[Apocryphon]

I’m arguing that Apple should strengthen Safari (and not just on iOS and macOS but to other operating systems owned by them) to make it more compelling to use for customers, and not rely on App Store guideline lock-in on iOS. But they clearly don’t care to, even when they could afford to. And they don’t care about promoting WebKit at all, because any alt-browsers running it would just provide competition for Safari anyway. As it stands it all seems very half-hearted and kind of lazy.

“The last temptation is the greatest treason: To do the right deed for the wrong reason.”

- T.S Eliot, Murder in the Cathedral

[mattl]

> And they don’t care about promoting WebKit at all, because any alt-browsers running it would just provide competition for Safari anyway.

Check out webkit.org:

https://www.webkit.org/downloads/

Browsers for Linux are right there.

[Apocryphon]

Sure, because KHTML and the Epiphany project predate Safari. Gotta mention it for legacy reasons.

[mattl]

GNOME Web (formerly Epiphany) switched from Gecko to WebKit in 2008, long after Safari was around.

[Apocryphon]

Alright, that's fair. I was going to say "Well, that's just because there's no such thing as Safari for Linux" but at this point I'm somewhat losing the plot. I suppose ultimately it seems like Apple just cares about Safari for its own platforms and if others happen to use WebKit, that's nice but they don't care, it's not like they're seeking to impact the web like Google does.

For all of Apple's contributions for WebKit, you don't exactly see them doing something like this:

"Supporters of Chromium-based Browsers" https://blog.chromium.org/2025/01/announcing-supporters-of-c...

Huh. That WebKit site links to a Mastodon account that doesn't even say anything. Maybe it's for queries.

https://front-end.social/@webkit

[mattl]

WebKit has this: https://webkit.org/team/

https://www.igalia.com seems to the other major contributor. Sony is in there a little too.

https://trac.webkit.org/wiki/Companies%20and%20Organizations... too but that's 12 years out of date.

I would love to see a WebKit browser for Windows that's released, but https://docs.webkit.org/Ports/WindowsPort.html does exist too.

As for the Mastodon link, I'd ask https://front-end.social/@jensimmons

[olyjohn]

Having a good web browser doesn't sell apps. That's why they don't care about it. They would rather you not have one at all and only have access to things via apps.

[Apocryphon]

Precisely, and it's quite ironic given Steve Jobs' original envisioning iOS as chiefly relying on web apps. The App Store mandate of banning non-WebKit browsers is entirely technical in nature and self-serving; to prevent apps from including third-party JIT compilers[0], and maybe (like Flash was) other browser engines are viewed as unoptimized and insecure for the platform. It's doubtful that Apple actually cares about preventing Chrome's takeover of the web. This is not the guardian you are looking for.

[0] iOS Application Security: The Definitive Guide for Hackers and Developers by David Thiel, pg. 8-9

"Jailed Just-in-Time Compilation on iOS" by Saagar Jha https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22401146