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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 actuall

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”.
    - mtomweb 4y ago
      How does that explain the enormous number of major bugs?
    - kjksf 4y ago
      Safari / WebKit used to be the engine driving the web forward. Apple had no problem rushing things when they were at the brink of death and had to compete with IE and Mozilla by making a better browser. Only when they could kill the competition by simply saying so they switched to a leisurely mode of development. Not to mention they are also very leisurely about fixing bugs. Spin that one to make it look good for Apple, please. The only consistent position that Apple has is: what's good for our business. When they had to compete, they were forced to compete. Now that they don't have to, they don't and instead pay a few PR people to spin it as good for customers for this or that reason. With a generous free help from folks like you, also telling us how Safari is really superior browser. All we ask Apple is to put that theory to test: let Chrome and Mozilla compete and we'll see what actual users prefer.
      - jacobolus 4y ago
        Personally I find Chrome to be utterly unusable for my browsing habits (hundreds of browser tabs open at once). It glitches, spins up my laptop’s fans like there’s no tomorrow and burns through battery, eats all the RAM it can find, and easily crashes. And that’s without even getting to the privacy discussion. The existence of a Chrome-based iOS browser would quickly lead web developers to drop Safari and Firefox support (“just install Chrome bro!”) so I for one am thankful that Apple is not budging here. Their browser is, for me, strictly superior. And their political decisions are the last defense of a multi-browser web.
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
        patrec 4y ago
        > The existence of a Chrome-based iOS browser would quickly lead web developers to drop Safari and Firefox support (“just install Chrome bro!”) Yeah, that would totally happen because websites that force people to install some massively resource hungry and sluggish browser first will obviously out-compete those that don't.
- Phrodo_00 4y ago
  > forcing inferior browser on iOS users is better than Chrome winning on merits? It's really dubious to say the chrome has or would win on merits alone, and not through a monopolistic advertisement push.
  - themacguffinman 4y ago
    Microsoft knows from painful experience that monopolistic advertisement pushes don't magically win the browser wars. And they really did try. For an entrepreneurial forum, it's pretty incredible how frequently magical mind control powers are attributed to marketing/advertising. Anyone who has ever made a real product knows that advertising is not enough, it only works in the long term if your product is actually good and worth using. By this logic, every Google product should automatically win. All they have to do is slap an ad on their homepage and sponsor some installation partnership deals and boom, nothing can stop Google.
    - AlexandrB 4y ago
      So far, only Facebook (G+) or Apple (Android) has stopped Google. They've spent the last few years successfully killing travel websites and shopping websites. Unless you have the resources and customer lock-in of a Facebook or Apple, you're probably doomed if Google looks your way.
      - lern_too_spel 4y ago
        Nonsense. If the user need can't be satisfied in a search page result, Google is completely impotent. Slack, Zoom, WhatsApp, Stripe, etc. all prove this out.
    - rhinoceraptor 4y ago
      They're still trying pretty hard, about one out of five times I try to launch something from the start menu, the search results don't find it or are too slow, and it launches Edge to search for "Fusion 360" or whatever I was trying to open, using Bing.
  - deleted 4y ago
- tgv 4y ago
  The funny thing is that he even dares to put "cui bono" in the article.
- thejosh 4y ago
  Except try and go and search for "google chrome" on a fresh windows 10/11 machine and see how much they beg you to please not switch.
- dmitriid 4y ago
  He was a premiere developer advocate for Chrome, and is the primary author and promoter of web components. He spent inordinary amounts of time vilifying anything that even remotely looked like competition. Then he went to work for Microsoft, and... nothing really changed. Though quite infrequently (hur hur pun) he mentions Chrome now.
  - jefftk 4y ago
    I think his criticism of Chrome/Google in https://infrequently.org/2021/07/hobsons-browser/ https://infrequently.org/2021/07/hobsons-browser/ is pretty solid
    - dmitriid 4y ago
      Yeah, this one is actually quite solid. I can't remember the few issues I had with it.
- nailer 4y ago
  And he's complaining about Apple, a trillion dollar company that gave up trying to compete against Firefox and IE and finally just started bundling a KDE fork.
the_gipsy 4y ago
I just want to be able to install a browser on my phone.
- rzz3 4y ago
  I just want uBlock Origin in my phone browser.
  - sydd 4y ago
    It's possible in Firefox (at least in Android)
