15 ms·

Safari isn’t the problem, but the lack of browser choice in iOS is

286 points by auchenberg 11y ago

zorked 11y ago
What made IE6 IE6 wasn't the technical choices it made, but the fact that whatever were its views, those were forced on the world by its market dominance. The browser that is closer to that position now is Chrome, not Safari. The sad fact that Apple does not allow other browsers in their platform in fact may be overall a good thing if it keeps Google from owning the web alone. Apple may need to do something or risk losing some of the appeal of iOS. But calling Safari the new IE is barking at the wrong tree.
- deleted 11y ago
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  - venomsnake 11y ago
    You are not. You are running a safari skin.
  - bjacobel 11y ago
    Chrome on iOS is just a Safari WebView, which is the entire point of this article. You would know that if you'd read it.
- gnufied 11y ago
  Depending on which market share data you are reading - Chrome isn't clear cut market leader (http://venturebeat.com/2015/05/01/chrome-passes-25-market-share-ie-and-firefox-slip/ http://venturebeat.com/2015/05/01/chrome-passes-25-market-sh...). I am far from Google fan but calling Chrome is a problem is naive. I use Firefox on my Linux desktop and I can make Firefox default browser on my Android phone too but my wife is stuck with Safari on her iPhone - no matter what she wants. I think that is bit of a problem and should be addressed.
  - mineshaftgap 11y ago
    Apple will never let iOS become the janky malware fest that is Android. You can run FF and Chrome on iOS you just have to run executable code in Webkit.
    - Oletros 11y ago
      What has to do the browser with malware? It seems that the post is just a fest of FUD
  - celebdor 11y ago
    Same here. I have android and GNU/Linux and Firefox is set up as default on both.
  - kuschku 11y ago
    Still, chrome forces us devs to do a lot of stuff that we don’t want to — I personally found about a dozen layout bugs in Chrome that don’t exist in either IE11, Firefox, Opera 12 or Konqueror (which uses KHTML, the predecessor of WebKit). Chrome just disables a bunch of JavaScript APIs on mobile, unless your site is .google.com or .youtube.com, etc. If you develop only in chrome, you never notice, but if you develop in Firefox first, and your whole site doesn’t work in Chrome... well, shit. And, on the other hand, we now have a bunch of sites with "works best in Google® Chrome™". Welcome to the 90s, Chrome is the IE6 of today.
    - jfoster 11y ago
      I find the exceptions for Google sites particularly offensive. I wonder if it might bite them in the ass (as anti-competitive behaviour) one day. Example for anyone unsure what we are referring to: https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=178297#c59 https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=178297#c...
  - deleted 11y ago
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    - 11y ago
- youngtaff 11y ago
  What made IE6 was that it was a good browser when it first came out and the competitors were getting worse. Some blame that on MS being anti-competitive but Netscape were busily shooting themselves in the foot, and had two distinct codebases for the browser, so having to make bug fixes, new feature implementations in two places and often screwing up.
- jfoster 11y ago
  I think that depends on whether you're talking about IE6's earlier or later years. Earlier on it was probably what you said, but eventually it was a minority browser, except a particularly difficult one to support.
- o_____________o 11y ago
  Except Apple very overtly neglects to fix huge bugs on Mobile Safari, so developers are locked into endless hacks to have anything substantial work correctly on iOS, which is a vital market segment. It may have been incompetence rather than willful neglect on Microsoft's part, but the end result for developers is the same. This is the right tree :)
- kethinov 11y ago
  The fact that Safari would have even less market share if other browsers were allowed onto iOS is not the preservation of healthy competition, it's undoing the distortions of unfair competition that allow an inferior product to gain disproportionately high market share. Browsers should be allowed to compete on their merits alone.
doorty 11y ago
The problem is that Apple doesn't provide access to lower level APIs that would allow other browser engines to compete on performance and increased functionality. They can only compete on UI. This lack of competition is holding back the potential of the mobile web.
- MagicWishMonkey 11y ago
  Chrome worked wonderfully on my iPhone 5, up until the point where I installed IOS8. It was unusable after that, so I had no choice but to switch back to safari. Did they remove some low level API's in 8 that were available in prior versions?
  - pistoriusp 11y ago
    No. There never were any low level API's. You're always using the webkit component; albeit one that's slightly slower than native safari.
    - matthewmacleod 11y ago
      Has Chrome not yet switched to using WKWebView? I know there was some talk about missing features.
      - LeoNatan25 11y ago
        The features are still missing as of iOS 9 SDK.
  - manojlds 11y ago
    Ironically, it is with iOS 8 that other browsers got access to Nitro JS engine that Safari used so that they could potentially be on par with Safari.
    - rockdoe 11y ago
      If they're willing to be broken in other ways.
iMark 11y ago
I don't disagree with the assertion that iOS needs greater browser choice, but, even were that to happen, Safari falling behind other browsers in standards support would still be an issue. IE6 remained a thorn in the side of the web development community long after viable alternatives appeared.
- iMark 11y ago
  On the plus side, the rapid adoption of new versions of iOS means that should Apple improve Safari, the new version will quickly supersede the old, rather than having it linger around for years, as IE6 did.
  - mcintyre1994 11y ago
    Is this a problem with Android's Gingerbread-era browser too? There must be a long tail of users still using that and I don't remember it being particularly good.
pistoriusp 11y ago
I recently switched from Chrome to Safari. It's a better experience for me.
- wodenokoto 11y ago
  The user interface in Safari is indeed very modern and rivals most if not flat out beat them. But this is a backend problem. Safari is literally holding the web back by not properly supporting modern web technologies. And not allowing users to switch away from safari on one of the widest used platform is a huge problem
  - exodust 11y ago
    Safari can't be switched to full screen on iOS. That's a point against the interface for me. I honestly have no idea where you're getting the idea that Safari flat out beats other browser interfaces?
    - rockdoe 11y ago
      ...not to mention that restrictions on what you can do with the WebView also restrict what you can eventually achieve with the UX, effectively crippling Safari's competition.
    - pistoriusp 11y ago
      I'm talking about the desktop experience. Chrome was a hog on my machine and didn't offer anything explicitly better compared to Safari. I personally prefer the cleanliness of the interface and the smooth scroll speed of Safari over Chrome and Firefox.
    - LeoNatan25 11y ago
      As usual with UI, it is very personal. I happen to agree that Apple's Safari UI, in both iOS and OS X is preferable to other browsers, but that is very personal. Others prefer Firefox, Chrome and even IE/Edge. And that's fine.
