zlacker

>>dochtm+(OP)
I think it's bizarre to conflate Apple's refusal to allow other webkits on iOS with the fact that Safari remains a viable alternative engine. They're far from heroes here. I think it's great they maintain a Chrome alternative kit that mostly works but let's not pretend they're saints or kid ourselves about the reasons for it. The only reason they disallow Chromium and Mozilla is they want their users locked into their environment and they want to leverage that substantial locked-in user base to dictate terms. It's only being one of the richest companies in history that gives them a seat at the table. If they're afraid of having to open the platform, that's because they're not keeping up.

It's not that they're one judgment away from that day. They know that. It's just that they want to get as much mileage as they can before they too abandon Safari and first allow, then switch to Chromium. That will happen in the next 5 years.

What might come of it all would be a reset where new branches form and new innovators get to introduce new proposals. Standards aren't a bad thing if they're open. If Safari dies then Google will be next in the line of fire for antitrust action anyway... things will fragment again. I'm personally pissed at the number of great technologies left as litter along the road, not least AS3, just to get to this shitty middle ground / cold browser war between two companies I hope die and one that won't help itself. Let the standards win and let's have a standard platform to innovate on top of.

>>noduer+Zd
> It's not that they're one judgment away from that day. They know that. It's just that they want to get as much mileage as they can before they too abandon Safari and first allow, then switch to Chromium. That will happen in the next 5 years.

I'm not a great future-reader myself, but I don't see this happening soon. The web is a great threat to their app (and also subscription) revenue stream, and they have a lot to lose with little to win for their platform. They lag behind because they want to, not because they can't.

>>leonon+2h
> The web is a great threat to their app (and also subscription) revenue stream

This is as ridiculous today as it has been every year since the iPhone began.

Mobile web apps are terrible and despite all the years of promises that "feature X" will fix this nothing has changed. And you can't blame Apple because Google et al could easily have made mobile web apps work on Android.

If you want to make a mobile web app then go right ahead. Apple isn't stopping you. But just don't be surprised when no user is interested in it.