are build on top of Apple's ecosystem and the same goes for Web Apps: build on top of Apple's WebKit.

5350-uiop-1130 4y ago
also crippling the browser so it does it not eat into app store profits.
- cyberpunk 4y ago
  I play nvidia GeForce now through safari. Added to my Home Screen it has no browser chrome, and it supports my Bluetooth controller pad no problem. What is crippled?
  - the_gipsy 4y ago
    Safari iOS, nobody is talking about macos. Edit: my bad. Well, I just want to be able to install another browser on the phone that I payed for.
    - girvo 4y ago
      They are talking about Safari iOS. I stream games from Gamepass semi-regularly (the Backbone One is excellent) on my iPhone 12 Mini
    - cyberpunk 4y ago
      I’m talking about my iPad.
  - makeitdouble 4y ago
    https://firt.dev/notes/pwa-ios/ https://firt.dev/notes/pwa-ios/
  - cowtools 4y ago
    The ability to freely run programs on your own damn hardware! Congratulations, you played a AAA video game on your personal surveillance device by streaming it from someone else's (useful) computer. Very cyberpunk of you! I guess that's why they call this place "hacker" news.
  - nicoburns 4y ago
    The two keys things: - There is no persistent offline storage that isn't at risk of getting wiped every 7 days (even for apps added to the home screen). - No push notifications (although these are coming). Which is somewhat frustrating precisely because Safari is otherwise so capable.
    - spullara 4y ago
      Both of those sound like positives for users. Maybe they aren't your customer.
      - makeitdouble 4y ago
        I'd hate to have a note taking PWA which data's get wiped every 7 days. Solutions to this is to sync the data with a server, which then requires an account and user management, privacy considerations, keeping the server alive, backing up data, GDPR fun etc... Any simple applications becomes a maintenance nightmare very quick.
      - nicoburns 4y ago
        They'd only be available with an explicit opt-in, so I don't see how. They'd probably only be available for webapps added to the homescreen too, so websites wouldn't even be able to spam the permissions request.
      - dento 4y ago
        Positives like not having "save" ability on documents? Or not having push notifications so messaging applications, calendars and such is not possible? Both of these can be abused of course, but not having them forces many categories of apps to be native.
      - resoluteteeth 4y ago
        Users don't want notifications from random websites they browse to, but they need them for pwas they install to their home screen which are supposed to have parity with apps
  - 5350-uiop-1130 4y ago
    I can't comment on cloud streaming, I guess vendors have ways to workaround browser limitations. As a web dev, i find Safari to be the jankiest. Just opening the dev tools has become problematic recently.
  - ThatPlayer 4y ago
    While there's no browser chrome, it's still not fullscreen like native games can be, without the iOS status bar at the top: https://caniuse.com/fullscreen https://caniuse.com/fullscreen Also their Gamepad API implementation doesn't do rumble: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/GamepadHapticActuator#browser_compatibility https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/GamepadHapt...
- madeofpalk 4y ago
  This doesn't follow when you realise that apple also neglects it's own native platforms that eats into it's "app store profitss"

throwaway2056 4y ago

There is a very sad hypocrisy with issues like these. Most decision makers (who are non-technical) sport iPhone. Just works (both Apple and the user).

eric4smith 4y ago

That's what you and I would do if we controlled our own wildly popular platform. This is not communism. Corporations want to make money and control their own destiny. Why should Apple, a private corporation be fully open? Seriously. I want diversity as well. But will that happen? Will Apple, Microsoft or Google allow just about anything on their platforms?? Heck no. Ain't gonna happen. Our countries are run by companies which are run by humans with a profit motive.

the_gipsy 4y ago
The issue here is systematically working against their own users interests.
- eric4smith 4y ago
  When has that ever stopped a corporation from making a profit? If that were so, Coke would stop selling their wildly popular drink.
  - the_gipsy 4y ago
    Yes, it happens all the time and profit is of course the goal of a corporation. But we are allowed to call them out when they throw their paying users under the bus, under some disguise or excuse.
- Someone 4y ago
  Firstly, companies are allowed to make stupid decisions. Secondly, they can’t be doing everything wrong, given that do they still sell zillions of devices every year. I think they aren’t working against the interests of their users at large. There are people who don’t like some of their restrictions, and some of them may even have an iPhone, but I think that’s a fairly small vocal minority of their users.
bmitc 4y ago
Wasn't Microsoft hammered with antitrust violations over a situation much less mundane than what Apple is doing?

