John Gruber, on Apple’s incredible power over the web:
As a side note, I think this is more or less what is happening, whether the web community likes it or not, because this largely seems to describe Safari/WebKit’s approach to moving forward – and Safari, because of iOS in particular – effectively gives Apple veto power over new web technologies. Apple can’t stop Google from adding new features to Chrome/Blink, but Apple can keep any such features from being something web developers can rely upon as being widely available. That implicit veto power is what drove this summer’s “Safari is the New IE” drama.
What could possibly go wrong. Meanwhile, John Gruber, on his site’s about page:
Web standards are important, and Daring Fireball adheres to them.
OK.
Yeah, but lets face it, this sort of power is fleeting. Not even Microsoft was able to keep it up and they had close to 80% of the market cornered (according to the Wikipedia link), at one point in time.
What are you actually trying to say in this comment, that market-dominating behaviours are OK, because they might in the future be replaced by another group that can do the same?
teco.sb,
You really think so? They no longer have a majority now, but a few years ago they did and the impact on our web was absolutely draconian. MS was responsible for a decade of hell for HTML developers everywhere. I still have occasional requests to support those older garbage browsers from Redmond… To suggest that this kind of power is “fleeting” is being extremely kind IMHO.
Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely… I think the ideal case is when marketshare stays balanced and doesn’t grossly favor any one technology over another.
Edited 2015-09-16 15:34 UTC
I’ll have to actually read this article, but am I wrong in thinking A) Webkit is open source, B) both Chrome/Chromium and Safari use it?
Not to mention a plethora of other browsers use webkit to render pages, such as Epiphany and Opera and even email clients like Evolution.
So for Apple to add things into it that only Safari would support would be shitty indeed, or for them to refuse new features. Using a single engine in all these browsers is supposed to standardize things… but of course Apple can’t even figure out that they should standardize on micro-USB…
leech,
You are not wrong. But at the same time they don’t all see eye to eye and because of that they’ve been forked apart:
http://www.cnet.com/news/google-parts-ways-with-apple-over-webkit-l…
I’d like to make a subtle distinction, it’s not the proprietary implementation of IE that made it so harmful to standards, but rather it’s popularity. So long as most users stick with the browser preinstalled by MS (as most did) then being open source in and of itself wouldn’t change what users were actually running – and web developers would still be pressured to target the IE that MS was shipping.
Don’t get me wrong, Apple is no where near as bad as MS has been, that would be a feat in and of itself. However it concerns me that users are banned from installing competing browser engines on IOS. Suppose safari did manage to get a huge browser monopoly advantage, I’m not very confident that apple would put the interests of an open web above it’s own. For example, in the past Apple has placed the interests of it’s patent portfolio over the interest of web standards.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2011/12/is-apple-is-using-patent…
Blink is used by companies like Opera and Google.
But yes, most developers are from Google.
WebKit is still used by many more companies and many of them contribute code -> Apple, Samsung, Ericsson, Adobe, etc.
But yes, most developers are from Apple.
https://trac.webkit.org/wiki/Companies%20and%20Organizations…
In some ways the Apple situation is worse even than the IE6 era, particularly on mobile.
In iOS, third party browsers can’t get access to the really optimized Javascript engine Apple built for Mobile Safari AND they aren’t allowed to provide their own JS. That’s why Chrome for iOS is so slow.
At least Microsoft allowed you to install uncirppled 3rd party browsers.
And the fundamental reason Apple has this policy? They don’t want HTML5/JS mobile apps to ever be as compelling as native iOS apps, because they are easily made to run on my platforms. Lock in, baby.
With iOS 8, Javascript performance is the same inside Safari or any iOS 8 compatible app using a web view.
Apple was building their 4th tier JIT for Javascript and had security concerns with it. iOS 7 introduced it into Safari, then iOS 8 added the needed security framework around it. https://www.webkit.org/blog/3362/introducing-the-webkit-ftl-jit/ details the 4th tier JIT.
