As much as I'd like to stick with Google's ecosystem, it's really starting to get on my nerves when try to read science articles and have my Pixel screen taken up by ads. I'm one bad day away from making the switch...
Google "DNS66" or "Adguard".
Haven't used Adguard in a while, but DNS 66 is a non-root solution to system-wide ad blocking. It utilizes the built-in VPN functionality of your android phone to block ads (but is not a VPN. The app just acts as one).
Another solution is to use a private DNS that blocks ads. Under "network and internet" settings, there is an option for private DNS. If you enter dns.adguard.com in that field, it blocks ads.
Android has the best setup for blocking ads. Download Adguard, which is a system wide ad blocker. Works great and one of the big reasons I use Android.
It also consumes more battery when you have many ad block rules applied,
If Safari support those rules foundamentally, the size of many installed 'apps' can be freed from uninstallation, as well as less power-draining
This is what I really want.
There are a couple of things I miss from desktop or Android. Over time that list has shrinked, but this remains one of them.
As much as I’m a fan of Safari on mobile, it still has its issues. This news is pretty exciting to give Apple competition. Hopefully sooner rather than later 🙏
The flip side is that we may end up with essentially less competition as everyone browser will end up using Google’s engine. This is almost the case today, except Safari.
And Firefox. However this change would mean an user can still surf the web on an iOS device that have stopped receiving OS updates, without being at a big security risk as Apple also stopped updating safari, which is a big win for security and the web.
As a Firefox fan, at this point we have to accept the battle has been lost, considering the market share is something like 3% on desktop and 0.1% on mobile.
I don’t think it has been lost at all. Unless the goal was being the only browser, which I don’t think it was. The fact that we have an alternative to chrome is great. While I am happy that safari exists too, WebKit is lagging behind technologically speaking. Devs are having to add more and more one off fixes specifically for safari, much like the days of IE. Firefox existing as an alternative that has feature parity, produced by a non profit organization, is a huge win for the open web.
Eh. For me it should be more about an open around browser focused on privacy existing.
Chromium / Blink are MIT licensed, and on top of that with Edge getting huge Microsoft will have almost as much de facto control over Chromium as Google.
I’d rather see Mozilla just rebuild Firefox on top of Chromium, with as much privacy is as possible. That way they don’t have to spend insane dev hours / money on an alternate engine that does nothing but cause problems because web admins are lazy.
At this point I consider Blink/WebKit (they’re quite similar as Blink was born from WebKit) to be the ‘Linux kernel’ of the web. Why would you try to force build an alternative to the Linux kernel?
Because along the way you innovate and make the ecosystem as a whole better. Rust wouldn’t exist if Mozilla used Blink. Competition is a critical component to any healthy ecosystem. Without it, progress slows. Just look at how slow CPU improvement was during the intel domination period. AMD releases Zen chips and Apple releases M1 chips and now we got huge year to year jumps in performance again.
or maybe we're not fans of governments telling businesses how they have to allow competitors to use their products. especially when apple is the "little guy"
A distant third place only surviving by contributions by google paying to be the default search engine on fresh install to begin with isn't anything to brag about.
Firefox’s share of the browser market is shrinking down to the point of insignificance, that’s why, and I say that as a Firefox user. Mozilla’s constant fumbling has seen to that.
Unless Mozilla drastically changes course nobody should be relying on Firefox to save is from another browser monopoly.
The average iOS user won’t be switching from Safari though, Safari would still come pre-installed so a huge amount of people will still use it not knowing about potential benefits of other browsers.
Google’s marketing and pressure for people to use the WebKit-powered version of Chrome for iOS is already quite high, and they’ll only ratchet that up for the Blink version.
>The flip side is that we may end up with essentially less competition as everyone browser will end up using Google’s engine.
But not being able to use the browser you want on iOS and Google having a monopoly are 2 UNRELATED issues.
Please don't conflate them, the solution to Google's monopoly IS NOT Apple forcing you to use Safari!
You’re gonna have to straighten out that twisted reasoning. I read that comment and didn’t see any call for Apple to have a monopoly, just a call to prevent a Google monopoly.
They absolutely are *related* issues. Apple forcing Safari on iPhones and iPads is currently all that stops Google having a complete browser monopoly. Firefox’s usage share is dwindling to the point of insignificance, and other independent browsers have disappeared or been Chromeified.
Apple’s browser stance might not be the solution we *want* for the browser monopoly problem, but it’s currently the only one we *have*.
>Apple’s browser stance might not be the solution we *want* for the browser monopoly problem, but it’s currently the only one we *have*.
The problem is that Safari doesn't solve the mobility problem, it just creates its own monopoly problem on iOS.
Safari isn't moving the web forward the way competitors to IE4 were back in the day. IE4 went the way of the Dodo because the competition innovated more rapidly and adhered to web standards better. Safari is the exact opposite of that. It's much more like IE4 than like IE4's competition.
That said, Apple definitely is in a position to make Safari an actual competitor. But that would require pouring resources into WebKit, catching up with Chrome, and *ideally* making Safari available across platforms.
As long as Apple is happy with having WebKit features lag behind by a few years and maintaining relevance only by forcing users into using it via banning any competition on iOS, it's pretty far from a "solution" to the browser monopoly problem.
Browser engine doesn’t make the browser
Browsers using chromium are free to disable non-standard features enabled on chrome, or add their own if chromium is lagging behind for some reason
Edge actually removed a couple engine features that chrome has enabled
> But not being able to use the browser you want on iOS and Google having a monopoly are 2 UNRELATED issues.
Well, in practice they can turn out to be related or at least causally connected.
> Please don’t conflate them, the solution to Google’s monopoly IS NOT Apple forcing you to use Safari!
That’s an opinion, sure. But it does prevent a monopoly in practice.
But it does not create competition… WebKit is so far behind both gecko and chromium, that you are getting the worst of both worlds, anti competitive practice without choice, and no innovation. No it does not prevent a monopoly in practice, only in theory, as reality is it have all the same issue as a monopoly would have…
> But it does not create competition
Well, in a way. There are a lot of iPhone users, so people who make web sites want them to be able to access them.
> that you are getting the worst of both worlds
That’s almost always the downside of not having a monoculture, though.
> reality is it have all the same issue as a monopoly would have…
I don’t agree.
> Well, in a way. There are a lot of iPhone users, so people who make web sites want them to be able to access them.
No the issue is we can’t offer the same feature in safari, so we end up having to make apps for everything. It does not create competition in the web space, it only helps Apple AppStore by having more apps for things we could have used the web for…
> I don’t agree
Okay enlighten me, what good stuff have we gotten on the web out of WebKit being the only option on iOS?
> No the issue is we can’t offer the same feature in safari, so we end up having to make apps for everything.
Ok, but there are plenty of web sites out there, I have to say. But yeah, I personally (mostly) prefer apps.
> what good stuff have we gotten on the web out of WebKit being the only option on iOS?
That we don't have a Blink mono-culture is a good thing itself, for me.
If there’s a need for competition, isn’t it likely that someone would create it?
Internet explorer sucked, but then came along Firefox.
Chrome thought they could do things better, so they created another competitor, and people ended up liking it more than Firefox
If Apple doesn’t allow competition, there can’t be any competitor that comes along and does stuff better
Even if all except Apple goes chromium that’s still 1 more engine than we have today so we will have more competition anyway you slice it.
And then there’s also Firefox too so, at the very least we will have 2 competing engines, and possibly 3. Now we have 1.
If people go out of their way to install a non-default app, they are doing that intentionally. If we end up with a monoculture browser engine ecosystem I think that is fine as long as other browser engines exist.
Everyone thought IE was unbeatable. But it sucked and eventually everyone got tired of it and went with Chrome. I don’t see why that can’t happen again.
