The existence of a Chrome-based iOS browser would quickly lead web developers to drop Safari and Firefox support (“just install Chrome bro!”) so I for one am thankful that Apple is not budging here.
Their browser is, for me, strictly superior. And their political decisions are the last defense of a multi-browser web.
Yeah, that would totally happen because websites that force people to install some massively resource hungry and sluggish browser first will obviously out-compete those that don't.
This is not hypothetical: developers have been putting up “this site works best (or only works) in X browser” warnings for decades by now.
And yet their monopolist behaviour is the only thing countering Google's monopolist behaviour with Chrome.
I fear witnessing the incoming manifest v3 apocalypse, when Google will nerf adblockers and plenty of other extensions. And all Chromium based browsers will most probably also be affected. So no capable adblockers in Edge/Vivaldi/Opera/etc. either, probably.
Apple had no problem rushing things when they were at the brink of death and had to compete with IE and Mozilla by making a better browser.
Only when they could kill the competition by simply saying so they switched to a leisurely mode of development.
Not to mention they are also very leisurely about fixing bugs.
Spin that one to make it look good for Apple, please.
The only consistent position that Apple has is: what's good for our business.
When they had to compete, they were forced to compete.
Now that they don't have to, they don't and instead pay a few PR people to spin it as good for customers for this or that reason.
With a generous free help from folks like you, also telling us how Safari is really superior browser.
All we ask Apple is to put that theory to test: let Chrome and Mozilla compete and we'll see what actual users prefer.