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So after the EU and the UK, Japan is now putting an end to Apple's iOS alternative browser engine ban too. Those are 3 large jurisdictions, I wonder if that's now a market big enough for Chrome and Firefox to invest into iOS versions of their browser that use Blink and Gecko under the hood. From what I heard this was one of the main reasons they haven't done it yet.
AFAIK the main reason is that only the EU+UK cared about these rules and their market share is too small for companies like Google or Mozilla to invest into. Because of the way the App Store works, browser engines segregated by region need to be two different apps. That means maintaining two source trees (EU+UK+JP vs worldwide) and two releases with two reviews. I expect niche browsers to have a go at porting to iOS…
to anyone who believes this is good news: enjoy your chrome monoculture in a few years when apple stops developing safari
If I was worried about a chrome monoculture I would want Safari to face competition. Apple has more then enough resources to invest in it.
(oh, and gecko is a joke, especially on mobile - no need to even bring it up)
BrowserEngineKit is a thin wrapper over XPC and iOS' extension system. The system would be so much better to develop for if XPC was an open API, and JIT for isolated sub-processes was permitted without Apple's blessing.
* Messengers could have separate sub-processes for preprocessing untrusted inputs -- iMessage already does this, third-party messengers are single-process and cannot.
* Applications could isolate unstable components for better user experience and crash recovery.
* Emulators, e.g. for retro systems, would benefit from speedy emulation.
* WASM would become useful in iOS.
* Browser could use XPC without special-purpose API wrappers such as BrowserEngineKit.
But alas, all of this would make it easier to load code that runs at native speed into an iOS app after a store review happened, and as we all know that'll be the end of the world.
to anyone who believes this is good news: enjoy your chrome monoculture in a few years when apple stops developing safari
Apple's Safari is unfortunately not keeping away the Web from being a Chrome monoculture.
Soon as this happens, Chrome is the web. The OWA knows this, it's their goal, it's an astroturf outfit.
to anyone who believes this is good news: enjoy your chrome monoculture in a few years when apple stops developing safari
to anyone who believes this is good news: enjoy your chrome monoculture in a few years when apple stops developing safari
You underestimate the power of the default setting
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If I was worried about a chrome monoculture I would want Safari to face competition. Apple has more then enough resources to invest in it.
if chrome ever ends up with a majority browser share on ios/ipados, apple won't have any way to keep up. at this point, google already almost 100% controls web standards, and they can push new features (no matter how privacy-hostile or overreaching) without even allowing apple the chance to keep up. at that point, the incentives for apple to keep developing safari would slowly dwindle away. (oh, and gecko is a joke,…
What is the issue with gecko? I am using it every day on my smartphone.