slightlyoff

https://infrequently.org/2025/11/performance-inequality-gap-...

This makes intuitive sense because those users are more likely to be out of disk space or bandwidth limited by geography or metering.

Regardless, while this issue is pronounced in the Android and Windows ecosystems, it's in a dramatically better place than it was in, e.g., the late Naughts when we had to build exotic solutions like Chrome Frame to address stagnation and fragmentation. So I'm not ignoring the issue, but again, to the extent we're discussing platforms that Apple has influence over, the ball is squarely in Cupertino's court. Every iPhone running an unsupported OS could be getting an updated browser, but Apple chooses not to make one or allow anyone else to plug the gap.

If there is a legacy browser problem today, it is entirely within Cupertino's gift to address. Everyone else already moved to out-of-band, decoupled autoupdates. Even ChromeOS is dramatically more up-to-date fleet-wide.

https://infrequently.org/2025/11/performance-inequality-gap-...

The top two lines are the fastest devices available in the iOS and Android ecosystems each year, and when using Samsung S-series devices, I have made sure to pick the faster of the Qualcomm vs. Samsung Semi parts (both are used historically, but Qualcomm is most prevalent in the US). As explained in the piece, the bottom two lines are taken from representative devices in the mid-range and low-end price categories. There's wild variation in those market segments due to short-run discounting, and the most meaningful uplift in CPU speeds has coincided with 5G radios (for obvious signal-processing reasons). Because the lowest-priced segment doesn't yet feature 5G, those processors have remained stubbornly slow, even if they get cheaper every year.

https://infrequently.org/2025/11/performance-inequality-gap-...

Mobile devices rarely last beyond the 5 year mark, although the age span has been increasing in the past several years and the resale market is booming thanks to inflation, geopolitical instability, and a global cost-of-living crisis.

Sucks to be corresponding via The Second Worst Website In The World (TM), but here we are. Hope all's well on your end.

A minor correction from Edge's perspective: we've participated in OT using Phi models, but have not shipped to Stable, and are unlikely to given the current shape of things. Developers have not given us feedback that they're relaxed about compatibility, but I would obviously welcome that sort of data in case anyone has it to hand.

Best,

Alex

The most important outcomes being:

- Apple can be compelled to allow third-party browsers on iOS to use their own engines.

- Apple can be compelled to provide equivalent access to functionality for browsers using their own browser engines.

- Apple can be compelled to let third-party browsers install and manage web apps using their own engines.

- Apple can be compelled to remove barriers to web app adoption, such as implementing a web app equivalent to smart banners or install prompts in iOS Safari."

https://infrequently.org/2025/09/apples-crimes-against-the-i...

https://caniuse.com/mdn-api_document_requeststorageaccess

In the world you want, how should leadership in designs manifest when there isn't consensus? Should nothing ship? And who does that help?

I am resigned that it's my fate to explain how <textarea>s work:

"Web Standards and the Fall of the House of Iamus: Every feature begins life as a non-standard proposal, often shipped. This is not a bug."

https://infrequently.org/2025/09/standards-and-the-fall-of-i...

Nothing you allege was missed, and indeed it was considered at length in the longer series on these topics:

https://infrequently.org/series/browser-choice-must-matter/

In its stead we must ask: "what sort of independent institution is worthy". It's something we create organically inside communities of shared democratic commitments (e.g., Blink)

Bringing no examples suggests a great deficit in the strength of your (obliquely offered) argument.

https://infrequently.org/2025/09/standards-and-the-fall-of-i...

It will seem odd to most, but my big concerns about Chrome relate to Android and ChromeOS. In neither environment did Chrome win share competitively. I think this has made them weaker and less useful, and that was mirrored in the tremendous difficulty we had in getting expansions of web capabilities done within the Chrome team, nevermind what I am documenting in this most recent post.

Sadly, the CrOS problem will be partially resolved when Google trashes it with Android rebasing in upcoming releases. On the Android side, Google is still withholding WebAPK support from competitors (suppressing PWAs on Android) and has failed to follow Apple's lead on hotseat browser replacement when choice screens are shown in the EU.

But neither of the bad effects are nearly as structural or impactful as Apple's out-and-out suppression of the web on mobile, because wealthy people carry iPhones and they have all the power:

https://infrequently.org/2025/09/apples-crimes-against-the-i...

https://infrequently.org/2023/02/safari-16-4-is-an-admission...

And it was only this year that I wrote up the broader thesis:

https://infrequently.org/2025/08/how-do-committees-fail-to-i...

Most of my current and former colleagues wouldn't dare for (legitimate) fear of reprisal in the form of even worse blockage in important design areas.

