Comment by shmerl
5 days ago
Did Japan decide to push proper competition laws?
Time to force Apple to do it everywhere. Very long overdue.
5 days ago
Did Japan decide to push proper competition laws?
Time to force Apple to do it everywhere. Very long overdue.
I agree with the “enforce competition laws” sentiment, but in this context, enforced naively, all it’ll do is entrench the dominant browser engine, Blink, even more across the mobile ecosystem.
I’m sure some devs will love this. But equally, some may worry about the monoculture implications.
It hasn’t on Macs. Safari is still popular among non-tech folk
It’s still got popularity within tech-inclined Mac/iOS circles too because it’s easier on the battery than Chrome (+derivatives) and Firefox. Some would like to switch but because neither Google nor Mozilla has much to lose for their browsers being battery hogs, relatively little engineering effort gets dedicated to improving efficiency compared to WebKit (which is similarly efficient under Linux in e.g. GNOME Web, proving it’s not purely first-party advantage).
That’s because Apple adds two extra legs to Safari on OS level and cuts both the legs of other browsers in a manner of speaking by rigging this comparison.
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I think the narrative is that once developers have the option to tell all of their users "we only support Chrome, just install Chrome" then any support for Safari will dry up.
Unfortunately I don't think we will see if this is how it plays out until Apple has to allow other browsers globally.
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The "monoculture" has never been less of a threat. WPT.FYI is driving towards asymptotically perfect compatibility and behavior. And the real web, the long-tail of websites, is too chaotic to be controlled by any entity regardless of browser market share. Chrome can cook up whatever API they want, no website can be forced to adopt it. And if someone can't use some WebMIDI site on Safari, well, they can't complain, they didn't want that site to exist in the first place.
It's simply not a good excuse to defend the iOS browser ban.
Banning competition can't possibly help increasing competition.
It would be good to see Firefox with its own engine there for example.