My point is that Apple is competing with other browser implementations on MacOS, yet I’ve very rarely used anything other than Safari. Most exceptions have actually been because I need a plugin to debug the JS framework I’m using.
I read that both Google and Mozilla are developing non webkit iOS browsers in anticipation of some regulatory changes, and also that Apple has been staffing up the webkit/Safari team in response.
If WebKit's market share on iOS were to drop this low, web developers would likely test for WebKit a lot less, and tolerate WebKit's missing features a lot less, and Apple would soon face much worse web compatibility problems on both platforms. To prevent that they saw that they needed to seriously step up their investment in WebKit, and from what I've observed it seems like they did. Though perhaps not yet to the level they really need. Old habits die hard.
Of course they could just do what Microsoft did and give up. I'm glad they haven't.
[1] [Edit: this site was wrong, see below for better numbers]
https://radar.cloudflare.com/reports/browser-market-share-20...
Cloudflare puts Safari at a bit under 40% for MacOS, so it looks like I’m very much n=1 and not particularly representative. Marketshare for Safari on MacOS is close to 85%, so I can definitely see that changing if users could install real alternate browsers.
I’ve never actually developed against Chromium, and my position as a staunch Firefox user (and a Nightly user at that, for at least eleven of the last thirteen years) may be negatively affecting my judgement in this, but although what you say may be true from a features perspective, I don’t find that at all difficult to manage, and from a bugs perspective my impression is that Chromium has historically tended to be much buggier: that Firefox shipped better quality, later, while Chromium shipped lower quality, earlier. Though I do get the sense that this is less true than it used to be, and that Chromium is generally of higher quality for features of a certain age now than five years ago. And I reiterate, this is about the vibes I’ve got, as a Firefox user. I’ve tended to have to file more interesting or problematic bugs against Chromium than against Firefox.
https://i.imgur.com/lMHkiH8.jpg
"Reload Without Content Blockers" and "Reload Reducing Other Privacy Protections" might be what you need. It might be Safari's anti-tracking/cookie features that might be at fault or it might be that you have a content blocker that's causing an issue. If you're using iCloud Private Relay, it's possible that sites are filtering those IP addresses or there's a DNS issue and you can use "Reload and Show IP Address" to check that. For example, iCloud Private Relay often uses Cloudflare's DNS. archive.is doesn't work with Cloudflare's DNS (because Cloudflare won't leak your location to their DNS servers and so archive.is returns bad results to them).
It's usually smaller things like SVGs not working with CSS animations, or SVG filters causing weird edge case issues, but I'd really expect any major browser to fully support something like SVG and it's a little disappointing to find that the browser is the issue.
See this post for historical context: https://codepen.io/AmeliaBR/post/me-and-svg
https://mutraction.dev/sandbox/?view=normal
Reports say there is some iframe load failure showing in the network monitor. Every file being loaded is a normal static file served from a CDN. Also, sometimes, when it fails there's a rare chance that a reload will make it work?
In Apple's case, I think there's some utility behind their drive for WebGPU: it's basically Apple's Metal graphics API. If WebGPU takes off, it'll mean a lot of developers getting familiar with something very similar to Apple's Metal API. Apple seems to be pursuing a long-term strategy of bringing more games to their platform. From the Game Porting Toolkit to ray tracing in their processors to Apple Vision to simply giving gaming a lot more attention in their keynotes.
And Apple might be well positioned to capitalize on gaming. A $130 Apple TV has a lot more CPU and graphics power than a Nintendo Switch. The same applies to the iPhones people are carrying around. It might not compete with giant consoles from Microsoft and Sony, but Apple has been showing that it can offer impressive gaming performance.
Fast forward to 2026: does a next-gen Apple TV have hardware ray tracing? Apple put a 2021 A15 processor in the 2022 Apple TV. It seems reasonable that they could put something better than a 2023 A17 Pro in a 2026 Apple TV (a 3 year old processor at that point). Sure, Microsoft and Sony will have next-gen consoles, but at what point are graphics facing diminishing returns? Nintendo has the most popular console even though it's older and was low-powered to begin with. For PC games, one must assume that some people are running graphics cards that are older.
I'm not saying this will happen. Companies can be fickle. However, Apple has show a reasonably consistent (if slow) move toward games over the past year or two. They're making the investments now and WebGPU's Metal-like API could be part of that strategy.
Heck, maybe WebGPU is even a strategy to avoid lawsuits from companies like Epic and anti-trust action from regulators. If you don't like the App Store rules, just use WebGPU. If games with native-level graphics can be distributed via the web, then there isn't nearly as much for regulators to go after the App Store.
WebGPU feels like an outlier in that respect but then it is intended as a “better” WebGL so it makes sense that if you already have WebGL you might as well have WebGPU. It’s a lot closer to Apple’s Metal API than WebGL is so they have an interest in people switching.