mod50ack 4y ago

It’s not just WebKit. Devs can’t extent WebKit very much. Orion is trying but they’ve barely gotten anything done on the iOS extension side. There are limitations on what you can do by linking into the iOS web browser API, it seems. I recently switched to Mac with great success. So I decided to try out the iPhone. I hadn’t used one for years and I was sick of Android. I’m still no great fan of Android. And so many little things are better on iOS. However, the SINGLE BIGGEST THING is absolutely broken. Browsing on iOS is unusable if you’re used to uBlock Origin. I can run that on Fennec/Firefox. I cannot do so on iOS. I was hoping the content blockers and extensions might come close. They do not in any way. I don’t even REALLY like FF and I don’t like Android but those are the options if I want browsing that doesn’t suck. Or maybe I’m missing something and someone can enlighten me before I return the iPhone.

tehnub 4y ago
I use Wipr on ios (and ublock origin everywhere else) and it works like 99% as well. Costs 2 bucks I think. Have you tried that?
neonsunset 4y ago
AdGuard extension for iOS Safari is really good and does the same job as uBlock Origin on desktop.
- dvzk 4y ago
  If you use uBlock's advanced mode to default-deny scripts or third-party resources then no other extension comes close. (Except for uMatrix, which is by the same developer.)
- redox99 4y ago
  It's doesn't do the same job, it's more like manifest v3. Which yes, with current ads that's enough for 99% of them. But especially once Chrome drops support for manifest v2, you'll start seeing a lot more antiadblocks and your rule based adblock won't be able to get around them.
threeseed 4y ago

sascha_sl 4y ago

Just the mere existence of WebKit keeps up Browser diversity. It's probably the one reason most websites have not adopted a "use Chrome or go away" model. Many were happy to adopt a "be in a country without GDPR or go away" model, so would that really be a stretch? I do think Apple should lose their walled garden, but it should be pretty hard to "unlock" an iPhone to keep coersion down. Maybe make it slightly more easy if you only trust one extra vendor, like Epic. They'll do it one way or another. While it's not perfect and AppStore review really needs to step it up, there are still some unique qualities there, especially for people that would never ever "choose" a browser - they just use whatever they have.

mtomweb 4y ago
Did you read the article?
- sascha_sl 4y ago
  I thought I did. But I might not be fully awake yet. I'll re-add this one to my reading list I guess.

tannhaeuser 4y ago

This fake-grassroots propaganda for "browser diversity" (= Chrome monopoly) needs to stop. Apple is literally the last bastion holding up the open web, with everything else - WHATWG, W3C, ga, DoubleClick, AdWords, YT, Mozilla/FF, etc., etc. - being Google/Alphabet or financially dependent on Google/Alphabet.

mtomweb 4y ago
How’s it fake grassroots? It literally got started by a bunch of no name developers
- Kerrick 4y ago
  For one thing, TFA is written by someone whose livelihood is earned at a competing software mega corporation & browser vendor. Their job title is, "Microsoft Partner PM on Edge."
- dmitriid 4y ago
  No. It wasn't. This is a several-year-long obvious and brash campaign by numerous very loud "developer advocates" and high-visibility developers from Chrome. Of whom Alex Russel (the author of the piece we're discussing) was one of the most visible (he worked at Google for 9 years? More?). Chrome is by far the largest driver behind "Safari bad, Safari no support standards" of these "grassroots no-name initiatives". On top of that, Google owns web.dev. And when Chrome releases another half-baked non-standard it's advertised there as "this great new standard now available" that gullible devs buy line, hook and sinker and flock to HN to demand that "the new IE wisen up and implement those things now".
  - nailer 4y ago
    > Chrome is by far the largest driver behind "Safari bad, Safari no support standards" of these "grassroots no-name initiatives". No Safari is the largest driver of the "Safari no support standards". It's Apple's choices, not Google or Microsofts or Mozilla's, that make Safari not support standards. Edit-reply due to rate limit: my own experience was WebCrypto, which was very much a standard https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Web_Crypto_API https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Web_Crypto_... and ignored by Safari for years. There are many, many others. If there are examples of 'Apple ignoring standards' actually meaning Chrome-only features please tell me one.

daviddever23box 4y ago

The misplaced assertion, "(p)ut differently; there's reason to think that Mozilla would not have suffered layoffs if Apple were an ally of engine choice" just about tells you everything you need to know about this article (and I'm typing this via a Firefox session as it stands).