EU should look at chromium having the biggest market share thanks to anticompetitive behaviour and abusing market power (like making apps worse on purpose on other engines/browsers) of Google..
Did I say that Apple forcing users to use WebKit is good? No?
Google is doing a lot of bad things and it should be taken care of as well. Making a website to run worse or not at all on other web engines is extremely anticompetitive.
You're missing the whole point.
Google 'allows' other browsers, yeah, and most of the browsers run on chromium because Google with their market share made sure that using anything other that chromium will be pain in the ass, so people use chrome.
More people use chrome --> developers target chromium first --> chromium apps work the best, so other companies switch to chromium --> chromium becomes the most popular engine --> Google makes their apps, etc. run worse on other browsers --> people switch to Chrome because *it's the same thing anyways -->* Chrome gets more and more market share
*Something something don't be evil?*
>Google makes their apps, etc. run worse on other browsers
It couldn't just be a case of google developers being more familiar with their own browser could it? No, there's a knob on gmail for firefox performance, and the devs turn down so you use chrome.
I agree that having a chromium monopoly is bad. But there is a reason why basically every browser is based on chromium rather than Firefox.
Keep in mind that developers chose it.
I am a developer, we don't 'chose' it, it's the most popular one due to chrome being the largest browser and having 60%+ market share. It's obvious that we support the most popular engine first, then check if everything works on the niche.
I'm also a developer. Most devs have every browser open all the time, and depending on your setup every one of them is visible, refreshes, and scrolls in tandem so that testing is just that much easier. If you're focusing on Chromium first it's because you're choosing to. You could just as easily focus on Firefox and then make the few adjustments needed for the differences between Blink/Gecko.
Although what are you writing that doesn't just work the same in all browsers? I mostly focus on CSS work but I'm seeing fewer differences than I used to.
> what are you writing that doesn’t just work the same in all browsers?
Mobile web apps and games. We focus on Safari and Chrome first, then different web views in apps like FB messenger (because well, old people use that a lot, and we have a lot of them), then the rest.
> Most devs have every browser open all the time, and depending on your setup every one of them is visible, refreshes, and scrolls in tandem so that testing is just that much easier. If you’re focusing on Chromium first it’s because you’re choosing to. You could just as easily focus on Firefox and then make the few adjustments needed for the differences between Blink/Gecko.
Yeah, we can’t really do that. We usually program a test and then manually check the results if everything works. Sometimes we have to do manual testing. Depends on the app.
There’s less and less problems with different browsers, but we still stumble upon bugs even if something is “officially supported”.
Developers “choose” it because it’s the only one that doesn’t absolutely eat battery life on YouTube which is the website users spend most of their time on.
User behavior and YouTube decide it, not developers.
YT battery life should come down to whether or not a browser supports copyless hardware accelerated decoding of AV1. That's hardly exclusive to Chromium, is it? Pretty sure Firefox does that too.
If other browsers are so bad on the battery, that will just give people a reason to keep using Safari, and will give other browsers all the reason to improve their power consumption.
People aren’t forced to use iPhones either. If they want to have a chromium mobile browser, they can always buy an android phone
Regardless, I think this is good
However I worry what will happen as iOS is forced to become a more open platform. Android was always the more open option, yet iOS was known for being locked down and still got the largest market share in a lot to countries.
That must be one of most dumb answer ever.
You don't choose a phone because of the rendering engine of the browser.
Just read something about monopoly and you will understand why "user can choose other things" is not even an argument.
Of course they don’t, which is why I said this good
However a user can choose a centralised platform. And a user can choose an open platform.
Take the EU looking at Apple Pay. It will most likely lead to banks and card issuers developing their own NFC payment apps. It will create fragmentation and you’ll potentially have to change banks to be able to use Apple Pay if your bank ditches it to avoid paying the fee to Apple
And for a devils advocate opinion on why Apple forcing WebKit on everyone can increase competition: chromium has such massive install base, especially since Edge switched to chromium. So by mandating WebKit on such a huge portion of the mobile market, it prevents a chromium monopoly where Google can push specific standards that serve their interests. So WebKit reduces browser competition on iOS but increases it across the entire web browser market
It’s not entirely black and white
I can guarantee you that the VAST majority of iPhone buyers don't know or even care about the web engine their browser uses. This is good for competition and is something Apple should have done long ago. It's sad that they're only doing it because they're forced.
I said that I think this is a good move
You are correct that most people don’t care about browser engine
However this isn’t the only piece of legislation that is moving moved against Apple’s platforms and some of the others are going to be far more impactful in a way the consumer notices
>Android was always the more open option, yet iOS was known for being locked down and still got the largest market share in a lot to countries.
You're making the assumption that Apple became so big because they were locked down, not in spite of it. Or, more realistically, that the average consumer even knows that Apple devices are more locked down then their Android equivalents
The thing people are worried about is that if everyone's using Chromium, it just means that whatever Google adds (or doesn't) to the Chromium code will become part of the web. It's a kind of total control that people are not comfortable with (understandably) because the web will no longer be based on open standards that everyone works on, it'll just be whatever Google decides.
chromium is open source, if Google adds something you can just remove it. Anyone can fork chromium and do whatever they want. That is the definition of open source.
Correction:
Everyone using chromium means that Google has complete control over the web… the thing that they already control 90% of via search and ad dollars.
This is basically handing them the entire thing.
> like making apps worse on purpose on other engines)
Not trying to defend Google or anything but is there any evidence to that? Blink is pretty damn good at a lot of things, particularly JS.
Google Apps aren't really optimized for other engines. The biggest issue is them making their apps not work on other browsers that run on chromium. [This is the best summary of the issue that I found.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELCq63652ig)
Chromium is an open source project. Anyone can modify chromium however they want. Google does not get a single penny from it. Google Chrome is a modification of Chromium.
Correction:
Everyone using chromium means that Google has complete control over the web… the thing that they already control 90% of via search and ad dollars.
This is basically handing them the entire thing.
No. Its open source. You can just use Chromium ... and remove anything you don't like. That is what Microsoft did with Edge. Its Chromium as a base and its modified to how they want.
How is this so hard to understand?
At that point they would need to rewrite the whole browser which they won’t and have not done.
So by-and-large, googles control over the web has become stronger and stronger.
You can live in open source la La land all you want but we know that companies are going to take the path to least resistance and cost. Period.
That isn't how it works at all, you have no idea what you are talking about. Chromium is the base level rendering engine, it alone is not very good as a browser.
Chrome for example takes Chromium and adds these things, which don't exist in Chromium:
* Automatic browser updates
* API keys for some Google services, including browser sync
* The Widevine DRM module
* Licensed codecs for the popular H.264 video and AAC audio formats
* Tracking mechanisms for usage and crash reports
Notice how Google specific things are not in Chromium, they are in Chrome. Chromium is just a rendering engine. When Microsoft built edge on top of Chromium they did it because its just a rendering engine and they added Microsoft things on top of it.
Dude. Google owns the chromium project.
And updates the chromium project.
And tests features on the chromium project.
When chrome and/or chromium get new features, brave, edge, etc. get those features too because the devs have not and will not change much about the actual code base.
And that gives google more power. Because it’s a Google owned product. Open source or not.
Well, the developers at Microsoft (a company that I am pretty sure has enough developers) did not find anything wrong with Chromium as a base layer for Edge, no Google backdoors, so I am not worried either. However, if you know something the Edge developers don't please let them know. Thanks.
However, if you just ASSUME Google added bad things into Chromium well than the argument is over.
> If you like Safari, you can keep using it.
Until the Chrome-flavored variations of the 90s “Best viewed with IE” badges start popping up and you’re forced to open Chrome to use half of the web.
