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Comment by ladon86 | Hacker News Reader

I disagree with the Chrome comment, but how about decoupling Mobile Safari upgrades from OS upgrades?

It would be nice for all users to get access to these new APIs via a simple app update. This would allow developers to actually start using them within days/months rather than years.

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The built-in webkit is used extensively in apps. Tying it to the OS release makes testing and development a whole lot easier.

Is it very difficult to ship two versions of it, one "stable" in the OS for embedding, and another in an app?

That's what they originally did, and developers complained that in-app browser wasn't getting the same features as the main browser

Make it an option for developers. They should be able choose between an OS-provided "stable" webkit, or the Safari-provided "evergreen" webkit.

You could even make it so that the stable option is automatically used as a fallback if Safari isn't installed, if that ever becomes an option.

or just ship both at the same time so it's nice and simple

Then you have to have two copies of the program, on disk and, at least at times, in memory. And they behave differently, which might be confusing. And all kinds of handoff scenarios and edge cases get potentially-weird.

Meanwhile, how many users would sacrifice any amount of stability or even just disk space to get somewhat-quicker releases of browser features? I'm guessing the percentage may very reasonably be rounded to zero. It's not even close to being urgent enough to be worth any amount of risk or extra resource use, IMO, as someone who conceivably might care about it, and the vast majority of users are even less likely to give a damn than I am.

So: why? Maybe I'm unusual, but it's been a really long time since I saw a new browser feature and was like "holy shit, this is amazing and I don't know how I browsed the web without it!" I can wait a few months for a browser update, it's really not a big deal.

>how many users would sacrifice any amount of stability or even just disk space to get somewhat-quicker releases of browser features?

Android does this so I figure quite a lot of users are willing.

Not only that; Chrome, even when preloaded, is uninstallable like any other app. It's use is not mandatory.

>even when preloaded, is uninstallable like any other app

Most preloaded apps are installed on a read only partition. Since it is read only you can't uninstall it.

You can disable them. System then behaves as if it wasn't there, without having to write into read only partition.

Android's webview is updated separately from the OS. Is that a problem in practice?

Last time I developed mobile apps that depended on consistent webview functionality, Android went a step farther: Android vendors could replace the webview provider with something custom, and some did (Samsung, at the time, notably and impossible-to-ignore since they're huge). Not only might you not get a particular version of Chrome/Blink providing your webview—you might get any engine. There were basically no guarantees at all.

The result was that the only way to obtain non-crazymaking behavior and bug report loads on Android, if you needed a webview or even just a javascript engine, was to bundle your own thing. IIRC we ended up bundling a JS engine to get around the worst of it, for what we needed—might have been a full browser we bundled, can't recall for sure. We encountered multiple real problems in the wild trying to use the built-in engine(s). On iOS, we both couldn't bundle our own JS or browser engine (by policy) and... had no need to, since that never caused many problems.

It's one of of several reasons that, while Android developent was probably easier even then at a hobbiest level than iOS was, it was a much bigger pain in the ass to support & develop for at any kind of scale. But, that was a while ago—maybe it's gotten better.

> Tying it to the OS release makes testing and development a whole lot easier.

Right now I'm having to debug an obscure issue with Safari and Mojave.

In my experience, coupling the browser with the OS version has been nothing but problems.

Well joke's on you, on macOS Safari is decoupled from the operating system.

Nope it's not. You can't get v15 or v16 even in Mojave which is just a couple of years old.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safari_version_history

The fact Safari is no longer supported in Mojave doesn't mean you can't get Safari updates separate from OS updates.

You're arguing semantics.

The simple fact remains that Mojave doesn't have access to Safari updates.

I think you're arguing semantics. Apple's refusal to push app updates to much older OSes is unrelated to coupling Safari's release with macOS.

Safari team is constantly deploying new features and you can get advance access through Safari Technology Preview. These aren't part of the system but are standalone applications. The simple fact that you can download multiple versions of them on your Mac is the point. New versions don't ship when macOS updates ship. OP is right.

You just agreed with him by saying pushing updates to older OS versions.

If Safari was an app it wouldn’t matter what OS version you were on. Edge will run on windows 7, 8, 10, and 11 all from the same installer.

Exactly.

But it doesn’t run on Windows 95 so…

Apple is more aggressive about removing backwards compatibility, but that doesn’t mean it’s linked to the OS.

Safari uses frameworks from macOS and iOS which is the reason you can't get v16 in Catalina or before.

Whether this is "coupling to the OS" or "deprecation" or "aggressive removing backwards compatibility" is really a matter of semantics.

I will say this though, it seems Apple is changing their policies since Safari v16 is now available down to Big Sur.

Echoes of Microsoft's "Windows Internet Explorer"

How does macOS handle it then? It also provides a web view for apps to use, but Safari is updatable separately from the OS.

Is Safari actually updatable separately? I thought that Safari major versions are OS locked on Mac as well?

Though I think most "Web View" apps on Mac just use Electron (shipping Chromium in their bundles)

Yes, it's updatable. You install it as a separate component under "software update" in system preferences.

> Though I think most "Web View" apps on Mac just use Electron (shipping Chromium in their bundles)

I mean specifically WKWebView. The thing native (AppKit) apps use when they want to display web content.

Probably a lot more apps bundle their own shit on macOS, like on Android. Not permitted on iOS—and also less necessary than on other platforms, since the available webview provider is much more predictable and consistent.

[EDIT] But I'm a lot more familiar with mobile dev (Android and iOS both) than macOS development, so I could be wrong about that.

It will be there when DMA kicks in. The sole reason for Safari updates being coupled with OS upgrades is because "it's a system service, so we cannot allow other browser engines!".

For a developer, it exists already as a simple app update: https://developer.apple.com/safari/technology-preview/

Edit: Sorry, missed the part about the "mobile" safari. You're right, I don't think it's available for mobile.

It also wouldn't matter much to me if developers could upgrade. What I would want is for users of my app to be able to upgrade when prompted.

Fortunately the cutoff I've chosen for my current project isn't that bad - 15.4. It means some iPhone users won't be able to use it. Eventually I'll feel OK about requiring 16.4. But I second the request for being able to install a new version without upgrading the whole OS.

Why assume the Safari release cycle is hindered by iOS updates? iOS has an update every month or two. Chrome is every 6 weeks.

Old iOS devices don't get Safari updates for one.

Define old. The oldest iOS device receiving today's updates is the iPhone 8 released in 2017.

https://support.apple.com/en-ca/guide/iphone/iphe3fa5df43/io...

Firefox for Android still supports Android 5.0, which came out in 2014.

Many devices released prior to that were upgradeable to Android 5.0, including 2013's Samsung Galaxy S4.

Apple may have a good track record in terms of device upgrades, but a 10 year old Android device can still run the latest browser.

Apple's policies make that an impossibility for iOS.

Like the iPhone 5, I suppose?

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