mtomweb 4y ago
Mozilla’s has publicly stated in document to regulators that Apple’s browser engine ban delayed their entrance by 7 years and significantly impairs their ability to differentiate their browser. It’s not a stretch to tie that to the loss of market share on IOS and thus to their revenue. If you think the assertion is misplaced you need explain why.
- eitland 4y ago
  Typing from Firefox: Mozillas problem is 1.) thinking they are a activism group that luckily sits on a gold mine of dumb users like me who keeps using Firefox, while in reality they were supposed to continue to provide the worlds best browser as an alternative to the shiny, memory eating, barely configurable spyware that is Chrome. 2.) Competing against one of the worlds largest companies, that actively cross subsidize their nerfed browser and promote for it free at the worlds largest web property with misleading statements like "switch to a better browser"[1], all while regulators have been sleeping for a decade or more. 3.) The tech community who killed IE has not woken up to the dangers of Chrome. Just like IE used to be it looks good, is good enough, works everywhere etc. [1]: I've tried it multiple times and can confirm that it looks shiny but still cannot do TreeStyleTabs, and in general the whole extension system is nerfed to the point that most "extensions" I could find was either canned bookmarklets or canned web sites.
- daviddever23box 4y ago
  Have you used Thunderbird lately? Or looked at Firefox OS (now KaiOS) from an developer's perspective? Mozilla's issues lie deeper than the browser (again, also a Rust developer here) and belie any sort of leadership, technical or product-focused, over a large number of years. Self-asserting that they believe that they're being picked on, as a reason for rightsizing, is, in my opinion, merely an excuse for a host of other problems.

the_gipsy 4y ago

I wanted to give the iPhone another try. But the web is just so so unusable. No way to install adblockers or real extensions in general. No push notifications. Just one single engine.

chunkyguy 4y ago
Push notifications have finally landed with iOS 16
- agust 4y ago
  iOS 16 is not out yet, and Apple stated that Push notifications won't come before 2023. So no, Push notifications have not landed (yet).
girvo 4y ago
You can install Ad Blockers, I use 1Blocker on iOS. It’s not as powerful as uBlock Origin obviously, but it does a more than good enough job by making the web browsable again at least.
philliphaydon 4y ago
The ad blockers in iOS work fine. I don’t want browser bloat on my iPhone. And I don’t want to be forced to install shitty chrome cos devs are like “oh we can’t make it work in safari”. Until chrome stops being the IE of the early 2000s I don’t want other browsers on iOS.
- js4ever 4y ago
  Maybe it's because so many things are either not working (web rtc, push), intentionally broken (PWA), or not available at all on safari. From my point of view, safari is the IE of modern times.
  - masswerk 4y ago
    > So many things intentionally broken (PWA) Mind that PWA are, as it now, as Mozilla has pulled out, pretty much a Chromium-only thing.

upbeat_general 4y ago

One of the more frustrating parts of Safari is that it is tied to the OS version. Besides the obvious security issues, it means a long(er) delay between a feature being available and supported by most users. Even with iOS’s good update adoption it still needlessly handicaps developers.

AnonC 4y ago
Yeah, Apple needs to decouple major OS releases from releases/updates to Safari and other Apple apps. Safari is probably the most important here. But then, Apple also wants to keep keynote events filled with enticing news and updates. So while it may never decouple Messages or Mail or Maps from the OS releases (for different reasons), Safari shouldn’t be that big a deal to separate out if the OS is redesigned.
- rtpg 4y ago
  One of my big motivators for just getting off of OS X was having all the bundling into OSes. Just completely unforced errors meaning that every .0 release would break everything. Y'all know that releasing one change at a time is going to be way easier to debug/fix than 100 at a time yeah? I get that this is their "thing", but as a person who was buying Apple devices on account of them working, I would greatly appreciate them actually doing things that improve how well things work, instead of prioritizing marketing.
jeroenhd 4y ago
I have an old iPad laying about. iOS 9, with the ancient Safari 9 browser. HN seems to be the only websites that render correctly. The device itself is snappy enough and I'm well aware of the RAM limitations Apple puts in their mobile devices. However, the entire thing is now useless. And old Android tab from the same year is slow as molasses (always has been) but runs Android 7 through custom ROMs which lets it use a modern version of Bromite. When it finally boots, it works well enough for casual browsing, especially on lighter web pages. The old iPad has no such luck. There are no newer browsers available for it, not even after jailbreaking the thing. It's a waste of electronics, really. I accept that Apple won't make a newer version of iOS for such a device, it's received support for much longer than its Android counterpart, but if you're going to abandon a device, at least free it! Open up the sources so people can develop new things for devices you no longer care about!