    - TooMuchPi 4y ago
      Unfortunately not on iOS. They're forced to use WebKit which means Firefox on iOS is essentially just a reskin of Safari without access to any Firefox extensions.
      - yreg 4y ago
        iOS Safari has extensions and content blockers though, e.g. 1Blocker is alright. uBlock Origin unfortunately isn't viable since it needs to see the data and Apple doesn't permit that. Safari content blockers have to provide a list of rules what should be blocked and Safari acts on it without providing any data back to the content blocker.
        the_gipsy 4y ago
        Apple only allows inspection of the request, and either block or not-block result to filter out ads. This is very limited, as evidenced by comparing to uBlock origin. Their reasoning is that they want to make it impossible for an adblocker to collect any data. But I don't care about that because I would chose one adblocker that I trust (uBlock origin). It's a non-issue. Now I'm forced to use a multitude of native apps that all have far more data collection and access than webapps.
kjksf 4y ago
You do see the implication of what you say: Apple produces a vastly inferior browser and only gets to maintain market share via absolute, monopolistic control over their OS. You clearly believe that if they were forced to compete on equal terms with Chrome, they would loose. Do explain how forcing inferior browser on iOS users is better than Chrome winning on merits? The road to better products has always been competition. Apple, Microsoft and Mozilla can, and do, compete with Chrome. Apple not allowing competition is the root of all evil. Neither Apple nor Google spends money on developing browser out of the goodness of their heart. In a battle of two evil corporations I'll side with the one that's making a better product. And in web browsers, it's Google.
- nwienert 4y ago
  Switched to Safari a couple years ago and haven’t looked back. Chrome feels like a dinosaur and I miss it only for the dev tools. Sorry to break it to you, but Safari is the better browser. I’m glad they limit the engine choice. At least apples authoritarian policies are limited to their own platforms, meanwhile Google is quickly fencing off the web for itself in pure EEE style, with new “standards” flying out as fast as they can tweet them.
  - peoplefromibiza 4y ago
    > Sorry to break it to you, but Safari is the better browser. unless you are in the 92% of the World that does not use Apple HW for computing and/or the 87% of the World that does not use an iPhone.
  - amadeuspagel 4y ago
    > Sorry to break it to you, but Safari is the better browser. > I’m glad they limit the engine choice. Why is that necessary if Safari is the better browser anyway?
    - jalfresi 4y ago
      Because the browser market is not a free market; both Apple and Google leverage their existing positions in other markets to promote their browsers.
fuu_dev 4y ago
I think you put up an impossible task by asking for evidence supporting impact. The reality is that the highest impact on user share is the default browser. Shortly after that is habit and user experience and this is what apple controls, it is fairly easy to restrict options for the competition or use dark patterns to impact the ux and apple is using this already to their advantage. The reality here is that we need to be objective and ask what benefits the user gets from this restrictions and what risks they bring and i think two decades of defaults do make a lot of people ignore that instead of being critical.
masswerk 4y ago
The funny thing being that, as it happens, the same corporation that develops and distributes Chrome also develops and distributes a mobile OS that enjoys pretty broad exposure. So, if the best product wins in a competitive marketplace, where is the problem? If the author was right, iOS shouldn't even be a thing. So, is it the customers? Are they just too dumb to give the best product the win, thus strangling browser development by their death grip? Is the principal failure that there's a marketplace at all? Something doesn't add up in the principle construction of the argument.
- amadeuspagel 4y ago
  "The funny thing is that the author thinks competition in one market would be good, but competition in another market hasn't yet led to the utter dominance of his prefered product. Something doesn't add up ..."
  - masswerk 4y ago
    I guess, since the only available browser engine on that one platform is thus broken and unusable, the entire (i)OS should have vanished by now? It's just those stubborn customers, seeking the worse experience possible…
- ho_schi 4y ago