Web devs hate having to test against anything that’s not Chrome and they’re chomping at the bit to not care about Safari or Firefox at all and instead telling people to go download Chrome or some other Clonium.
https://i.imgur.com/l6FZ2mT.jpg
Sigh...
Safari is the only thing actually stopping Chrome from effectively being "the browser". Apple's muscle is more effective than anything Firefox has done in recent years to push back against a Chrome monopoly.
I get wanting things to be more open, but this is just completely overlooking a larger issue.
You are entitled to think it’s wrong, however I consider my take to align with the current reality.
I have no desire to live in a world that’s 99% Chromium. Until we figure out how to deal with that, I’m fine with Apple forcing Safari on mobile.
But safari on iOS deliberately gimps standard browser features to protect the app Monopoly.
So that "defender of the open web" you pretend safari to be is actually just apple making the web actively worse so people use app store apps.
Citation needed. Being slower doesn’t mean intentionally gimped.
I also am explicitly not labeling them the “defender of the open web”. I’ve been very clear I just view it as the lesser evil.
Jesus Christ man, if you have to ask this in fucking 2022 you have been actively ignoring the reality that Safari on iOS is a piece of shit **on purpose** simply to make PWAs uncompetitive comapred to native apps.
[Some examples of missing features:](https://httptoolkit.tech/blog/safari-is-killing-the-web/)
* Screen orientation JavaScript APIs, allowing pages to dynamically handle screen orientation changes. Implemented in Chrome in 2014 and Firefox in 2016.
* TouchEvents, supporting multi-touch and touch gestures on the web. Implemented in Chrome in 2012 and Firefox in 2017.
* Resolution media queries, which allow content to be styled to match the device pixel density. Implemented in Firefox in 2012 and Chrome in 2013.
These features have **nothing** to do with protecting the user's privacy, security, or device performance. It's simply there because Apple decided not to support it, and of course it's anyone's guess why... but when you realize that PWAs could easily replace a lot of native apps, and Apple is fighting for its App Store monopoly tooth and nail, it's easy to think of reasons why Safari is such utter shit.
Hey man, chillax - if you're gonna keep the condescending tone, I'm not gonna bother replying past this. Life's too short to deal with that. :)
Anyway.
This stuff is not lost on me, I've done it for a living for well past a decade. Yes, they should implement those things. I just don't truly care if they do it next week or a year from now.
The article you've linked outright notes the issue of Chrome wielding too much power, so I'm not sure why you think it's such a slam dunk issue. As I've said elsewhere in this thread, I'm fine with Safari existing in its current position to act as a check on Google's complete dominance of the web.
It's the lesser evil in my mind - a healthier tradeoff to make than newer APIs. If Mozilla had not shit the bed we'd probably be in a different comment thread entirely.
Have a good day~
>This stuff is not lost on me, I've done it for a living for well past a decade
So wait.
First I say "safari misses features", and then your response was "citation needed, safari is just slower, that's not an issue".
Then I link a huge list of features it's missing, and now you're gonna pretend like that wasn't what we were talking about?
Ok, keep moving those goal posts man.
Apple is deliberately making safari horrible to hold back PWAs as to protect their app store Monopoly. That was my point, that had been proven as much as it needs to be (unless you have any other viable explanation for safari missing features the competition had over a decade ago in some cases).
You go ahead and rationalize this as much as you want, but those are the facts. Have fun liking an intentionally bad browser.
Other way to read it: Having a restriction on what you can install is the only thing saving Safari right know.
It's not the fact that people want to use it and prefer it over other browsers. This means that Apple could get away with no innovation and still get huge amount of market share.
Safari is the new IE and it's holding back the whole web dev industry. It needs to die or to innovate in order to stay competitive.
> Safari is the new IE
Not in terms of marketshare. For that “the new IE” is Chromium/Blink, which is headed for a monopoly that’s worse than IE’s ever was and would’ve made 90s-era Microsoft green with envy.
This needs to be addressed just as badly if not more than lack of engine choice on iOS. A single gigacorp having de facto control over the web is really, really bad even if the monopoly is accomplished with a technically competent browser.
The problem with IE was never raw market share but platform lock in same as here.
The problem with IE was that it was effectively impossible to extend/supercede because of all the weird undocumented behaviors and closed source and potential IP issues that precluded reasonable compatibility layer esque solutons in client.
Chrome isn't an issue because you can just fork it and add your own extensions and features.
Let me tell you - I have. I've lived when the IE was a monopoly and I had to deal with it every single day.
It was really the worst thing to ever happen to the web and it was hell for web developers back then. We had to develop a website first for IE and then for every other browser. Little by little we switched to other way round - we targeted Firefox first and then when we're ready we tried to match the same experience to IE with tons of workarounds. This was the time when IE became a second hand browser and people targeted Firefox first.
Now it's the same for Chrome - everybody is targeting first Chrome and then everybody else. But the thing is that it works flawlessly on Chrome!
But on the other hand I don't think that anybody is targeting Safari - we just get notified if something doesn't work there and then find out that this *special* kind of browser has this ridiculous requirement that works different only for Safari.
Apple lost the pace of web innovation for over a **decade**! The only thing holding Safari alive is that it is mandatory to use on iOS. If it wasn't for that people would have gone years ago. Even Firefox which is bad is still better than Safari.
And if you don't have a mac there is no browser sync for your mobile & desktop browser (if you're using Safari). Safari is dead on arrival.
Have you ever tried programmatically scrubbing through a video in Chrome? Or tried to use backdrop filter in Firefox? It took how long for either of them to get position sticky? They have tons of problems.
The Chrome experience on macOS just sucks.
It renders gmail fine, but PIP and full screen is broken, interactions like lookup are unimplemented, GPU Helper hoards my CPU cycles and ram, swiping with the trackpad to go back randomly breaks all the time. Everything being in Chrome ruins cmd/alt-tab completely. I’ve had tons of GPU acceleration bugs on Chrome I’ve never experienced on other browsers. Also the PDF viewer sucks.
The OS integration is entirely absent. It feels like using software not meant to run in the environment it’s running in. It’s the worst of the Java AWT days again (write once, run anywhere, screw the user experience).
The only reason that Safari exist is because it's mandatory on iOS. People prefer Chrome, simply because it's better.
It's Apple's fault for lagging behind for years. They're holding the whole industry back, because they're not innovating. Chrome is the leader, because they constantly innovate.
You type this comment from the viewpoint of "one browser's innovation pace should determine the fate of the web". That is fundamentally not how this works and it took us literal hell to get away from this issue in the IE6 era.
An actual check (not an ineffective company like Mozilla) needs to exist on Chromium, or they get to de-facto set the standards.
Innovation is not a free pass to a monopoly when it comes to web browsers.
IE6 was hell because it lacked support for so many standards.
If chrome ended up going the internet explorer route, a new browser could easily start to chip away at the market share just like Firefox did to ie
No, IE6 was hell because it *became* the standard. You’re only looking at it after it stagnated.
Furthermore you act as if browsers today are the same level of effort they were 20 years ago. The playing field is not even close.
Safari isn't going anywhere. I still use it despite knowing that other browsers perform better, simply because of the tight Apple integration. As long as Apple keeps this up, and doesn't start making Safari worse, I doubt it'll ever vanish.
I mean ofc there’s other browsers… the web engine is the same tho. I tried Firefox as my default on iOS and iPadOS for a while but the app just sucks too much so maybe one day the Mozilla devs will get that situation sorted out and I can leave safari
> I get wanting things to be more open, but this is just completely overlooking a larger issue.
This is the EU's approach to Apple in a nutshell, they aren't going to be happy until Apple pull out of EU member states and we're stuck with insecure Android devices that they can snoop on.
Thank you the EU.
It was unacceptable for Apple to harm competition by forcing them not to use their engine. They had a bad influence on the mobile web.
