I don't like Apple's restrictive policies. But the fact that Safari (or any non-Chromium browser) has 25% of the mobile market share is a good thing.
We'll see how effectively Google will manage to convince users to switch.
EDIT: As for the "you have the choice to stay within the walled garden" thing... no, you don't really. Developers have the choice to publish their app to the walled garden, but if I need a certain app, I don't have the choice to get that app through the walled garden. I will be forced to get the app where the developer of the app publishes it, just like I am currently forced to get the app through the App Store.
[1] https://www.construct.net/en/blogs/ashleys-blog-2/safari-rel...
Firstly, you complain of a third-party dependency being broken in a preview build of Safari, and that you had went on holiday the week the stable version was published, meaning you couldn’t guarantee the problem was fixed in the stable release. Plainly, that’s an organisational problem on your end—the Safari team fixed the problem on their end. I’ll come back to your complaints re. release schedules.
Your second complaint is, in your own words, “we accidentally relied on a Chrome bug that meant our Service Worker was broken in Safari 16.4.” You go on to rehash your initial complaint, which is that Apple doesn’t publish a release schedule for Safari. I don’t inherently disagree with this complaint at face value.
Finally you move on to your third complaint, but to me it seems like yet another problem on your end. You made the observation that a given feature was supported and made the assumption that it was supported fully, with no other logic in place to test functionality or fallback to another rendering method. By your own admission again: “We detected OffscreenCanvas merely by seeing if it was defined. I never expected a browser to ship it with some contexts but not others - I assumed it would have parity with the standard canvas element.” I can understand the frustration and panic of being caught out here, but the pitfall is in your application logic. Your arguments afterwards with regard to supporting existing content are well said, but don’t generalise in this case. Just because something broke for you doesn’t mean everyone made the same flawed assumptions you did.
You then go on to list a random assortment of historic instances of Safari having flaws, as if that isn’t true of all browsers across the board.
All other browsers have enough communication and transparency to avoid this. Towards the end of the blog post I outline what Apple need to do - which all other browser makers already do - to make it at least vaguely tolerable to develop for Safari.
However, if your goal is to prevent Google from having complete and total unilateral control of the web standards, simply the existence of WebKit as a prominent browser engine is enough. Its quality pretty much doesn't matter in this regard. This is pretty much my perspective.
You do not fix a tech monopoly issue by imposing a duopoly, especially not with each one in their own little garden with no cross over.
And you don't fix the issue of one way too big tech company having full control over the web through their browser by giving it or some of it to another way too big tech company, especially if that other company has already shown its propension to use its control of the stack to protect its own interest.
The solution here is to do what we did in the early 2000s, and educate people about firefox + ublock. On desktop after a large growth notably in europe, Firefox stagnated in speed and that's how Chrome take its headstart, but on mobile with google insistence on no extensions the game is still open.
I agree that nothing about the current situation is ideal. These changes won't take us from a good situation to a bad one, it will just take us from a bad situation to another situation that's slightly differently bad.
I hope you're right that uBlock Origin can get people to switch from Chrome to Firefox on mobile... but proper Firefox has been on Android forever, yet Firefox's market share on mobile is pretty much non-existent. Why hasn't the "educate people about firefox + ublock" strategy worked there? Why do we think it would work better on iOS?
While this is a good question, It is not relevant to the point because Edge is still Chromium. So this still gives Google the dominant place it wants to take and monopoly on web standards.
You don't fix it by cementing a monopoly either.
> The solution here is to do what we did in the early 2000s, and educate people about firefox + ublock.
This was a much smaller tech-enabled population, and even that was moving mountains. I'm not saying it can't be done but it's important to recognize it's a very uphill battle since Chrome is not a bad browser and IE was.
This isn't even remotely the same game here.
Arguably they're already doing that. There's a shockingly high number of times that I click on something in Windows and it opens up Edge instead of Firefox, my default browser. Even Apple manages to respect my default browser on macOS.
Whatever one might think about Chrome on desktop, fact are that 1 - people install it on purpose, because they want to, not because they're forced, and 2 - it's supremely easy to replace, which is why google tries hard to tie itself into more (password manager obviously, but chrome apps at one point).
Chrome is open to competition, it's just that this competition is as much marketing and mind share as it is tech merit. What Edge and Safari are doing or trying to do is not open to competition.
(this does not mean chrome should not be reigned it, I believe it should)
But regarding ios, at this point this is just speculation. Safari has the "default browser" advantage and people are used to it.
How much of an effect it will have remains to be seen. But Google has shown themselves quite good at overcoming the default browser advantage by making other browsers not work well on Google websites and by pushing pop-ups into people's faces telling them to "upgrade" their browser to Chrome.
