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Comment by Hamuko | Hacker News Reader

Maybe Apple should just make good browsers if they want to compete, not just restrict people from installing other browsers.

I want to get a native Firefox iOS version if it means that I can get uBlock Origin on it. If I could get it on Mobile Safari, then I'd have basically no reason to download Firefox. But no, they'd rather not have me use it on desktop or mobile, since no version of Safari supports proper adblocking.

It's also a good time to remind people that the reason why you can't get a proper version of Firefox from the walled garden is because Apple explicitly doesn't allow Firefox to release it there. The walled garden very much prevents you from leaving it, and unwanted developers like Mozilla from entering it.

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Firefox, IMO, is a good browser.

It has laughably low market share.

Browser market share has very little to do with the quality of the browser after a certain point. Safari is a pretty good browser, but it has a decent market share due to Apple's policies. Google Chrome is a pretty good browser, but it has crazy market share because everyone uses Google services for everything and Google pushes Chrome incredibly hard, to the point of intentionally breaking their websites and/or arbitrarily disabling certain features in non-Chrome browsers.

Browsers don't really compete on their merits.

FWIW, I'm also looking forward to having proper Firefox on my phone.

Browsers do compete on merit. I use both iOS and Android. My Pixel 6 has an inferior processor compared to my iPhone 14. Even a 5 year old iPhone would smoke my Pixel 6 in benchmarks. But my day to day use Chrome on Pixel 6 is faster for JS heavy apps, scrolling and faster network loading. On a flaky network for sites with http3 the difference is day night between Safari and Chrome android. Chrome’s heuristics based rendering is far more advanced than Safari. I would say Safari a very good JS engine but Chrome has found other ways to make pages much faster.

I'm happy that you have made what I'm sure is highly intelligent rational choices based solely on the technical merits of the browsers!

But there are significant factors outside of merit which influence popularity.

The thing is that Google has made Chrome really good that, there is less reasons for people to leave it for another browser. The only cons are privacy and fear of Chrome being the monopoly. I think other browsers should also compete on technical merits to stop haemorrhaging users.

Yes, Chrome is good.

But there are significant factors outside of merit which influence popularity.

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