einpoklum 4y ago

Apple are the vendor-lock-in kings, in pretty much everything. For this reason, try avoiding using their computers and operating systems in favor of more flexible and configurable systems.

shmerl 4y ago

The fact that Apple are still not yet blasted by anti-trust for their anti-competitive browser polices shows how diluted and dysfunctional that law became.

red_admiral 4y ago

I lost interest in the article at the heading > Apple's Long-Standing Policies Are Anti-Diversity "Diversity" has become such an applause light (https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/dLbkrPu5STNCBLRjr/applause-lights https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/dLbkrPu5STNCBLRjr/applause-l...) that it conveys no useful information anymore except "I'm part of the cool kids group". What the writer means is "this policy is BAD", which is a defensible opinion, but for all the effect they're getting here they might as well call the policy "heretical" or "un-American", as those terms were the equivalent in previous eras. But using "anti-diversity" to mean "I don't like" id trying to divert moral outrage at the subject, and this is about Paul Graham's DH0/DH1 level of argumentation (http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html), more commonly known as "ur a fag". Less of this, please.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

nemothekid 4y ago

The article does an incredible job as painting Apple as a dystopian corporation that is strangling the web with forced WebKit, but spends so little time actually refuting the statement "if WebKit weren't mandated, Chromium would take over". It pretty much comes down to "if Apple were forced to open their platform, they would spend money improving Safari, and user's wouldn't switch because Apple has a gorillian dollars". The author seems to ignore that Google also has a gorillian dollars, plus the added inertia of Chromium itself, plus the pervasive network of Search and YouTube that would shove ads for Chrome down the throats of users. Money alone, even billions, cannot create a competitive browser engine. Microsoft tried. I'm not sure that, if you actually cared about browser diversity, that forcing Apple to open up iOS and then hoping they don't mismanage Safari trying to compete with Chrome is a losing bet.

dwaite 4y ago
It appears the author works for Microsoft, a trillion dollar company that gave up trying to compete against Google and finally just started bundling a Chrome fork.
- CyberNoodle 4y ago
  Actually before that he worked at Google. He has made it his life mission to get chromium everywhere.
  - jacobolus 4y ago
    Before that he made the Dojo JavaScript library (jQuery precursor / competitor). Alex Russell’s position has always been that web developers (especially library authors) need as many browser features as possible to help them build the most flexible / capable web applications possible. He has consistently pushed for browsers to ship new features ASAP, with the idea that developers can paper over the differences or work around a buggy API, but can’t turn nothing into something. My impression is that he joined Google because he thought that was the best way to further that pre-established goal; it’s not fair to say that he’s just promoting this because he thinks it is in Google/Microsoft/Chrome’s interest. By contrast, Safari developers’ position has long been that new browser features should be carefully evaluated and then implemented at leisure, because this is a long game and we don’t need rush jobs. Their focus is more on client-side resource use (it’s shocking how far behind Chrome is on this one), correctness of the features they do decide to implement, performance, and user privacy (Google’s whole business model is ubiquitous surveillance). These two positions are both defensible, but are at odds with each-other. For Safari developers, Chrome trying to ram big piles of half-baked new features down every browser’s throat ASAP is just a recipe for churn, and getting developers to adopt them right away so that users then come complain that “Safari is broken” is endlessly annoying. For Chrome developers (or web developers who want to build on new shiny features right away instead of waiting 2+ years for cross-browser adoption), Safari lagging behind is “holding back the web”.

dwaite 4y ago

Since its not clearly stated otherwise, this blog post appears to be written by a manager working for Microsoft on Internet Explorer Edge - which puts a lot of the points under a peculiar light.

smcleod 4y ago
Why am I not surprised. Nothing like pushing for a chrome base only web....
CyberNoodle 4y ago
He is an Ex-Googler as well

athrun 4y ago

To me, I felt this take was so disconnected from my reality as a user that I didn't even know where to start. Looking at the author bio, I can see he's very invested in the Blink project so it's difficult to shake the feeling that by arguing for "browser diversity", he's simply pushing for increased Blink dominance. If one truly wanted to get more diversity in the Browser space, the number one objective should be getting Google to divest from the Chrome project. This would finally create space for other players to come in and have real influence over the future of the web. As it is today, everything Web-related gravitates around what Google wants. Apple is not playing ball, and so Google is getting the community to push regulators to intervene and make them kneel. Well, that's my view at least, maybe I'm too cynical.