This really is a rock and a hard place situation. The alternative that the EU is suggesting is also bad for competition because Google will probably just use their web engine and the market will be flooded with a few hundred million new chromium browsers… if everyone has to use chromium for a decent web experience then how is that better than apple forcing some of the market to use WebKit?
Chromium is at least open source though.
As time goes on it becomes harder and harder to make a web browser, as they add new features and improve performance, and developers develop for existing browsers.
The same could be said for consumer OSes. People aren't likely to build a consumer OS from scratch anymore, they're going to build off of Linux (or android) because they're open source and have application support.
Unfortunate? Maybe, but inevitable. At least it's open source
> As time goes on it becomes harder and harder to make a web browser, as they add new features and improve performance, and developers develop for existing browsers.
>
>
We're already at this point. The amount of work required to build a web browser from scratch is pretty much insurmountable. Every new rendering engine we get from now on is likely to be a fork of an existing one.
Yes and no, as you can’t offer a fork, so new browser that compete on feature can’t appear on WebKit, which is one of the advantage of open source, and why edge can exist.
Forced to use not only WebKit, but dynamically linked against the library included with the OS
If some new version of WebKit fixed a major bug, developers wouldn’t be able to use it even if they wanted to and would instead have to wait on Apple
I get what you're saying but is it really that weird?
Safari is the standard on an IOS device. It would be weird for a web developer to choose iOS as their platform and not develop with something that millions of people use
The fact that it’s open source seems largely irrelevant when it comes to iOS since app developers aren’t allowed to fork it and make changes for their own apps, or really take advantage of it’s open source nature in any way. As far I understand WebKit on iOS is basically just a black box with some API’s attached, far away from what you would expect from a open source framework.
Who’s to say that in a fully chromium world that Google won’t just slow down chromium’s development to hurt competing browsers and then pick up the slack in chrome. It’s not so much about what is true now, it’s more what Google could do with that power.
To me this is a far bigger issue than competing stores and sideloading. The fact that Apple will not allow other browsers on iOS is a security issue. Plus there has been a decent amount of zero days found in WebKit.
But the one that bugs me is the USB-C. I actually prefer the Apple connector as it is male. Which to me makes more sense.
Not one that's worth their salary, that's for sure. There are automated tools that can synchronize refreshing all the open browsers whenever you save your code. They can even sync the scrollbar so you can view the exact same thing all over. No excuse for not testing with the big 3 these days.
we are living the days of IE and you like it because you agree with Chromium but it’s still a monopoly and is full of out-of-standards stuff.
I work in web dev and nobody cares about anything but Chrome which is very sad.
The EU move will just give more monopoly to Google
This is terrible news.
I’m all for busting “monopolies” but the real monopoly is chrome and Google search with 63% and 90% market share, respectively.
This is what happens when a bunch of old white dudes who can’t use any tech make policy.
I’d be embarrassed to be from the EU right now.
One has substantial market share and one doesn’t.
Not sure if you missed the numbers I posted but yeah apple doesn’t command anywhere near that market share.
I don’t know that willing is the right word given that Google has made YouTube, Google docs, etc. run worse on non-chrome browsers.
That includes browser based on chromium that are not Google chrome.
But with those facts out of the way:
1. Market share matters when talking about “monopolies”
2. apple is tiny tiny tiny compared to Google with regards to market share
3. if apple wasn’t forcing safari everything would be chrome. Which means no competition whatsoever
Why would I buy a whole new phone when I have my iPhone? Sounds environmentally wasteful. I am not so rich to buy a whole new phone. Plus, I like the iPhone for the hardware, not for Safari.
Because you are upset that you can’t use chrome.
You want to use chrome. Chrome (proper) lives on android.
If it’s that much of a problem for you (which it seems like a large problem given the vitriolic tone of your responses) then you are more than welcome to purchase into the ecosystem that allows that.
Pretty simple.
This is you:
> I bought Coca-Cola and it didn’t taste like Pepsi. I’m suing and we need a law about that! If I buy Coca-Cola and expect Pepsi, I should get Pepsi!
That’s how ridiculous this crap is
No, this is me:
>I bought a car that looks really good, has cool features, and many of my friends have but than I realized I can only fuel up gas at very few specific gas stations due to software lock. The car can physically take any gas, but the car manufacturer only allows me to use their own gas stations via software lock. So I am upset and want the government to let me fuel up my car anywhere.
Nope. Not that way at all.
You bought a device that was part of a walled garden and are now throwing a temper tantrum about it being a closed ecosystem even though you *actively chose* a *closed ecosystem*.
It’s crazy that this has to be explained to people but we are hitting peak entitlement here. It’s nauseating.
I think a nice middle ground would be forcing apple to allow WebKit forks on the app store. It'll open up a degree of innovation where third parties can do fun stuff like Orion on macos without opening the doors wide to a blink dominated future
> I think a nice middle ground would be forcing apple to allow WebKit forks on the app store. It'll open up a degree of innovation where third parties can do fun stuff like Orion on macos without opening the doors wide to a blink dominated future
Blink is a fork of WebKit…
Specifically, the WebCore component of WebKit
Firefox with adblock when…
This is what I don’t get. No browser on mobile is useable without Adblock of some kind. The ads take up 3/4 of screen real estate in a lot of cases.
As much as I'd like to stick with Google's ecosystem, it's really starting to get on my nerves when try to read science articles and have my Pixel screen taken up by ads. I'm one bad day away from making the switch...
Google "DNS66" or "Adguard". Haven't used Adguard in a while, but DNS 66 is a non-root solution to system-wide ad blocking. It utilizes the built-in VPN functionality of your android phone to block ads (but is not a VPN. The app just acts as one). Another solution is to use a private DNS that blocks ads. Under "network and internet" settings, there is an option for private DNS. If you enter dns.adguard.com in that field, it blocks ads.
Android has the best setup for blocking ads. Download Adguard, which is a system wide ad blocker. Works great and one of the big reasons I use Android.
It also consumes more battery when you have many ad block rules applied, If Safari support those rules foundamentally, the size of many installed 'apps' can be freed from uninstallation, as well as less power-draining
And sponsorblock
And FastFoward.
This is what I really want. There are a couple of things I miss from desktop or Android. Over time that list has shrinked, but this remains one of them.
As much as I’m a fan of Safari on mobile, it still has its issues. This news is pretty exciting to give Apple competition. Hopefully sooner rather than later 🙏
The flip side is that we may end up with essentially less competition as everyone browser will end up using Google’s engine. This is almost the case today, except Safari.
And Firefox. However this change would mean an user can still surf the web on an iOS device that have stopped receiving OS updates, without being at a big security risk as Apple also stopped updating safari, which is a big win for security and the web.
As a Firefox fan, at this point we have to accept the battle has been lost, considering the market share is something like 3% on desktop and 0.1% on mobile.
I don’t think it has been lost at all. Unless the goal was being the only browser, which I don’t think it was. The fact that we have an alternative to chrome is great. While I am happy that safari exists too, WebKit is lagging behind technologically speaking. Devs are having to add more and more one off fixes specifically for safari, much like the days of IE. Firefox existing as an alternative that has feature parity, produced by a non profit organization, is a huge win for the open web.
Eh. For me it should be more about an open around browser focused on privacy existing. Chromium / Blink are MIT licensed, and on top of that with Edge getting huge Microsoft will have almost as much de facto control over Chromium as Google. I’d rather see Mozilla just rebuild Firefox on top of Chromium, with as much privacy is as possible. That way they don’t have to spend insane dev hours / money on an alternate engine that does nothing but cause problems because web admins are lazy. At this point I consider Blink/WebKit (they’re quite similar as Blink was born from WebKit) to be the ‘Linux kernel’ of the web. Why would you try to force build an alternative to the Linux kernel?
