Why would anyone want to build these features if they're so platform / browser specific? Does anyone know if these auth features might work on other browsers on iPhone?
How can Apple be a monopolist from such a small position, or have a "stranglehold" when they are outsold 4-8x by the competition?
[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/216459/global-market-sha...
The poster I replied to compared Google and Apple using the terms "stranglehold" and "monopoly". These terms don't work because Apple don't have control of most of the smartphone market, so they can't be a monopoly. Through Android, Google do control most of the smartphone market, so they might have a monopoly effect on the smartphone market. Apple aren't in any position to strongarm things. Google are.
Therefore whatever Apple does with iOS can't be "worse" from this perspective. It could be worse for users, but it can't be "worse" monopolistically for Apple to affect 20% of the market in Apple's favour, than it is for Google to affect 80% of the market in Google's favour.
Google could strongarm Huawei and Sony and LG and all the other Android manufacturers. Apple couldn't. Google could strongarm 80% of smartphone users, Apple only 20%.
Apple has a 49-60% share in the USA. Their next biggest competitor is Samsung with less than 1/2 of that.
Google controls Android which Samsung use, and the terms on which they're allowed to use it if they still want to allow Google apps. That means it's not Samsung vs Apple, it's Google vs Apple, especially when my reply was to someone comparing Google to Apple, not Samsung to Apple.
Apple and Samsung are in direct competition. Apple has >50% of the smartphone market in the USA. Samsung has less then 25%, every one else has even less. Google has < 1%. That Samsung happens to use Android is irrelevant. FWIW Samsung has its own app store and plenty of distinguishing features from every other phone.
The rest of the world has its own markets. If the UK wants to sue Apple or Google for being a monopoly they only care about the UK market, not how it's selling in Indonesia. In other words it doesn't matter one wit if some company has a large market share in the world, monopolies are only enforced in a specific country for that country's market, not the world market. You quote iOS has only have 20%, but as that is a world wide number it's entirely irrelevant and pointless. If iOS had 100% market share in Singapore but only 5% marketshare in the world it would be Singapore suing because of the Singapore market. There is no one who can sue on behalf of the world.
And by reaching over multiple Android phone sellers, that has at least a similar, but likely much greater reach than anything Apple can do, doesn't it?
Whether a company can be sued for being a monopoly in a given jurisdiction isn't so interesting to me, as whether they can influence ~80% of the worldwide smartphone market; If they can do that but you can't sue them for being a monopoly in Tuvalu that has no bearing on anything interesting.
I’ve never noticed that criticism come up in the wild. The criticism I’ve seen of Android is that it’s primarily a surveillance device with a questionable security model.
AFAIK that hasn't been true for years. WKWebView (as opposed to the old UIWebView) lets you use the full speed JS engine.
Questioning this because you were just proven wrong once, do you have a source that confirms what you're saying?
Layout engine and even rendering etc. is quite distinct from the other browser features. What goes on in front of your eyes is fairly separate from networking, security all those other nice things.