Apple's intentional crippling of Mobile Safari • Hacker News Board

Re: Apple's intentional crippling of Mobile Safari

#141

Post by nerdjon » Sun, Mar 22, 2026, 5:24 PM UTC

leptons wrote: post #129

nerdjon wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, but putting aside that limitation on iOS for a moment. The very important part about this is whether or not these features are actually considered a web standard or is it Google pushing their own agenda. Which is where whether or not any non chromium browser supports any of these on any platform. Which many of these features they don't. That completely changes the conversation here, from Apple purposefully igno…

>The very important part about this is whether or not these features are actually considered a web standard or is it Google pushing their own agenda. Apple is on the W3C board that gets to decide what APIs become standards, so Apple is definitely pushing their own agenda on the W3C. So you can't really complain that Google is pushing their own agenda with these APIs when Apple is the one refusing to make them a stand…

Google is also involved in W3C and do I really need to bring up the topics API as Google attempting to use their position to push their agenda as well?

We really need to stop putting google on a pedestal as if they are truelly on the side of an open web, like every company they are looking out for their own interests. Which is fine, they are allowed to do this.

That doesn't change that many of these are in fact not a standard according to W3C and should not be implemented in any browser until it is. A discussion about why it may not be standard is worth it, but that is also a very important distinction that is not made on this page. Right now it is framing it as google supports a standard that the other's (including Firefox) do not.

Just because Google does something it doesn't mean the rest of the industry should follow. If we did that in IE days we would still have ActiveX

Re: Apple's intentional crippling of Mobile Safari

#142

Post by kevin061 » Sun, Mar 22, 2026, 5:26 PM UTC

Yeah, I don't want background sync. I mean, iOS is built upon the idea that any task in the background might be killed at any time and without warning by the OS. This is so the OS is able to manage battery and memory effective.

You can of course dislike this, but not even native apps allow background sync anyway, so of course web apps would not be allowed to do this either.

Re: Apple's intentional crippling of Mobile Safari

#143

Post by freedomben » Sun, Mar 22, 2026, 5:30 PM UTC

DrewADesign wrote: post #87

nerdjon wrote: post #53

I am curious why Safari in particular is getting a lot of the hate here when firefox supports even less of the features which leads me to believe that the reason many of these features have not been accepted is because they have not been accepted by the larger ecosystem and is just google pushing their own things as standard (Feels like IE days in many ways). That being said, I am not sure why I would actually want m…

I think anything that mentions Apple in a negative light gets reflexive upvotes. I use both Apple and Android ecosystems, so I’ll occasionally participate in normal user conversations about features, how-tos, etc. Posting anything about the Android ecosystem, unless I was talking about Samsung features I disliked using, is no more or less likely to get down/upvoted than anything else I post about any other technology…

I don't think you're wrong, but what's especially interesting about this is that up until just a few years ago, it was completely the opposite. Giving any criticism of Apple would get so many rapid/reflexive downvotes that it often killed the comment before many people even got a change to see it. I experienced it myself a number of times. Having been reading HN now for ~13 years (I lurked for years before starting to participate), that's been my number one dislike about HN is the complete inability to have objective discussions about Apple. At one point I even wrote a quick browser extension to filter out posts that had Apple in the title because it was so nauseating. Ideally the pendulum wouldn't swing, but instead would just settle in the middle, but alas that just isn't human nature.

Re: Apple's intentional crippling of Mobile Safari

#144

Post by rjrjrjrj » Sun, Mar 22, 2026, 5:34 PM UTC

leptons wrote: post #119

JimDabell wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here’s what Mozilla has to say about Web NFC, for example: > We believe Web NFC poses risks to users security and privacy because of the wide range of functionality of the existing NFC devices on which it would be supported, because there is no system for ensuring that private information is not accidentally exposed other than relying on user consent, and because of the difficulty of meaningfully asking the user for…

>The fact is that Google wrote these specifications, couldn’t convince any other rendering engine to implement them, and somehow it’s Apple’s fault the rest of the world rejected their idea. Apple is on the W3C board that gets to decide which APIs become standards. They are preventing these APIs from becoming standards. They have an interest to forbid Web Bluetooth and NFC from becoming standards, because they profit…

Opera, Edge, Samsung and I suspect "others" use the Chromium rendering engine.

Re: Apple's intentional crippling of Mobile Safari

#145

Post by archerx » Sun, Mar 22, 2026, 5:34 PM UTC

mort96 wrote: post #121

leptons wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Even so, conflating "Safari is holding the web platform back by not implementing standardized web features" with "Safari is holding the Google platform back by not implementing non-standard Google features" is kind of disingenuous. You missed the point completely. Apple >forbids any browser engine on iOS other than their own Safari. So you can't just install Chrome on iOS, because when you do you get Safari instead.…

Mobile safari is arguably the only thing standing between Google and total browser dominance. It's the reason why Google "only" has roughly 75% of the mobile browser market even though it has a 90% market share in desktop. I'm principally against the idea that Apple can prevent users from installing the software they want on their own devices, but we can't deny that it's better for the health of the web. Anyway, if y…

You clearly haven’t tried to design anything complicated that has to run on safari iOS. Safari iOS is a massive piece of shit. I’ve been working on a web game for a while now using canvas and most of my pain comes from making it compatible with safari. So much stuff is broken on safari so you have to find work arounds. Like a simple but annoying one, CSS filters don’t work on canvas so you have to write all those filters your self and apply them by using imgData.

