Its a shame Apple gets away with stifling browser competition and forcing everyone to use Webkit.
Of course it's a brilliant move: by controlling the stagnation of web browser tech, they can force developers to implement apps with their high-lock-in native app frameworks.
Google does the same thing with Android, but it is not nearly as blatant as Apple's flat-out blocking competitive browser implementations.
Ironically Apple ensuring that every browser on iOS runs webkit is one of the only things preventing Chrome from having a complete hegemony of the web.
If you actually want stronger competition the best thing you could do is separate Chrome from Google.
Apple deliberately hinders Progressive Web Applications on iOS Safari, effectively stifling innovation. Look at how many requests are there on WebKit to implement many of the features/API's required.
They don't even allow competing browser engines. Chrome, Firefox etc on iOS are just wrappers around Safari.
The Apple of today has a very conflicted relationship with webkit, the anticompetitive reasons they want to keep their platform "webkit only", simultaneously encourages them to support and neglect webkit development. i.e on the one hand, webkit must be reliable and secure and compatible "enough" to provide a decent basic browsing experience. But should not improve so much as to make developing applications competitive with the apple store.
The difference between the resources Google and Apple contribute to their respective open source browser engines is night and day, and as any web developer will know - it shows.
In an ideal world two things would change at the same time: Apple is forced to allow other browsers, and webkit gets some genuine love and decent resources to make it a legitimate competitor again, instead of being used as a pawn in a game between Apple and Google.
If Apple has to force WebKit on every iOS browser for it to stay afloat, then something is wrong with WebKit.
I do agree that Chromium overtaking the web is bad for the open web in general. I don’t agree that forcing Apple to allow third party browser engines is going to make that problem worse.
Isn't that obvious? With iPhone being major mobile device they put enough pressure on web developers to support WebKit which benefits Safari not just on iOS, but on macOS as well. This also not just wins better support for Safari, but give Apple some foot in making of web standards.
If they allow alternative engines on iOS they'll just slowly lose browser market share they still have which likely end up in death spiral for Safari support.
It's extremely hard to compete with Google since even Firefox on Android is still extremely rare no matter how much effort Mozilla put into it.
Their Safari browser, running on WebKit, is full of bugs and lagging behind in features such as Push Notifications, Install prompts for Web Apps, and many many others. It makes it impossible to have quality Web Apps running through Safari.
This wouldn't be a problem if users could use other browsers that are not that buggy and have the features needed to build native-like app experience. But Apple is banning any other browser from using their own engine, they are all forced to use the buggy and lagging behind WebKit. Firefox, Edge, Chrome, etc on iOS are just skins around WebKit.
So there is basically no browser competition on iOS, and this is how Apple prevent web apps from competing with native apps.
About time Apple is forced to allow alternative Browser Engines to Webkit.
Of course they have a strong incentive to handicap Web Apps in order to protect their lucrative extortionate 30% App Store tax.
Nobody would care if Apple allowed other browsers on their mobile platforms. The problem isn't what APIs they do or don't support, it's their refusal to allow alternatives to WebKit.
Remember the days when software choice was a thing, and Microsoft were condemned for merely including a browser with the OS, not banning all software competition? Maybe in about a decade the competition authorities will wake up to this.
If Apple allowed other browsers there would be even less competition overall in browsers - as Chrome would also dominate there too (and third parties force its use to be compatible with them).
At the monent, iOS being Safari/Webkit only is what keeps us having two engines with both having any real market share.
Lets hope that the anti-trust judiciary has enough technical understanding to realise how restrictive and damaging to competition - Apple’s policy of not allowing alternative web browser engines on IOS is.
They should force Apple to allow alternative engines to Webkit, thus enabling much stronger competition to Safari and to native Apps on Apple mobile devices.
Do you have specific examples of how you consider Apple to be "stifling" progress to defend Safari?
I use both Safari and Chrome (and WebKit nightlies). I vastly prefer Safari to Chrome, but their underlying use of WebKit seems quite similar.
Competition has seemed to help WebKit in the past (especially between Apple and Google). If you recall, they both contributed a new process model to WebKit (http://betanews.com/2010/04/09/the-big-change-coming-to-safa...). It could be argued that Apple's contribution in this area was more useful to users of the WebKit framework, while Google's was restricted to Chromium. That said, Google makes many great contributions too.
Another explanation, less popular, is that Apple restricting to WebKit actually helps foster browser competition at the moment.
Let me explain. Right now it's WebKit vs Blink (Chrome and all Chromium-based Browsers, including Brave, Vivaldi, Opera, Edge, etc.). If Blink were to be allowed on iPhones... you'd see Chrome become even more dominant. Firefox is dying on PC, has less than 1% mobile share, and is no competition in this case.
Requiring WebKit is what prevents an even greater Chrome monoculture.
Enforcing webkit prevents websites from going back to "best viewed with internet explorer" today just with IE replaced by "any broweser using chromium".
I don't use apple, but I do appreciate the suffering of limited choice their users endure for the effect of higher diversity. Thank you, iphone users.
I disagree. While I agree with you that it is highly problematic that iOS/iPadOS users have no alternatives to WebKit in terms of what rendering engine their browser uses, I disagree with the sentiment that Apple has a level of control over the web that is remotely comparable to Google’s.
Why? For one, Chrome has much higher marketshare than Safari on mobile. While Apple has a huge marketshare in terms of revenue, Android devices are much more popular than iOS/iPadOS devices in terms of sheer numbers, and these devices predominantly run Chrome.
As such, Chrome dominates both the mobile and desktop browser market, and the only way for the consumer to work against that is, simply put, to run Firefox/Gecko on his computer and his (Android) phone, or if you’re basically anti-Google like me, WebKit on your iPhone.
What is this hope for healthy browser engine competition? On Android and ChromeOS, Chrome and Chromium-based browsers have more than 99% marketshare.
"Apple should allow non-WebKit browsers" is really saying "what's holding back the mobile web is that Google does not completely dominate it." Only one thing prevents that outcome today.
That is also why they are currently preventing competition on web browser engines on iOS, by forcing other browsers to use theirs (webkit). That way they can limit the web app capabilities, by not implementing APIs like the Push API, and make the web look very bad by not fixing bugs.
I'm wondering why Mozilla, amongst other companies, hasn't taken action against this anti-competitive behaviour.
The innovation-stifling effects of browser lock-in require development to be expensive. Any compelling product in such an environment will be built to maximize revenue, which requires those products to support as wide of a consumer base as possible. This makes it difficult to build products with new technologies.
Today, development is cheap. Compelling products can be built as side projects with a minimal investment of time and money. If creators don't have to worry about making money with their creations, they're more likely to use whatever technology they feel like using.
If Mobile Safari lags behind other browsers in implementing emerging web standards, many developers will run browsers that stay current, even if they have to buy a new phone to do so. When they come up with nifty ideas that are relatively easy to build, they'll use whatever technologies they want, which will occassionally be HTML5 and friends. After normal iPhone users come across enough neat hacks that their phone can't run because their phone can't support it, they'll switch phones.
I doubt that Apple would let Mobile Safari lag behind other browsers, especially since they'll likely want desktop Safari to support emerging standards, but even if they did, it would be self-defeating.
Of course it's a brilliant move: by controlling the stagnation of web browser tech, they can force developers to implement apps with their high-lock-in native app frameworks.
Google does the same thing with Android, but it is not nearly as blatant as Apple's flat-out blocking competitive browser implementations.
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