  Best product? This make me question the story of Microsoft. MS-DOS, Windows and especially the Internet-Explorer (Trident). All of them won in a competitive marketplace and where of questionable quality and in long term harmful. I cannot defend Apples locked platform! Yes, WebKit is crucial to the web and also needed on Linux (WebKitGtk, GNOME, Qt-WebKit, Epiphany, RasPi). Actually I'm quiet happy with WebKit but would appreciate always more speed. Feels like a lot of folks use Chrome and expect every other web-browser must use the same engine so they don't need to care about compatibility? Which is bad. * KHTML - gone * Trident - gone * Opera - gone It is only Blink, WebKit and Firefox. Firefox is also in struggle and Microsoft Teams still blocks it? Like back in 2001. The EU also doesn't require Microsoft to present the modal browser choice dialog anymore. And Google is pushing hard on iOS-users to install their apps. Same on Windows. I would appreciate if politics put strict control over Google, Microsoft and Apple and require them to allow full access without the luring users with locked-down systems, lower fees and other things. I prefer strict control of companies because it worked very well with AT&T until it was broken up.
nailer 4y ago
> so little time actually refuting the statement "if WebKit weren't mandated, Chromium would take over" The author is not trying to refute this point. He's saying it's a re-wording of "we (Apple) can't compete with better browser rendering engines" and he's right.
wdb 4y ago
Personally, I think Safari is a great browser to consume content with. I am more worried about the Chromium/Chrome domination in the browser world. I typically don't have major issues when developing web applications targeting Safari. The only limitation was push notifications on mobile devices but that's coming. The web workers support is getting better in recent versions.
msh 4y ago
It seems dishonest to me when a ex chrome developer complains about apple not allowing other browsers when chromebooks exist, there the browser choice is even more locked down.
2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
> if WebKit weren't mandated, Chromium would take over Why do they need to refute it? Nobody can see the future and whether that statement is true or not still does not change the fact that Apple should not be mandating WebKit. Chromium is open source anyway. What does it mean for an open source project to "take over"? Who wins there? I suppose in this instance that Google wins but so do users. The only loser is Apple because it puts a hole in their prison ecosystem.
- kitsunesoba 4y ago
  I would agree with you if Chromium were the project of a nonprofit, but it’s not. A Chromium-dominated web is a Google-controlled web, and Chromium being open source does nothing to change that because nobody but Google has the same level of manpower, plus it’s ultimately Google holding the reigns. It’s a massive conflict of interest. And once Chromium dominance has been achieved, there will be no party that can mount a meaningful opposition due to the velocity of Google’s Chrome/Chromium team stacked with the ever-taller demands of web engines. With every feature added Google builds the moat more deep and wide, further ensuring their monopoly will never be unseated. With all that considered, the only real winners are web devs who only need to care about testing against a single engine (once Safari is out of the picture, Firefox’s ~2.5% marketshare will not be large enough for most to bother with).
  - 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
    Why do we keep moving the goalposts? So it not only needs to be open source but now it needs to be from a non profit? Why does manpower matter? So now all open source software needs to be developed equally by purely non-profit orgs? Malarkey. We are getting a free and open source browser engine that anybody can fork. Microsoft forked it to create Edge, Brave uses it. Frankly, I wish Apple would either open source Safari, release Safari on other platforms, or contribute to Firefox. Edit: > Chromium being open source does nothing to change that because nobody but Google has the same level of manpower Microsoft
    - kitsunesoba 4y ago
pier25 4y ago
> "if WebKit weren't mandated, Chromium would take over" Are you saying that iOS users, given the choice, would not use Safari?
azangru 4y ago
> spends so little time actually refuting the statement "if WebKit weren't mandated, Chromium would take over" Does it have to? It's a rather strange claim to advance. I cannot read it as anything other than the recognition that in an open competition, even given the headstart of being the default browser, Safari/webkit would lose to Chrome/blink, which, again, I cannot read as anything other than the admission that Safari is an inferior browser. And if that is the case, if users are not free to choose the browser they prefer, then what good is the argument against the browser monoculture anyway?
synergy20 4y ago
Apple is the old Microsoft as far as open-closed-source is concerned, I just ditched Macbook pro for a windows laptop that runs WSL2 at work, my home is pure Linux. I took similar actions against Microsoft/Windows a decade ago, now I think Apple is a much worse Microsoft, browser is just one of its typical behaviors.
labcomputer 4y ago
> they would spend money improving Safari What I wish more people acknowledged is that the phrase "improving Safari" is shorthand for "improving Safari for advertisers and developers" not "improving Safari for users". Yes, it may be true that users experience some benefits, but it is infrequently acknowledged that most users hate popups, hate tracking, and don't want notifications from websites.