    - natch 11y ago
matznerd 11y ago
Without being jailbroken it is nearly impossible to properly utilize alternative browsers. I particularly enjoy being able to choose my default browser (and mapping choice) for links. If when I click a link it always opens In safari, I end up using that browser a lot more than I would given a choice. Apple also hamstrings alternative browsers by not allowing them the ability to utilize the nitro JavaScript engine. The tweak nitrous allows chrome and other apps with in-app browsers the ability to do so, but it shouldn't have to be this way!
- matthewmacleod 11y ago
  I would point out that WKWebView in iOS 8 provides full Nitro support, so that's no longer an issue. I'm not sure if browsers are using this yet, though – there was some talk about difficulties with certain features.
  - matznerd 11y ago
    That is good to know. Is there a way to check whether an app is utilizing it or not?
    - LeoNatan25 11y ago
      No major browser uses `WKWebView` because it has very large gaping design holes, making it a bad choice for a browser.
      - rockdoe 11y ago
        Firefox for iOS is. But yes, the gaping holes make making something competitive problematic.
        LeoNatan25 11y ago
        Hm, I wasn't actually familiar with the Firefox for iOS project as a real project, just plan. Thanks
toyg 11y ago
The problem is all in this fragment: "as a vendor of dominant mobile operating system". We all know Apple makes more money than any other mobile manufacturer, and we all know they are culturally dominant, but in terms of actual market penetration, they own 20% of the global market. Samsung gets 27%, just to mention one competitor. This makes it extremely hard to get any sort of antitrust leverage against Apple. We can keep screaming at them until we're blue in the face and nothing will change.
- blinkingled 11y ago
  This market share/mind share / profit share rhetoric changes nothing for the sizeable portion of Apple's iOS users. Last I checked there are half a billion of them - they have no choice but to use Safari.
  - ryandvm 11y ago
    Well, for one thing, they can stop buying products from a company that is openly hostile to consumer choice...
    - biftek 11y ago
      It's as if the people buying Apple products actually like Apple's choice…
      - blinkingled 11y ago
        I guess the same can be said about all the people buying Windows devices in the 90s. Everything is absolute, 1:1 after all - you buy something and you must like everything about it 100%!
      - oksawe 11y ago
        Exactly. Occasionally I'll give Chrome, Firefox, among others a try, but I keep coming back to Safari. I hate the way the other browsers look, especially Chrome, and Safari is super quick while being easy on the battery.
georgeek 11y ago
A good reason why such petitions are important is that the (sluggish) EU Commission competition authority needs to see such representative citizen efforts in order to look into the lack of browser choice in iOS.
- skc 11y ago
  You don't have to use iOS. So such petitions are pretty pointless.
  - wolfgke 11y ago
    You don't have to use a computer, either (you can also, say, use a typewriter).
  - gurkendoktor 11y ago
    Why is this being downvoted? Apple's financial success is a completely different beast from the monopoly that Microsoft enjoyed fifteen years ago. Even today (!!) teachers and recruiters demand Microsoft Word files. My clients regularly force Skype and Google crap on me. In contrast, when has anyone ever demanded that you use an iPhone in a world where most devices run Android?
  - skc 11y ago
    I think it's being downvoted because a lot of geeks hate that they love Apple products. It's a bizarre situation that results in some odd things, such as Macs and iPads being prevalent at OSS user group meetings.
fenesiistvan 11y ago
One relevant example is WebRTC. WebRTC can be used on all platforms now (Linux, Windows, MAC, Android) except iOS because of it's Safari limitation.
- shellac 11y ago
  There are a few WebRTC tools on iOS, including a browser: https://itunes.apple.com/app/bowser/id560478358?mt=8 https://itunes.apple.com/app/bowser/id560478358?mt=8. WebRTC remains a W3C draft, of course, and had been dragging on horribly.
  - jessaustin 11y ago
    "Dragging" in what sense? ISTM several browsers found what they needed in the spec to implement it. [This isn't an endorsement of WebRTC, because I haven't used it.]
    - shellac 11y ago
      It's been going for four years and remains a draft, and rechartered earlier this year. As you say, there are a number of implementations (although I don't know how complete they are), so it's not clear why they aren't progressing to recommendation. Software projects :-)
LoSboccacc 11y ago
Safari is the problem. Even allowing choices doesn't matter (see the whole IE issue for how competition dies in face of convenient defaults) Its a problem because as opposed to the article view (who cares about a subset of advanced features) it also botches standard common and useful stuff, like positioning fixed element having a css transform differently to every other browser or misrepresenting the actual viewport dimension or having unreliable orientation change events.
PhilipA 11y ago
I have always been very surprised on how MS could get sued on bundling IE with Windows, without the same happening to Apple on IOS.
- benzoate 11y ago
  Microsoft was hit with an anti-trust suit in Europe at a time when they had >90% market share in desktop computing. Bundling Internet Explorer was seen as abusing their dominant market position. In Europe, iOS has around 20% market share, whilst Android sits close to 70%. It's really hard to argue that Apple are exploiting their dominant market position. You'd have to count iPhone as its own market.
  - venomsnake 11y ago
    Iphone is separate market due to lack of interoperability.
    - 7Z7 11y ago
      [Windows] is a separate market share due to lack of interoperability.
- babuskov 11y ago
  One reason: market share.
paulstringer 11y ago
So this guy is saying that if other vendors were able to implement their own engine on iOS, he'd no longer have to bother ensuring the work was compatible with the massively popular default browser on iOS? The argument doesn't stand up that Safari is holding developers back because due to it's real world levels of usage by customers you'd still be unrealistic not to support it - that is unless people are planning a 90's style 'please use Google Chrome' on Safari, nice. Basically the guy is lazy and wants to use some latest cool bleeding edge chrome feature and is annoyed he might have to do to some other work to support Safari. I get the feeling this guy would be far more comfortable with a Google dominated Chrome monoculture of a Web.
- deleted 11y ago
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- jaffathecake 11y ago
  I think you've misunderstood the post. Many developers are still suffering from how MS throttled back on browser development, but there's an end in sight. Users made that happen by voting with their feet. On iOS, there's nowhere else to go, so no user vote. Yes, we'll still have to support Safari, but if Apple's browser starts to lose users on their own OS, they'll have to compete on quality/features or continue to lose users. For developers and users, that's win-win.
  - TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