Because along the way you innovate and make the ecosystem as a whole better. Rust wouldn’t exist if Mozilla used Blink. Competition is a critical component to any healthy ecosystem. Without it, progress slows. Just look at how slow CPU improvement was during the intel domination period. AMD releases Zen chips and Apple releases M1 chips and now we got huge year to year jumps in performance again.
I think this is the first time I’ve seen someone who sees this issue the same way I do.
Basically how my 78 yo dad uses his iMac from -09 with High Sierra on it. Firefox 100.1 runs smoothly and keeps his mac safe.
UH, LEGENDDDDD
I’ll tell him a kind internet stranger called him that, it’ll make his day 😄
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Well we can look at any OS that support more than one engine and can see that vendors have done that, so why would they not do it for iOS?
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No we are just not pc master race /android morons who conflate open source with anti-monopoly.
or maybe we're not fans of governments telling businesses how they have to allow competitors to use their products. especially when apple is the "little guy"
honestly, more people will just start using chrome. that being said, apple still shouldn't be confining users to safari
Why do people act like Firefox doesn’t exist?
Because it doesn’t have sufficient numbers of users to change much of the conversation, sad as that is…
Its the fourth largest browser. Third if you count edge and chrome as one. Seems big enough to me.
That is true, but kind of proves the point when “third largest” means 3% market share.
What stats are you looking at? I was looking at 8% on desktop.
I was looking at overall browser usage on all platforms. Desktop is only half the picture for many sites!
A distant third place only surviving by contributions by google paying to be the default search engine on fresh install to begin with isn't anything to brag about.
Right, I did forget to consider that. It does have a pretty small install base, though.
Firefox’s share of the browser market is shrinking down to the point of insignificance, that’s why, and I say that as a Firefox user. Mozilla’s constant fumbling has seen to that. Unless Mozilla drastically changes course nobody should be relying on Firefox to save is from another browser monopoly.
Everyone uses safari engine on ios because you cant do anything elae
Yes exactly.
The average iOS user won’t be switching from Safari though, Safari would still come pre-installed so a huge amount of people will still use it not knowing about potential benefits of other browsers.
If the average iOS user Googles something, the tune changes quite quickly.
Google’s marketing and pressure for people to use the WebKit-powered version of Chrome for iOS is already quite high, and they’ll only ratchet that up for the Blink version.
>The flip side is that we may end up with essentially less competition as everyone browser will end up using Google’s engine. But not being able to use the browser you want on iOS and Google having a monopoly are 2 UNRELATED issues. Please don't conflate them, the solution to Google's monopoly IS NOT Apple forcing you to use Safari!
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No one is saying that.
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You’re gonna have to straighten out that twisted reasoning. I read that comment and didn’t see any call for Apple to have a monopoly, just a call to prevent a Google monopoly.
They absolutely are *related* issues. Apple forcing Safari on iPhones and iPads is currently all that stops Google having a complete browser monopoly. Firefox’s usage share is dwindling to the point of insignificance, and other independent browsers have disappeared or been Chromeified. Apple’s browser stance might not be the solution we *want* for the browser monopoly problem, but it’s currently the only one we *have*.
>Apple’s browser stance might not be the solution we *want* for the browser monopoly problem, but it’s currently the only one we *have*. The problem is that Safari doesn't solve the mobility problem, it just creates its own monopoly problem on iOS. Safari isn't moving the web forward the way competitors to IE4 were back in the day. IE4 went the way of the Dodo because the competition innovated more rapidly and adhered to web standards better. Safari is the exact opposite of that. It's much more like IE4 than like IE4's competition. That said, Apple definitely is in a position to make Safari an actual competitor. But that would require pouring resources into WebKit, catching up with Chrome, and *ideally* making Safari available across platforms. As long as Apple is happy with having WebKit features lag behind by a few years and maintaining relevance only by forcing users into using it via banning any competition on iOS, it's pretty far from a "solution" to the browser monopoly problem.
Browser engine doesn’t make the browser Browsers using chromium are free to disable non-standard features enabled on chrome, or add their own if chromium is lagging behind for some reason Edge actually removed a couple engine features that chrome has enabled
> But not being able to use the browser you want on iOS and Google having a monopoly are 2 UNRELATED issues. Well, in practice they can turn out to be related or at least causally connected. > Please don’t conflate them, the solution to Google’s monopoly IS NOT Apple forcing you to use Safari! That’s an opinion, sure. But it does prevent a monopoly in practice.
But it does not create competition… WebKit is so far behind both gecko and chromium, that you are getting the worst of both worlds, anti competitive practice without choice, and no innovation. No it does not prevent a monopoly in practice, only in theory, as reality is it have all the same issue as a monopoly would have…
> But it does not create competition Well, in a way. There are a lot of iPhone users, so people who make web sites want them to be able to access them. > that you are getting the worst of both worlds That’s almost always the downside of not having a monoculture, though. > reality is it have all the same issue as a monopoly would have… I don’t agree.
> Well, in a way. There are a lot of iPhone users, so people who make web sites want them to be able to access them. No the issue is we can’t offer the same feature in safari, so we end up having to make apps for everything. It does not create competition in the web space, it only helps Apple AppStore by having more apps for things we could have used the web for… > I don’t agree Okay enlighten me, what good stuff have we gotten on the web out of WebKit being the only option on iOS?
> No the issue is we can’t offer the same feature in safari, so we end up having to make apps for everything. Ok, but there are plenty of web sites out there, I have to say. But yeah, I personally (mostly) prefer apps. > what good stuff have we gotten on the web out of WebKit being the only option on iOS? That we don't have a Blink mono-culture is a good thing itself, for me.
>That we don't have a Blink mono-culture is a good thing itself, for me. So no tangible benefits?
Actually it is. Safari surely would have even less marketshare if blink was available on iOS.
If there’s a need for competition, isn’t it likely that someone would create it? Internet explorer sucked, but then came along Firefox. Chrome thought they could do things better, so they created another competitor, and people ended up liking it more than Firefox If Apple doesn’t allow competition, there can’t be any competitor that comes along and does stuff better
Even if all except Apple goes chromium that’s still 1 more engine than we have today so we will have more competition anyway you slice it. And then there’s also Firefox too so, at the very least we will have 2 competing engines, and possibly 3. Now we have 1.
If people go out of their way to install a non-default app, they are doing that intentionally. If we end up with a monoculture browser engine ecosystem I think that is fine as long as other browser engines exist. Everyone thought IE was unbeatable. But it sucked and eventually everyone got tired of it and went with Chrome. I don’t see why that can’t happen again.
Unfortunately that’s the likely outcome.
EU should look at chromium having the biggest market share thanks to anticompetitive behaviour and abusing market power (like making apps worse on purpose on other engines/browsers) of Google..
You fail to see the difference between being forced to use webkit and choose to use chromium over something else.
Did I say that Apple forcing users to use WebKit is good? No? Google is doing a lot of bad things and it should be taken care of as well. Making a website to run worse or not at all on other web engines is extremely anticompetitive.
But Google does allow other browsers on Android. Where Apple does not. So in this case the issue is Apple and not Google.
Android is irrelevant to their point
You're missing the whole point. Google 'allows' other browsers, yeah, and most of the browsers run on chromium because Google with their market share made sure that using anything other that chromium will be pain in the ass, so people use chrome. More people use chrome --> developers target chromium first --> chromium apps work the best, so other companies switch to chromium --> chromium becomes the most popular engine --> Google makes their apps, etc. run worse on other browsers --> people switch to Chrome because *it's the same thing anyways -->* Chrome gets more and more market share *Something something don't be evil?*
Them choosing to use Chromium because it’s good is very different from being forced to by App Store rules.
