Apple doesn't cripple Safari. They just don't want to engage in a losing war of implementing half-baked underspecified standards that Chrome rushes against any objections.
Mozilla is increasingly on the Apple's side these days.
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.
Mozilla probably cares more about the Chrome/Blink hegemony than Safari. If not for iOS requirements inflating Safari market share the browser market would be at least 90% Chrome or a Chrome derivative.
Safari is still relevant due to iOS and iPad not macOS, and although I mostly use FF privatly, it is seldom a project acceptance requirement to also validate against it.
Ironically it were the IE haters that kind of helped this to happen.
That’s true to some extent, but there are also several things that the WebKit team has not implemented due to concerns centered around privacy or loss of user control, which are often shared by Mozilla.
Apple should probably do more to keep up with web standards but they absolutely should not accept everything that Google tries to push through with Chrome. At this point, with Firefox marketshare sitting in the low single digit percentages, Apple with WebKit is the only meaningful opposition to Google and it would be incredibly damaging to lose that.
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.
The situation with Safari is a worrying echo of Internet Explorer's heyday, with an important player dragging their heels when it comes to implementing standards.
I'll be curious as to how this plays out. Safari, even on mobile, isn't anywhere near as close to the sort of dominance IE had at its peak, so I'd hope pressure over standards will eventually force Apple to capitulate.
If Apple allowed other browsers beyond Safari, Google would stop supporting Safari and force people to download Chrome (or FF, their supported also-ran). We'd be back where a giant company 100% sets web standards.
Apple standing against that is important for the open web.
I think it's bizarre to conflate Apple's refusal to allow other webkits on iOS with the fact that Safari remains a viable alternative engine. They're far from heroes here. I think it's great they maintain a Chrome alternative kit that mostly works but let's not pretend they're saints or kid ourselves about the reasons for it. The only reason they disallow Chromium and Mozilla is they want their users locked into their environment and they want to leverage that substantial locked-in user base to dictate terms. It's only being one of the richest companies in history that gives them a seat at the table. If they're afraid of having to open the platform, that's because they're not keeping up.
It's not that they're one judgment away from that day. They know that. It's just that they want to get as much mileage as they can before they too abandon Safari and first allow, then switch to Chromium. That will happen in the next 5 years.
What might come of it all would be a reset where new branches form and new innovators get to introduce new proposals. Standards aren't a bad thing if they're open. If Safari dies then Google will be next in the line of fire for antitrust action anyway... things will fragment again. I'm personally pissed at the number of great technologies left as litter along the road, not least AS3, just to get to this shitty middle ground / cold browser war between two companies I hope die and one that won't help itself. Let the standards win and let's have a standard platform to innovate on top of.
You don't need to worry about Apple. You don't need to underestimate Apple's engineering team. It has the most well-funded and competitive engineering team on the planet and they can afford fighting for browser market share against Chrome. Safari was falling behind the competition for a while not because Chrome is a unbeatable monstrosity but Apple doesn't have to compete against it.
Apple can't really compete with Chrome. They have walled off one little walled garden (iOS) that Chrome isn't allowed to enter, but everywhere that Chrome is allowed, it is crushing Safari.
Yet I don't have a problem supporting Firefox, or honestly even desktop Safari for the most part. It is specifically iOS Safari that is being deliberately held back by Apple to protect their App Store monopoly.
Apple's ban of all browsers but Safari turned out to be the main barrier preventing progressive web apps from being viable, deepening the duopoly power of themselves and Google, because Apple refuses to implement basic browser standards that are necessary for PWAs.
And then when they do implement similar browser standards, they don't follow any web standards, they instead make their own proprietary bespoke web standard for Safari[1].
And they also did other fun things like wait until nearly 2021 to support WebP and let Safari be the the #1 source of one-click exploits on iOS.
It's weird to see Safari trotted out in defense of web standards of all things.
This shouldn't be a hot take, but moreso a sobering reality.
That said I'm glad more people are starting to acknowledge this and bring it up in these discussions. Firefox is not really a counter to Chrome's dominance and WebKit only really still is due to Apple being too big to push around.
If I'm stuck choosing between those two evils, I'd sooner take Apple... then try to figure out what a better solution is than just "make Apple change because I don't like Safari".
For years Google been stamping "standards" one after another even though other browser vendors were against many of them and they end up being Chrome-only.
No matter what Apple itself does Safari being major non-Chromium browser helps Firefox a lot just by existing and having huge marketshare.
Mozilla is increasingly on the Apple's side these days.
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