Yes. Both the real browser engines in Chromium and Firefox are starting from absolute zero on iOS, and Chrome will certainly be much higher than Firefox.
I want to get a native Firefox iOS version if it means that I can get uBlock Origin on it. If I could get it on Mobile Safari, then I'd have basically no reason to download Firefox. But no, they'd rather not have me use it on desktop or mobile, since no version of Safari supports proper adblocking.
It's also a good time to remind people that the reason why you can't get a proper version of Firefox from the walled garden is because Apple explicitly doesn't allow Firefox to release it there. The walled garden very much prevents you from leaving it, and unwanted developers like Mozilla from entering it.
It has laughably low market share.
Browser market share has very little to do with the quality of the browser after a certain point. Safari is a pretty good browser, but it has a decent market share due to Apple's policies. Google Chrome is a pretty good browser, but it has crazy market share because everyone uses Google services for everything and Google pushes Chrome incredibly hard, to the point of intentionally breaking their websites and/or arbitrarily disabling certain features in non-Chrome browsers.
Browsers don't really compete on their merits.
FWIW, I'm also looking forward to having proper Firefox on my phone.
But there are significant factors outside of merit which influence popularity.
But there are significant factors outside of merit which influence popularity.
Not if Chrome gets a huge mobile web broswer share and you end up needing to use it for compatibility.
Or if major third party apps that you want to use (say Facebook or YouTube or whatever) are all moving into their vendor's app stores.
>the whole pretense of "the curating of the store allows them to ensure high quality safety" is frankly not in line with reality, the app store being full of crap and spam while blocking updates to apps that apple don't like (spotify for example).
I don't think it is. It might not have only top tier apps, but it's not full of spam and crap the way the Android store is, and has a much smaller problem with malware.
Just because the bad apps aren't reduced to 0% compared to Android, doesn't mean a 50-80% reduction is not already a good thing.
As the "tech guy", I routinely have to uninstall slow crap stuff that hogs down the whole phone from parents and friends Android phones. iOS? Not so much, if ever.
The major third party apps are still on Google Play though, why should they act any differently on iOS?
Your point on Chrome is indeed an issue, and I am pessimistic. While Firefox has a browser engine, how many can they spare to port/retrofit it for iOS?
Your Android parents and friends are lucky. They are at least able to easily uninstall slow crap stuff from their phones. You cannot uninstall slow crap Safari from an iPhone.
Which is irrelevant. You can always not use it. And when you don't use it, it doesn't slow down your iPhone.
In fact it doesn't slow down your iPhone even when you use it.
In Safari's backend is close up there with Chrome for speed and beats Firefox (as seen in macOS, where all three engines are available). It also does so with much less memory and cpu load, to the point that it adds 20% or more of battery life to use it on a laptop.
Apple forces all other browsers to be equally slow.
> it adds 20% or more of battery life to use it on a laptop.
This hasn't been true for years.
The choice is the developer's not the user's, if the app is only available in one app store (which seems likely to be the majority case).
Precisely because it is the developer's choice, users may be forced to leave the safety of the walled garden if they need an app that's not available - I saw another HN comment phrase it well as: if an app you need in order to "survive" is not available, you don't have a choice (for example, a banking app or a government app).
There’s a bit of religion happening in both directions. iOS has, objectively, fewer problems than Android in these regards and part of that are the policies.
I don't get spam on my phone (well, SMS spam sometimes but that has nothing to do with the OS) and nobody I know does. Also, I keep hearing on HN that iOS doesn't split notifications into channels and you can't block just the ad notifications. Unlike on Android where I block the ads for Uber Eats, the only application that wants to spam me (but doesn't, since I can just disable ads).
I install apps that I need -- news, banking, podcast, email, Uber etc, usually from well known companies. A small amount of apps are lesser known but they have good reviews.
I don't think there is any fundamental difference from the Apple app store. Maybe do a check of yourself first.
When you say "objectively" I assume that this is something that has been measured and that there are reliable sources for this statement?
That is my point of view, and to each their own I assume.
As for Spotify, yes technically it's not blocked, probably because they know that's a line they can't cross.
> iOS has, objectively, fewer problems than Android in these regards
You really need to outline clearly what "regards" you mean in that front, and objectively implies fact backed. I would disagree with that statement as-is.
[0] https://www.cloudsek.com/threatintelligence/copy-of-malware-...
[1] https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2023/09/22/apps-attack-risk
As an example of where your android example is worrying, stalker apps are currently only available for Android.
I was always of the opinion that if you didn't like the walled garden, don't buy apple. That's also a choice. It looks like this was a successful startegy on apple's part, and people want to muscle in.