It’s not a drama, rather a dirty play. Apple should be slammed with antitrust regulations.
For what? They don’t even have close to a monopoly on mobile. Besides, whether Safari, IE6, or something else, there’s always going to be a ‘lowest common denominator’ web browser to code around, and if you can’t build a decent website with Safari as your base, you REALLY need to find another line of work.
For instance for banning competing browsers on iOS. It’s a clear anti-competitive behavior which antitrust law should prevent. Apple only gets away with it because current legal system rarely cares about anti-trust violations.
I’d say developers should at some point simply boycott Safari, like they started boycotting IE6. Apple should get what they deserve for staying in the stone age of technology and trying to keep everyone else there too.
Edited 2015-09-16 19:21 UTC
And what is your justification for this? It made a bit more sense to go after Microsoft when they had like 95% of the desktop market, but iOS doesn’t even have 20% on mobile, so it’s not like consumers are locked in.
What, why banning competition should be forbidden? Justification is pretty straightforward. Monopolistic control hinders progress and results in stagnation. That’s exactly what’s happening with Apple holding the industry back here. Not sure why you need to look far for justification if this case is illustrated by its very self.
Edited 2015-09-16 20:18 UTC
I wasn’t aware Apple had the ability to ban Android, Windows, and Blackberry devices.
Apple banned Firefox, Chrome and all other browsers which don’t use their engine on iOS. If you didn’t know, check out iOS SDK license which has that ban.
As I said, they only got away with it because antitrust laws are rarely enforced.
Edited 2015-09-16 21:17 UTC
So what? It’s their platform, they can do whatever the hell they want with it. If you don’t like it, go buy something else.
Edited 2015-09-16 21:21 UTC
Ah, so you are a supporter of anti-competitive behavior? What are we discussing then? I’m talking about how it has to be prevented with the law. You are talking about how crooked companies like Apple should dance around the law to ban competition because “it’s not justified” to stop them.
Say thanks to the them for stagnating the market next time you cheer for such behavior.
Edited 2015-09-16 21:24 UTC
So no company should have a right to say what goes on with their own platform, which they themselves created, and which does not hold monopoly status in the market place?
No company should have a right to hold the market hostage to their crooked whims. And that’s what’s happening here, because Apple has significant enough market share in browsers. Antitrust laws should prevent that, yes. That’s what they are made for – to make sure market is not bent by disproportionate influence.
Edited 2015-09-16 21:47 UTC
That was the point of my original post. There’s ALWAYS going to be a popular browser that sucks more than the rest of them. This didn’t change when IE6 lost market dominance, and won’t change if Safari does either, so you’re always going to be coding for the lowest common denominator. Same thing happens with game consoles – even if one is more powerful than the others, most cross-platform titles will only be as good as the weakest of those consoles.
And besides, even if we got governments to do what you’re asking, it isn’t likely that the majority of iOS users would download an alternate browser anyway, just like they didn’t on Windows. So we’re essentially right back to where we started.
Anyway, I’m not seeing the real harm here. It’s not like the earth will stop spinning on its axis if web devs have to code with Safari as the base. Safari isn’t exactly a dinosaur insofar as the web goes. You’re not going to have to code using HTML4 or anything.
I realize it’s not as advanced as the others, but we’re a helluva lot further than we were in the IE6 days, yet web devs are still bitching. It has been my experience that the more advanced web browsers get, the shittier the experience is for end users, with stuff blinking and flashing and moving all over the place. It wouldn’t bother me at all if we went back to the HTML3 days, with a little CSS thrown in for bandwidth savings.
Edited 2015-09-16 22:06 UTC
You’re missing the key point that Apple is not a monopoly. People have very viable, useful options available to them. Antitrust laws regarding anti-competitive behavior only apply when a company is in a position to abuse the market with anti-competitive behavior.
It isn’t that the laws aren’t being enforced. Apple is not in that position, so there is literally no law to enforce.
