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Comment by nicce | Hacker News Reader

> Safari is the new IE, there is a difference between a monopoly while still being able to use a competing product (like chrome in other platfroms), and forcing Safari(WebKit) while hindering the web because of Apples interests.(2-3)

Ehm. Chrome is the new IE. Apple is using anti-competitive methods but its far far away from market domination.

Microsoft is doing even more, by pushing so much Edge-only stuff.

On iOS Apple forces the Webkit rendering, but for normal user it does not even matter much. They can download Chrome and get the UI they want.

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> Apple is using anti-competitive methods but its far far away from market domination.

Apple Safari has, literally, 100% marketshare across the entire iPhone market. Its App Store also has 100% marketshare and enforces the Safari marketshare.

I have an iPhone 13 Pro Max. I love the hardware, but I'd love to install other browsers; why can't I? I'd also love to run real PWA's or run WebRTC without major issues. Why shouldn't I be able to do these things?

Apple enforces its own browser, which it carefully and deliberately hamstrings, in order to force web apps to not bypass the App Store, so Safari also enforces the App Store marketshare.

They're tightly tied together (so tight that the Windows-IE tying isn't even in the same galaxy) in order to enforce the other's marketshare. At least Microsoft allowed third party browsers and installing apps from other locations. This is tying on a completely different level.

> Apple Safari has, literally, 100% marketshare across the entire iPhone market. Its App Store also has 100% marketshare and enforces the Safari marketshare.

And that’s the big difference between Safari dominance and IE at the time. Safari is only on iOS/iPadOS dominant not in the entire market like IE was

There was no mobile at the time.

It’s not about mobile or desktop, it’s about marketshare. So just all devices.

IE had a nearly 100 % percent marketshare and Safari is far away from 100 % marketshare.

That's what countered the claim that Windows+IE were 'one product' as opposed to separate, right?

Outside of legal-land this seems like a BS argument, and even more so now. But legal-land is what matter first I suppose.

Do you understand that you are spouting conspiracy theory brain poison?

Feel free to debate the end result. If you presume motive, you can be proven wrong.

> Do you understand that you are spouting conspiracy theory brain poison?

Why don't you actually refute the points they made instead? If it's so obviously "conspiracy theory brain poison"

Webkit quite literally has 100% market-share on the iOS platform, as no other browser engine is even allowed. Same goes for the App Store, 100% market-share.

Your "marketshare" definition is bogus. I could claim that Firefox has 100% marketshare of PlayStation consoles.

There's no such market as devices of a single manufacturer.

...which is equally ridiculous. If Sony is actively preventing Playstation owners from installing other browsers with their control over app distribution, then that too should be considered malicious and just further indicates how necessary sweeping legislation like this is.

That's exactly why markets aren't defined in that way. See judge's notes from Epic v Apple trial.

If you buy a computer from ASUS, you can download whatever browser you want. If you buy a cellphone from a Android-manufacturer, you can download whatever browser you want.

But if you buy an iPhone, you can only download browsers that are using Apples own browser.

Just because smartphones have traditionally been locked down, doesn't mean that it should be like that.

PCs were also pretty locked down the beginning. And Windows have tried a couple of times to move in that direction. But fortunately, we have a relatively open ecosystem when it comes to devices we use for "producing" things on. It's just missing that the devices we "consume" on works similarly.

PCs weren't made "open" by the government regulations. Any company if it wishes so could start selling a locked down Windows machine with no ability to replace the browser. Nobody will call this company "a monopoly" for that fact alone.

For all your criticisms against Safari you still bought the most expensive phone on their lineup. So I guess they got so many other things right so you apparently still believe they ship the best phone out there.

I used to wish for Firefox on my iPhone too. But after a while I got skeptical this would benefit me or other users. Apple was the one to make the hard decision to kill Flash, and Firefox is known to have done their missteps too. So what if they are right in their decision and Safari does have a role in the reason you and so many others consider the iPhone the best phone to buy?

Well, I actually don't consider it the best phone to buy; I consider it among the best hardware. I think a Google Pixel is a much nicer and more comfortable phone, although the iPhone has a far better screen and is a lot prettier, although its shape is uncomfortable to hold, even with a nice Otterbox.

I'm running GrapheneOS on the Pixel. It is perhaps ironic that the best phone to de-Google is actually a Google, and that Google both allows this and explicitly supports it, but it's not possible to de-Apple any iPhone.

Yours is not the only comment I see here that eventually comes down to the OS discussion.

We are supposedly talking about Safari, yet Safari is tied to iOS not to the hardware. People can install Brave or Firefox on Android. But they are not ever satisfied. I don't have the numbers, but I suspect the sum of GrapheneOS and other de-Googled Android distributions might be bigger than the sum of Firefox and Brave on regular Android.

In the end, maybe Apple should just allow you to download some software that voids your warranty and roots the iPhone, while removing iOS. People can then reverse engineer and do whatever they want. But Apple's drivers and some of the chips are proprietary, and that I don't see a way people would convince regulators to enforce them to open-source those.

IEs biggest problem isn't market domination, its hindering the entire web, and pushing proprietary stuff.

Safari is one of the worst browsers in terms of compatibility, like PWAs and notifications, they are unsupported on purpose to push developer to develop apps and give apple a cut. And when they do adopt new technologies, they are often super late like webp.

Please die WebKit.

Safari supports everything in PWA (which is a non-existent thing, but a dozen standards in a trenchcoat) except notifications.

By "compatibility" you mean "support all of the Chrome's no n-standards it pushes at breaking speed"?

> except notifications.

Which is THE single selling points that brings everyone to make 2 native apps instead of one URL. It hs been available on Android for a decade, and is still undetermined when it will actually land in iOS.

It won't, they want to push you to make an app no matter what.

I bet

Actually Web Push is coming in iOS 16.

It's not in the release...

Well iOS 16 is still in developer preview and it won't be launched for another 3 months almost, so it might not be in the currently released versions. But here: https://www.macrumors.com/2022/06/06/ios-16-support-web-push...

These features were actually recently added. See https://www.apple.com/ios/ios-16-preview/features/

Web push notifications

Adds support for opt‑in notifications on iOS. Coming in 2023.

Hmm, preparing for market changes ?

It might not matter to users in the sense that they ask themselves what rendering engine Chrome on iOS is using under the hood, but the effects do matter. I get a lot of support requests saying "Your [web] app is broken on my iPhone!", "Right, Safari doesn't support feature XYZ", "I'm not using Safari, I'm using Chrome", "..."

How does the developer story get better if you're required to support many web rendering engines on iOS instead of one? Or is the endgame that you'd just point people to Chrome/Blink and extend the web monoculture to Apple devices too?

The endgame is that Apple is forced to actually make a working browser, rather than intentionally starve it of resources to benefit the App Store. Everyone wins.

That seems to be a communication problem. Instead of saying "Right, Safari doesn't support feature XYZ", say "Right, iOS doesn't support feature XYZ".

It's also technically more correct, the best kind.

Just wait until Google has Chrome running natively on iOS and introduces nonstandard behaviors to break Safari rendering intentionally.

Then at least you’ll be able to tell all your customers that you recommend switching to Chrome for all browsing. What a great victory for browser diversity and the open web!

Both Safari and Chrome are the new IE's. Regulation should force folks to download a browser or have competing browser (with relevant competing engines) already pre-installed on both iOS and Android.

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