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

Re: Apple's intentional crippling of Mobile Safari

#281

Post by fennecfoxy » Mon, Mar 23, 2026, 10:52 AM UTC

troupo wrote: post #191

shalanah wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi! Creator here (of iOS404) - you can filter level of standard and compare to FF Android (or compare to Safari Desktop, or any mix) instead if you'd like.

It's called iOS 404, not "FF" or "Chrome" and pushes the narrative that iOS is bad, and missing features. There are 34 features listed (IIRC it did contain a bunch of Chrome-only crap once upon the time, hence my harsh reaction). All of them enabled by default. If we limit this only to actual, you know, standards, and not "scribbled on a napkin, awaits review", we get a grand total of 9 (yes, nine ). And even there m…

Are you mad because they probably found the same thing I did when doing web stuff that had to run on iOS (going as far back as about 2012~) that iOS required so much more hoop jumping, hacks, polyfills etc? It was just assumed that every other platform worked fine, time was always allocated for inevitable issues on mobile Safari.

Re: Apple's intentional crippling of Mobile Safari

#282

Post by fennecfoxy » Mon, Mar 23, 2026, 10:55 AM UTC

raw_anon_1111 wrote: post #213

xd1936 wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People like you could turn off these features and continue installing and updating native binaries for the Starbucks app or random hardware companion apps all you want. I'd like first-class PWAs please.

Funny enough, I just replied to someone who posted a link to the great lengths Slack is going through to make it use less memory on the desktop. https://slack.engineering/reducing-slacks-memory-footprint/ When the obvious answer I gave about how to reduce the memory footprint and make it more performant was “to stop using fucking [web technologies]” and create a native app But the question I always ask people who say…

To your last point surely it makes sense that they'd probably be rolling something like RN or similar where at that point they may as well build for Android app as well right?

Versus with proper PWA support across the board, a single button on the company's site that installs a PWA no matter which platform your customers are on.

Re: Apple's intentional crippling of Mobile Safari

#283

Post by fennecfoxy » Mon, Mar 23, 2026, 10:57 AM UTC

Levitating wrote: post #269

boomskats wrote: post #199

This isn't about browsers, it's about Apple spending the last decade blocking PWAs on their platform by intentionally breaking something new with every new OS release, thus forcing people to build and ship bloated pointless 50meg webview packages through their aPp StOrE every time they update the width of their sidebar. PWAs are great. They were literally Steve Jobs' original vision for the iPhone. I don't know why p…

> PWAs are great. They were literally Steve Jobs' original vision for the iPhone. Was it? I think one of IOSs strength is its operating system and proper native apps. PWAs are inaccessible, bloated, slow and awkward to use.

Native apps were never a part of the original iPhone release, all the apps were essentially web apps, running one at a time (no multi-tasking/running in background unlike it being built into Android from the get-go).

Re: Apple's intentional crippling of Mobile Safari

#284

Post by cromka » Mon, Mar 23, 2026, 10:57 AM UTC

omnimus wrote: post #277

cromka wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is any popular browser actually available with non-WebKit browser in EU? So far I wasn't able to confirm this.

No it's not. The percentage of people who actually can use alt stores is so small that nobody will really dedicate money to make browser build for iOS. Why would they when Apple would just make the work impossible anyway. It's pure malicious compliance from Apple. Anybody defending Apple on this is simply delusional.

Alt stores and web engine stuff are two separate things: https://developer.apple.com/support/alternative-browser-engi...

Browsers with alternative engines can be offered in regular AppStore. That's why I wonder why isn't this a thing. At the end of the day, browser makers probably want to reduce confusion and complexity of maintaining two vastly different applications under the same name. This most likely isn't a case of malicious compliance, you got yourself carried away here I think.

Re: Apple's intentional crippling of Mobile Safari

#285

Post by fennecfoxy » Mon, Mar 23, 2026, 11:01 AM UTC

spiderfarmer wrote: post #19

Darkstryder wrote: post #16

As a daily Safari on iOS user, I don’t care about any of this, but since iOS 26 basic Safari features such as bookmarks and text search have become so buried deep underneath, they are basically unusable at this point. It infuriates me a lot more than all the liquid glass stuff (on which I’m neutral overall).

Yes. "Add to homescreen" is in the "Share" menu. That's where they burry all bodies.

A friend was telling me yesterday that this is how you can set custom ringtones on iOS. He seemed really excited about it, how cute.

Because I literally could not believe the archaic process previously used until very recently to set a ringtone on iOS. And now it's under the share menu?! Why do Apple people put up with this shit?

I've been able to set a custom ringtone in Android from the OS settings/any file browser app for at least 15 years and I would not be surprised if Android launched with it.

>Apple still sells 30-second song ringtones for $1.29 each through the iTunes Store app.

Oh...alright well now we know why.

Re: Apple's intentional crippling of Mobile Safari

#286

Post by neomantra » Mon, Mar 23, 2026, 11:26 AM UTC

cromka wrote: post #284

omnimus wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it's not. The percentage of people who actually can use alt stores is so small that nobody will really dedicate money to make browser build for iOS. Why would they when Apple would just make the work impossible anyway. It's pure malicious compliance from Apple. Anybody defending Apple on this is simply delusional.