They can do whatever they hell they want, and there is nothing wrong with it as long as people have useful options in the market. And, people do.
They aren’t a complete monopoly, but they are able to hold back the market (as per article and as others noted many times already), which is exactly what antitrust laws are intended to prevent. Where do you draw the line?
Apple are in position and they are abusing it. That’s the whole point that this original article is discussing, isn’t it?
Edited 2015-09-16 22:58 UTC
The article is wrong, though. In the US, Safari only represents 20% of all devices. This percentage is lower in the rest of the world. Other browsers can support features, just fine, and developers can use them and not worry about wide-spread availability just because Apple doesn’t want to use them.
This only matters if you want to target ONLY mobile users, and exclude desktop users. In that case, Apple has much more leverage, but since that only applies if you’re already cutting out most of the market, well, that’s your choice.
How is it wrong if Apple with those supposedly “only 20%” can hold the industry back? Or you are saying it’s all an illusion and calling Safari the new IE is not deserved?
20% isn’t something that can be ignored, but it certainly doesn’t give them veto powers.
And it absolutely doesn’t make them a monopoly worthy of antitrust investigations.
So you are saying developers should be OK to ignore outdated Safari as they did with IE6, and just say iOS users – tough luck? Or not? Somehow that didn’t happen yet, which shows that it hold the market back. You said yourself – it can’t be ignored.
And therefore such sick influence should be prevented in cases when Apple are explicitly banning competing browsers.
Edited 2015-09-16 23:36 UTC
Where the law draws the line. I understand what you would like the law to prevent ( apple not providing browser engine choice), but I don’t know how to write a general law around that which doesn’t have disastrous consequences for other industries.
McDonalds doesn’t give me the option of installing Grey Poupon on a hamburger, or allow me to choose a different meat supplier for the beef. Should that be banned? Furthermore, McDonalds is franchised, but the contracts don’t allow the Franchisee to change the burger or the options.
Writing fair laws is difficult, even if you are an unbiased source with perfect morality and can actually see in a crystal ball all of the possible scenarios.
That’s very abstract. There are a lot of antitrust violations which are ignored, even though the formal law sees it as wrong. Because usually it’s never enforced until some related case comes up and even then it’s rarely followed through. The most common case is product tying. Windows tax anyone?
Edited 2015-09-17 14:56 UTC
Wrong according to whom? You? Legal scholars? Joe’s crab shack? I don’t think its obvious at all that the Windows tax is a violation of the anti trust law. I don’t like it, but at this point in 2015, I don’t think its a violation of antitrust law.
I think it is even according to scholars. But it’s hard to actually enforce such things.
And if it isn’t, it should be.
Ah, there we can agree. But I have no idea how to write that legislation. And even less hope of ever passing it.
I think you are talking whiny, tedious nonsense about perfectly normal business practice.
Apple sells a product which combines software and hardware in an integrated product. Apple makes a series of decisions about what is and is not included or possible in both the hardware and software of its product and then offers these products to consumers in market where Apple does not have a monopoly position, does not control a majority market share and in which there are many competing same category products from other companies that consumers can buy. If consumers don’t like the decisions Apple has made about what it does or does not include in its software and hardware they can buy other alternative same category products. That is how the market is supposed to work. Get over it.
It’s you who calls anti-competitive behavior a normal practice. That’s what’s nonsense. I’m surprised people actually defend such thing. You can call crookedness normal only if think everyone should be a crook.
Which on top probably violates another set of antitrust laws – i.e. about product tying. But again, who cares about anti-trust?
Edited 2015-09-16 23:21 UTC
Jeez – how can an adult write such infantile nonsense.
Correct, except Apple has no monopoly, in fact they are far from it (thank the gods). If they become a monopoly, antitrust laws will come into play, as they should.
Since they are able to hold progress back, it means they have enough control over the market to apply regulation to them.