cowtools 4y ago
From my perspective as a firefox user, chrome/chromium is the most successful browser because it's the best. Apple needs to resort to cheap tactics to hold onto their market share and create vendor lock-in for their users, which is profitable for them.
- salzig 4y ago
  are you really afraid of a mobile browser that is only used by ~13% [0] of Global Mobile Devices? ~87% of Mobiles Devices run Android (so potentially use Chrome). Besides that, do you believe that there is any money for apple to earn by "forcing" safari to its iOS users? I would like to see other browser too, but right now it looks more like Google is forcing Chrome in every corner so they can make money out of it. I personally don't like Chrome everywhere, it's the same shit we had with Internet Explorer. After some features where added to IE you couldn't use Netscape everywhere anymore. It took us quite a while to getrid of IE again. Chrome is IMHO kind of going the same direction, adding more and more features to let other browser look bad -> and thereby improve/increase market share. But are we really benefiting of a single browser engine? We call Browsers Operating Systems of the Web. Why would it be good to have a single OS? 0: https://www.statista.com/statistics/272307/market-share-forecast-for-smartphone-operating-systems/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/272307/market-share-fore...

rocqua 4y ago

> Past swings away from OS default browsers have hinged on the superior features, better performance, improved security, and superior site compatibility. Marketing and distribution play a prominent role but have been indecisive in recent browser battles. The leads of OS incumbents are not insurmountable because browsers are commodities with relatively low switching costs. Better products tend to win. The point that people pick browsers for "superior site compatibility" is not a minor thing. And it arguably undermines the statement that "better browsers tend to win". Because "superior site compatibility" is affected by what browsers the majority uses. This can build a moat for a bad browser (IE6) or it can hijack web standardization (chrome). The second point, hijacking of web standardization, is a more topical problem. Chrome is doing this, and chrome is developed by google. This is allowing google to push changes to how the web works unilaterally. This is bad.

iasay 4y ago

One reason I choose Apple is because of this. I know there is one possible egress browser on the platform which goes through the same control channels as anything else whether it’s embedded in an app or standalone. The moment it’s open then every app will ship their own embedded engines which circumvent the controls. Controls being screen time (whitelisting) and centralised blocking lists. If anyone is not happy they should perhaps go and use Android? Ah no we banned Android because despite all the security controls it was possible to just browse anything on a kiosk tablet by using the a random link to public internet on the about box of an app which was updated by the vendor.

FrozenSynapse 4y ago
Why would anyone want such a closed system? I cannot stand iOS because of this...
- iasay 4y ago
  Simply because it abstracts away all of the problems I don’t want to care about and enables all the solutions I do care about at the same time. And most importantly it just works.
Avamander 4y ago
That's not entirely true though, a lot of apps "embed" Safari which does break things. Such as opening a specific website's links in native app directly. Not all apps allow disabling it either.
- iasay 4y ago
  Embedded safari is subject to the same controls. I’ve tested it. Also you can open specific links in a browser instead of an app easily. Just hold finger on the link.
  - Avamander 4y ago
    Long tap takes as long as it takes to open the embedded browser and to tap the Safari button. Equally inefficient and annoying.

Devasta 4y ago

Before Opera gave up and became another Chrome reskin, I had plenty of sites that would not work for me until I switched user agent. The exact same thing would start to happen to all non-chrome browsers (and hell, even some chrome browsers) within months of other engines being available on iOS. If doesn't matter whether or not your browser works or is even good, if the devs for that website couldn't be fucked supporting anything other than Chrome you are done. I am sure regulators will eventually mandate other browser engines be allowed, when that happens the most likely course of action from Apple will be to give up too and switch to Chrome, leaving mozilla to be dangled about so that everyone can pretend there is no monopoly.

moonchrome 4y ago
I see zero value in Mozilla building their own rendering engine when they abandoned all the potentially innovative stuff when they dumped Servo/Rust. I would switch to Firefox instantly if they chose to replace Gecko with Blink - I'd have a compatible cross-platform browser with decent performance and would be able to install plugins on mobile, etc. This argument about "monopoly" seems misguided to me. Maybe if you're a standards fetishist and you like having multiple implementations duke it out what's the "correct" implementation of whatever random detail. I don't really see anyone actually significantly innovating in browser rendering space - might as well reduce it to a commodity that's packaged up and developed in open source by multiple vendors. The only thing I see from the webkit situation is the whole web being dragged down by Apple protecting their cash cow/making sure web apps can't compete with app store.
- kaishin 4y ago
  Are Web apps competing with Android apps where users can use Blink-based browsers? I’m not so sure about that… I’d like to see some data points that’d prove otherwise though.

fbanon 4y ago

TL;DR: ex-Googler Microsoft employee (working on their browsers) salty that they can't push their crap onto people's iPhones. Sorry pal, you're not Commodore Perry, the iPhone won't open up for your trash.