    > Yes, we'll still have to support Safari, but if Apple's browser starts to lose users on their own OS, they'll have to compete on quality/features or continue to lose users. That presupposes that Apple cares if a small number of users switch to Firefox or Chrome.
    - TorKlingberg 11y ago
      Microsoft didn't care for years, but as more users switched they eventually started caring.
- 11y ago
realusername 11y ago
Android Browser is the new Internet Explorer along with the webkit engine (Safari included). I should make a blog post one day showing what you get with Firefox for Android and what you get with the Android browser. Youtube, Gmail, Office 365, Google Maps, nothing works well with Firefox for Android nowadays.
- teekert 11y ago
  I agree, I refuse to turn Chrome back on but it is tempting sometimes or even necessary. Most recently FF didn't correctly handle some intent and no app was found when a link was clicked. This was necessary for authenticating something for work. Very annoying. Anyway, the amount of Cool stuff posted here that does not work in FF desktop and requires Chrome is also quite high.
- babuskov 11y ago
  I don't see this as an issue as I use native apps for YT, Gmail and Google Maps anyway. What's interesting is that YouTube app for iOS lacks some essential features that Android app has. For example, you can't go back to video you just watched. In Android it works with Back button, but there's no Back button on iPhone. You can have to go to history which breaks the nice user flow we have on Android and Desktop YouTube.
  - Fr0styMatt8 11y ago
    No I don't think that's anything particular to do with the fact that one is iOS and one is Android; Google's OWN YouTube apps are inconsistent. The Android TV YouTube app, for example, has no way to subscribe to a channel. It also has no immediate 'go back to the video I was watching' either; you have to wait some amount of time until your YouTube history gets updated. This is Google's own YouTube app on their own platform.
kenrick95 11y ago
Similarly, in Windows Store (of Windows 8 & 8.1 and Windows Phone 8 & 8.1), every browser is IE or IE-wrapped: so in Windows RT and Windows Phone environment (were only Windows Store apps are allowed), there is only one choice for browser, i.e. IE. Well, MS killed Windows RT and Windows Phone hasn't got that much of market share. Hopefully they will change these restrictions in Windows 10.
- smrtinsert 11y ago
  False, Google Chrome has thrived on Windows.
  - rockdoe 11y ago
    He's talking about Windows RT.
  - kenrick95 11y ago
    What I meant is those Windows where only Windows Store apps are allowed (i.e. Windows RT & Windows Phone).
  - higherpurpose 11y ago
    Windows Phone (and Windows RT previously). Windows 10 "Mobile" will probably suffer from the same lack of browser choice (on purpose, obviously).
mythz 11y ago
Personally mandating a single WebView on iOS ends up being a good thing for iOS Users: a fast, responsive, quality rendering engine that has the same experience everywhere and gets updated with each major iOS release - dramatically reducing the permutations of rendering engine versions that needs to be tested against and supported. One of the liberating things when first developing a Web App for iOS was only having to support a single modern browser, allowing usage of advanced features which weren't crippled by having to gracefully support old IE versions. Only having to target a single platform with limited resolutions is also one of the few benefits I see with native iOS development. Apple have always put the end Users Experience before Developers, so it's primarily focused on maintaining a fast, fluid browsing experience on iOS which is the most used browser for tablets and smart phones and IMO still continues to provide the best browsing experience on any mobile device. So it doesn't follow the feature-mill factory pushed by other browser vendors, I still prefer iOS's performance focus, yearly upgrade cycle which thanks to iOS's fast upgrade adoption, iOS Web Developers get to enjoy adopting new features long before Android Web Developers who have to support the old browsers shipped on JellyBean.
- pjc50 11y ago
  I don't think you said "iOS" often enough in that post. (More seriously, people really want to target "the web" as a platform without having to handle the various mobile devices seperately)
  - shellac 11y ago
    Fair enough, but how are you defining that web platform? W3C seems like a reasonable bet, but many of the features developers want remain fairly far from recommendation level.
- agentPrefect 11y ago
  Actually really agree with this. As someone who develops for Android I can't tell you much potential "mental damage control" you have to be prepared for with implementing stuff. Accommodating the different support packages, APIs, device & hardware specifications - it's a headache sometimes. But I think that's part of why I love it too, the freedom and "openness" relative to iOS eco system. That being said - Apple might be closed and all the rest, but make no mistake: they know their customer and they are willing to defend them. Even if it means pissing people off. Which is kinda nice.
rmc 11y ago
aka "Freedom Zero"
brudgers 11y ago
No, the way to get Apple's attention over Safari is to pull a page out of Apple's own playbook and that page should be "iOS Strategy for Flash." These days Apple doesn't negotiate with developers. When they have to negotiate it's hardball time. Given that Apple mostly ignores requests from the community of iOS developers, the odds Apple will mea culpa to people even less relevant to its strategy than "the help" are probably zero. A concerted campaign of browser sniffing and delivering a "We don't serve your kind here" to Mobile Safari users is going to stand a much better chance of Apple's attention than a petition. There's nothing wrong with treating the current situation as just business, but if it really needs to change then that change has to be driven by market changes. A Hallmark Card to Tim Cooke ain't gonna do it.
- zeitg3ist 11y ago
  So, make your site completely inaccessible under iOS? Your users are going to blame you, not Apple.
  - brudgers 11y ago
    Either it pays off to take a dependency on Apple or it doesn't. The costs of the dependency are both short-term - building apps for the Apple app store and supporting Mobile Safari - and long term in the form of Apple changing it's "API" arbitrarily in ways detrimental to your business. My point is that your business model is what you can control and change and the odds of changing Apple's business model without changing the nature of the market are zero. Changing your business model can change the market. Finally, if your business's customers are more loyal to orthogonal aspects of Apple than to your business then it is better to think of those customers as Apple's rather than your business's. There's nothing to be gained by wishing it were otherwise.
- mythz 11y ago
  Apple serves its Users not Developers, most of whom appreciate there's only 1 icon they need to click on to access the Internet. Only developers think that having multiple browsers to choose from is a value-add - for most users it just adds unnecessary confusion and complexity. Killing Flash wasn't a FU for Flash Developers. The only reason why Flash was banned was because it provided a poor experience on a touchscreen device, performed horribly and was a battery drain. The way to get Apple's attention is for Google or Firefox to develop a superior browser and browsing experience on Android, that users take notice is missing from iOS and is regarded as a USP for Android.
