moving forward we can expect Apple to start systemically hindering web apps
They have been doing this for quite some time now. Always ostensibly to protect users but always also conveniently putting webapps at a permanent disadvantage to native apps.
For my part I'm not interested in being a user of a platform so hostile to the web that it disallows any third party browsers.
> Always ostensibly to protect users but always also conveniently putting webapps at a permanent disadvantage to native apps.
This isn't always a bad thing though. For example, Safari has prohibited some obnoxious behavior that Chrome has allowed: Autoplaying videos, tab suspension, push notifications. These hog CPU and destroy battery life, worsening the user experience.
Remember, making everything a web app is Google's agenda because they benefit most from it.
I would just point out there are very valid use cases for these things, i.e. push notifications are very useful to me (from certain apps). The problem is one of consent.
Interesting. I can tell Safari to not autoplay videos on YouTube in its preferences, but that doesn't seem to do anything. Seems more like a bug on Safari's part and/or workaround on Google's part than anything deliberate.
Safari uses some sort of algorithm to determine whether you actually want the autoplay to happen.
For example I've noticed that if you play a video on a website during that session, it will allow autoplay from scripts on that page (not 3rd party) for the rest of that session. Same for unmuting an autoplaying video.
This is all undocumented though and through personal observations, as Apple seemed to stop posting Safari documentation years ago.
Technically they could blacklist certain behaviors from certain sites. They and all other major browsers already do this in a privacy-preserving way for Safe Browsing, certificate revocation, etc.
Blacklisting is a losing game, especially from the malicious sites most likely to abuse this. Notice how those malware and fake Chrome extension ads have a new URL every day.
So it's not about what's best for the user but what's best for Apple? I wouldn't call that "understandable". All this is doing is contributing to webkit monoculture.
There's some irony that Apple forcing the use of Safari on iOS is creating a monoculture when, were the restriction lifted, everyone would be using Chrome.
I'd be amazed if there were more than a tiny fraction of iOS/iPadOS users (of which there are hundreds of millions) who weren't perfectly ok with Mobile Safari for their everyday usage.
[I'm probably the "target market" for Chrome (backend, occasionally frontend developer) and there's no way I'd have it on my phone. I only suffer the GMail app because they've made IMAP usage of gmail unreliable.]
It doesn’t matter what users choose, devs would badger users into using Chrome for their own convenience. It’d be the return of the “viewed best in” badges from the late 90s and early 00s.
I believe that OP is saying it would be preferable to have blink-everywhere than to have a deliberately-crippled Apple web browser with all other choices banned.
Agreed. There is no choice with IOS: you choose the same WebKit that they've chosen, or Safari. One engine and version, or one browser using that one engine.
You can install any browser you want from playstore or outside of playstore. There are no restrictions on what you can and cannot have on your phone on android.
Yet non-default browsers on Android are non-existent. So in practice Android has the same web-engine mono-culture as iPhone. Given how successfully Google was able to ensure Blink domination on desktop and even more so on Android it is very understandable what Apple has done. And for me having at least 2 web engines on mobile is better than 1.
In what reality-distortioned world is that worse than 0%? Also, several of those Blink-based browsers include additional non-Google-approved features, like Mozilla's own Firefox Focus, Samsung Browser, Edge, and Brave. I'd hardly call that a monoculture just because they share the same lineage.
They have been doing this for quite some time now. Always ostensibly to protect users but always also conveniently putting webapps at a permanent disadvantage to native apps.
For my part I'm not interested in being a user of a platform so hostile to the web that it disallows any third party browsers.