This came out in the Epic Trial. Those people are much less likely to put a credit card on any random site.
Candy Crush games could already be done on the web on mobile - it wouldn’t be nearly as monetizable
Both companies are working very hard to remove this image though for obvious political reasons.
Apple Pay is only in certain counties, with supported banks/cards. iTunes/App Store supports a plethora of payment options across the world, as well as Apple Pay.
There is literally, for now, zero risk of that. companies will have devs meet the customers where they are at. Of the largest mobile market share platform in the USA doesn’t support PWA or only supports it without features the company requires, said company will build an iOS app. As has been the case.
Application developers will not go anywhere, for many reasons:
- iOS is where the money's at
- PWAs are not "apps". They are web apps with all the limitations it implies. You want complex functionality, rich controls, fluid animations and a billion other things? You go for native apps.
iOS 16.4 added new wake lock api but it does not work in PWA. Still not fixed in iOS 17.2
iOS 17 removed dark/light mode switching in PWA. Still broken in iOS 17.2
My main concern is monetization.
With a PWA the traditional monetization method of selling apps doesn’t work. So, your options will be a subscription or ads.
But, a subscription is too much hustle for small utilities and casual games. And I love apps like Procreate that are paid, without subscription and ad-free.
We're basically there already unfortunately, even for store-distributed software. Apps like Procreate and Pixelmator are a rarity these days.
It definitely doesn't help that the App Store makes charging for new major versions awkward, and that upgrade discounts are basically impossible, but I suspect the main reason is that most developers just make more money from subs than purchases.
As a consumer though, it sucks. Subscriptions are fine if your product has an ongoing cost to you as the developer, for example server or API fees. And I really don't mind JetBrains-style subs, where you can cancel any time and you retain access to the last version you paid for, for as long as it still works on your machine. But, while I appreciate the need for ongoing revenue to continue paying salaries, I am not interested in renting software in perpetuity—that's not a fair deal. Especially when it robs me of the ability to stick with an older version if I prefer it.
How so? Offer to install the pwa and unlock functionality only after the user has paid. How is that different from a paid "app"?
Everything is doable, and I recognize that my comment of “doesn’t work” was exaggerated.
But I don’t think small apps will do all that work when it is easier to monetize with ads. A more likely scenario for ad-free utilities will be having umbrella subscriptions a la Netflix (like Apple Arcade).
I’m a web dev, too, and I read many enthusiastic articles about PWAs as the future. (Mostly from Google evangelism, for a good business reason). But, the “old school” guy in me that grown-up loading games in diskettes feels that something is lost and more invasive in that future. (I’m not comparing it with the current App Store experience but with the experience of macOS/Windows/Linux, where you can still manually install app binaries).
And I haven’t heard anyone say “you know I have a really great experience with web apps. I wish all of my apps were web apps on mobile and Electron on my computer”
I think a part of it is an "app craze", i.e. organizations want "apps" just because "an app" is something fancier and totally different than "just a website". I have done an "app" like this (implemented as an optionally installable website).
Also many people, including many developers, also vastly underestimate what can be done with contemporary browsers, so they assume that "a native app" is needed if you e.g. want to take a picture or read a file.
Like can PWAs run in background or respond to location changes, etc
Not really, no
> There is no real reason to have a native app.
Except, you know, for all the reasons where anything web-based sucks: resources needed to run, fast reaction times, performant animations, rich complex controls etc.
The web, unfortunately, made everyone accept the most limited and under-developed version of what things could be.
But you have to apply them to DOM. Where every single little thing results in a re-layout and repaint. There are reasons why you still can't animate height: auto.
The built-in controls also don't help. Can't find it now, but details set display:none or visibility:none on closed contents, and that can't be animated.
And there are a million such things.
The development experience for a PWA could be a dream and it won’t matter if users don’t like them.
User acceptance is all that matters.
On the PWA side, best guess is anti-competition scrutiny.
How could the performance of a web app ever be faster than a native app? That’s impossible.
I'm really doubtful Apple sees Safari as competition for their app store distribution. I don't think that matches reality of how most consumers use mobile devices and spend money.
I don’t think they see Safari as competing with the App Store. Even with the recent PWA additions it doesn’t seem to matter.
At this point I’d say Safari is 100% a hedge against being fully dependent on Google/Chrome. It started to not be dependent on MS/IE and improve what MS didn’t care a ton about.
Apple HATES being fully dependent on others for very important stuff. They’ve been burned too many times.
Safari is great. I love it. But there’s no way it is ever going away even if they are forced to preload 18 different app stores and 4 browsers on every phone by the different governments of the world.
It’s Apple keeping control of Apple’s destiny.