It seems the EU isn’t buying Apple’s explanation and it will have to open up the app store to other web browsing technologies. I imagine that this will also affect other countries like USB-C did.
Now, web developers are going to be testing on more than only WebKit for iOS/iPadOS, and it won’t be the biggest mobile web browser anymore. I don’t know a single person outside web forums that uses Safari, even on mobile, so if this happens we could see the end of compatibility with Safari on websites (which is already bad where I live). This could mean a lot of sites become broken in the future, which is a shame as having browsing on iOS in only WebKit has meant reasonably good compatibility.
The only good thing is that I will finally be able to access sites that don’t work on mobile once Chrome shifts from WebKit to Blink - I cannot book a train, use my university LMS, or access any government services at present on mobile as they are completely broken on WebKit.
This reminds me of the time Microsoft tried to copyright the word “Windows” and some of their own literature helped undermine their case.
I like Safari but I frequently have to switch to another browser. Just a few days ago I was searching for a way to modify the new iOS Contacts app. Safari failed to open the site and said something about the site not responding. The site opened immediately in Chrome.
It seems like a better title would be bad news for the web? Overall it seems that Chrome dominates browser share. Do we want a web that is developed for just Chrome? Reminds me of the early 2000s when my fuzzy memory says most things were geared towards Internet Explorer.
A web that returns to a focus on functionality for one browser seems like a more broken web.
Editing to add that in my extended family Safari is nearly 100% the only browser being used on iOS and iPadOS.
I use Safari as my default on all devices. 98% of the time, I have no issues but for the other 2% I have to use Chrome or Brave.
Assuming, based on that article, that most of us over time may need to change our default browser to something other than Safari, would you recommend Chrome or Brave? Is there any advantage to using Chrome vs Brave?
Hmmmmm … We should fix this. Let’s plan to meet sometime at a convenient place and time.
I imagine the end effect of this is to drive Apple to adapt to the market demand. Whether and what we as consumers gain or loose is not quite clear to me.
Good memory. It’s about 2/3 as bad as the early 2000s. When IE peaked it had around 95% of the market. The difference today, IMO, is there are several Chromium based browsers.
Currently Chrome has around 65% of the world wide browser market, Safari has 19%, Edge, Firefox, Opera, and Samsung are all in single digits. On mobile only Chrome is still 65% and Safari has 25%. When it comes to security it looks like Safari has only logged about 70% as many vulnerabilities as Chromium.
I’m a mobile first user. When I need to access a site that doesn’t work/work well with Safari I’m stuck, because iOS/iPadOS version of Chrome is required to use webkit.
The way I see it, if sales of the iPhone is actually peaking, as some believe, then Safari’s marketshare isn’t likely to grow very much. And I need a non-webkit browser on iPadOS.
I use Safari for personal browsing and Brave for work related web applications. The only site where I have issues with Safari is my credit union where it will not download ofx or pdf files so I use Ungoogled Chromium (link below) for those downloads.
I like and recommend Brave and find their privacy policies acceptable, but am not interested in their crypto nonsense.
Brave. Hands down. Popup blocking and security is so much better. Disable the crypto stuff, Brave Wallet, etc. It’s a fantastic browser.
The benefit to Chrome - if you consider it a benefit - is that Chrome accounts that sync all of your data and such don’t really work in Brave. For example, I have a plugin that I use that requires an account to upgrade to the “pro” features - and I can’t do that in Brave.
This is actually kind of like old IE code for the web. IE didn’t do a lot of things other browsers did, or it did them in a non-standard way - so sites needed to be coded around it, detect browsers, etc. They did that because IE was bundled with the OS, and it was therefore a dominant browser.
The same thing is functionally true with Safari. The difference is that in the early 2000s, people could download an alternative to IE if a website didn’t work. Not the case with iOS Safari. That’s the real problem.
Allowing true browser competition would be a good first step toward making Safari better (if Apple really wants to double down on that), or letting the market sort things out with alternative browsers.
