[mtomweb]

That's a poor take. The issue is that because there is no browser competition on iOS, Apple doesn't need to fear losing market share. That in turn ensures they have no reason to invest in Safari or web apps.

Apple has the staff and the budget to make a decent browser and to ensure web apps work, they don't because they don't want anyone competing with their AppStore or their 20b/year google search revenue.

[burnerthrow008]

Ok, let’s follow your line of reasoning a bit: Why will Apple bother to even continue shipping their own browser engine?

You claim they only do it protect the App Store monopoly… so if users will just download something else, what would be the point? The things you want them to add (what you claim makes them uncompetitive to Chrome) completely defeats the alleged purpose of supporting their own engine. So why would they pay engineers to work on that? It’s nonsensical, magical thinking.

I seriously hope you will reflect on the real negative consequences of what you are doing to the web. This isn’t one of those times when you can just stick your head in the sand and repeat the mantra “I’m just typing code”.

Once Safari is killed, Google can really start ramping up the war on Firefox because the collective market share of non-Chrome browsers will be too small to matter. You are killing the open web that you claim you want.

[mtomweb]

Apple has single-handedly killed off mobile web apps from being viable on both iOS and Android, have deprived Firefox billions of dollars of revenue and strangled every other browser out of the most valuable marketplace. They do this why taking 20b/year from Google.

Apple is the one that has cost Firefox. Otherwise they’d likely have a thriving mobile browser which would have taken off because of extensions years before the competition.

Apple is not the defender of the open web, they invested the bare minimum into Safari to the point it was full of bugs, completely unreliable to build anything but basic websites, and was lacking all the core features required to compete with native apps. They were not competing with chrome on any platform except for on MacOS.

The only reason they have increased investment recently is because of the threat of competition.

[rootusrootus]

> Apple is the one that has cost Firefox. Otherwise they’d likely have a thriving mobile browser which would have taken off because of extensions years before the competition.

Firefox maintains an unimpressive ~3% market share according to this [0]. Why do you believe they'd have a thriving mobile browser if not for Apple? Is it not more likely that Chrome would just dominate iOS like it does everywhere else?

[0] https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share

[kebokyo]

If Apple has to force WebKit on every iOS browser for it to stay afloat, then something is wrong with WebKit.

I do agree that Chromium overtaking the web is bad for the open web in general. I don’t agree that forcing Apple to allow third party browser engines is going to make that problem worse.

[turquoisevar]

You completely sidestepped their criticism of Google’s Chromium dominance, which will only be exacerbated by Chromium engines being able to enter the last bastion Google needs to conquer: iOS.

I’ll leave in the middle any value judgment on whether that warrants blocking other engines. Still, it must be pointed out that you sidestepped it and then held up a shiny new topic before pulling a whataboutism.

> The issue is that because there is no browser competition on iOS, Apple doesn't need to fear losing market share. That in turn ensures they have no reason to invest in Safari or web apps.

And yet, they did invest in Safari and specifically in supporting web apps. So, what was the incentive? Or are you going to follow up your cynicism with something along the lines of “they want to evade regulation”?

> Apple has the staff and the budget to make a decent browser and to ensure web apps work, they don't because they don't want anyone competing with their AppStore or their 20b/year google search revenue.

Talk about a poor take.

This is not true. Since Jen Simmons joined Apple in 2020, Apple has made considerable strides in improving Safari and WebKit and added significant support for web apps.

They’ve consistently scored high on the annual Interop score, if not outright lead the pack at the top, and every update continues to add heaps of improvements.

People in the industry who can see past the trite “Apple bad, Safari sucks” mantra also acknowledge this: https://www.threads.net/@syntax_fm/post/C22hyslOABy/

Your choice to name-drop OWA to produce a fallacious argument from authority followed by poor takes ensures I won’t bother taking OWA seriously when it’s mentioned in the future.

[saurik]

Google managing to use their search monopoly to win a browser monopoly isn't a reason to let Apple continue its own anticompetitive practices as some kind of crazy check-and-balance: it is a reason to ALSO break apart Google.