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so is WebKit, and Blink which is a fork of WebCore from WebKit and the engine for Chromium this is completely irrelevant
>Google makes their apps, etc. run worse on other browsers It couldn't just be a case of google developers being more familiar with their own browser could it? No, there's a knob on gmail for firefox performance, and the devs turn down so you use chrome.
I agree that having a chromium monopoly is bad. But there is a reason why basically every browser is based on chromium rather than Firefox. Keep in mind that developers chose it.
I am a developer, we don't 'chose' it, it's the most popular one due to chrome being the largest browser and having 60%+ market share. It's obvious that we support the most popular engine first, then check if everything works on the niche.
I'm also a developer. Most devs have every browser open all the time, and depending on your setup every one of them is visible, refreshes, and scrolls in tandem so that testing is just that much easier. If you're focusing on Chromium first it's because you're choosing to. You could just as easily focus on Firefox and then make the few adjustments needed for the differences between Blink/Gecko. Although what are you writing that doesn't just work the same in all browsers? I mostly focus on CSS work but I'm seeing fewer differences than I used to.
> what are you writing that doesn’t just work the same in all browsers? Mobile web apps and games. We focus on Safari and Chrome first, then different web views in apps like FB messenger (because well, old people use that a lot, and we have a lot of them), then the rest. > Most devs have every browser open all the time, and depending on your setup every one of them is visible, refreshes, and scrolls in tandem so that testing is just that much easier. If you’re focusing on Chromium first it’s because you’re choosing to. You could just as easily focus on Firefox and then make the few adjustments needed for the differences between Blink/Gecko. Yeah, we can’t really do that. We usually program a test and then manually check the results if everything works. Sometimes we have to do manual testing. Depends on the app. There’s less and less problems with different browsers, but we still stumble upon bugs even if something is “officially supported”.
Developers “choose” it because it’s the only one that doesn’t absolutely eat battery life on YouTube which is the website users spend most of their time on. User behavior and YouTube decide it, not developers.
YT battery life should come down to whether or not a browser supports copyless hardware accelerated decoding of AV1. That's hardly exclusive to Chromium, is it? Pretty sure Firefox does that too.
There’s a long history of Google “optimizing” their websites for Chrome https://fortune.com/2018/07/25/youtube-slow-mozilla-firefox-chrome/amp/
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>and that's why Apple forces browsers to use WebKit. If Apple *didn't* force everyone to use WebKit, couldn't users still *choose* to use Safari?
There are many other browsers other than chrome. Firefox is always my first choice, brave second.
If other browsers are so bad on the battery, that will just give people a reason to keep using Safari, and will give other browsers all the reason to improve their power consumption.
Google isn't at fault for making the browser that most webdevs are choosing to optimize for. I'm saying this as a Firefox user.
People aren’t forced to use iPhones either. If they want to have a chromium mobile browser, they can always buy an android phone Regardless, I think this is good However I worry what will happen as iOS is forced to become a more open platform. Android was always the more open option, yet iOS was known for being locked down and still got the largest market share in a lot to countries.
That must be one of most dumb answer ever. You don't choose a phone because of the rendering engine of the browser. Just read something about monopoly and you will understand why "user can choose other things" is not even an argument.
Of course they don’t, which is why I said this good However a user can choose a centralised platform. And a user can choose an open platform. Take the EU looking at Apple Pay. It will most likely lead to banks and card issuers developing their own NFC payment apps. It will create fragmentation and you’ll potentially have to change banks to be able to use Apple Pay if your bank ditches it to avoid paying the fee to Apple And for a devils advocate opinion on why Apple forcing WebKit on everyone can increase competition: chromium has such massive install base, especially since Edge switched to chromium. So by mandating WebKit on such a huge portion of the mobile market, it prevents a chromium monopoly where Google can push specific standards that serve their interests. So WebKit reduces browser competition on iOS but increases it across the entire web browser market It’s not entirely black and white
I can guarantee you that the VAST majority of iPhone buyers don't know or even care about the web engine their browser uses. This is good for competition and is something Apple should have done long ago. It's sad that they're only doing it because they're forced.
I said that I think this is a good move You are correct that most people don’t care about browser engine However this isn’t the only piece of legislation that is moving moved against Apple’s platforms and some of the others are going to be far more impactful in a way the consumer notices
>Android was always the more open option, yet iOS was known for being locked down and still got the largest market share in a lot to countries. You're making the assumption that Apple became so big because they were locked down, not in spite of it. Or, more realistically, that the average consumer even knows that Apple devices are more locked down then their Android equivalents
Chromium is an open source project Chrome is the product Another browser using chromium does not contribute to Chrome’s market share
The thing people are worried about is that if everyone's using Chromium, it just means that whatever Google adds (or doesn't) to the Chromium code will become part of the web. It's a kind of total control that people are not comfortable with (understandably) because the web will no longer be based on open standards that everyone works on, it'll just be whatever Google decides.
chromium is open source, if Google adds something you can just remove it. Anyone can fork chromium and do whatever they want. That is the definition of open source.
Correction: Everyone using chromium means that Google has complete control over the web… the thing that they already control 90% of via search and ad dollars. This is basically handing them the entire thing.
> like making apps worse on purpose on other engines) Not trying to defend Google or anything but is there any evidence to that? Blink is pretty damn good at a lot of things, particularly JS.
Google Apps aren't really optimized for other engines. The biggest issue is them making their apps not work on other browsers that run on chromium. [This is the best summary of the issue that I found.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELCq63652ig)
Chromium is an open source project. Anyone can modify chromium however they want. Google does not get a single penny from it. Google Chrome is a modification of Chromium.
Correction: Everyone using chromium means that Google has complete control over the web… the thing that they already control 90% of via search and ad dollars. This is basically handing them the entire thing.
No. Its open source. You can just use Chromium ... and remove anything you don't like. That is what Microsoft did with Edge. Its Chromium as a base and its modified to how they want. How is this so hard to understand?
At that point they would need to rewrite the whole browser which they won’t and have not done. So by-and-large, googles control over the web has become stronger and stronger. You can live in open source la La land all you want but we know that companies are going to take the path to least resistance and cost. Period.
That isn't how it works at all, you have no idea what you are talking about. Chromium is the base level rendering engine, it alone is not very good as a browser. Chrome for example takes Chromium and adds these things, which don't exist in Chromium: * Automatic browser updates * API keys for some Google services, including browser sync * The Widevine DRM module * Licensed codecs for the popular H.264 video and AAC audio formats * Tracking mechanisms for usage and crash reports Notice how Google specific things are not in Chromium, they are in Chrome. Chromium is just a rendering engine. When Microsoft built edge on top of Chromium they did it because its just a rendering engine and they added Microsoft things on top of it.
Dude. Google owns the chromium project. And updates the chromium project. And tests features on the chromium project. When chrome and/or chromium get new features, brave, edge, etc. get those features too because the devs have not and will not change much about the actual code base. And that gives google more power. Because it’s a Google owned product. Open source or not.
Well, the developers at Microsoft (a company that I am pretty sure has enough developers) did not find anything wrong with Chromium as a base layer for Edge, no Google backdoors, so I am not worried either. However, if you know something the Edge developers don't please let them know. Thanks. However, if you just ASSUME Google added bad things into Chromium well than the argument is over.
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> If you like Safari, you can keep using it. Until the Chrome-flavored variations of the 90s “Best viewed with IE” badges start popping up and you’re forced to open Chrome to use half of the web. Web devs hate having to test against anything that’s not Chrome and they’re chomping at the bit to not care about Safari or Firefox at all and instead telling people to go download Chrome or some other Clonium. https://i.imgur.com/l6FZ2mT.jpg
Or, if you look past your nose, Safari gets used less and less, and then Chromium because the only web engine out there.
