Hacker News Reader

Comment by _0w8t | Hacker News Reader

Apple disallows third-party web rendering engines. Google Chrome on iOS uses own networking stack.

It is still a significant restriction, but it is rather understandable. Without it it could be just Blink everywhere at this point.

View on HN

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.

Remember, making everything a web app is Google's agenda because they benefit most from it.

Remember, harming webapps is Apple's agenda because only they benefit from it.

On the other hand, the web is mostly open for all, so most people benefit from it, not just Google.

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.

> 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.

If so it would be because users chose it and it would also help keep Firefox in the game which important to the long term health of the web.

> Without it it could be just Blink everywhere at this point.

In what reality-distortioned universe is that worse than having a crippled web?

Please don't call anything that's not Blink "a crippled web".

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.

I'm the OP and I am a Mozilla volunteer. I prefer a web with many engines, I want it to have WebKit, Blink, Gecko and more.

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.

Android is a web monoculture too. Non-Blink browsers on Android are at <1%.

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.

Then you also prefer not to have those options banned.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com