abhv 11y ago
All we need is Taylor to sign-off/tweet on this. She already has the appropriate last-name for iOS-dev related credibility.
birdsbolt 11y ago
Microsoft case has nothing to do with this - even the market share numbers (that are obviously way smaller in case of Apple) do not influence the absence of lawsuits. Apple produces the hardware and the software. Microsoft imposed software restrictions (or lets say defaults) on hardware sold by vendors which turned out undesirable for EU. If Apple offered iOS on other phones and restricted the browser application to Safari, they would obviously get sued. Since they "own" the hardware, and bundle it with their own software - there's nothing illegal about it. Not that I condone of that kind of behavior, just clearing up the reasoning that was not present in the article.
ebbv 11y ago
I couldn't disagree more. The mobile user experience would not be improved by having multiple web browsers, and my life as a developer would be a lot more annoying trying to support multiple mobile web experiences that differ significantly (otherwise what would be the point of alternative browsers.) If Apple were to disallow alternative browsers on OS X, that would be disastrous. But OS X is a general computing platform. iOS is not. It is a device first and foremost. It does not need to be an open platform where any developer can do anything.
legulere 11y ago
Allowing alternative browsers goes against iOS' security model. They want to keep JIT capabilities exclusive to Webkit's javascript engine.
- wstrange 11y ago
  Competing browsers have a security record which is at least as good as Safari (perhaps better). That seems like a weak excuse on Apple's part
damoncali 11y ago
Since 2010 or so, I've had to monkey with code to get it to run in Safari (desktop and mobile) more than I've had to mess with it to work in IE. My, how times change. So yeah, the problem is Safari. Thinking it will go away because of choice is naive. It's the default, and defaults stick around.
joeblau 11y ago
Based on the points made, I'm wondering what web developers are building in the UI that requires the latest and greatest web engine technology in Chrome or Opera? The reason I'm asking is that I understand the request for more choice, but I've also seen Android developers struggle to keep up with multiple versions of just Google Chrome on different versions of Android. I've also gotten rid of Chrome on my personal Macbook Pro because of how resource abusive it is. There are also security concerns with allowing third party programs to have direct access to a device that contains a lot of users personal information. Putting aside supporting fragmented web rendering engines, battery resources, and security; I'm really wondering exactly what Safari can't do that it needs to do?
- hughw 11y ago
  Unlike all other browsers, Safari refuse to implement Pointer Events. So you cannot use Pointer Events (easily) in your webapp; you have to polyfill for Safari. That was exactly the situation with IE in the 2000's. Edit: I mean with IE in the 2000s you always had to write exceptional code just for it, because it had this massive presence you could not ignore, and it refused to implement standards.
  - Retric 11y ago
    Even ignoring safari Pointer events are really still way to new to depend on with Android as most devices still doin't support it.
    - hughw 11y ago
      I didn't say, and didn't mean to imply, that all other browsers already have implemented it. They all, except Safari, have announced plans to implement it. (IE and Edge support it now; FF in two releases... Chrome has announced they will support it, but I don't see it yet on caniuse.com....) Safari, explicitly, has declared they will not. Edit: http://caniuse.com/#feat=pointer http://caniuse.com/#feat=pointer. Only Chrome and Opera don't show it in upcoming releases. Opera presumably will support it the minute Blink does. Edit 2: Chrome intent to support PE https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/forum/#!topic/blink-dev/ODWmcKNQl0I https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/forum/#!topic/blink...
lowmagnet 11y ago
This is especially a problem when a site has something broken in it (JS/large files/etc.) that causes the browser to crash. One has little recourse when this happens to every browser on the platform.
tosseraccount 11y ago
If android can support multiple browsers, why can't Apple?
- Mikeb85 11y ago
  Because they don't want to.
rgawdzik 11y ago
I'm sure Apple will consider allowing proper web browser competition on iOS if either: 1) It's against the law not to do so. 2) Apple users flee iOS to Android for this reason. Neither which seem to be the case, maybe in a couple of years?
natch 11y ago
Kenneth, what is the radar ID of the enhancement request you have filed on this issue, so I can dupe it?
fomb 11y ago
Safari isn't the problem. It's not chrome either. The problem is that 99.99% of people using the web via these browsers doesn't give a shit. It's up to us developers to build for what people are using right now.
- wutbrodo 11y ago
  It should be self-evident how wrong this is from the fact that UIs (web and otherwise) from (e.g.) the early 90s are pretty hideous (and much harder-to-use, in many cases)[1]. One has to balance between building for the present and moving the ecosystem and its capabilities forward. [1] Note that this is an overlapping but different discussion from "the web was created for serving static pages and it should stick to that"
tosseraccount 11y ago
Apple is the new Microsoft.
vfclists 11y ago
Why won't folks accept that the fact appeal wields major influence in Washington and Brussels, or the bureaucrats waiting for Apple's cashpile to get bigger so that they can stiff Apple for a bigger amount? It makes you wonder whether these legislators are really committed to competition which I suspect they are not. Stiffing transgressors seems to matter more to them than genuine competition.
skrowl 11y ago
Come over to Android. We have lots and lots of browser choice here!
- tdkl 11y ago
  .. and prepare to make time for new full time hobby, like analyzing battery usage and discovering memory leaks.
t0mas88 11y ago
Petition created: https://www.change.org/p/apple-allow-true-other-browsers-on-ios https://www.change.org/p/apple-allow-true-other-browsers-on-...
pfooti 11y ago
This is especially problematic for the market I work in - small shop, vertical market. Modern, fully-supported html5 and javascript means I can build cross-platform webapps that do really interesting stuff on desktops and mobile devices. Since I'm part of a team of two developing most of the application framework, I'm really not interested in building native apps for iOS and Android to go along with the desktop app- my time would be much better spent making sure the web app works well on all mobile platforms. I've already run into this- I have to either polyfill or avoid using modern javascript APIs (localStorage, web workers) because there's absolutely no iOS option. The nature of my vertical market is such that I could get away with asking my users to run chrome or ff if one works better than the other, but I'm basically stuck with iOS / safari as the lowest common denominator, and have no real options to improve, other than just pulling support for iOS entirely (something I'm seriously considering).
ommunist 11y ago
take Panic's Prompt, and use Lynx from your favourite vps. Although that may look a little hacky.