Also the constant crashing when using canvas and the web audio api, it’s a disaster to be honest and it feels intentional, like they want me to write an app instead so they can rent seek.

Re: Apple's intentional crippling of Mobile Safari

#146

Post by archerx » Sun, Mar 22, 2026, 5:35 PM UTC

mvanbaak wrote: post #118

nerdjon wrote: post #53

I am curious why Safari in particular is getting a lot of the hate here when firefox supports even less of the features which leads me to believe that the reason many of these features have not been accepted is because they have not been accepted by the larger ecosystem and is just google pushing their own things as standard (Feels like IE days in many ways). That being said, I am not sure why I would actually want m…

> I am curious why Safari in particular is getting a lot of the hate here Here is HN, where apple is the bad boy in town.

Or maybe they deserve it?

Re: Apple's intentional crippling of Mobile Safari

#147

Post by mort96 » Sun, Mar 22, 2026, 5:40 PM UTC

archerx wrote: post #145

mort96 wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mobile safari is arguably the only thing standing between Google and total browser dominance. It's the reason why Google "only" has roughly 75% of the mobile browser market even though it has a 90% market share in desktop. I'm principally against the idea that Apple can prevent users from installing the software they want on their own devices, but we can't deny that it's better for the health of the web. Anyway, if y…

You clearly haven’t tried to design anything complicated that has to run on safari iOS. Safari iOS is a massive piece of shit. I’ve been working on a web game for a while now using canvas and most of my pain comes from making it compatible with safari. So much stuff is broken on safari so you have to find work arounds. Like a simple but annoying one, CSS filters don’t work on canvas so you have to write all those fil…

The argument which has been provided so far about why Safari is crippled is that it does not implement non-standard Chromium-only features. There are other problems with Safari, but they are not found in the page we are discussing.

Re: Apple's intentional crippling of Mobile Safari

#148

Post by rejhgadellaa » Sun, Mar 22, 2026, 5:40 PM UTC

nerdjon wrote: post #141

leptons wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The very important part about this is whether or not these features are actually considered a web standard or is it Google pushing their own agenda. Apple is on the W3C board that gets to decide what APIs become standards, so Apple is definitely pushing their own agenda on the W3C. So you can't really complain that Google is pushing their own agenda with these APIs when Apple is the one refusing to make them a stand…

Google is also involved in W3C and do I really need to bring up the topics API as Google attempting to use their position to push their agenda as well? We really need to stop putting google on a pedestal as if they are truelly on the side of an open web, like every company they are looking out for their own interests. Which is fine, they are allowed to do this. That doesn't change that many of these are in fact not a…

> many of these are in fact not a standard according to W3C and should not be implemented in any browser until it is.

That's not exactly how standards work. A browser (or anyone) comes up with a spec, a browser can ship it (to test the waters in an origin-trial, to gain traction if they believe in it), and the standard (often) comes after the fact:

"Working Groups don't gate what browsers ship, nor do they define what's useful or worthy. [...] In practice, they are thoughtful historians of recent design expeditions, critiquing, tweaking, then spreading the good news of proposals that already work through Web Standards ratified years after features first ship, serving to licence designs liberally to increase their spread."

https://infrequently.org/2025/09/standards-and-the-fall-of-i...

Re: Apple's intentional crippling of Mobile Safari

#149

Post by tshaddox » Sun, Mar 22, 2026, 5:41 PM UTC

freedomben wrote: post #143

DrewADesign wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think anything that mentions Apple in a negative light gets reflexive upvotes. I use both Apple and Android ecosystems, so I’ll occasionally participate in normal user conversations about features, how-tos, etc. Posting anything about the Android ecosystem, unless I was talking about Samsung features I disliked using, is no more or less likely to get down/upvoted than anything else I post about any other technology…

I don't think you're wrong, but what's especially interesting about this is that up until just a few years ago, it was completely the opposite. Giving any criticism of Apple would get so many rapid/reflexive downvotes that it often killed the comment before many people even got a change to see it. I experienced it myself a number of times. Having been reading HN now for ~13 years (I lurked for years before starting t…

> Giving any criticism of Apple would get so many rapid/reflexive downvotes that it often killed the comment before many people even got a change to see it. I experienced it myself a number of times.

I’ve never found myself in any online community that meets that description. Certainly not HN, and HN hardly seems big enough to have Apple fanboy niches that you could accidentally find yourself in.

In the heyday of Steve Jobs’ Apple there was certainly a lot of praise here, but also constant prominent complaints about Apple being overpriced, or not open enough, or too litigious, or having too many fanboys.

I’ve seen way more complaints about Apple fanboyism than actual fanboyism. I’m genuinely curious how you could find yourself in one of those communities by accident.

Re: Apple's intentional crippling of Mobile Safari

#150

Post by rejhgadellaa » Sun, Mar 22, 2026, 5:43 PM UTC

troupo wrote: post #102

rejhgadellaa wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But on macOS you can switch to a browser that can do all these things. A company could ask you to use a different browser (not ideal, but if the web app requires a specific API, it's not an unreasonable). Safari is in a very special position because it controls what the web can do on iOS (all browsers on iOS have to use Apple's WebKit engine, they can't add web features). Apple is not just gatekeeping native (through…

> the open webm Sonehow you seem to confuse open web with Chrome-only non-standard APIs

No, because any browser can decide to ship a feature that it thinks is worthwhile. Users can decide which browser they trust to be their User Agent. The distribution model is open. You type a URL, you click a link. No single company in control.