This is clearly for reasons of security.
I don't think Apple is terribly interested in market share for Safari. What they are interested is preserving their competitive advantage in privacy.
I don't think Apple is terribly interested in market share for Safari. What they are interested is preserving their competitive advantage in privacy.
How do you explain that all other OSes, including Apple's own macOS, manage to allow other browser engines?
Do you think the iOS team is that incompetent?
> WebKit’s sandbox profile on iOS is orders of magnitude more stringent than the sandbox for native iOS apps.
[1] https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/62277271d3bf7... [2] https://open-web-advocacy.org/apple-dma-review
Based on what? Happy to be wrong, but the quote in my reply was Apple's stance on the WebKit vs native iOS apps
Google pays Apple $20B a year because of the market share Safari has on iOS.
I'd call that "interest"
That's 10% of their turnover (and likely mostly pure profit, as they seem to spend a fraction of that on Safari)
Having Safari is a default browser is another (valid) issue, but that is a separate concern from the web engine.
The browser engine is an important piece of the puzzle when it comes to getting people to switch browsers. If a site works faster or better on browser B, that's a reason to switch.
If Apple's WebKit engine doesn't allow you to do video calls, you could build that into your engine and actually compete.
Why would Google and Mozilla spend millions on developing and maintaining their own engines if they didn't think that it provides value, e.g. a competitive edge?
[1] In the past, Safari did get some features that other browsers on iOS didn't get, e.g. Being the default browser (you couldn't set Chrome or any other browser as the default until iOS 14(!), Nitro JIT (Safari was significantly faster than other browsers on iOS for 4 yrs), camera and microphone access (video calls only worked in Safari), Web Extensions, Apple Pay, Fullscreen API, Add to Home Screen (ironically)...