Agree to disagree. Increasing marketshare for an already dominant player decreases chances of competition in this context. If websites design for a 99% marketshare engine, there's very little incentive to design websites for other engines that have <1% marketshare.
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Apple's WebKit Rules Reportedly Cost iOS Users Almost 30% Browser Performance
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This is so off topic, it's hilarious.
Nonsensical take.
Apparently you didn't know other engines were allowed on the Mac and you're playing the "semantics" argument. And now you're searching through my post history and trying to argue at a different angle. 😂
You're describing it as if it's absolutely certain that it will happen. And even if it does, as if it's some catastrophic scenario.
Both of which I disagree with.
By the way, the current rules mean Apple also has little incentive to improve Safari.
I would also have appreciated if you had actually refuted the points in my comment, rather than being selective on what you answer to.
No matter how you try to spin it, you want competition under control while you frame it as "I'm defending competition". Do you not see the contradiction?
Where do you draw the line, then?
If Apple also wanted to prevent browsers on the Mac from using their own engines, and all would have to use WebKit, what would be your opinion on it?
Would you consider that OK, too, because it promotes even better competition by making Chromium's market share even smaller, limiting it to people who use operating systems like Windows and Linux?
Or do you acknowledge that it's becoming questionable and anti-competitive now?
How about letting all browsers vendors have their own engines on all platforms, competing by making their browsers better and letting users make their own choices?
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I'm describing it based on me working in a Fortune 500 company developing frontend web. For desktop we targeted the largest marketshare which is Chrome obviously. For Internet Explorer users, we just popped a message box saying to download Chrome (this was when Microsoft was still pushing updates to IE).
Before I left the company, we were discussing dropping support for Firefox to "streamline operations".
What do you mean? Safari is still competing on Mac against Chrome. WWDC26 show cased 1000 engine improvements.
And because webkit still has a good sizable overall mobile marketshare, Apple can dedicated large $$$ in the budget to keep improving webkit which the benefits on mobile propagate to Mac, improving Safari on Mac. This helps Safari's webkit competition against chromium.
FYI, Safari was practically forced to adopt Chrome's Manifest V2/V3 because everyone was developing extensions for Chrome and not Safari. You wanted evidence of how majority marketshare is bad for competition, there's one. Two if you include the top of my post.
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What incentive is there for Apple to make Safari better on iOS devices? None since they force everyone to use the craptastic webkit.
Android is a competitor to iOS. There's an incentive to not lose customers.
They already lost customers over their ridiculous Apple watch updates cut off and their price increases aren't going to help. Safari is the most basic boring browser on the market.
recap:
- you argued "No other operating system wants to run Webkit"
- yet, webkit became #1 in 2012 for all operating systems, not just Apple platforms.
- you replied that "Google, Mozilla, and every other browser are forced by Apple to use Webkit on Mac." which isn't true.
- you edited on Mac to on Apple devices (changing the argument)
the argument still doesn't hold up considering windows/android were #1 operating systems using WebKit as the #1 global browser engine and it was not forced upon Microsoft or Google
So back to your original argument, "No other operating system wants to run Webkit" is practically false considering it was purely optional to run WebKit on the most popular operating systems in 2012 and it became #1.
You're saying browsing experience doesn't matter when a person decides which phone to buy. Hard disagree.
You're grasping at straws at this point. Browsing experience is better on Mac, Android, and Windows because they allow you to use whatever browser you want with any rending engine powering the browser. Safari is crap, you just can't admit it.
This article is about iOS devices. I made a small error, I'm human not a robot.
Apparently everything has to be correct in your perfect world where you know everything.
Because you went there. You act like you know everyhing and can't accept the truth.
You keep grasping at straws in your argument. This is comical.
You are an expert and your experience is very valid. But there are certainly millions of people making websites around the world, from 12-year-old teenagers (maybe even younger) to experienced developers like yourself.
Do you not think it's quite a stretch to say that if other browsers engines were allowed in iOS and iPadOS, most of the web would be designed for Chromium? I do think it is.