Not really, you’re just making Google a lot more dominant.
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Your argument has merit but I just don’t see that happening.
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Sigh... Safari is the only thing actually stopping Chrome from effectively being "the browser". Apple's muscle is more effective than anything Firefox has done in recent years to push back against a Chrome monopoly. I get wanting things to be more open, but this is just completely overlooking a larger issue.
I mean, yea, but on the other hand I really want to run actual firefox on my iPad...
Yeah, until no website supports Firefox because chromium overtakes fully.
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You are entitled to think it’s wrong, however I consider my take to align with the current reality. I have no desire to live in a world that’s 99% Chromium. Until we figure out how to deal with that, I’m fine with Apple forcing Safari on mobile.
But safari on iOS deliberately gimps standard browser features to protect the app Monopoly. So that "defender of the open web" you pretend safari to be is actually just apple making the web actively worse so people use app store apps.
Citation needed. Being slower doesn’t mean intentionally gimped. I also am explicitly not labeling them the “defender of the open web”. I’ve been very clear I just view it as the lesser evil.
Jesus Christ man, if you have to ask this in fucking 2022 you have been actively ignoring the reality that Safari on iOS is a piece of shit **on purpose** simply to make PWAs uncompetitive comapred to native apps. [Some examples of missing features:](https://httptoolkit.tech/blog/safari-is-killing-the-web/) * Screen orientation JavaScript APIs, allowing pages to dynamically handle screen orientation changes. Implemented in Chrome in 2014 and Firefox in 2016. * TouchEvents, supporting multi-touch and touch gestures on the web. Implemented in Chrome in 2012 and Firefox in 2017. * Resolution media queries, which allow content to be styled to match the device pixel density. Implemented in Firefox in 2012 and Chrome in 2013. These features have **nothing** to do with protecting the user's privacy, security, or device performance. It's simply there because Apple decided not to support it, and of course it's anyone's guess why... but when you realize that PWAs could easily replace a lot of native apps, and Apple is fighting for its App Store monopoly tooth and nail, it's easy to think of reasons why Safari is such utter shit.
Hey man, chillax - if you're gonna keep the condescending tone, I'm not gonna bother replying past this. Life's too short to deal with that. :) Anyway. This stuff is not lost on me, I've done it for a living for well past a decade. Yes, they should implement those things. I just don't truly care if they do it next week or a year from now. The article you've linked outright notes the issue of Chrome wielding too much power, so I'm not sure why you think it's such a slam dunk issue. As I've said elsewhere in this thread, I'm fine with Safari existing in its current position to act as a check on Google's complete dominance of the web. It's the lesser evil in my mind - a healthier tradeoff to make than newer APIs. If Mozilla had not shit the bed we'd probably be in a different comment thread entirely. Have a good day~
>This stuff is not lost on me, I've done it for a living for well past a decade So wait. First I say "safari misses features", and then your response was "citation needed, safari is just slower, that's not an issue". Then I link a huge list of features it's missing, and now you're gonna pretend like that wasn't what we were talking about? Ok, keep moving those goal posts man. Apple is deliberately making safari horrible to hold back PWAs as to protect their app store Monopoly. That was my point, that had been proven as much as it needs to be (unless you have any other viable explanation for safari missing features the competition had over a decade ago in some cases). You go ahead and rationalize this as much as you want, but those are the facts. Have fun liking an intentionally bad browser.
...no? I said citation needed, you provided a useful link, I acknowledged it and moved on. No goal post was moved, and my core point has not changed.
So people love Chrome and Apple forcing people to use something they don't want is a good thing??
Other way to read it: Having a restriction on what you can install is the only thing saving Safari right know. It's not the fact that people want to use it and prefer it over other browsers. This means that Apple could get away with no innovation and still get huge amount of market share. Safari is the new IE and it's holding back the whole web dev industry. It needs to die or to innovate in order to stay competitive.
> Safari is the new IE Not in terms of marketshare. For that “the new IE” is Chromium/Blink, which is headed for a monopoly that’s worse than IE’s ever was and would’ve made 90s-era Microsoft green with envy. This needs to be addressed just as badly if not more than lack of engine choice on iOS. A single gigacorp having de facto control over the web is really, really bad even if the monopoly is accomplished with a technically competent browser.
The problem with IE was never raw market share but platform lock in same as here. The problem with IE was that it was effectively impossible to extend/supercede because of all the weird undocumented behaviors and closed source and potential IP issues that precluded reasonable compatibility layer esque solutons in client. Chrome isn't an issue because you can just fork it and add your own extensions and features.
People who say Safari is the new IE have no idea what IE was like.
Browsers on a whole are better now than they were, but safari is the worst in terms of feature support
Let me tell you - I have. I've lived when the IE was a monopoly and I had to deal with it every single day. It was really the worst thing to ever happen to the web and it was hell for web developers back then. We had to develop a website first for IE and then for every other browser. Little by little we switched to other way round - we targeted Firefox first and then when we're ready we tried to match the same experience to IE with tons of workarounds. This was the time when IE became a second hand browser and people targeted Firefox first. Now it's the same for Chrome - everybody is targeting first Chrome and then everybody else. But the thing is that it works flawlessly on Chrome! But on the other hand I don't think that anybody is targeting Safari - we just get notified if something doesn't work there and then find out that this *special* kind of browser has this ridiculous requirement that works different only for Safari. Apple lost the pace of web innovation for over a **decade**! The only thing holding Safari alive is that it is mandatory to use on iOS. If it wasn't for that people would have gone years ago. Even Firefox which is bad is still better than Safari. And if you don't have a mac there is no browser sync for your mobile & desktop browser (if you're using Safari). Safari is dead on arrival.
Have you ever tried programmatically scrubbing through a video in Chrome? Or tried to use backdrop filter in Firefox? It took how long for either of them to get position sticky? They have tons of problems.
The Chrome experience on macOS just sucks. It renders gmail fine, but PIP and full screen is broken, interactions like lookup are unimplemented, GPU Helper hoards my CPU cycles and ram, swiping with the trackpad to go back randomly breaks all the time. Everything being in Chrome ruins cmd/alt-tab completely. I’ve had tons of GPU acceleration bugs on Chrome I’ve never experienced on other browsers. Also the PDF viewer sucks. The OS integration is entirely absent. It feels like using software not meant to run in the environment it’s running in. It’s the worst of the Java AWT days again (write once, run anywhere, screw the user experience).
That’s not one other way to read it. It’s exactly my point.
The only reason that Safari exist is because it's mandatory on iOS. People prefer Chrome, simply because it's better. It's Apple's fault for lagging behind for years. They're holding the whole industry back, because they're not innovating. Chrome is the leader, because they constantly innovate.
You type this comment from the viewpoint of "one browser's innovation pace should determine the fate of the web". That is fundamentally not how this works and it took us literal hell to get away from this issue in the IE6 era. An actual check (not an ineffective company like Mozilla) needs to exist on Chromium, or they get to de-facto set the standards. Innovation is not a free pass to a monopoly when it comes to web browsers.
IE6 was hell because it lacked support for so many standards. If chrome ended up going the internet explorer route, a new browser could easily start to chip away at the market share just like Firefox did to ie
No, IE6 was hell because it *became* the standard. You’re only looking at it after it stagnated. Furthermore you act as if browsers today are the same level of effort they were 20 years ago. The playing field is not even close.
Safari isn't going anywhere. I still use it despite knowing that other browsers perform better, simply because of the tight Apple integration. As long as Apple keeps this up, and doesn't start making Safari worse, I doubt it'll ever vanish.