286 points by auchenberg 11y ago

What made IE6 IE6 wasn't the technical choices it made, but the fact that whatever were its views, those were forced on the world by its market dominance. The browser that is closer to that position now is Chrome, not Safari. The sad fact that Apple does not allow other browsers in their platform in fact may be overall a good thing if it keeps Google from owning the web alone. Apple may need to do something or risk losing some of the appeal of iOS. But calling Safari the new IE is barking at the wrong tree.

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- venomsnake 11y ago
  You are not. You are running a safari skin.
- bjacobel 11y ago
  Chrome on iOS is just a Safari WebView, which is the entire point of this article. You would know that if you'd read it.
gnufied 11y ago
Depending on which market share data you are reading - Chrome isn't clear cut market leader (http://venturebeat.com/2015/05/01/chrome-passes-25-market-share-ie-and-firefox-slip/ http://venturebeat.com/2015/05/01/chrome-passes-25-market-sh...). I am far from Google fan but calling Chrome is a problem is naive. I use Firefox on my Linux desktop and I can make Firefox default browser on my Android phone too but my wife is stuck with Safari on her iPhone - no matter what she wants. I think that is bit of a problem and should be addressed.
- mineshaftgap 11y ago
  Apple will never let iOS become the janky malware fest that is Android. You can run FF and Chrome on iOS you just have to run executable code in Webkit.
  - Oletros 11y ago
    What has to do the browser with malware? It seems that the post is just a fest of FUD
- celebdor 11y ago
  Same here. I have android and GNU/Linux and Firefox is set up as default on both.
- kuschku 11y ago
  Still, chrome forces us devs to do a lot of stuff that we don’t want to — I personally found about a dozen layout bugs in Chrome that don’t exist in either IE11, Firefox, Opera 12 or Konqueror (which uses KHTML, the predecessor of WebKit). Chrome just disables a bunch of JavaScript APIs on mobile, unless your site is .google.com or .youtube.com, etc. If you develop only in chrome, you never notice, but if you develop in Firefox first, and your whole site doesn’t work in Chrome... well, shit. And, on the other hand, we now have a bunch of sites with "works best in Google® Chrome™". Welcome to the 90s, Chrome is the IE6 of today.
  - jfoster 11y ago
    I find the exceptions for Google sites particularly offensive. I wonder if it might bite them in the ass (as anti-competitive behaviour) one day. Example for anyone unsure what we are referring to: https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=178297#c59 https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=178297#c...
- deleted 11y ago
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  - 11y ago
youngtaff 11y ago
What made IE6 was that it was a good browser when it first came out and the competitors were getting worse. Some blame that on MS being anti-competitive but Netscape were busily shooting themselves in the foot, and had two distinct codebases for the browser, so having to make bug fixes, new feature implementations in two places and often screwing up.
jfoster 11y ago
I think that depends on whether you're talking about IE6's earlier or later years. Earlier on it was probably what you said, but eventually it was a minority browser, except a particularly difficult one to support.
o_____________o 11y ago
Except Apple very overtly neglects to fix huge bugs on Mobile Safari, so developers are locked into endless hacks to have anything substantial work correctly on iOS, which is a vital market segment. It may have been incompetence rather than willful neglect on Microsoft's part, but the end result for developers is the same. This is the right tree :)
kethinov 11y ago
The fact that Safari would have even less market share if other browsers were allowed onto iOS is not the preservation of healthy competition, it's undoing the distortions of unfair competition that allow an inferior product to gain disproportionately high market share. Browsers should be allowed to compete on their merits alone.

doorty 11y ago

The problem is that Apple doesn't provide access to lower level APIs that would allow other browser engines to compete on performance and increased functionality. They can only compete on UI. This lack of competition is holding back the potential of the mobile web.

MagicWishMonkey 11y ago
Chrome worked wonderfully on my iPhone 5, up until the point where I installed IOS8. It was unusable after that, so I had no choice but to switch back to safari. Did they remove some low level API's in 8 that were available in prior versions?
- pistoriusp 11y ago
  No. There never were any low level API's. You're always using the webkit component; albeit one that's slightly slower than native safari.
  - matthewmacleod 11y ago
    Has Chrome not yet switched to using WKWebView? I know there was some talk about missing features.
    - LeoNatan25 11y ago
      The features are still missing as of iOS 9 SDK.
- manojlds 11y ago
  Ironically, it is with iOS 8 that other browsers got access to Nitro JS engine that Safari used so that they could potentially be on par with Safari.
  - rockdoe 11y ago
    If they're willing to be broken in other ways.

iMark 11y ago

I don't disagree with the assertion that iOS needs greater browser choice, but, even were that to happen, Safari falling behind other browsers in standards support would still be an issue. IE6 remained a thorn in the side of the web development community long after viable alternatives appeared.

iMark 11y ago
On the plus side, the rapid adoption of new versions of iOS means that should Apple improve Safari, the new version will quickly supersede the old, rather than having it linger around for years, as IE6 did.
- mcintyre1994 11y ago
  Is this a problem with Android's Gingerbread-era browser too? There must be a long tail of users still using that and I don't remember it being particularly good.

pistoriusp 11y ago

I recently switched from Chrome to Safari. It's a better experience for me.

wodenokoto 11y ago
The user interface in Safari is indeed very modern and rivals most if not flat out beat them. But this is a backend problem. Safari is literally holding the web back by not properly supporting modern web technologies. And not allowing users to switch away from safari on one of the widest used platform is a huge problem
- exodust 11y ago
  Safari can't be switched to full screen on iOS. That's a point against the interface for me. I honestly have no idea where you're getting the idea that Safari flat out beats other browser interfaces?
  - rockdoe 11y ago
    ...not to mention that restrictions on what you can do with the WebView also restrict what you can eventually achieve with the UX, effectively crippling Safari's competition.
  - pistoriusp 11y ago
    I'm talking about the desktop experience. Chrome was a hog on my machine and didn't offer anything explicitly better compared to Safari. I personally prefer the cleanliness of the interface and the smooth scroll speed of Safari over Chrome and Firefox.
  - LeoNatan25 11y ago
    As usual with UI, it is very personal. I happen to agree that Apple's Safari UI, in both iOS and OS X is preferable to other browsers, but that is very personal. Others prefer Firefox, Chrome and even IE/Edge. And that's fine.
  - natch 11y ago

matznerd 11y ago

Without being jailbroken it is nearly impossible to properly utilize alternative browsers. I particularly enjoy being able to choose my default browser (and mapping choice) for links. If when I click a link it always opens In safari, I end up using that browser a lot more than I would given a choice. Apple also hamstrings alternative browsers by not allowing them the ability to utilize the nitro JavaScript engine. The tweak nitrous allows chrome and other apps with in-app browsers the ability to do so, but it shouldn't have to be this way!

