Comforting Myths Awash in revisionist histories about Apple's web efforts, a look at the evidence.
In several recent posts, I've attempted to address how the structure of standards bodies, and their adjacent incubation venues, accelerates or suppresses the potential of the web as a platform. The pace of progress matters because platforms are competitions, and actors that prevent expansions of basic capabilities risk consigning the web to the dustbin.
Inside that framework, there is much to argue over regarding the relative merits of specific features and evolutionary directions. This is healthy and natural. We should openly discuss features and their risks, try to prevent bad consequences, and work to mend what breaks. This competitive process has made browsers incredibly safe and powerful for 30 years.
Until iOS, that is.
Imagine my surprise hearing that Apple isn't attempting to freeze the web in amber to make space for its own proprietary platform because it engages to redesign proposals it disagrees with.
As I have occasionally documented, this was not my experience. I had relatively broad exposure to the patterns of Apple's collaboration, having designed, advised on, or led teams that built dozens of features across disparate areas of the platform since the Blink fork.
But perhaps this was the wrong slice from which to judge? I've been hearing of Apple's openness to collaboration on challenging APIs so often that either my priors are invalid, or something else is at work. To find out, I needed data.
A specific parry deployed whenever Apple's sluggish pace is raised: “controversial” features “lack consensus” or “are not standards” or “have privacy and security problems” (unspecified). The corollary being that Apple engages in good-faith to address these developer needs in other ways, even in areas where they have overtly objected.
Apple's engine has indisputably trailed Blink and Gecko in all manner of features over the past decade. This would not be a major problem, except that Apple prevents other browsers from delivering better and more competitive web engines on iOS.
Normally, consequences for not adopting certain features arrive in the market. Browsers that fail to meet important needs, or drop the ball on quality lose share. This does not hold on iOS because no browser can ship a less-buggy or more capable engine than Apple's WebKit.
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