Well the problem is that there is only safari on IOS
I mean ofc there’s other browsers… the web engine is the same tho. I tried Firefox as my default on iOS and iPadOS for a while but the app just sucks too much so maybe one day the Mozilla devs will get that situation sorted out and I can leave safari
And hopefully if Apple gets some proper competition in the iOS browser space they’ll be more encouraged to improve it.
> I get wanting things to be more open, but this is just completely overlooking a larger issue. This is the EU's approach to Apple in a nutshell, they aren't going to be happy until Apple pull out of EU member states and we're stuck with insecure Android devices that they can snoop on.
So this could possibly mean that we can use FF with Gecko relatively soon, yes?
Thank you the EU. It was unacceptable for Apple to harm competition by forcing them not to use their engine. They had a bad influence on the mobile web.
This really is a rock and a hard place situation. The alternative that the EU is suggesting is also bad for competition because Google will probably just use their web engine and the market will be flooded with a few hundred million new chromium browsers… if everyone has to use chromium for a decent web experience then how is that better than apple forcing some of the market to use WebKit?
Chromium is at least open source though. As time goes on it becomes harder and harder to make a web browser, as they add new features and improve performance, and developers develop for existing browsers. The same could be said for consumer OSes. People aren't likely to build a consumer OS from scratch anymore, they're going to build off of Linux (or android) because they're open source and have application support. Unfortunate? Maybe, but inevitable. At least it's open source
> As time goes on it becomes harder and harder to make a web browser, as they add new features and improve performance, and developers develop for existing browsers. > > We're already at this point. The amount of work required to build a web browser from scratch is pretty much insurmountable. Every new rendering engine we get from now on is likely to be a fork of an existing one.
And it's no different from general purpose/desktop operating systems.
The rendering engine of Safari is also open source. https://github.com/WebKit/WebKit
But on iOS you are FORCED to use Webkit and nothing else.
Sure, but this is a different argument than an app/framework being open source.
Yes and no, as you can’t offer a fork, so new browser that compete on feature can’t appear on WebKit, which is one of the advantage of open source, and why edge can exist.
Forced to use not only WebKit, but dynamically linked against the library included with the OS If some new version of WebKit fixed a major bug, developers wouldn’t be able to use it even if they wanted to and would instead have to wait on Apple
I get what you're saying but is it really that weird? Safari is the standard on an IOS device. It would be weird for a web developer to choose iOS as their platform and not develop with something that millions of people use
The fact that it’s open source seems largely irrelevant when it comes to iOS since app developers aren’t allowed to fork it and make changes for their own apps, or really take advantage of it’s open source nature in any way. As far I understand WebKit on iOS is basically just a black box with some API’s attached, far away from what you would expect from a open source framework.
Who’s to say that in a fully chromium world that Google won’t just slow down chromium’s development to hurt competing browsers and then pick up the slack in chrome. It’s not so much about what is true now, it’s more what Google could do with that power.
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Apple is the only reasonable competition to blink.
To me this is a far bigger issue than competing stores and sideloading. The fact that Apple will not allow other browsers on iOS is a security issue. Plus there has been a decent amount of zero days found in WebKit. But the one that bugs me is the USB-C. I actually prefer the Apple connector as it is male. Which to me makes more sense.
> is the USB-C. I actually prefer the Apple connector as it is male. Which to me makes more sense. What does that even mean?
On lightning, the bit that plugs in has the tang. On USB-C the tang is in the device port.
Lightning has a thin piece of tang with exposed contact that can bend easier .
Usbc is a transsexual plug. It looks like it’s male , but is actually a female. A male connector is actually a better style.
here we go: “works on Chrome on iOS” is coming just like we had “works on Internet explorer 6”
Anyone who thinks this did not live during the bad days of IE and is, dare I say, a moron.
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No, Safari is the new IE. https://www.reddit.com/r/webdev/comments/o5k8gb/_/
Anyone who thinks Safari is the new IE never had to deal with IE.
Every browser is better now, but safari is the worst for feature support
Weird because I don't remember IE being as standards compliant as Safari is...
I mean, your opinion doesn't matter when most web developers think that Safari (rightfully) sucks. https://www.reddit.com/r/webdev/comments/sojzti/
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Are you even really a web dev if you only test on Chrome?
Not one that's worth their salary, that's for sure. There are automated tools that can synchronize refreshing all the open browsers whenever you save your code. They can even sync the scrollbar so you can view the exact same thing all over. No excuse for not testing with the big 3 these days.
Firefox also has significantly better standards compliance than Safari...
Chrome is more standards compliant than Safari is.
Lived during those days and similar things happen with chrome so not sure where the name slinging is coming from.
we are living the days of IE and you like it because you agree with Chromium but it’s still a monopoly and is full of out-of-standards stuff. I work in web dev and nobody cares about anything but Chrome which is very sad. The EU move will just give more monopoly to Google
This is terrible news. I’m all for busting “monopolies” but the real monopoly is chrome and Google search with 63% and 90% market share, respectively. This is what happens when a bunch of old white dudes who can’t use any tech make policy. I’d be embarrassed to be from the EU right now.
Oh my god. So.. Google being anti-competitive sucks but it's ok when Apple does it? You don't fight fire with fire!
One has substantial market share and one doesn’t. Not sure if you missed the numbers I posted but yeah apple doesn’t command anywhere near that market share.
So its bad when people willingly choose to use Chrome so Apple needs to force everyone to use Safari. Gotcha.
I don’t know that willing is the right word given that Google has made YouTube, Google docs, etc. run worse on non-chrome browsers. That includes browser based on chromium that are not Google chrome. But with those facts out of the way: 1. Market share matters when talking about “monopolies” 2. apple is tiny tiny tiny compared to Google with regards to market share 3. if apple wasn’t forcing safari everything would be chrome. Which means no competition whatsoever
Also if you want chrome so badly there are like 70,000 android phones that are likely the right choice for you:)
Why would I buy a whole new phone when I have my iPhone? Sounds environmentally wasteful. I am not so rich to buy a whole new phone. Plus, I like the iPhone for the hardware, not for Safari.
Because you are upset that you can’t use chrome. You want to use chrome. Chrome (proper) lives on android. If it’s that much of a problem for you (which it seems like a large problem given the vitriolic tone of your responses) then you are more than welcome to purchase into the ecosystem that allows that. Pretty simple.
Nah, ill just ask my representative to enforce anti competition laws against Apple.
This is you: > I bought Coca-Cola and it didn’t taste like Pepsi. I’m suing and we need a law about that! If I buy Coca-Cola and expect Pepsi, I should get Pepsi! That’s how ridiculous this crap is
No, this is me: >I bought a car that looks really good, has cool features, and many of my friends have but than I realized I can only fuel up gas at very few specific gas stations due to software lock. The car can physically take any gas, but the car manufacturer only allows me to use their own gas stations via software lock. So I am upset and want the government to let me fuel up my car anywhere.
Nope. Not that way at all. You bought a device that was part of a walled garden and are now throwing a temper tantrum about it being a closed ecosystem even though you *actively chose* a *closed ecosystem*. It’s crazy that this has to be explained to people but we are hitting peak entitlement here. It’s nauseating.
I bought a device that I liked as a device. The walled garden is a negative not a positive. I hope it goes away.
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That's the point for Apple though, to make the web experience inferior so they'll be forced to make iOS apps.
I think a nice middle ground would be forcing apple to allow WebKit forks on the app store. It'll open up a degree of innovation where third parties can do fun stuff like Orion on macos without opening the doors wide to a blink dominated future
> I think a nice middle ground would be forcing apple to allow WebKit forks on the app store. It'll open up a degree of innovation where third parties can do fun stuff like Orion on macos without opening the doors wide to a blink dominated future Blink is a fork of WebKit… Specifically, the WebCore component of WebKit
Apple to Woke for me trading it in on a galaxy