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Comment by sokoloff | Hacker News Reader

If you asked me (in the software field, but never working at Apple), I’d 100% agree that Safari on iOS and macOS are two different products.

I would not make the same conclusion about iOS and iPadOS versions.

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I'd go further and say that iOS safari and Webview iOS Safari are different browsers. They have fundamentally different features, standards support, etc. Unfortunately the latter is arguably one of the most popular browsers in the US, because every app doesn't want you to leave, no matter where you're going.

They can't let you leave or they wouldn't be able to see where you're going.

And then Apple wouldn't be able to make 30% off you where you're going which is why the app store reviewers encourage devs to use in app browser instead of letting it just load Safari which is a far better experience

Having just hit a super weird bug at work concerning browser focus which only appears on Mac Safari and iOS Safari I'm inclined to disagree -- they're different flavours of the same offering imo.

Nobody is disputing that Safari for iOS and Safari for macOS both use the same open source WebKit rendering engine, so you'd expect many bugs to be common among them. I'm sure many Chrome bugs are shared with Edge and Brave, too.

Chromium and Chrome too, and Chrome Canary. They are all Chrome tho.

Why do you say iOS and macOS are different?

My experience as a daily user of both is that a touch-driven browser running on a battery and CPU limited device with a small screen where that engine is the only approved engine in the platform feels substantially different as a product than a mouse-driven one on a far less constrained system and where other browser engines are explicitly permitted.

I can’t say the extent to which there’s source-level sharing, but from a product angle, I think of them as a different product, same as I think of Outlook Web Access/O365 as different from the fat-client Outlook mail client or Word being a different product from Excel even though they’re commonly sold in a bundle.

(I’m not claiming to be definitively correct here, just admitting that I agree in one key area with Apple’s argument.)

Personally, it comes down to the input method. The entire UI is different because the input method demands it. The version of Safari on Vision Pro will be different too. But the iPhone and iPad versions are practically the same.

Of course whether macOS and iOS Safari are different enough to qualify as separate things depends entirely on context. I don't know the context here, but it seems unlikely that Apple's argument makes sense.

Other than sharing a rendering engine (which itself behaves very differently based on the target OS) they're clearly very different pieces of software.

Arguably Chrome and Edge are significantly more similar.

For all intents and purposes these browsers are not competing for market share amongst themselves.

Two questions:

1. Does Chrome on iOS represent valid competition for Safari? Why/why not?

2. Does Edge on Windows represent valid competition for Chrome? Why/why not?

1.Would you care to reply first? How does a company compete with itself?

2.Do you think it's honest to compare two browsers from different companies from two versions of a browser of the same company?

1. I never said they do. It's possible in theory, it depends on context. There's no simple absolute answer to this hypothetical.

2. I never proposed such a comparison. It could be honest or not honest depending on context. There's no simple absolute answer to this hypothetical.

Now that I've answered your questions, I'm curious to hear your answers to the questions I asked of aaomidi. Fortunately my questions weren't abstract or hypothetical so should be a lot easier to answer.

1. Yes, and Firefox

2. Yes, Microsoft has enough weight to counterbalance Google if they want. Doesn't mean it will be to favor the consumers as they all collude and avoid conflict.

I disagree for #1, since the browsers on iOS and iPadOS are a skin for Safari.

Those browsers import the WebKit web view for rendering pages, not “Safari.” They are completely independent web browsers in every respect other than rendering engine. They manage their own cookies, bookmarks, history, UX, cloud MMO sync, etc.

If your concern is an entity having control of web standards, then you will agree that web browsers based on Blink or Chromium don’t represent competition for Google Chrome.

Personally, my concern is maximising rendering engine diversity, and iOS represents the last stand against Chrome’s total dominance. If you don’t like WebKit, don’t buy an iPhone. And to anyone who does web development, stop bitching and moaning that you have to support another web browser. The web is supposed to be an open platform, not the Google Chrome platform.

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