>> "Autoplaying video and other similar features are just plain evil."

I'm not even asking for that. My app is a music player in the vein of Pandora. iOS Safari doesn't let me play the next song if I'm not in the fore. Apple has acknowledged this is an issue; maybe they will fix it in a future version.

iOS Safari: As someone who has supported a web app (now PWA) for 7 years on iOS Safari, I say with knowledge and experience that yes, iOS Safari is the modern IE6. I say that because it is the slowest to adopt standard web features, and the reason for doing so is a business one. Both reflect 1990s IE and Microsoft.

They don't even allow competing browser engines. Chrome, Firefox etc on iOS are just wrappers around Safari.

The size of their user base demands that we don't ignore Safari when developing sites, but they simultaneously refuse to support modern standards. They are literally holding back the web.

IE6 remained a thorn in the side of the web development community long after viable alternatives appeared.

I would love to see someone push for iOS to allow any browser/renderer to run.

IE gave us wonderful features (XMLHTTPRequest) but as soon as MSFT found they had a monopoly, development stalled and the world got stuck with IE6, which lacked even basic features like PNG image alpha transparency.

When/if a court orders Apple to allow alternative web engines on iOS, and they start losing market share to Firefox, Chrome or Edge because they are including features that Safari does not, Apple will finally put some effort into Safari.

They certainly have the money to keep pace with Chrome, and I certainly don't want to put up banners saying "works best in [anything but Safari]", which has been the case for many years now.

I use Firefox on my non-work machines ... in an ideal world, enough people would do that to prevent the "best in Internet Explorer" web of the dark ages, but I'll take getting forced to use Webkit on my phone over that, even if I'd prefer a "true" Firefox.

I agree with you on your arguments about Chrome. I don't support Chrome specific features. They even have broken things in the past.

My perspective on this is that iOS locks out non-Safari browsers, so users are forced to use it and as a developer I'm forced to make workarounds for it.

With IE11 I don't have this problem anymore. We're at a stage now where I can convince my clients of "This is a browser, which is losing official support soon. I can make this feature work/look better on IE11 if you really want, which costs me this much time". IE is being faded out just by the fact that more new stuff looks worse and works worse.

With Safari this is not the case. There is no "Oh this website works better with Firefox, you should install it" which is likely the biggest factor for browser adoption and my gut feeling says that Apple knows and uses this.

This particular statement seems questionable:

> My main point is that Safari is not flouting or disregarding established W3C/WHATWG web standards but, rather, being very careful about how it implements those standards which takes time.

In some cases their actions simply don't make sense, except if you look at it from a perspective of protecting their iOS App platform. For example breaking localStorage in the name of privacy (which is ridiculously paradox) and not supporting obvious, simple UX improvements like scroll-anchoring.

Safari is in some cases stricter/more standards compliant than Firefox and especially Chrome. But in some cases like above the feature intersection of Firefox and Chrome is the one that makes the most sense for the web.

My point was that contrary to Mozilla, they do have an agenda regarding how much Web Safari should support on iOS.

Right now web developers are forced to support webkit because they can't tell iOS users to install Chrome for better experience.

If they could, they would drop webkit and provide blink-only experience. Many websites do that to Firefox nowadays.

And if webkit can't render website, Apple would replace it with blink. So Safari would become another Chromium reskin and Web would finally settle on a single engine.

It’s just not on the parts that you and other developers want it to be on. It’s definitely on the parts that I (as a user) want it to be on (security, privacy, and battery life in roughly that order).

It is unlikely that a court will be able to force Apple to expose OS APIs that would allow for the insecurity of WebUSB or WebMIDI on iOS, even if they do force other engines. And that’s a good thing.

As a web developer iOS is the most infuriating platform at the moment for me. There are some random nonstandard features. Just this last month I had an issue with ios "low power mode" causing webkit to throttle all browser animation frame requests by half, with no way to override or even check if it is on. There are open complaints and issues about this going back years but nobody can change it without Apple's blessing, which they don't give, so it affects every browser on iOS with no recourse.

I have had tons of iphone browser specific issues and I am pretty sure their platform monopoly is a big part of why they go ages without being addressed. If there was real competition on the ios browser market they might push each other to do better by comparison.

Which is to say, Safari (and the requirement of iOS users using it) is the last thing holding back Google from complete control of the web at this point.

Yes an independent small-time developer cannot create a browser engine from scratch today, but Apple does not fall into that category. Their choices with Safari are not born out of lack of resources or expertise but deliberate planning.

Yes large companies have seized control over the web from W3C. Apple is one of those large companies. They refuse to follow standards that they themselves dictate for others.

Yes pushing more features to the web is going to result in loss of privacy. But Apple doesn't want vanilla websites, they want developers to make iOS apps (gated behind their store) which are worse in every way.

Plus it doesn't address the biggest argument, which is that even if you say Apple can do whatever it wants with Safari, what is their rationale for blocking other browsers on iOS? It sure isn't because Apple loves the open web.

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.

> but safari is not "another" piece of the iOS experience to interface with the internet. it is the primary & sole means to interface with the net on iOS & apple abuses their monopoly to insure it is the one and onlywans to interface with the web. no other browser engines may run, no one else is permitted to travel the reaches of the internet aside from safari.

As said below on the same message, WebKit usage is enforced by Apple's ToS. Also, Apple doesn't have any monopoly, they are the small slice of the duopoly (Google and Apple). And yes, a duopoly is also a bad thing. Maybe Epic's lawsuit will bring down the Apple Store strict policies and Blink and Gecko will be finally ported to iOS.

> If safari weren't such a viciously forcibly entrenched force for whatever market share apple has, it wouldn't be such an offensive barge of obsolescence.

Most of Safari's unimplemented features are drafts pushed by the huge Google Chrome development team at light-speed and only Firefox tries to keep up with that. Microsoft threw the towel and forked Edgium, Opera stopped Presto and also forked, etc.

> what undefended pathetic psuedo-apologia. how this is bliss & good for the user, being locked in to the app store & commercial offerings, is undefined & imo inexplicable. does it just feel good, having a non-threatening experience, knowing your web surfing is ridiculously obsolete, low on features, incompetent, buggy, and slow? it makes you happy to know you have no choice, that there's no way you could use better internet surfing tech even if you wanted to? how is this bliss?

Most users don't care about this, only the ones which care a bit about their own privacy, spend some time comparing products, etc. Maybe people should be educated about this kind of stuff at schools. And as a user, Safari is fast, the iPad doesn't get hot and the battery lasts quite a lot while browsing. Most websites redirect you to their app (Reddit's ugly approach).

> weird weird appeal: tech is only ever any good when it's proprietary & unavailable on the net (because of the crushing grip of the obsolete buggy browser your os enforces as a lower than low standard upon us all).

That's Apple appeal since they own the walled garden. Since most people couldn't care less about proprietary vs open source licensing they do whatever they please.

It doesn't matter that iOS isn't dominant to the extent that Windows/IE was. The fact that roughly half of users are stuck using a buggy and outdated browser is enough to prevent the web platform from being useful to people like the original commenter.