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”.
  - mtomweb 4y ago
    How does that explain the enormous number of major bugs?
  - kjksf 4y ago
    Safari / WebKit used to be the engine driving the web forward. Apple had no problem rushing things when they were at the brink of death and had to compete with IE and Mozilla by making a better browser. Only when they could kill the competition by simply saying so they switched to a leisurely mode of development. Not to mention they are also very leisurely about fixing bugs. Spin that one to make it look good for Apple, please. The only consistent position that Apple has is: what's good for our business. When they had to compete, they were forced to compete. Now that they don't have to, they don't and instead pay a few PR people to spin it as good for customers for this or that reason. With a generous free help from folks like you, also telling us how Safari is really superior browser. All we ask Apple is to put that theory to test: let Chrome and Mozilla compete and we'll see what actual users prefer.
    - jacobolus 4y ago
      Personally I find Chrome to be utterly unusable for my browsing habits (hundreds of browser tabs open at once). It glitches, spins up my laptop’s fans like there’s no tomorrow and burns through battery, eats all the RAM it can find, and easily crashes. And that’s without even getting to the privacy discussion. The existence of a Chrome-based iOS browser would quickly lead web developers to drop Safari and Firefox support (“just install Chrome bro!”) so I for one am thankful that Apple is not budging here. Their browser is, for me, strictly superior. And their political decisions are the last defense of a multi-browser web.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - patrec 4y ago
        > The existence of a Chrome-based iOS browser would quickly lead web developers to drop Safari and Firefox support (“just install Chrome bro!”) Yeah, that would totally happen because websites that force people to install some massively resource hungry and sluggish browser first will obviously out-compete those that don't.
Phrodo_00 4y ago
> forcing inferior browser on iOS users is better than Chrome winning on merits? It's really dubious to say the chrome has or would win on merits alone, and not through a monopolistic advertisement push.
- themacguffinman 4y ago
  Microsoft knows from painful experience that monopolistic advertisement pushes don't magically win the browser wars. And they really did try. For an entrepreneurial forum, it's pretty incredible how frequently magical mind control powers are attributed to marketing/advertising. Anyone who has ever made a real product knows that advertising is not enough, it only works in the long term if your product is actually good and worth using. By this logic, every Google product should automatically win. All they have to do is slap an ad on their homepage and sponsor some installation partnership deals and boom, nothing can stop Google.
  - AlexandrB 4y ago
    So far, only Facebook (G+) or Apple (Android) has stopped Google. They've spent the last few years successfully killing travel websites and shopping websites. Unless you have the resources and customer lock-in of a Facebook or Apple, you're probably doomed if Google looks your way.
    - lern_too_spel 4y ago
      Nonsense. If the user need can't be satisfied in a search page result, Google is completely impotent. Slack, Zoom, WhatsApp, Stripe, etc. all prove this out.
  - rhinoceraptor 4y ago
    They're still trying pretty hard, about one out of five times I try to launch something from the start menu, the search results don't find it or are too slow, and it launches Edge to search for "Fusion 360" or whatever I was trying to open, using Bing.
- deleted 4y ago
tgv 4y ago
The funny thing is that he even dares to put "cui bono" in the article.
thejosh 4y ago
Except try and go and search for "google chrome" on a fresh windows 10/11 machine and see how much they beg you to please not switch.
dmitriid 4y ago
He was a premiere developer advocate for Chrome, and is the primary author and promoter of web components. He spent inordinary amounts of time vilifying anything that even remotely looked like competition. Then he went to work for Microsoft, and... nothing really changed. Though quite infrequently (hur hur pun) he mentions Chrome now.
- jefftk 4y ago
  I think his criticism of Chrome/Google in https://infrequently.org/2021/07/hobsons-browser/ https://infrequently.org/2021/07/hobsons-browser/ is pretty solid
  - dmitriid 4y ago
    Yeah, this one is actually quite solid. I can't remember the few issues I had with it.
nailer 4y ago
And he's complaining about Apple, a trillion dollar company that gave up trying to compete against Firefox and IE and finally just started bundling a KDE fork.

