Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web and HTML, has expressed support for compelling Apple to allow other browser engines on iOS. He also states that having a powerful browser on iOS would "change the dynamic" with respect to web app's viability on mobile.
1/4
https://open-web-advocacy.org/blog/tim-berners-lee-on-apples-browser-engine-ban-and-web-apps/
Discussion
Loading...
Post
@owa Safari is actually one of the very best browsers, though.
@codinghorror @owa You understand that Safari's quality is totally immaterial to the question of whether or not true browser competition should be allowed on iOS, right?
@slightlyoff @owa when I want browser competition, I use a different operating system. I love ChromeOS and Windows, for example. I .. like.. Android. I'm OS-polyamorous.
@codinghorror @owa Ah yes, the privilege bubble answer: "if you don't like suppression of competition, just pay unknowably high switching costs in money, time, and capabilities"
Not a serious argument, either technically, ethically, or legally.
@slightlyoff @owa "unknowably high"? There is no way to know? It's impossible to know? Can you please elaborate? I'm a HUGE fan of chromebooks (I use one regularly), and a used chromebook is rather inexpensive.
@codinghorror @owa Put yourself in the shoes of a normal person — someone who does not have a few hundred bucks to explore their tech options — how can they know the apps and utilities they rely on will work on Android (or some other alternative)? How much research do they need to sink into this question? And is a better browser worth that?
This is the crux of market power today; high switching costs for no justifiable reason. The antidote is interoperability *on the devices you already own*.
1 more replies (not shown)
@codinghorror @slightlyoff As a business you can’t choose for all of your customers to switch to Android. The market needs to be seen from the eyes of a business that is choosing whether to develop a native application or a web application and Apple ensures that there is no real choice.
@owa @slightlyoff "no real choice"? Can you elaborate with a few specific examples? I don't understand.
@codinghorror @owa (not that Safari's quality is...um...high; see @rgadellaa's incredible compendium: https://webventures.rejh.nl/blog/2024/history-of-safari-show-stoppers/ )
@codinghorror @owa by what metric?
It supports less of the agreed standards than the other browsers, it regularly has regressions that impact major features that break websites, it has the slowest release schedule of all the browsers, and their team sandbags development of the ecosystem at every turn.
@bendelarre @owa can you provide evidence to back up your claims? Looking here: https://caniuse.com/ciu/comparison I see..
caniuse.com browser feature comparison chart, all modern browsers, "Mixed Support" (part 2) plus "No support"
caniuse.com browser feature comparison chart, all modern browsers, "Mixed Support" (part 1)
caniuse.com browser feature comparison chart, all modern browsers, "At least partially supported"
caniuse.com browser feature comparison chart, all modern browsers, "Supported (some prefix)"
@bendelarre @owa can you point out which of the "lots" of agreed standards you are referring to in the data I cited, please?
@codinghorror @owa Filesystem Access, web transport, requestIdleCallback, scheduler API all of which are very powerful primitives for building more performant web applications.
Then there's the major features which admittedly Firefox has also not yet implemented: Web serial, web Bluetooth, web USB, web hid, background sync, image capture, gyroscope. These are all features that allow browsers to compete with native apps and arr impossible to workaround.
@bendelarre @codinghorror @owa imo it depends if you’re asking from a dev or user pov. As a user just the better battery life and content blockers alone put miles about the rest.
Being forced to use chrome at work I see no perceptible difference with regards to missing features. A lot of web apps still have that non native janky feel and everything is full of ads so the reading experience is worse.
@fds @codinghorror @owa for many websites that's probably fair, but in my mind this is exactly the goal of Apples strategy with regard to the web.
They believe the web is a largely static content consumption platform - that interactive deep session applications are to be built on native platforms they can tax, not on open platforms they can't control.
There are examples that show the potential of the web as an app platform, but Apple does it's level best to try and prevent them succeeding.
bonfire.cafe
A space for Bonfire maintainers and contributors to communicate
Automatic federation enabled