Worth noting that Apple doesn't just cripple iOS Safari, it cripples all iOS browsers because it also forces them to use WebKit, the crippled browser engine underneath Safari.
It would be fine if they just made Safari bad, that's their choice. But they don't stop there: they make the entire web bad on iOS purposely to promote the native apps they can tax.
Yeah other reasons I've heard of include the obligation to adopt iOS-specific APIs for features like scrolling and text inputs; developing a separate app for these markets and therefore loosing their existing userbase; and signing a pretty crazy contract, among other things.
But the bigger the market they can reach, the bigger the reward, and so at some point it may justify investing resources to work around those roadblocks and accept the drawbacks.
So after the EU and the UK, Japan is now putting an end to Apple's iOS alternative browser engine ban too.
Those are 3 large jurisdictions, I wonder if that's now a market big enough for Chrome and Firefox to invest into iOS versions of their browser that use Blink and Gecko under the hood. From what I heard this was one of the main reasons they haven't done it yet.
The likely outcome of alternate, capable browser engines coming to iOS will be to push Apple to invest in Safari so it can compete with them and not loose all of its market share.
Otherwise, yes it's likely web apps will prompt their user to use a browser with a capable engine on iOS if they exist. Nothing to configure, install and use.
Users will then be able to use capable web apps that take up a tenth of the storage of native apps, that are cheaper and portable across platforms — among many other benefits.
Browser engines define the capabilities of web apps and websites. When they don't support APIs or have bugs, they impact negatively web software.
Apple's WebKit is renowned to be lagging behind, refusing to implement crucial features and being rigged with bugs, hence limiting the capabilities and quality of web apps, and effectively preventing them to compete with native apps.
Getting other browser engines on iOS would be beneficial for developers, businesses and end user by making mobile web apps viable.
The ability to install web apps that open as standalone apps, and not in Safari, was introduced by Apple with iOS 2.1 in 2008. Well before this ability was added to Android.
> "EU is already so harmonized that startups can shop for best corporate structure and law, just like they do in the US and run their business smoothly."
It's not harmonized at all, it's fully fragmented.
You can't hire someone working from another EU country. You can't raise capital across the EU. You have many different rules, regulations, taxes, etc depending on the state.
Just one nitpick: the DOM is not updated by CSS here, only the value of the CSS variable is. (It will indeed cause style recalc and paint though, and result in poor performance as we can see with the demos.)
So they can make it to work for platform-specific apps that they tax 30%, but can't make it to work for interoperable web apps which they can't tax. How convenient.
And what are they suggesting to improve the proposal? Apple, which makes $20B a year with Safari, surely has enough resources to make a counter-proposal?
The APIs coming with a security or privacy risk are always gated by a permission prompt on the web (contrary to platform-specific apps). Safari has gone even further by only allowing some of them (e.g. Push notifications) for installed web apps.
These APIs are also much more restricted than their proprietary-ecosystem equivalent.
Overall, web apps having access to these features in Chrome are an order of magnitude safer than platform-specific apps.
How do you explain that all other OSes, including Apple's own macOS, manage to allow other browser engines?
Do you think the iOS team is that incompetent?