When a product start becoming such an important part of its owner life, and has such a huge market share, I believe society should impose some rules on it to ensure it conforms with the ideals of said society. In this case, ability to be in control your non niche computing device.
So I think this is a case where we must agree to disagree.
But people buy them because of the restriction that you don't like. you're imposing your own standard on something you probably wouldn't even buy. I doubt most users give one single thought to rooting their phone
You will need a source that people buy them because of the restriction.
> you're imposing your own standard
No, our EU society has done so, through our elected parliament.
> I doubt most users give one single thought to rooting their phone
This subject has nothing to do with rooting a phone.
There you go.
Now you can argue with more nuance than “users are being held hostage!”
I did not say nor imply what you put in quote, you chose to read that which is different.
Android has allowed everything from the beginning, and overall it looks... fine? Of course there are all kinds of malicious actors who manage to publish malware on Play Store or trick people into sideloading, but if my mom, a basic Android user who knows very little about how computers and phones work, never got herself into trouble, that says something. You must be either dumb enough or really understand exactly what you are doing to go way out of the safe zone to download a shady app.
And anyone concerned about browser's safety -- if that were a real thing we'd have already been screwed on Windows and Mac. The reality is that most people use Chrome and it is generally safe enough for everyday use. Some people use Firefox, Brave and whatever but most of those are well maintained. If you install a browser that nobody knows, that's your problem.
This is just all fear mongering. So stupid.
Android has allowed everything from the beginning, and overall it looks... fine? Of course there are all kinds of malicious actors who manage to publish malware on Play Store or trick people into sideloading, but if my mom, a basic Android user who knows very little about how computers and phones work, never got herself into trouble, that says something. You must be either dumb enough or really understand exactly what you are doing to go way out of the safe zone to download a shady app.
And anyone concerned about browser's safety -- if that were a real thing we'd have already been screwed on Windows and Mac. The reality is that most people use Chrome and it is generally safe enough for everyday use. Some people use Firefox, Brave and whatever but most of those are well maintained. If you install a browser that nobody knows, that's your problem.
This is just all fear mongering. So stupid.
This is above all a “win” for companies like Meta who will use their market power to create a more user-hostile experience for the common user. I don’t care if you don’t use Facebook anymore because you don’t like it. The reality is that a lot of people do, and the restrictions put in place by iOS definitely stop the Facebook app from being as bad as Meta would like it to. Now all it’s going to take is Meta to say “Instagram is only available on the Meta store”, or some variant thereof, for things to get a whole lot worse, quickly.
Delusional indie developers see this as a win when in reality it was hard enough to get people to use their apps in the first place.
Just as delusional are the tech enthusiasts that have along the way somehow conflated “cool new iOS features that I’m going to spend some time geeking out over” with “something that will legitimately make the experience better for end users at large”.
Above all, the view that anyone that disagrees with you isn’t a smart utility-belt-wearing techie such as yourself is such an absurd hill to die on and avenue to assert your elitism. I’ve spent considerable time using Android devices and customised them out the wazoo. I know how computers work. Gentoo was my daily driver for a long time. I grew up obsessed with computers and everyone around me knew it. By any of the silly tribal measures that I’m sure you’d use to establish who is a “real nerd”, I’m probably going to quality. Please consider that the fact that you can’t comprehend why supposedly smart people disagree with you may be a sign that you aren’t interrogating your own view enough, rather than it being a sign that you’re the only sane person in a world going insane.
I find it ironic when this is framed as user choice when it is being lobbied by massive corporate interests for their own benefit.
Epic wants to give you the “choice” to download Fortnite from exactly one place, forcing you to install their App Store if you want to engage in that fairly important social network.
Google wants to give you the “choice” to help create total Chrome hegemony, giving them an absolute monopoly on web tracking once they disable 3P cookies this year. Is the DMA going to step in there and give users the choice to configure their tracking engine in that monopolistic market?
How many recursions of choice will DMA protect? Or was there already choice in the form of Android as people continually point out?
I find it a bit puzzling and amusing how so many people in the other threads are acting like this is the end of safety on apple and yada yada, while 1 - you're free to stay well within the walled garden if you so desire, stepping out is a personal choice (but now is a choice for the user, instead of banning him from doing something apple doesn't like), 2 - we have the example of android to know apps won't each flock to their own little store, 3 - the whole pretense of "the curating of the store allows them to ensure high quality safety" is frankly not in line with reality, the app store being full of crap and spam while blocking updates to apps that apple don't like (spotify for example).
I'm flabbergasted at "tech oriented users" ability to forget what they know when it come to certain brands they like.