matthewmacleod 11y ago
I would point out that WKWebView in iOS 8 provides full Nitro support, so that's no longer an issue. I'm not sure if browsers are using this yet, though – there was some talk about difficulties with certain features.
- matznerd 11y ago
  That is good to know. Is there a way to check whether an app is utilizing it or not?
  - LeoNatan25 11y ago
    No major browser uses `WKWebView` because it has very large gaping design holes, making it a bad choice for a browser.
    - rockdoe 11y ago
      Firefox for iOS is. But yes, the gaping holes make making something competitive problematic.
      - LeoNatan25 11y ago
        Hm, I wasn't actually familiar with the Firefox for iOS project as a real project, just plan. Thanks

toyg 11y ago

The problem is all in this fragment: "as a vendor of dominant mobile operating system". We all know Apple makes more money than any other mobile manufacturer, and we all know they are culturally dominant, but in terms of actual market penetration, they own 20% of the global market. Samsung gets 27%, just to mention one competitor. This makes it extremely hard to get any sort of antitrust leverage against Apple. We can keep screaming at them until we're blue in the face and nothing will change.

blinkingled 11y ago
This market share/mind share / profit share rhetoric changes nothing for the sizeable portion of Apple's iOS users. Last I checked there are half a billion of them - they have no choice but to use Safari.
- ryandvm 11y ago
  Well, for one thing, they can stop buying products from a company that is openly hostile to consumer choice...
  - biftek 11y ago
    It's as if the people buying Apple products actually like Apple's choice…
    - blinkingled 11y ago
      I guess the same can be said about all the people buying Windows devices in the 90s. Everything is absolute, 1:1 after all - you buy something and you must like everything about it 100%!
    - oksawe 11y ago
      Exactly. Occasionally I'll give Chrome, Firefox, among others a try, but I keep coming back to Safari. I hate the way the other browsers look, especially Chrome, and Safari is super quick while being easy on the battery.

georgeek 11y ago

A good reason why such petitions are important is that the (sluggish) EU Commission competition authority needs to see such representative citizen efforts in order to look into the lack of browser choice in iOS.

skc 11y ago
You don't have to use iOS. So such petitions are pretty pointless.
- wolfgke 11y ago
  You don't have to use a computer, either (you can also, say, use a typewriter).
- gurkendoktor 11y ago
  Why is this being downvoted? Apple's financial success is a completely different beast from the monopoly that Microsoft enjoyed fifteen years ago. Even today (!!) teachers and recruiters demand Microsoft Word files. My clients regularly force Skype and Google crap on me. In contrast, when has anyone ever demanded that you use an iPhone in a world where most devices run Android?
- skc 11y ago
  I think it's being downvoted because a lot of geeks hate that they love Apple products. It's a bizarre situation that results in some odd things, such as Macs and iPads being prevalent at OSS user group meetings.

fenesiistvan 11y ago

One relevant example is WebRTC. WebRTC can be used on all platforms now (Linux, Windows, MAC, Android) except iOS because of it's Safari limitation.

shellac 11y ago
There are a few WebRTC tools on iOS, including a browser: https://itunes.apple.com/app/bowser/id560478358?mt=8 https://itunes.apple.com/app/bowser/id560478358?mt=8. WebRTC remains a W3C draft, of course, and had been dragging on horribly.
- jessaustin 11y ago
  "Dragging" in what sense? ISTM several browsers found what they needed in the spec to implement it. [This isn't an endorsement of WebRTC, because I haven't used it.]
  - shellac 11y ago
    It's been going for four years and remains a draft, and rechartered earlier this year. As you say, there are a number of implementations (although I don't know how complete they are), so it's not clear why they aren't progressing to recommendation. Software projects :-)

LoSboccacc 11y ago

Safari is the problem. Even allowing choices doesn't matter (see the whole IE issue for how competition dies in face of convenient defaults) Its a problem because as opposed to the article view (who cares about a subset of advanced features) it also botches standard common and useful stuff, like positioning fixed element having a css transform differently to every other browser or misrepresenting the actual viewport dimension or having unreliable orientation change events.

PhilipA 11y ago

I have always been very surprised on how MS could get sued on bundling IE with Windows, without the same happening to Apple on IOS.

benzoate 11y ago
Microsoft was hit with an anti-trust suit in Europe at a time when they had >90% market share in desktop computing. Bundling Internet Explorer was seen as abusing their dominant market position. In Europe, iOS has around 20% market share, whilst Android sits close to 70%. It's really hard to argue that Apple are exploiting their dominant market position. You'd have to count iPhone as its own market.
- venomsnake 11y ago
  Iphone is separate market due to lack of interoperability.
  - 7Z7 11y ago
    [Windows] is a separate market share due to lack of interoperability.
babuskov 11y ago
One reason: market share.

paulstringer 11y ago

So this guy is saying that if other vendors were able to implement their own engine on iOS, he'd no longer have to bother ensuring the work was compatible with the massively popular default browser on iOS? The argument doesn't stand up that Safari is holding developers back because due to it's real world levels of usage by customers you'd still be unrealistic not to support it - that is unless people are planning a 90's style 'please use Google Chrome' on Safari, nice. Basically the guy is lazy and wants to use some latest cool bleeding edge chrome feature and is annoyed he might have to do to some other work to support Safari. I get the feeling this guy would be far more comfortable with a Google dominated Chrome monoculture of a Web.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
jaffathecake 11y ago
I think you've misunderstood the post. Many developers are still suffering from how MS throttled back on browser development, but there's an end in sight. Users made that happen by voting with their feet. On iOS, there's nowhere else to go, so no user vote. Yes, we'll still have to support Safari, but if Apple's browser starts to lose users on their own OS, they'll have to compete on quality/features or continue to lose users. For developers and users, that's win-win.
- TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
  > Yes, we'll still have to support Safari, but if Apple's browser starts to lose users on their own OS, they'll have to compete on quality/features or continue to lose users. That presupposes that Apple cares if a small number of users switch to Firefox or Chrome.
  - TorKlingberg 11y ago
    Microsoft didn't care for years, but as more users switched they eventually started caring.
11y ago

realusername 11y ago

Android Browser is the new Internet Explorer along with the webkit engine (Safari included). I should make a blog post one day showing what you get with Firefox for Android and what you get with the Android browser. Youtube, Gmail, Office 365, Google Maps, nothing works well with Firefox for Android nowadays.

