At this point, we in the web community need to come to terms with the fact that Safari has become the new IE. Microsoft is repentant these days, Google is pushing the web as far as it can go, and Mozilla is still being Mozilla. Apple is really the one singer in that barbershop quartet hitting all the sour notes, and it’s time we start talking about it openly instead of tiptoeing around it like we’re going to hurt somebody’s feelings. Apple is the most valuable company in the world; they can afford to take a few punches.
I’d like to know what people think the problem is:
They just don’t care or because they have the monopoly on their own devices they don’t _have_ (want) to care.
The problem is that perceived nesessity of supporting Safari holds back what technologies can be used and hinders progress.
Hopefully the industry has learned a lesson from supporting IE and IOS users start seeing this message:
Best viewed with a modern browser.
One of the problems is:
Safari is the only browser Apple allows on iOS.
Browsers like Chrome or from Mozilla are only allowed to use the Safari engine on iOS.
So there is no competition on the iOS platform.
The only reason why, for example the agency that deals with anti-competitive behavior in the EU, hasn’t stepped in is because Android also exists. Thus Apple doesn’t have a ridiculously large market share.
Lennie,
Wasn’t allowed to upvote, but these restrictions are a major problem for competition.
This article hits the nail on the head. I’ve gotten calls from clients saying this or that doesn’t work on iphone, so I’m forced to recode things because the client needs it on the iphone.
Until users start leaving IOS over it (very unlikely), Apple has very little incentive to fix this. Users are totally locked in to whatever browser apple wants to ship, and by extension web developers are held back by the need to support those users. It’s an ugly situation made worse by iphone restrictions.
Edited 2015-06-30 17:06 UTC
So what do you think the answer is to my original question ?:
Just lazy or incombent ?
Lennie,
Apple doesn’t like to reveal it’s thinking, but judging by history I’d guess it’s a strategic decision rather than laziness. The article even highlights that Apple could have used a better working IndexedDB implementation that was already available in the open source WebKit, yet they still elected to disable the feature.
I think apple is at odds with having too much rich client-side functionality inside safari because it competes with apple’s walled garden. Holding back safari web standards minimizes the threat.
That is what I think too:
1. make sure web doesn’t compete well with apps.
2. developers make more apps
3. get some money from apps aka profit
You forgot option 3: a desire to stifle competition & use the size of their userbase as a lever to exercise undue control over web standards. Imagine the uproar, if (back in the heyday of IE5/6) Microsoft had disallowed all browser plugins that they hadn’t explicitly approved, and then used that position to – say – encourage the use of WMV, by rejecting any ActiveX plugins for all other media formats.
Yet that’s EXACTLY what Apple does with H.264 and iOS. If it weren’t for the fact that that h.264 is the only web video format that iOS users can view, there would be no reason for it remain as the de-facto standard – and WebM would have overtaken it by now.
3 is the incombent option, they use it to force their own ideas on their customers. Instead of thinking about what customers really want.
You mean “incumbent”? I had thought that was misspelling of “incompetent,” but yeah that makes more sense in context.
Edited 2015-06-30 20:07 UTC
Ohh, sorry, my mistake. Yes, that was what I meant. 🙂
You probably guessed it: English is not my mother tongue.
On our platform 70% of mobile traffic from the English speaking world is on iOS. It’s by far the most popular browser.
I’ve heard similar numbers from others in our industry.
No one is going to ‘rebel’ against Safari while those dynamics hold.
Edited 2015-06-30 22:55 UTC
Monopoly abuse. Apple should be forbidden from tying the browser to iOS (and required to provide an explicit browser choice similar to how MS were required at some point). That would give them a kick.
Oh yeah, that really worked. How many EU-specific editions did MS sell again? One?
It won’t be a complete fix, but stopping Apple from banning other browsers on iOS will surely be some improvement.
Edited 2015-06-30 17:38 UTC
It might help some. But even still, I doubt the majority of iOS users will go through the trouble of installing alternate browsers. So the *real* fix I think would be to get people to stop using iOS. Not sure how you’re gonna do that though, as even an experienced user like me has to work a little to wade through the sea of shit Android devices trying to find the few good ones that exist.
WorknMan,
There might be another victory if, in addition to installing 3rd party browsers, users also got the right to replace the default apps.
What monopoly?
Droid has 80% of the world wide phone business…
Unless you mean on their own hardware?!?!?!?! how fucking dumb is that?
It’s their own HW and SW!!!.
That’s like saying Samesung has a monopoly on the OS/apps that runs on their own refrigerators so we should force them to add other companies apps.
Sorry Apples echo system is their own from the ground up!
Just fucking stupid!
Isn’t it just that Apple is not interested in making the web a ‘do all’ platform and more interested in an app centred net experience. Google is the opposite and not only wants people to use the web as much as possible but wants to build the web services into apps. Both are reflections of their different business models.
I think Apple wants to free itself of dependency on Google service as as much as it can as long as it can broadly maintain or improve the quality of user experience in the process.
Apple is currently slowing turning search into an app based or OS integrated exercise, and is quite happy to kill Google’s business model through ad blocking if it is something end users want (which they do).
Apple see safari as a browser not a platform, as long as you are just browsing it’s fine, try and build a platform on top of it and you run into an Apple wall of indifference.
Why on earth would Apple want a browser based platform to flourish?
Not any more, ironically that was what they were doing when the first iPhone came out:
http://9to5mac.com/2011/10/21/jobs-original-vision-for-the-iphone-n…
Winners adapt.
I guess Google leaving the Webkit project hurt Apple here.
But not all is bad, MathML for example is supported in Firefox and Safari, while Chrome doesn’t pursue it any more.
Uh, didn’t I say this, like five years ago?
http://camendesign.com/not_the_web
Jobs is obviously gone now, but as figure-head of the company he was representative of the company’s immovable policies.
If Apple can afford to take a few punches, they are able to fix the Safari issues so punches won’t be necessary. Get ‘er done Apple!
Safari will never become dominant the way IE was, because Apple will never have the kind of platform domination Microsoft did. The price of Apple hardware compared to others makes that certain. Safari will, therefore, never be able to hold back web standards the way Microsoft did with IE 6 because, though Apple fans will deny it until they’re blue in the face, neither Windows nor Android are going away in the near future.
darknexus,
That depends on how comfortable developers (and more importantly clients) are with not supporting iphone users. If they insist on supporting iphone, then yes it does hold back web standards.
Safari is really just ie 5.5 version 2.0.
There won’t be any Safari-only sites and Mac users are often enough forced to Chromium/Firefox already because web developers just don’t test in Safari (because they’re not on Macs).