Your sample is obviously very small. Most non technical people will simply use the built in browser, this was true on Windows for many years, it’s true on Android and also on IOS. People have had the ability to download “Chrome” on IOS for years and haven’t. (Yes, I know it uses WebKit)
is absolutely true. The thing that caused the greater adoption of Chrome and/or Firefox was the non-technical people hearing from their more-technical friends/family/etc. that they should do something different.
And the average non-technical user remembers these tips as if they were magical incantations, and just does them for the rest of time until they’re told differently. I guarantee there are people out there who would still be defragging Windows hard drives once every month or so if the tools hadn’t basically been hidden or disabled.
Case in point. My dad is very much a regular, non-technical user - but he insists on Chrome because once he had a glitch with Safari, and I suggested that he try Chrome for that website as it might work better. Since then he just decided that Chrome is what he uses now, because why should he use two browsers? He’ll buy a new computer, and call somebody to come over to download Chrome for him. No joke.
Now back to iOS. That collection of magic incantations doesn’t exist yet - at least not regarding web browsers. If my dad called me with a problem with his iPhone, I would never tell him to download Chrome, because it wouldn’t do any good.
But give it several years, and I predict that there would be a rather sharp uptick in alternative browser usage. Not because the average person is desperate to download Chrome, but because the few people that the average person takes advice from will suggest they move in that direction as they hit edge cases. Peoples’ banks will suggest that people use an alternate browser. LMS platforms will suggest it. Their tech-savvy friends will suggest it. And when they fire up the alternate browser, they’ll set it as a default - because it doesn’t make sense for the average person to use two browsers when one will do.
I teach around 500 students each semester, and I’ve yet to find one that uses Safari as they cannot submit their work with it. Having two browsers with separate bookmarks makes no sense at all. Almost all of them use Macs, and I am often helping them and seeing their laptops. They also use the Google office suite extensively, which performs poorly on Safari.
Outside my job, all my friends use Chrome due to government websites not working, they cannot do things like tax returns as those sites freeze and don’t let you continue on WebKit. I’ve never met anyone who switches browser depending on the website.
On mobile most I know want their bookmarks to sync so install Chrome.
Interesting observations to be sure. Reminds me of the (old) days … “When you really must be a power user on Excel, don’t use it on a Mac.”
I am curious. Do the problems arise because Safari (WebKit) holds to more rigorous standards, thereby requiring a higher effort to develop certain operations? Or does Safari (WebKit) have fewer features, thereby limiting what can be developed within it? Or do other browsers break out of the supposedly accepted standards, thereby allowing them to offer more than Safari (WebKit)?
If you look at https://caniuse.com/ it shows browser compatibility with various web technologies. Of what they track, Chrome is ahead significantly, followed by Firefox, followed very closely by Safari.
My experience is also that browsers other than Chrome deal poorly with malformed HTML. In an ideal world this would be a non-issue, but in the real world it’s not that uncommon.
The answer is probably neither, but Safari does have far fewer extensions available than Chromium browsers. AFAIK Safari is the only general purpose browser that uses Webkit and some of it’s privacy features are suspected to interfere with some websites. I’m not an expert but with the exception of Blackberry and PlayStation Webkit doesn’t appear to be used by anyone except Apple.
I think it’s like the days when Internet Explorer ruled the Internet. A lot of website developers don’t bother testing with Safari, and others may only care about mobile Safari. And I don’t think this will change.
I use Safari, Brave and Firefox regularly, and Chrome occasionally; I fire up Edge occasionally too. (Oh, and Choosy, of course.)
I genuinely don’t run into problems with any of them. I use a wide range of websites, including a lot of corporate and other sites that I’m visiting for the first time. I use Google sites mostly with chromium browsers, but not exclusively. Things just generally work. I guess what I’m not doing is much in the way of video, games or ad-intensive free sites – or EU government sites.
On my iPhone I don’t run into many problems either – every once in a while, I get a site that isn’t designed in a remotely responsive way, but that’s rarer all the time.
I have no doubt those of you reporting problems are genuinely experiencing them. I just wonder how I haven’t.
