We were in a “built for Netscape” world right before IE had its brief window of innovation in versions 4-5. The fact that people were building to IE though was only painful for a few specific reasons: 1. the versions of IE targeted were exclusive to Windows (Mac IE was way different, so it wasn’t that useful for when the site had targeted Windows IE)

2. IE stopped all development of useful UI or web standards features, meaning if you needed the compatibility you were stuck with a stagnant browser

3. Due to #2, of course web devs hands were tied when it comes to adopting things like HTML5, <video> tags etc. Users would have needed to switch between the two constantly — Firefox for cool new sites and IE for their bank, school, government, whatever.

I would posit that none of the above seems true about Chromium. They do continue developing it, they add new web standards the most aggressively of anyone, and it’s available on basically every platform except the one Apple bans it from. Mind you I don’t really want Google to own it, because they are way too damn big even without Chrome… but honestly it’s no IE situation.

Yep. Chrome's mindshare and momentum is incredibly difficult to overcome, and outside of technology-oriented circles users generally don't develop associations between specific programs and poor battery life unless it gets the fans blaring like you're running Cyberpunk 2077 with setting cranked to max or something.

It's similar to how the overwhelming majority of people driving cars aren't going to make note of the difference in driving dynamics between CVT and automatic transmissions unless one severely underperforms compared to the other. It either runs or it doesn't and that's where the distinction ends for people who treat their car/computer/phone as an appliance.

>> people will figure that out and adapt for themselves

>No they won't. People on HN will. Not the average person.

Yes they will, Apple has made it very easy to see.

To check iOS app power usage, go to Settings > Battery, where you'll see a breakdown of battery consumption by app for the last 24 hours or 10 days, showing usage time and background activity, allowing you to identify power-hungry apps and manage settings like Background App Refresh to improve battery life.

So yeah, it's easy to see which app is taking the most power, and users can do this easily, unless you think Apple's UX is so bad that users won't know how to read it?

>The problem is, arbitrary code execution vastly expands the risks. Your "should" is doing all the work there.

If that's a problem for web browsers, then it's a problem for every single app in the app store. There's nothing really unique about a web browser app that makes it more risky than any other app. Javascript is already very much sandboxed. And there have been plenty of exploits that already target Safari. So saying other browsers are the problem is like blaming the victim (of Apple's anti-competitive practices).

>Huh? Apple follows web standards. Why the heck should it make Safari available on Android and Windows? Safari isn't a standard, web standards are.

If web standards are standards, then let other web browsers on iOS.

The real reason Apple disallows other browser engines on Safari is so they can force developers to create native apps where they can get a cut of any purchase made through the app. The problems with Apple's anti-competitive practices have been spelled out in the DOJ lawsuit against them:

https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/media/1344546/dl?inline