the_gipsy 4y ago

I just want to be able to install a browser on my phone.

rzz3 4y ago
I just want uBlock Origin in my phone browser.
- sydd 4y ago
  It's possible in Firefox (at least in Android)
  - TooMuchPi 4y ago
    Unfortunately not on iOS. They're forced to use WebKit which means Firefox on iOS is essentially just a reskin of Safari without access to any Firefox extensions.
    - yreg 4y ago
      iOS Safari has extensions and content blockers though, e.g. 1Blocker is alright. uBlock Origin unfortunately isn't viable since it needs to see the data and Apple doesn't permit that. Safari content blockers have to provide a list of rules what should be blocked and Safari acts on it without providing any data back to the content blocker.
      - the_gipsy 4y ago
        Apple only allows inspection of the request, and either block or not-block result to filter out ads. This is very limited, as evidenced by comparing to uBlock origin. Their reasoning is that they want to make it impossible for an adblocker to collect any data. But I don't care about that because I would chose one adblocker that I trust (uBlock origin). It's a non-issue. Now I'm forced to use a multitude of native apps that all have far more data collection and access than webapps.

kjksf 4y ago

You do see the implication of what you say: Apple produces a vastly inferior browser and only gets to maintain market share via absolute, monopolistic control over their OS. You clearly believe that if they were forced to compete on equal terms with Chrome, they would loose. Do explain how forcing inferior browser on iOS users is better than Chrome winning on merits? The road to better products has always been competition. Apple, Microsoft and Mozilla can, and do, compete with Chrome. Apple not allowing competition is the root of all evil. Neither Apple nor Google spends money on developing browser out of the goodness of their heart. In a battle of two evil corporations I'll side with the one that's making a better product. And in web browsers, it's Google.

nwienert 4y ago
Switched to Safari a couple years ago and haven’t looked back. Chrome feels like a dinosaur and I miss it only for the dev tools. Sorry to break it to you, but Safari is the better browser. I’m glad they limit the engine choice. At least apples authoritarian policies are limited to their own platforms, meanwhile Google is quickly fencing off the web for itself in pure EEE style, with new “standards” flying out as fast as they can tweet them.
- peoplefromibiza 4y ago
  > Sorry to break it to you, but Safari is the better browser. unless you are in the 92% of the World that does not use Apple HW for computing and/or the 87% of the World that does not use an iPhone.
- amadeuspagel 4y ago
  > Sorry to break it to you, but Safari is the better browser. > I’m glad they limit the engine choice. Why is that necessary if Safari is the better browser anyway?
  - jalfresi 4y ago
    Because the browser market is not a free market; both Apple and Google leverage their existing positions in other markets to promote their browsers.

fuu_dev 4y ago

I think you put up an impossible task by asking for evidence supporting impact. The reality is that the highest impact on user share is the default browser. Shortly after that is habit and user experience and this is what apple controls, it is fairly easy to restrict options for the competition or use dark patterns to impact the ux and apple is using this already to their advantage. The reality here is that we need to be objective and ask what benefits the user gets from this restrictions and what risks they bring and i think two decades of defaults do make a lot of people ignore that instead of being critical.

masswerk 4y ago

The funny thing being that, as it happens, the same corporation that develops and distributes Chrome also develops and distributes a mobile OS that enjoys pretty broad exposure. So, if the best product wins in a competitive marketplace, where is the problem? If the author was right, iOS shouldn't even be a thing. So, is it the customers? Are they just too dumb to give the best product the win, thus strangling browser development by their death grip? Is the principal failure that there's a marketplace at all? Something doesn't add up in the principle construction of the argument.

amadeuspagel 4y ago
"The funny thing is that the author thinks competition in one market would be good, but competition in another market hasn't yet led to the utter dominance of his prefered product. Something doesn't add up ..."
- masswerk 4y ago
  I guess, since the only available browser engine on that one platform is thus broken and unusable, the entire (i)OS should have vanished by now? It's just those stubborn customers, seeking the worse experience possible…
ho_schi 4y ago
Best product? This make me question the story of Microsoft. MS-DOS, Windows and especially the Internet-Explorer (Trident). All of them won in a competitive marketplace and where of questionable quality and in long term harmful. I cannot defend Apples locked platform! Yes, WebKit is crucial to the web and also needed on Linux (WebKitGtk, GNOME, Qt-WebKit, Epiphany, RasPi). Actually I'm quiet happy with WebKit but would appreciate always more speed. Feels like a lot of folks use Chrome and expect every other web-browser must use the same engine so they don't need to care about compatibility? Which is bad. * KHTML - gone * Trident - gone * Opera - gone It is only Blink, WebKit and Firefox. Firefox is also in struggle and Microsoft Teams still blocks it? Like back in 2001. The EU also doesn't require Microsoft to present the modal browser choice dialog anymore. And Google is pushing hard on iOS-users to install their apps. Same on Windows. I would appreciate if politics put strict control over Google, Microsoft and Apple and require them to allow full access without the luring users with locked-down systems, lower fees and other things. I prefer strict control of companies because it worked very well with AT&T until it was broken up.

