Comment by pickledoyster

7 months ago

On top of that, iOS continues to push Safari on users by disregarding their default browser settings.

Steps to reproduce: 0. Select a different default browser, delete the Safari app (just for good measure, even though it's not really possible just like deleting IE in older Win versions) 1. Open the Books app 2. Select text 3. Select Search 4. Press Search the Web 5. Safari search results open as you stare in disbelief

This is because the safari app is a wrapper for apple’s webview, which is the only way to display web content on iOS, that’s what the article is talking about

  • No. This is not webview, this is opening a full Safari browser instance and disregarding the user's default browser setting. It also used to be the case with doing a dictionary look up anywhere in iOS too, where the user selects a word, uses the popup menu to Loop Up, and then selects Search Web. This resulted in the absurd situation where you're using your default browser, looking up a word, selecting Search Web and then having Safari (again, not the default browser) open with a search query. Thankfully, at least that behavior has changed recently

They do similarly with dates and calendar app. Disgraceful.

  • Apple knows that what they're doing is against the law, but every day, every month, every year they can get away with it, till the hammer of the law inevitably strikes, is more money in their pocket. So delaying it by every means necessary is what's in their best interest, it's what their lawyers are paid to do because each such decision of conforming to the law boils down to an accounting decision for them: "are the potential fines bigger than the profits".

    You know a company has long lost the innovation race when the company is run by the lawyers and bean counters instead of the engineers, trying to milk their product lines form 10+ years ago. I wonder how long until they resort to becoming a patent troll ... oh wait. Their final form will be selling ads to their users.

Google does this too on Android in a few places. Stuff still opens in Chrome even if Firefox is the default.

Interestingly this is not the case on iOS. So much so that Apple Mail has an option in context menu for hyperlinks to open them in any of the installed browsers (while respecting your choice of the default).