Joe_Boogz 4y ago
Trash? Like, for example, a critical security vulnerability that could be patched quickly vs. one that would otherwise be tied to an IOS release?
- Klonoar 4y ago
  Ah, yes, let’s fix one vulnerability for one app… rather than the current situation, where every app gets the fixes when they go out. Makes total sense. ;P
  - Joe_Boogz 4y ago
    It does make sense, so your okay with EVERY app having the vulnerability then? versus an open market?
    - Klonoar 4y ago
      I'm perfectly okay with every app having the vulnerability and then getting patched, yes. What part of that isn't clear?

porcoda 4y ago

It always strikes me that the angst around browsers comes largely from people who have given up on targeting OS’s for development and use the browser as their OS. You all do realize that if you stop relying exclusively on the JS ecosystem, there is actually quite a bit of choice out there. You know, those native APIs or portable frameworks that some of us talk about occasionally. I get the economic incentive to develop once and run everywhere, and the education problem where we’ve somehow churned out tons of JS-only developers, but that seems to mean we’ve contributed to the problem that the Apple monoculture is revealing. Perhaps a solution to this is to not rely so much on browsers as our exclusive target platform, and take back some control? Nobody’s making us all move to an exclusively browser centric target for all development… I get it: native is more expensive, more time consuming, and excludes developers who don’t want to leave the comfort of their NPM/JS world, but it IS an option that one company and one browser engine can’t control. Even if you don’t go full native, there still are things like Qt, GTK, etc. that are at least decoupled from one OS and one engine. Do people really hate the idea of learning the languages and tools required to use those?

__alexs 4y ago
If you're developing for the web you probably care a lot about mobile users. If you care about mobile users your alternative options are even more of a walled garden than the web is.
EnKopVand 4y ago
Do you have any evidence that the angst you’re talking about comes from people who build tools on the JS ecosystem? In Danish digitalisation we’ve basically gone the route or having JavaScript (really Typescript) fronts for basically everything and I’ve yet to personally hear anyone working in that area complain about chrome becoming the dominant browser. And why would they? Frameworks like react, angular and vue make the underlying “OS” as you call it unimportant for the most part. Especially now that IE6 is almost dead. And if you do have certain needs that needs to control the environment you can always go the electron route. You sound like you’re not a fan of JavaScript, which is perfectly fair, but why would you go on a crusade for it? There are enough development jobs around that can keep you working with exactly the language you prefer and never care about any other languages.

spullara 4y ago

I hope they never let any other browser on their platform.

ribit 4y ago

I can’t help but think that the article is highly manipulative. It’s hard to argue with the author on the logical points, but they even to go out of the way to avoid addressing the elephant in the room: the fact that Google controls around 90% of the browser technology today. And it’s hardly the “Chrome is a better product” that led us to this situation but rather the aggressive marketing and Googles status as web leader. Don’t get me wrong, Apple shouldn’t dictate which browser the customers are allowed to use, but personally I am more concerned about web standards being controlled by a single company. Regulators should probably have a look there first. Can’t have meaningful choice in a monopoly.

quitit 4y ago
I find it hard to believe that Apple with it’s shrinking fractional share is legitimately holding back a web utopia. Android and Chrome are everywhere, if it could happen it just would. It has the market already and that share is growing. The attacks on Apple locking down the browser engine seem obvious: it’s the next largest chunk of users which Chromium can absorb and a way of taking Apple’s platform out from their control. (i.e It’s about money, not idealism or purity or some saccharin tech empyrean). The result would be obvious, less browser engines and more control to Google - I think few would argue that less browser engines are a good thing since the whole point of this argument is supposedly the opposite. As for apple’s security rationale: We frequently see serious security threats across a range of engines, especially Chromium, the argument of limiting that vector on iOS platforms is solid with history on its side. Placing a high risk component in the hands of a different company is beyond foolish, because in comparison to a desktop computer, the smartphone is a figurative treasure chest. “- But what about user choice?” Users aren’t demanding this, and they really do have a choice since picking an iPhone means wading through a sea of Android options at every available price point and screen size. Which brings me to an ignored point: One really needs to acknowledge that users aren’t dummies and their choice of iPhones isn’t blind chance. The apple ecosystem suits a type of user lifestyle with its low-effort approach to technology. What actually needs to happen is we stop asking the foxes what the chickens want.