Alt stores and web engine stuff are two separate things: https://developer.apple.com/support/alternative-browser-engi... Browsers with alternative engines can be offered in regular AppStore. That's why I wonder why isn't this a thing. At the end of the day, browser makers probably want to reduce confusion and complexity of maintaining two vastly different applications under the same name. This most likely isn't a cas…

I think the main technological limitation is that other browsers cannot just-in-time compile (JIT) JavaScript or any other embedded language. Except in the EU.

ETA: your link includes JIT; I’m pointing out that that’s why they don’t exist outside of the EU. Non-JIT browsers would just not be very performant.

Re: Apple's intentional crippling of Mobile Safari

#287

Post by nerdjon » Mon, Mar 23, 2026, 11:56 AM UTC

leptons wrote: post #206

nerdjon wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How is Web Bluetooth an evil agenda of Google?? Never said it was, notice how in the thing you quoted I said "Topics API"? That is extremely evil and was only introduced to benefit a single company, Google. I never made a claim that every single thing on this list that safari does not support is a negative. > IE was the first to implement XMLHTTPRequest. It changed the web fundamentally, and was the basis for "web…

>Google alone cannot and should dictate a standard, even though apparently we are fine with them attempting to do just that. They did not "dictate a standard". They saw a good use case for an API and made one for it (Web Bluetooth is what I'm really focused on). If the other W3C members want changes made, then they can make suggestions, and Google or someone else can implement the changes. They can even implement the…

You continue to dwell on Bluetooth while ignoring that there are reasons to not just blindly follow Google which is what pages like this are advocating for. I honestly don't care about Bluetooth and I don't have any stakes on whether or not it is supported, and I also don't know enough about it to actually talk about security on it. I will leave that to people that actually know what they are talking about instead.

I would love if you can actually respond to Topics API and other initiatves that google has attempted that only furthers their agenda, just like you are saying Apple is doing. The fact is both companies are incentivized to do exactly that, and as I have already said both companies do this, and yet you seem to want to give Google a free pass and ignore when they have been problematic.

Regarding Firefox, them not implementing something is a very important piece of the puzzle and you cannot choose to ignore them just to try to strengthen your own argument. This is my fundamental issue with this page since they do not by default show Firefox because it completely breaks the "Apple Bad" narrative they are trying to push.

The fact is, Firefox on both mobile and desktop has not implemented many of the same API's that Safari has not and in some cases has implemented less. The Why there is extremely important because it directly impacts the conversation. Mozilla does not have any of the incentives that either Google has for pushing these features or that Apple has for not implementing them and yet they have chosen not to implement them.

Re: Apple's intentional crippling of Mobile Safari

#288

Post by omnimus » Mon, Mar 23, 2026, 12:10 PM UTC

cromka wrote: post #284

omnimus wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it's not. The percentage of people who actually can use alt stores is so small that nobody will really dedicate money to make browser build for iOS. Why would they when Apple would just make the work impossible anyway. It's pure malicious compliance from Apple. Anybody defending Apple on this is simply delusional.

Alt stores and web engine stuff are two separate things: https://developer.apple.com/support/alternative-browser-engi... Browsers with alternative engines can be offered in regular AppStore. That's why I wonder why isn't this a thing. At the end of the day, browser makers probably want to reduce confusion and complexity of maintaining two vastly different applications under the same name. This most likely isn't a cas…

This whole thing is of Apples doing. Of course they don't want to comply.

Re: Apple's intentional crippling of Mobile Safari

#289

Post by _aavaa_ » Mon, Mar 23, 2026, 12:11 PM UTC

cosmic_cheese wrote: post #219

_aavaa_ wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let Google dominate the web. If that’s a problem we can sort that out. But two wrongs don’t make a right.

As the ball of mud that is web standards grows, the less likely that it becomes that things can “sort themselves out”. Even as things are you need a literal army of developers to build and maintain a modern standards compliant browser, making any real threat to Chromium dominance unlikely, and that only intensifies as Google rolls ever more crap into the katamari. If users can then be harassed into switching to Chrom…

If Google abusing it’s dominant position in web browsers is a problem then the solution is legislation and anti trust action. Letting Apple abuse its own position because it currently provides benefit is not a good approach.

Same thing played out with ads and tracking a few years ago, and now look at the ads situation in the App Store.

Re: Apple's intentional crippling of Mobile Safari

#290

Post by kokada » Mon, Mar 23, 2026, 12:16 PM UTC

neomantra wrote: post #286

cromka wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alt stores and web engine stuff are two separate things: https://developer.apple.com/support/alternative-browser-engi... Browsers with alternative engines can be offered in regular AppStore. That's why I wonder why isn't this a thing. At the end of the day, browser makers probably want to reduce confusion and complexity of maintaining two vastly different applications under the same name. This most likely isn't a cas…

I think the main technological limitation is that other browsers cannot just-in-time compile (JIT) JavaScript or any other embedded language. Except in the EU. ETA: your link includes JIT; I’m pointing out that that’s why they don’t exist outside of the EU. Non-JIT browsers would just not be very performant.

If that is true, this is malicious complaint. Unless Safari has the same restrictions, of course.