Asked an entire room full of webdevs yesterday if any of them knew that FF/Chrome/Opera/Brave/etc. for iOS weren't allowed to compete on engine quality.
Zero hands up.
Zero hands up.
The consequences of being forced into WebKit WebView on iOS are massive. Every browser there faces a Sophie's Choice: fast JS or no netstack pluggability. They all choose not losing benchmarks by a huge amount. And that's only one in the long line of constraints.
Alternative browsers on iOS can never *really* be the default. And they can't use their own engines. And they can't use Service Workers, which means no Push Notifications or offline support. And no PWA installability. Etc. etc.
Apple dramatically under-invests in WebKit, which means that the richest users have the jankiest web, and switching browsers doesn't help.
Business decision makers don't think the web can deliver the experiences they want to give users because, on iOS (which they use), it can't.
Business decision makers don't think the web can deliver the experiences they want to give users because, on iOS (which they use), it can't.
The soft bigotry of low expectations ensues.
The mobile web can't succeed when Apple is allowed to stack the rules against it.
The mobile web can't succeed when Apple is allowed to stack the rules against it.
Apple undermining the future of the web is a scandal with echoes of FB's IAB shenanigans. The common thread is hiding bad engines behind UI that *suggests* that everything is on the level.
It's expectation arbitrage, and the future of web is what's being shorted.
It's expectation arbitrage, and the future of web is what's being shorted.
