Apple's WebKit Rules Reportedly Cost iOS Users Almost 30% Browser Performance

[krakenrelease]

Everyone knows Netscape is the best. Just search ask Jeeves and you will see it’s true!

I’ll raise you with Alta Vista 😁

 

[phuklok1]

i always find it interesting when forum people applaud or even just find it acceptable that a trillion dollar corporation should limit their choices in software or how they choose to use the devices they paid a premium for - strange world we live in. 😂 😂

 

[Starfia]

The title is suspiciously clickbaity.

Innovation.

 

[germanbeer007]

Requiring Webkit is ridiculous but that's what Apple does to stifle competition.

so...you want chromium to own 70% of not only desktop but also mobile? hilarious

 

[zarmanto]

Flash was relegated off the Internet for being highly insecure and buggy as heck.

Both true -- but you forgot to mention that it was also a huge battery drain. (All of that was documented in Steve's open letter, Thoughts on Flash.)

 

[germanbeer007]

i always find it interesting when forum people applaud or even just find it acceptable that a trillion dollar corporation should limit their choices in software or how they choose to use the devices they paid a premium for - strange world we live in. 😂 😂

I always find it interesting when forum people forget they always had a choice to buy an Android device. 😂

 

[jhende7]

i always find it interesting when forum people applaud or even just find it acceptable that a trillion dollar corporation should limit their choices in software or how they choose to use the devices they paid a premium for - strange world we live in. 😂 😂

Which Trillion dollar company are we talking about? We can have google having a monopoly over the entire internet or Apple having a monopoly on the internet on iPhone…. Lesser of two evils I think.

 

[TheMacDaddy1]

On MacOS, Edge is my default browser. Safari is just slow, lacks so my creature comforts and it is a toss up as too which browser wont render a page correctly, Safari or FF.

Like it or not the Internet is best served by a Chromium based browser. My company (large retail chain) does not even test our website on desktop Safari anymore. Firefox is about to get dumped as well. Our numbers show us they simply do not matter in terms of the traffic we get from them and it is not worth the cost to test against them.

There is a reason that Chrome is the most used browser on MacOS.

 

[star-affinity]

For how long has it been like this? Seems to me that browser engines are always evolving and one benchmark win over another isn’t something static.

The speed at which Chrome/Chromium is updated with actual official releases is crazy compared to Safari/Webkit, though.

 

[huge_apple_fangirl]

If Chromium is allowed on iPhone all our native apps will be replaced with battery and memory sucking web technologies like Electron. Look at desktop. That's what web devs want for mobile as well. Safari is behind on web "standards" that Google made up and are privacy risks like WebUSB. Because Google has so much market share with Chromium they can just declare anything a standard. Apple is protecting consumers from bad web apps by strangling this in its crib.

 

[TheMacDaddy1]

I always find it interesting when forum people forget they always had a choice to buy an Android device. 😂

I am sure the EU will fix this lack of choice/option, sooner rather than later. I have no doubt Apple already has plans for it already and a quick update will allow it after they are told to do so.

Picking your default browser, with its own engine should be an OPTION. The default can still be Safari, as long as you have the OPTION.

 

[huge_apple_fangirl]

I am sure the EU will fix this lack of choice/option, sooner rather than later. I have no doubt Apple already has plans for it already and a quick update will allow it after they are told to do so.

Picking your default browser, with its own engine should be an OPTION. The default can still be Safari, as long as you have the OPTION.

You won't have a choice when all the websites say "works best in Chrome".

 

[Hajj.david]

Requiring Webkit is ridiculous but that's what Apple does to stifle competition.

Competition? You mean against the 95% of Chromium users? Webkit IS the competition

 

[txscott]

I haven't worried about the speed of browser rendering in 20 years, maybe more.

 

[nikusak]

Once Apple is forced to allow alternative engines globally Google will port their engine to iOS/iPadOS and then they will have pretty much total control of the web's future.

Quite the opposite of what regulators wanted 😂 Beautiful, even.

I think Microsoft could also have published other data such as energy consumption.

I don't think there is much of a performance difference between Safari and Chromium based browsers on a Mac, so this report probably does not quite reveal everything there is to it.

 

[now i see it]

WebKit is the gatekeeper ensuring Safari will become utterly unusable after 5 years = time to buy a new iPhone!

 

[BeatsByTim]

You do realize Edge IS Chrome, simply with different face paint? In fact it's even worse than Chrome, because it has extra Microsoft crap added on top.

It's not Chrome. It just uses the same rendering/browser engine. It doesn't use Google's services, doesn't disable manifest v2, has sensible tracker blocking by default.

 

[allpar]

The good thing about the rule is that without it, Chrome would be the only browser that worked on the Web. Now people have to make things webkit compatible. They still often don't but it's more pressure.

 

[Karma*Police]

i always find it interesting when forum people applaud or even just find it acceptable that a trillion dollar corporation should limit their choices in software or how they choose to use the devices they paid a premium for - strange world we live in. 😂 😂

I think it’s the other way around. I think it’s interesting that people who intentionally chose a closed system want an open system. Why not just go with Android and call it a day?

Steve’s philosophy was always very clear. He wanted to make computing like an appliance. PC’s and Android exist for people who want to tinker.

If Safari was so bad, people wouldn’t be buying Apple devices. The market will always decide the winners and losers in the end.

 

[zarmanto]

I don't think there is much of a performance difference between Safari and Chromium based browsers on a Mac, so this report probably does not quite reveal everything there is to it.

I suppose that depends upon how you measure performance. Safari reportedly has a significant advantage in energy efficiency and memory efficiency, but also responds more quickly when loading basic webpages. Chrome reportedly has an advantage when loading extremely complex and memory intensive workloads... notably much like those workloads available within Google's own infrastructure, such as Google Workspace or YouTube.

That is to say, they optimized their browsers based upon different priorities.

 

[BeatsByTim]

The good thing about the rule is that without it, Chrome would be the only browser that worked on the Web. Now people have to make things webkit compatible. They still often don't but it's more pressure.

I don't spend any time on webkit. It's such a small portion of my userbase and I'm not developing on a mac, so I don't have access to it.

 

[germanbeer007]

Picking your default browser, with its own engine should be an OPTION.

Vote with your wallet. It's pretty simple.

I, for one, am glad Apple killed Flash because it was not an option in iPhones (a choice you can make). Droid made a big deal about supporting flash but clearly people didn't care. General user base benefitted from this.

 

[Hajj.david]

Once Apple is forced to allow alternative engines globally Google will port their engine to iOS/iPadOS and then they will have pretty much total control of the web's future.

Quite the opposite of what regulators wanted 😂 Beautiful, even.

I think Microsoft could also have published other data such as energy consumption.

I don't think there is much of a performance difference between Safari and Chromium based browsers on a Mac, so this report probably does not quite reveal everything there is to it.

Worse yet is every app will be an electron app. Why spend money on native development when you can build once and run (like garbage) everywhere!