teekert 11y ago
I agree, I refuse to turn Chrome back on but it is tempting sometimes or even necessary. Most recently FF didn't correctly handle some intent and no app was found when a link was clicked. This was necessary for authenticating something for work. Very annoying. Anyway, the amount of Cool stuff posted here that does not work in FF desktop and requires Chrome is also quite high.
babuskov 11y ago
I don't see this as an issue as I use native apps for YT, Gmail and Google Maps anyway. What's interesting is that YouTube app for iOS lacks some essential features that Android app has. For example, you can't go back to video you just watched. In Android it works with Back button, but there's no Back button on iPhone. You can have to go to history which breaks the nice user flow we have on Android and Desktop YouTube.
- Fr0styMatt8 11y ago
  No I don't think that's anything particular to do with the fact that one is iOS and one is Android; Google's OWN YouTube apps are inconsistent. The Android TV YouTube app, for example, has no way to subscribe to a channel. It also has no immediate 'go back to the video I was watching' either; you have to wait some amount of time until your YouTube history gets updated. This is Google's own YouTube app on their own platform.

kenrick95 11y ago

Similarly, in Windows Store (of Windows 8 & 8.1 and Windows Phone 8 & 8.1), every browser is IE or IE-wrapped: so in Windows RT and Windows Phone environment (were only Windows Store apps are allowed), there is only one choice for browser, i.e. IE. Well, MS killed Windows RT and Windows Phone hasn't got that much of market share. Hopefully they will change these restrictions in Windows 10.

smrtinsert 11y ago
False, Google Chrome has thrived on Windows.
- rockdoe 11y ago
  He's talking about Windows RT.
- kenrick95 11y ago
  What I meant is those Windows where only Windows Store apps are allowed (i.e. Windows RT & Windows Phone).
- higherpurpose 11y ago
  Windows Phone (and Windows RT previously). Windows 10 "Mobile" will probably suffer from the same lack of browser choice (on purpose, obviously).

mythz 11y ago

Personally mandating a single WebView on iOS ends up being a good thing for iOS Users: a fast, responsive, quality rendering engine that has the same experience everywhere and gets updated with each major iOS release - dramatically reducing the permutations of rendering engine versions that needs to be tested against and supported. One of the liberating things when first developing a Web App for iOS was only having to support a single modern browser, allowing usage of advanced features which weren't crippled by having to gracefully support old IE versions. Only having to target a single platform with limited resolutions is also one of the few benefits I see with native iOS development. Apple have always put the end Users Experience before Developers, so it's primarily focused on maintaining a fast, fluid browsing experience on iOS which is the most used browser for tablets and smart phones and IMO still continues to provide the best browsing experience on any mobile device. So it doesn't follow the feature-mill factory pushed by other browser vendors, I still prefer iOS's performance focus, yearly upgrade cycle which thanks to iOS's fast upgrade adoption, iOS Web Developers get to enjoy adopting new features long before Android Web Developers who have to support the old browsers shipped on JellyBean.

pjc50 11y ago
I don't think you said "iOS" often enough in that post. (More seriously, people really want to target "the web" as a platform without having to handle the various mobile devices seperately)
- shellac 11y ago
  Fair enough, but how are you defining that web platform? W3C seems like a reasonable bet, but many of the features developers want remain fairly far from recommendation level.
agentPrefect 11y ago
Actually really agree with this. As someone who develops for Android I can't tell you much potential "mental damage control" you have to be prepared for with implementing stuff. Accommodating the different support packages, APIs, device & hardware specifications - it's a headache sometimes. But I think that's part of why I love it too, the freedom and "openness" relative to iOS eco system. That being said - Apple might be closed and all the rest, but make no mistake: they know their customer and they are willing to defend them. Even if it means pissing people off. Which is kinda nice.

rmc 11y ago

aka "Freedom Zero"

brudgers 11y ago

No, the way to get Apple's attention over Safari is to pull a page out of Apple's own playbook and that page should be "iOS Strategy for Flash." These days Apple doesn't negotiate with developers. When they have to negotiate it's hardball time. Given that Apple mostly ignores requests from the community of iOS developers, the odds Apple will mea culpa to people even less relevant to its strategy than "the help" are probably zero. A concerted campaign of browser sniffing and delivering a "We don't serve your kind here" to Mobile Safari users is going to stand a much better chance of Apple's attention than a petition. There's nothing wrong with treating the current situation as just business, but if it really needs to change then that change has to be driven by market changes. A Hallmark Card to Tim Cooke ain't gonna do it.

zeitg3ist 11y ago
So, make your site completely inaccessible under iOS? Your users are going to blame you, not Apple.
- brudgers 11y ago
  Either it pays off to take a dependency on Apple or it doesn't. The costs of the dependency are both short-term - building apps for the Apple app store and supporting Mobile Safari - and long term in the form of Apple changing it's "API" arbitrarily in ways detrimental to your business. My point is that your business model is what you can control and change and the odds of changing Apple's business model without changing the nature of the market are zero. Changing your business model can change the market. Finally, if your business's customers are more loyal to orthogonal aspects of Apple than to your business then it is better to think of those customers as Apple's rather than your business's. There's nothing to be gained by wishing it were otherwise.
mythz 11y ago
Apple serves its Users not Developers, most of whom appreciate there's only 1 icon they need to click on to access the Internet. Only developers think that having multiple browsers to choose from is a value-add - for most users it just adds unnecessary confusion and complexity. Killing Flash wasn't a FU for Flash Developers. The only reason why Flash was banned was because it provided a poor experience on a touchscreen device, performed horribly and was a battery drain. The way to get Apple's attention is for Google or Firefox to develop a superior browser and browsing experience on Android, that users take notice is missing from iOS and is regarded as a USP for Android.