The downsides to this are not lost on me. Why do you think I'm making an issue of it publicly now? We tried literally everything else. This is last resort stuff. The goal is always more collaboration, and through it, better, better-funded, and more capable browsers. Apple is the unique obstacle to all of that today.

Instead, they come from open, honest, iterative design (when done well), and shipping ahead of others is risky, but that's why we designed the Blink Launch Process to demand so much pre-work (specs, tests, origin trials, good faith attempts to include other vendors in design, etc.) in order to launch that way.

Some background on these points here:

https://infrequently.org/series/effective-standards-work/

https://youtu.be/1Z83L6xa1tw?si=939PBH4_idtZGI6Y

As to, "should Apple follow Chromium's lead", perhaps ask "how would that be different than today?"

See:

https://infrequently.org/2023/02/safari-16-4-is-an-admission...

And:

https://infrequently.org/2025/06/the-ghost-of-christmas-past...

https://infrequently.org/2022/06/apple-is-not-defending-brow...

TL;DR is that the premise of the argument is false, or at least almost entirely so, and deprives Apple of agency, when in fact it has all the power in the equation.

So, if you read the post, you probably saw this:

https://infrequently.org/2023/02/the-market-for-lemons/#fn-t...

The little model there helps us distinguish types of sites, and so the very first thing to do is to note that you probably aren't building one of these.

But let's say you are!

In that case, it might help you to know that I've consulted with 4 of the 5 teams you mention, and because they have high management maturity, they often make choices that look different than the stacks you're being pitched at JS conferences.

Outside the editing canvas itself (a 20+ year old codebase ported to WASM), Adobe realised they couldn't afford the overhead of using React the "usual" way and have moved to Lit-based Web Components for PS:

https://web.dev/ps-on-the-web/

YouTube is made of Polymer Web Components, and before that (for most of it's history) was a server-rendered Python frontend with progressive enhancement.

Maps is built on the usual Google frontend tech (Closure Library, Soy, etc.), and while that means it's still lugging around a lot of legacy cruft, it performs because the team both works hard to keep it in check and that the tools started in an era that (correctly) assumed that CPU and bandwidth are not plentiful on the client.

Figma uses React outside the canvas, but their team also includes former browser engineers. They don't use it naïvely. Nor does Excalidraw, as the author knows where the (latency) bodies are buried.

In all these cases, the reason these experiences work well is management maturity, not tech. Strong teams that need to have deep local interaction respect the problem and usually make choices that go against the "HN consensus" because better user experiences matter more than in-group signaling:

https://infrequently.org/2022/05/performance-management-matu...

E.g.:

https://app.speedcurve.com/benchmarks/usa/retail/fast/fully-...

The fast sites on "legacy" stacks have 1/10th the COGS for the same performance versus the absolutely stupid costs invoked for React/NG/Ember/etc. SSR + hydration.

Which brings up the real issue: when the framework is both baseline-costly and runtime nasty, metrics like INP will suffer without extraordinary controls. When you see a React site in the list above, it's a fair guess that I've talked with their tech teams and they have felt trapped between unsubstantiated narratives and the reality that shipping React-based sites is losing them tons of money.

The antidote is a frank discussion of up-front cost vs. per-interaction latency. And we aren't having that debate right now. Presumptively the careers of the last decade's charlatans depends on us not levelling up. It's the only reason I can peep for why we haven't evolved past new ways to spell old ideas.

TL;DR: your JS is probably worse than you think. Write HTML and CSS instead. It will go better for everyone. And feel free to ignore the most popular JS framework vendors; they have not known what they are talking about for at least a decade.

Something I've tried to highlight in other posts, and perhaps skimped on in the verbiage around the lists, was that results for users are the result of culture, not technology. I've worked with teams that absolutely killed it using slow-as-molasses tools (React, Angular...even Ember), and I've seen teams screw things up with "fast" tools.

But the outliers are just that. In the main, what I observe as most determinative of good outcomes is the marriage of stack complexity with management (which can be at the TL level, not necessarily PMs or EMs) that has the capacity to wrestle with the dimensions of complexity a stack presents.

This writeup (linked from the original article) might be helpful in outlining the way culture is co-variate with good outcomes and _tends_ to select for more appropriate tooling:

https://infrequently.org/2022/05/performance-management-matu...

https://www.webpagetest.org/video/compare.php?tests=230205_B...

https://infrequently.org/2021/03/the-performance-inequality-...

As this relates to latency, JS-mediated UI is slower to materialize for a host of reasons, not least of all the problems with getting it across the wire (as you note). Naive SPA designs tend to serialize what should be parallel (data fetching and shell setup). Getting better at this requires more sophistication, whereas teams that stick to basic HTML + light progressive enhancement tend to end up with simpler systems that are faster for light-to-medium session depths and are easier to diagnose/fix when things go sideways.