It’s a step in the right direction, but honestly, what’s really the point when all browsers are just wrappers around Safari anyway.

That’s a tech-centric view. For most people a browser is defined by its features like tab handling, account syncing, preferences, extensions, etc. Nobody cares about the HTML engine, only developers. The fact that it’s possible to change the default browser is an important user-level feature.

It's true, but I think that's not the point. It's not because people don't care that it won't impact them.

Many people don't care about Privacy, Ecology, etc... yet it will have catastrophic consequences down the line.

Similarly here, yes it's true people don't care about the web engine, yet given Mozilla situation and Microsoft who switched to chromium, the web is seriously not in a good shape and it will have consequences on the long term.

I mean the most likely effect of iOS allowing alternative browsers is even more Chrome dominance than already currently exists. The fact that a major platform forces developers to not just stop once it works in Chrome is probably a net benefit at this point.

Not really... for me, iOS is a hard target, because all the non-default browsers (Chrome, Brave, Firefox) interact in different ways with the underlying engine that Safari provides.

Bugs present in iOS browsers, won't be present in Android browsers even if the browser version is the same which makes debugging harder.

For example, it turns having 3 targets (Chrome, Firefox, Safari...) into 5 targets (Chrome Android, Chrome ioS, Firefox Android, Firefox iOS, Safari iOS).

Differences between mobile/desktop browser are relatively minor in comparison.

On the Chrome side, there's fragmentation from all the browser that just wrap Chrome like Samsung Internet and QQ, but those are greatly mitigated by having up to date apps or are region specific so won't apply if your business doesn't do business in China.

Yes that's a fair point agreed . If every platform were like that then Mozilla would never have even existed, but Chrome gaining even more market wouldn't be great either

It is not remotely a tech centric view. People want things to work. Stuff doesn't work in Safari because it's missing features. User's also want to pay less. PWAs let companies skip the app store and therefore skip paying apple 30% of their transactions which means cheaper prices for users. If apple allowed other browser engines those engines would have PWA support.

> User's also want to pay less.

If that's all they wanted they would buy an Android.

> PWAs let companies skip the app store and therefore skip paying apple 30% of their transactions which means cheaper prices for users.

Exactly, this is what this is all about: companies wanting to milk users for more money and maximize their own profits, not that they actually care about the users.

> what’s really the point when all browsers are just wrappers around Safari anyway.

I think one of the reasons may be to enforce the global settings for parent controls and privacy etc. which would be hard with third-party engines.

I'm just guessing here, but since Apple has pretty strict review requirements for apps in the app store, I assume they could list as a requirement that any browser app (or app with similar functionality) needs to hook into these Apple settings and process them correctly.

Doesn't look like it works.

I set Spark to my default email app, but clicking on mailto: links in Safari still shows Send button greyed out because no accounts are configured in Mail.app.

Seems more like a bug

It’s still not in yet. Been waiting for it all beta as the #1 feature. Going to guess it will be in 14.1

Your favorite apps might just need to get updated to support the new feature.

Yes. Apps need to add support for this.

Right now you can set Chrome or Edge as default Browser, and Outlook as default Mail.

Yep you are correct. I assumed it would just have worked. Just updated Firefox and it's the default! Sweet relief!

14 major versions in ain't so bad

You can finally set a default browser but still can't install an alternative browser. We will get there eventually

I like using iOS on my iPad 3, where websites don't load anyway so I don't need to care ;)