abhv 11y ago

All we need is Taylor to sign-off/tweet on this. She already has the appropriate last-name for iOS-dev related credibility.

birdsbolt 11y ago

Microsoft case has nothing to do with this - even the market share numbers (that are obviously way smaller in case of Apple) do not influence the absence of lawsuits. Apple produces the hardware and the software. Microsoft imposed software restrictions (or lets say defaults) on hardware sold by vendors which turned out undesirable for EU. If Apple offered iOS on other phones and restricted the browser application to Safari, they would obviously get sued. Since they "own" the hardware, and bundle it with their own software - there's nothing illegal about it. Not that I condone of that kind of behavior, just clearing up the reasoning that was not present in the article.

ebbv 11y ago

I couldn't disagree more. The mobile user experience would not be improved by having multiple web browsers, and my life as a developer would be a lot more annoying trying to support multiple mobile web experiences that differ significantly (otherwise what would be the point of alternative browsers.) If Apple were to disallow alternative browsers on OS X, that would be disastrous. But OS X is a general computing platform. iOS is not. It is a device first and foremost. It does not need to be an open platform where any developer can do anything.

legulere 11y ago

Allowing alternative browsers goes against iOS' security model. They want to keep JIT capabilities exclusive to Webkit's javascript engine.

wstrange 11y ago
Competing browsers have a security record which is at least as good as Safari (perhaps better). That seems like a weak excuse on Apple's part

damoncali 11y ago

Since 2010 or so, I've had to monkey with code to get it to run in Safari (desktop and mobile) more than I've had to mess with it to work in IE. My, how times change. So yeah, the problem is Safari. Thinking it will go away because of choice is naive. It's the default, and defaults stick around.

joeblau 11y ago

Based on the points made, I'm wondering what web developers are building in the UI that requires the latest and greatest web engine technology in Chrome or Opera? The reason I'm asking is that I understand the request for more choice, but I've also seen Android developers struggle to keep up with multiple versions of just Google Chrome on different versions of Android. I've also gotten rid of Chrome on my personal Macbook Pro because of how resource abusive it is. There are also security concerns with allowing third party programs to have direct access to a device that contains a lot of users personal information. Putting aside supporting fragmented web rendering engines, battery resources, and security; I'm really wondering exactly what Safari can't do that it needs to do?

hughw 11y ago
Unlike all other browsers, Safari refuse to implement Pointer Events. So you cannot use Pointer Events (easily) in your webapp; you have to polyfill for Safari. That was exactly the situation with IE in the 2000's. Edit: I mean with IE in the 2000s you always had to write exceptional code just for it, because it had this massive presence you could not ignore, and it refused to implement standards.
- Retric 11y ago
  Even ignoring safari Pointer events are really still way to new to depend on with Android as most devices still doin't support it.
  - hughw 11y ago
    I didn't say, and didn't mean to imply, that all other browsers already have implemented it. They all, except Safari, have announced plans to implement it. (IE and Edge support it now; FF in two releases... Chrome has announced they will support it, but I don't see it yet on caniuse.com....) Safari, explicitly, has declared they will not. Edit: http://caniuse.com/#feat=pointer http://caniuse.com/#feat=pointer. Only Chrome and Opera don't show it in upcoming releases. Opera presumably will support it the minute Blink does. Edit 2: Chrome intent to support PE https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/forum/#!topic/blink-dev/ODWmcKNQl0I https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/forum/#!topic/blink...

lowmagnet 11y ago

This is especially a problem when a site has something broken in it (JS/large files/etc.) that causes the browser to crash. One has little recourse when this happens to every browser on the platform.

tosseraccount 11y ago

If android can support multiple browsers, why can't Apple?

Mikeb85 11y ago
Because they don't want to.

rgawdzik 11y ago

I'm sure Apple will consider allowing proper web browser competition on iOS if either: 1) It's against the law not to do so. 2) Apple users flee iOS to Android for this reason. Neither which seem to be the case, maybe in a couple of years?

natch 11y ago

Kenneth, what is the radar ID of the enhancement request you have filed on this issue, so I can dupe it?

fomb 11y ago

Safari isn't the problem. It's not chrome either. The problem is that 99.99% of people using the web via these browsers doesn't give a shit. It's up to us developers to build for what people are using right now.

wutbrodo 11y ago
It should be self-evident how wrong this is from the fact that UIs (web and otherwise) from (e.g.) the early 90s are pretty hideous (and much harder-to-use, in many cases)[1]. One has to balance between building for the present and moving the ecosystem and its capabilities forward. [1] Note that this is an overlapping but different discussion from "the web was created for serving static pages and it should stick to that"

tosseraccount 11y ago

Apple is the new Microsoft.

vfclists 11y ago

Why won't folks accept that the fact appeal wields major influence in Washington and Brussels, or the bureaucrats waiting for Apple's cashpile to get bigger so that they can stiff Apple for a bigger amount? It makes you wonder whether these legislators are really committed to competition which I suspect they are not. Stiffing transgressors seems to matter more to them than genuine competition.

skrowl 11y ago

Come over to Android. We have lots and lots of browser choice here!

tdkl 11y ago
.. and prepare to make time for new full time hobby, like analyzing battery usage and discovering memory leaks.

t0mas88 11y ago

Petition created: https://www.change.org/p/apple-allow-true-other-browsers-on-ios https://www.change.org/p/apple-allow-true-other-browsers-on-...

pfooti 11y ago

This is especially problematic for the market I work in - small shop, vertical market. Modern, fully-supported html5 and javascript means I can build cross-platform webapps that do really interesting stuff on desktops and mobile devices. Since I'm part of a team of two developing most of the application framework, I'm really not interested in building native apps for iOS and Android to go along with the desktop app- my time would be much better spent making sure the web app works well on all mobile platforms. I've already run into this- I have to either polyfill or avoid using modern javascript APIs (localStorage, web workers) because there's absolutely no iOS option. The nature of my vertical market is such that I could get away with asking my users to run chrome or ff if one works better than the other, but I'm basically stuck with iOS / safari as the lowest common denominator, and have no real options to improve, other than just pulling support for iOS entirely (something I'm seriously considering).

ommunist 11y ago

take Panic's Prompt, and use Lynx from your favourite vps. Although that may look a little hacky.