amadeuspagel 4y ago

Incredible how many ad hominem attacks on the author there are here. Wow, someone who cares about the web works on a browser. Totally discrediting.

mediumsmart 4y ago

>Apple Is Not Defending Browser Engine Choice There is no choice to defend in Browser Engines. Safari is as good as it gets. For tracking and Dev tools that help in implementing a timely modal pixelperfectly placed to tell me I can subscribe, Chrome takes the crown. All is good.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

DeathArrow 4y ago

Microsoft was called evil when they packaged IE with the operating systems and used various tactics to promote it's use to the detriment of competition. But Microsoft didn't even wish to do what Apple has done, to force the users to only use one browser. I see people defending Apple's anticonsumer practices and I wonder why.

xlii 4y ago
It's an oversimplification. Internet Explorer being bundled with Windows was a different issue back then. Main problem was that a lot of official (government issued) software required ActiveX to run. Since ActiveX was bundled with Internet Explorer and Internet Explorer was bundled with Windows it was simple chain of dependencies that forced people into buying (not as cheap as today) Windows license. There were even some bribery charges in few European countries but usually towards 3rd party sellers so nothing that could stick to Microsoft itself. [1] Still that was in a scenario where IE had 95% market share. Today Chrome on mobile has 65% market share. Safari has 25% market share. Most likely (as there is other comment about it in this thread) if Chrome on iOS would be an option Google would push users towards (as both Google Search and YouTube are dominant product and it's easy to provide extra features there) which would bring us to exact situation where Internet Explorer was in Microsoft vs US case. Funny, though, how the old version of the joke "you either die a hero, or live long enough to become a Microsoft" [1] e.g. http://techrights.org/2010/11/23/microsoft-corruption-of-french-system/ http://techrights.org/2010/11/23/microsoft-corruption-of-fre... If you're interested you could dig more articles like that. Yet, because a lot of those happened around year 2000, searching articles is hard (as DDG for example uses Bing for results, and I can imagine why those aren't showing in bulk) but there are still few that can get you the taste what was the core issue if you're curious enough.
- badkitty99 4y ago

ubercow13 4y ago

=-0w564r3d2q1

cromwellian 4y ago

Reading these threads is like reading a political debate. “I’m for free speech, but this needs to be banned”, “people have a right to assembly, but I don’t want your parade in my town”, etc Basically, free software zealots supporting super closed source Apple software and DRMed hardware lockdown because of tribalist bias. We’ve been through this before with Win95 IE vs Netscape Navigator and Opera. Why are the arguments for freedom of choice on the desktop suddenly invalidated on mobile?

mensetmanusman 4y ago

Wow, never had any idea that maintaining a competitive browser is a half $1 billion annual expense.

mtomweb 4y ago
Minimum cost. That’s for a browser engine though. You can do a soft fork for far less

jmull 4y ago

I agree Apple shouldn’t dictate which browser you can use on iOS. (The way to resolve that is for iOS to allow alternative stores. It’s fine for Apple to control their store, just not my device.) But this article is absolutely full of it. This is part 6 of a 6 part series ostensibly on the importance of browser choice, and there’s not a peep about the long-term problems with the dominance of Chrome and the chromium engine, and Google’s de facto control of web standards. We’re hanging off the edge of a cliff and this guy’s complaining our foot is snagged.

nuker 4y ago

Alex Russel, it was bery hard to read post. Try make more sense with less words next time.

QuadmasterXLII 4y ago

~buy an android~

tomxor 4y ago

> Regulatory mandates about engine choice will take more than a year to come into force, giving Apple plenty of time to respond ! Has some activity in this area happened recently? I found this but it's UK only: https://www.macrumors.com/2022/06/10/uk-to-target-apple-gaming-and-browser-restrictions/ https://www.macrumors.com/2022/06/10/uk-to-target-apple-gami...