nailer 4y ago

> so little time actually refuting the statement "if WebKit weren't mandated, Chromium would take over" The author is not trying to refute this point. He's saying it's a re-wording of "we (Apple) can't compete with better browser rendering engines" and he's right.

wdb 4y ago

Personally, I think Safari is a great browser to consume content with. I am more worried about the Chromium/Chrome domination in the browser world. I typically don't have major issues when developing web applications targeting Safari. The only limitation was push notifications on mobile devices but that's coming. The web workers support is getting better in recent versions.

msh 4y ago

It seems dishonest to me when a ex chrome developer complains about apple not allowing other browsers when chromebooks exist, there the browser choice is even more locked down.

2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago

> if WebKit weren't mandated, Chromium would take over Why do they need to refute it? Nobody can see the future and whether that statement is true or not still does not change the fact that Apple should not be mandating WebKit. Chromium is open source anyway. What does it mean for an open source project to "take over"? Who wins there? I suppose in this instance that Google wins but so do users. The only loser is Apple because it puts a hole in their prison ecosystem.

kitsunesoba 4y ago
I would agree with you if Chromium were the project of a nonprofit, but it’s not. A Chromium-dominated web is a Google-controlled web, and Chromium being open source does nothing to change that because nobody but Google has the same level of manpower, plus it’s ultimately Google holding the reigns. It’s a massive conflict of interest. And once Chromium dominance has been achieved, there will be no party that can mount a meaningful opposition due to the velocity of Google’s Chrome/Chromium team stacked with the ever-taller demands of web engines. With every feature added Google builds the moat more deep and wide, further ensuring their monopoly will never be unseated. With all that considered, the only real winners are web devs who only need to care about testing against a single engine (once Safari is out of the picture, Firefox’s ~2.5% marketshare will not be large enough for most to bother with).
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
  Why do we keep moving the goalposts? So it not only needs to be open source but now it needs to be from a non profit? Why does manpower matter? So now all open source software needs to be developed equally by purely non-profit orgs? Malarkey. We are getting a free and open source browser engine that anybody can fork. Microsoft forked it to create Edge, Brave uses it. Frankly, I wish Apple would either open source Safari, release Safari on other platforms, or contribute to Firefox. Edit: > Chromium being open source does nothing to change that because nobody but Google has the same level of manpower Microsoft
  - kitsunesoba 4y ago

pier25 4y ago

> "if WebKit weren't mandated, Chromium would take over" Are you saying that iOS users, given the choice, would not use Safari?

azangru 4y ago

> spends so little time actually refuting the statement "if WebKit weren't mandated, Chromium would take over" Does it have to? It's a rather strange claim to advance. I cannot read it as anything other than the recognition that in an open competition, even given the headstart of being the default browser, Safari/webkit would lose to Chrome/blink, which, again, I cannot read as anything other than the admission that Safari is an inferior browser. And if that is the case, if users are not free to choose the browser they prefer, then what good is the argument against the browser monoculture anyway?

synergy20 4y ago

Apple is the old Microsoft as far as open-closed-source is concerned, I just ditched Macbook pro for a windows laptop that runs WSL2 at work, my home is pure Linux. I took similar actions against Microsoft/Windows a decade ago, now I think Apple is a much worse Microsoft, browser is just one of its typical behaviors.

labcomputer 4y ago

> they would spend money improving Safari What I wish more people acknowledged is that the phrase "improving Safari" is shorthand for "improving Safari for advertisers and developers" not "improving Safari for users". Yes, it may be true that users experience some benefits, but it is infrequently acknowledged that most users hate popups, hate tracking, and don't want notifications from websites.