I had written about that here already:
About this:
Well, it sounds like the work from that team contributed to the problem you seem to be against.
Why develop only for Chrome and why on Earth did your team decide it was a good idea to tell users to download Chrome specifically?
(I'm against Chrome too and I refuse to install it on my computer. But I'm not against Chromium browsers, like Vivaldi.)
We're getting deeper, but I still want to ask. Why do you frame what you said above, along with
and
as bad things?
So what if Apple had to adapt? In markets where there is competition, there are early adopters and followers. That's just how the world works.
Even if Chromium's market share grows as you predict, why is that being framed as something that must be avoided at all costs, to the point that restricting competition in iOS and iPadOS is acceptable, instead of letting people make their decisions?
What's the realistic scenario where 99% of web is Chromium and most developers decide to design to support many non-chromium engines?
Regulating web caused us to have annoying cookie popups. Sounds terrible.
Yes companies do a risk calculation and many conclude that supporting one browser long term is worth the risk in losing customers who refuse to use a certain browser.
Executives give a budget and feature requirements. Given that: you can spend 1x time making the product work great on 70% of browsers or spend 2x time making the product work okay on 80% of the browsers. The decision is clear on what to focus on. Competition is reduced due to Chrome having an extreme marketshare on desktop.
You're arguing for Chromium to exist on iOS. Clearly if Chromium was the majority on Android and iOS, companies would just focus on Chromium. Great for engineering since it's simpler to just focus on one browser engine, but that's bad for competition. see how that works?
I don't understand what you're asking. I'm literally responding to your questions. Larger marketshare means more likely companies will just focus on the biggest one. iOS allowing Chromium would just mean Fortune 500 companies will design for Chromium for mobile and desktop. Easier for engineering but what sort of competition is there then?
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zarmanto
macrumors 65816
What he may have meant and what he said are two different things: he absolutely did reference the Mac, as germanbeer007 has pointed out.
Second... I would suggest that it's not even remotely a "tiny" detail. It's actually core to the discussion.
Funny observation... if you ask Google's Gemini "How did Chrome come into existence?" there is a non-zero chance that you will be presented with a false narrative (as I was) which states in part:
If you call out Gemini on this, it will immediately admit the falsehood and offer a more accurate history, crediting WebKit as Chrome's original rendering engine.
Personally, I think the full (true) history is quite interesting, but I won't go into detail here; suffice to say, Google was never forced into anything; they chose WebKit because it was open source and it was well written. Not because of Apple. And when Google and Apple had diverging visions for the future development of Webkit, Blink was born. Up until that point, all versions of Chrome -- including the Windows version -- were based upon Webkit.
Most websites are made for Chrome not Safari. Apparently you favor Safari over every other browser on the market.
BSDnostalgia
macrumors 6502
A lot of replies here, so I may have missed it, but, I recall that a while back someone published a comparison showing that while Safari wasn't the fastest realtime, it was the most energy efficient, something that might matter more to both iOS and laptop-on-battery users. That was a few years ago. I'm not sure if that study has been re-done recently, but, for mobile users it might still be the case that the metric they care more about is battery usage.
Edit (finishing thought): so, since the WebKit part is probably where most of the energy is consumed, other browser makers should be happy that "their" browser is running more efficiently on iOS mobile devices using WebKit than it would using their own library.
On MacOS, Chromium may be faster, but, Safari may be using less battery. (Not to mention, more private.)
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Actually, @KevinN206 responded to me asking "Why do you think Apple doesn't offer Safari on Android, Windows, and Linux?". I gave a response, and then you replied to my response. The conversation diverged to other OSes (even you asked the question about why other operating systems supposedly don't want WebKit). If you wanted to limit the scope to iOS, you would have replied to me saying the article is only about iOS.
It wasn't until after you conveyed the erroneous statement that Mac limited the choice of rendering engine to WebKit is when you started to limit the scope to iOS.