If developers choose limit themselves because Apple told them to, they are idiots. The only thing Apple has is street cred with hipster startup bro-grammers who are too clueless or lazy to spin up a proper Linux or BSD dev machine.
Besides, the mobile web is a horrid, ad-filled mess that offers a postage-stamp-sized view of the web with ads taking up the rest of the screen, even on sites that don’t have obtrusive advertising on their desktop versions. Any improvement on that front is welcome in my eyes, whether it’s Apple or Google or Microsoft or anyone else behind it.
I also think Thom and most everyone else here is overlooking this particularly important line in the article:
In other words, focus on a simpler, more complete web experience instead of trying to make it something it isn’t. And that goes for you too, Apple.
I agree, they deserve to be ignored, but they aren’t.
Eh, do you need to have a big majority of the market to harm competition? Besides, I’m sure iOS is much more than 20% of the North American market.
In North America, it’s about 45%. Still, that’s not anything approaching a monopoly.
In this case Apple harms it. So what gives?
That’s just mobile usage.
Safari, as a whole, represents roughly 20% of the browser market. That give Apple far less leverage.
If Chrome adds something, does that make it a standard? Does Apple have veto power on the w3 HTML group’s decisions?
I think this is kind of a crazy discussion. It would make more sense as a discussion on what makes sense in a web app vs a native app rather than politicizing it as an Apple vs everyone/anyone else.
If Trident, Gecko, and Blink all add something odds are quite good it WILL be a w3 standard eventually. Apple’s engine is merely one out of four these days… as long as you don’t care about fucking over iOS users.
I’ve always been against it working this way, but that’s how it usually goes with web features.
Why are you against this ? It’s how both the W3C (webstandards, HTML, CSS) and IETF (which makes protocols like IP, TCP, HTTP, UDP, DNS, etc.) work.
The motto of the IETF was at a time: “We believe in rough consensus and running code”
Now, the process is actually more sophisticated. This is the standard process:
– someone has an idea
– they might discuss it with their colleagues at their company (if they have any, anyone can get involved in standards work)
– they discuss it on a W3C or IETF mailinglist.
– if enough participants are interested the topic might be discussed at a meeting too.
– someone writes a proposal (usually in form of a draft of the specification), others complain about it… euh, I mean, give constructive criticism or create a new proposal.
– someone writes an alpha implementation (in this case very likely might be Mozilla or Google or Opera)
– people working on the subject/specification can now see how it would work in practise
– these days implementation is probably only available ‘behind a flag’ (for example Firefox has about:config for that). A setting which prevents it being available by default.
– in the recent past they had a vendor prefix like: -mozFeature or -webkitFeature
– others like webdevelopers can now also see how it works and get on the mailinglist and make suggestions
– other vendors can now also create implementations of the draft specification
– if at least 2 implementations of a specification exist which are compatible -> then it can become a standard.
– a few years ago: then the prefix should be removed
– now: the vendor can remove the flag from it’s implementation and webdevelopers ‘can use it in wild’.
So the flag is only removed when it’s clear it’s going to be a standard and the vendor is willing to support the feature for the many, many years to come.
Usually only the vendors interested in adding the feature actually work on the specification. Other vendors might want to implement it later.
Edited 2015-09-16 20:34 UTC
The most important aspect of that process is that someone *implements* a feature, demonstrates the value of it, then gets design feedback and buy-in from the other browsers.
What they *don’t* do is design a feature in a committee, then try to implement it, then see if the result is useful to web developers.
Yes, that is a good summary: they have to demonstrates the value of the design.
That’s exactly what websites should do to stay in control of their future. Use every feature modern browsers support and let iOS users bitch and moan that sites are broken on their ancient Safari.
Of course that’s not going to happen. Web will just stagnate to current level of technology and all major sites start producing app feeds for Apple’s walled garden while paying for the privilege.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers
The highest value I see for safari (combined) is about 20%. Typically it’s armor half of Chrome’s combined marketshare.