ykevinator2 4y ago

NorwegianDude 4y ago

Apple should clearly open for other engines and stop handicapping the web. I've had so many users complaining about Safari on iOS over the years that it's insane. On one of my web apps I've had so insanely many people who tries to get push notifications to work. Despite it being clearly stated in extremely visible red text that push notifications are not supported on iPhones, many users are still contacting me complaining that they can't get it to work, even after installing other browsers. Even more technical users are tricked by Apple into thinking that they have a choice. Users don't understand that Apple is the problem and instead blames the web sites they are using for the lack of iOS features. This clearly needs to stop. Safari is also insane when it comes to bugs. Everything from the keyboard not wanting to open sometimes when a text input is focused, to scrolling sometimes not working without reloading the page, to having to quit safari to be able to press the address bar and even a shorter period where some users had to actually reboot the phone to make the browser work again. These issues seems to be fixed now, but some of them persisted for quite some time(years for some of them). Scrolling is still an absolute shitshow(momentum scrolling animations, switching scroll targets and so on), and that is the most used feature on any browser. Safari is definetly the new IE, at least on mobile.

rafaelturk 4y ago

Maybe is just me.. but I really like safari, mostly because it just works. and is super snappy and CPU and memory friendly.

pojntfx 4y ago
That's great, most people don't, so let them change their preferred browser as the DMA requires it.

cosmiccatnap 4y ago

Safari really is the new IE

fleddr 4y ago

It's hard to pick sides between two of the most hypocritical companies in the world. To start with, Apple. It's very much true that Apple has intentionally sabotaged Webkit's potential. By underinvesting, by neglect (not solving bugs, poor documentation) and by blocking a whole series of promising new web features, all under the disguise of "user privacy". It's not some unfounded wild claim. Somebody like Maximiliano Firtman has been documenting Apple's crappy track record for years: https://firt.dev/tags/ios/ https://firt.dev/tags/ios/ It's also very typical how after years of neglect all of a sudden Safari has substantial and meaningful releases in recent months. A timeline that directly aligns with dramatically increased regulatory pressure. Apple doesn't want the web to succeed. It wants to do the absolute least possible to ensure it's tolerable yet can never compete with native apps. Moving on to Google (Alex Russell is an ex-Googler): "Past swings away from OS default browsers have hinged on the superior features, better performance, improved security, and superior site compatibility. Marketing and distribution play a prominent role but have been indecisive in recent browser battles." I find this statement maddening. To a normie, zooming out across all web users, modern browsers are near-identical. They don't do a deep study to compare web browsers in the way us nerds might do. They use the browser that was already installed, got pushed to them, or what their friends use. Google is able to aggressively push browsers on Android and billion user services like Youtube. Compare this to the reach of Mozilla, which is zero. To dismiss this point and to insist it's mostly "merit" is a lie. "Destkop OSes have long created a vibrant market for browser choice, enabling many competitors to flourish over the years." In the article, this quote is preceded with a chart showing the exact opposite: https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share/desktop/worldwide/#yearly-2009-2022 https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share/desktop/worl... In this "thriving market", we're back at an IE level monopoly. Mozilla has been bleeding market share for 12(!) consecutive years. It has no reach and most new users are mobile, where it has near-zero presence, so it will continue to bleed further. The rest are Chromium clones. It's even a lie to call it a market. As the author illustrates, it would cost 400M+ annually to develop a competitive browser. This would still get you nowhere since you need an OS and billion-user services to push it. So it's not a market at all, since you can't realistically enter it. Anyway, it's still interesting to contemplate which of these two hypocritical companies should win, what would be the best outcome for the web? In a perverted way, Apple's sabotage of webkit makes them the last man standing in keeping Google in check in not doing any funny business on the web. It is the only sizable counter force remaining. On the other end, full browser engine competition on IOS could bridge the gap between the web and native apps. Or, it could just mean Chrome overruns Safari and the open web pretty much ends. In the short term, I prefer the Webkit wakeup call scenario that we now see unfolding. If they continue to lock browser engines yet rapidly change their behavior for the better, this might be best for the web on the short to mid term. It feels very dirty, it's not right, but it might be the best outcome.

wseqyrku 4y ago

Ain't surprising? Apple doesn't support any kind of choice in their platform. Maybe wait until next major update until you can change some color or something.

Xorakios 4y ago

One thing missing in this otherwise awesome discussion among peers is that except for the interregnum for Covid lockdowns, iPhone users are able to walk into Apple stores and get support pretty much on demand and free for any Apple software product. But people (including my mother!) just assume that includes all software on their phone, and sometimes people think it's for hardware as well. The expectation is that the genius bar resources are built into the purchase of Apple products, which makes it harder to support 3rd party browsers or any other 3rd party products that just "stopped working" or "won't let me log into my bank account" -- again both things that happened with my mother 3000 miles away and I couldn't fix long distance, but the genius bar did for free when she walked in. So it's a tough choice on that - better to have higher prices and better service, or options that nobody fixes because there is less of a sense of accountability?