[alwillis]

> For all its flaws, Mozilla is actually the ONLY other company building a browser engine. When it's gone, there will basically be only one left.

Safari's iOS/iPadOS global marketshare is about 33%; it's on 2+ billion devices. Definitely not going anywhere [1].

[1]: https://mycodelesswebsite.com/safari-statistics/

[KingMob]

> Definitely not going anywhere

Apple will happily let Webkit languish as much as possible to drive people to apps. They have every interest in getting that App Store cut, and none in extending the web with open, competing technologies. (* Maybe the recent app store legal rulings ill change things, we'll see.)

[alwillis]

> Apple will happily let Webkit languish as much as possible to drive people to apps.

Doesn't make any sense: why would Apple allow an app that's on 2+ billion devices to languish?

There's no evidence of WebKit languishing. If anything, the WebKit team has shipped important web platform features more quickly than it ever has before.

WebKit is arguably the most important framework for the App Store; many thousands of apps rely on it, including many of Apple's first party apps.

* first to ship <search> in Safari 17, September 2023

* first to ship :has in Safari 15.4, March 2022 [1]

* first to ship wide gamut color support [2]

* the only browser shipping support for JPEG XL

* so many new features shipped in Safari 18.4 it took 8,000 words to describe it all [3]

[1]: https://www.webkit.org/blog/13096/css-has-pseudo-class/

[2]: https://webkit.org/blog/10042/wide-gamut-color-in-css-with-d...

[3]: https://webkit.org/blog/16574/webkit-features-in-safari-18-4...

[KingMob]

> Doesn't make any sense: why would Apple allow an app that's on 2+ billion devices to languish?

Because they can make more money on apps. Like I said in the parent comment you're choosing to ignore.

> There's no evidence of WebKit languishing.

It's pretty well-documented that Safari has been a laggard when it comes to web standards, cherry-picked links aside.

[alwillis]

> It's pretty well-documented that Safari has been a laggard when it comes to web standards

A few years ago, Safari being behind was a persistent narrative, which started because Safari didn’t support Chrome’s (often) nonstandard features.

These days, any important web features arrive simultaneously on Safari and Chrome (like CSS Grid) or within a month or two of each other… although it took 5 months for Chrome to ship :has in 2022.

[airbreather]

what about things like the browser object in Qt/PyQt?