While 20% is a big number it’s only one fifth of the whole market and didn’t seem like it should, on its own, dictate the direction of web technologies.
What I think is happening is simply that most developers like and user Apple products. As a result they make sure they work on their platform first.
However the Safari thing is many many many times worse than MSIE. Eventually desktop users figured out how install and replace MSIE…but on your iPhone and iPad… it’s just not as easy or interesting.
Yes, that is exactly the problem, at least for the webstandards.
Apple through their appstore prevents other browser engines from being installed on iOS.
Because Apple does not allow other browser engines on iOS.
If you see a Google browser or a Mozilla browser-like app on the Apple appstore for iOS then it’s using the Safari engine ! If the Google browser app is called ‘Chrome’ it’s not Chrome, it’s Chrome UI around the engine of Safari.
“Chrome uses Apple’s UIWebView for loading and rendering content”
https://developer.chrome.com/multidevice/ios/overview
Ironically, Microsoft Edge can now be independently updates from Windows. This wasn’t true with IE. Parts of IE are used by other programs on Windows.
Apple does not allow apps to run arbitrary code.
After all, this could easily break security in the iPhone.
This would allow viruses on the iPhone.
This would allow malware on the iPhone.
Web browsers run arbitrary code. To lessen the security risk of this, Apple lets competing browsers on the platform only if they use a known codebase for which they know the security risks – Webkit. And this is a good decision. The app store as tons of competing web browsers. But they are safe browsers which do not sideload viruses and malware onto iOS devices.
All you have to do is see how many viruses, malware, and insecurities exist on Android when you are allowed to run arbitrary code. See how many viruses, malware and insecurities on jailbroken iOS devices exist since this allows apps to run arbitrary code.
iOS has ZERO viruses and malware. Its insecurities largely do not affect users. It is the safest computing environment in the mass market. Apple’s decision was in the best interest of its customers. And iOS devices are highly coveted and loved as a result.
Since iOS devices are not the majority of portable computing devices, you can always choose the competition if you don’t like Apple’s policies, decisions, and its gay CEO.
I don’t buy the argument. It might apply to the apps, but not the major browsers.
You have to remember Apple doesn’t do source review.
If you want to slip something in there, you can. For example the last time the Apple app-sandbox has been broken was less than a couple of months ago.
The other browser engines aren’t less secure than the engine in Safari.
Safari also runs arbitrary web code, heck regularly Apple blocks apps from the appstore and people build an web version instead to make them available for iOS.
No, I think in the case of the webbrowsers it’s a control issue. Apple are control freaks. They went to far.
I’m not a US-citizen, but I’ve heared US-citizen say the same about less severe things: it’s un-American. It’s the opposite of freedom.
The most important reason, next to app review, you don’t see rampant security bugs on iOS: updates.
iOS get updates a lot better the Android phones out there.
Edited 2015-09-18 19:18 UTC
Again Apple wants control:
http://www.osnews.com/comments/28849
The situation is really sad. In fact, there’s no real alternative to Safari.
Even Firefox for iOS will be just a Safari-wrapper, not a full fledged browser.
And to make things even worse, Safari is a pretty good browser, IE sucked so much that people had a very concrete reason to switch to Firefox… It’s a golden cage.
First of all, web designers are completely free to ignore what Apple does. Its presence on the web with safari, BOTH desktop and mobile safari is a tiny percentage of web traffic. The problem is people believe Apple’s pull is larger than it really is, and that’s *only* true if you’re designing exclusively mobile content, and even then, if you don’t play Apple’s game, you’re not going to lose.
Second, if web designers as a whole, walk away from Apple’s closed ecosystem as they *should* and design around standards everyone can get around, not just Apple’s sheeple, Apple would have no choice to stop being a complete arrogant ass (in this instance at least) and start properly supporting standards again.
Remember when Google removed plugins? Or when they ripped out all of Adobe’s WebKit contributions?
Apple is not the only one with veto power.
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