What we need are companies working on browsers that actually care about the web. Apple have demonstrated time and time again that they don't, because they favor native applications on iOS and macOS over anything web, so we end up with subpar browsers who ship with the OSes. In some cases (iOS), we even end up with a browser-monopoly where no other browser is even welcome.
It’s an improvement over the situation as it was, but Google still has a great deal more muscle than anybody else in steering the development of Blink and the web in general.
Really, at this point I think Chrome/Blink should be spun out as a separate entity. It could be set up as a model similar to that of ARM, or perhaps a non-profit of some kind. Either way, Blink needs to be separated from overwhelming corporate influence.
> I think Chrome/Blink should be spun out as a separate entity
Dear god, no, please.
The Chrome team is a treasure of immense value to the world. They are the only major software team in the world where my bug reports have been triaged and fixed. Again and again and again, and usually very quickly too. Ocassionally I would find some hellish obscure corner case of a bug, ignore it, and it would still get fixed even without my reporting it: the team is just unbelievably effective! I wished Google were not selling advertising, but the downsides for Chrome have been fairly limited. The fact that they have given the source code to Chromium away for free is just plain astonishing. I am blown away by how good Google has been as a custodian of something that is used by so many in the world: it has been a fair gift to us all with surprisingly few caveats.
If you don’t like Google’s guardianship then use a derivative browser, even Microsoft Edge!
Split off Chromium and it would likely turn to shit. How many times have I seen browser vendors go down the path of evil? How many times have I seen important software get sold, and the product focus shift to something execrable?
On browsers: the Safari team is a black hole for bug reports, with a browser full of broken or non-compliant functionality… IndexedDB is just one of many similar symptoms. Firefox has the right social goals, but it hasn’t been delivering guru level engineering, but instead Firefox is continually chasing useless queer features (similar to many other now dead products in the world). The Microsoft Edge team did fix one bug report for me once, but I just happened to report it while they were developing the feature, and I had test cases showing the feature working in Firefox and Chrome. I still have trauma from Microsoft IE6+ (although it was a competitive edge for my business that I could usually make it work, albeit at the cost of years of my life devoted to creating IE workarounds).
Edge adopted chromium because microsoft could not compete with their monopoly power to enforce web standards as “however it is implemented in chrome”. If chrome ships a feature, there 80-90% market share means that every other chromium browser has to ship it or they’re “broken” and people switch to chrome.
if the other chromium wrappers have a seat at the table, that isn’t the table that makes the decisions.
It's good that Apple doesn't care about the web, because that means that developers can't rely on the APIs that Apple refuses to implement, meaning that in the end the web ends up with fewer APIs that can be used in practical terms.
Why would you want less api? Overall at the specification level those APIs are secure even if some implementations aren't. Web is a mature application platform at this point and it's being held back by apple.
Apple has been rapidly addressing shortcomings in WebKit and significantly expanding its team over the last year (at least). They’re clearly investing, so they clearly care in that sense. It’s also obvious that that rapid pace and onboarding could produce defects. But I don’t think it’s accurate at all to say they don’t care about the web.
iOS sure but native mac applications are dead, D-E-A-D, muerto, morte, morto etc on macOS and have been almost entirely ejected in favor of web based SAAS and electron apps over the past 4 years.
I genuinely can’t name a native application released for macOS built with AppKit or SwiftUI or whatever that didn’t come from Apple.
Off the top of my head: Nova (Panic's new code editor) and Craft are both pretty new such apps. Acorn and Pixelmator Pro are both image editors that aren't brand new, but aren't quarter-century old incumbents by any stretch. There's the whole Affinity suite of Adobe competitors. And while BBEdit is a quarter-century old incumbent, of sorts, it's pretty far from being in maintenance mode -- and it certainly has company.
It's certainly true that the center of gravity is tilting toward web apps, but not every kind of app makes a good web app, at least yet.
TablePlus looks cool! Also the only one started in the last decade.
Inertia is the most powerful force in the universe, and gravity is up there as well. Adobe & Microsoft dynastyware dating back to 1990, and two also rans devoured by the web (Figma/Postman). And TablePlus which genuinely looks cool and gives just enough hope to mourn again.
I’ve come around on Figma these days honestly, but will take Paw’s quality over Postman’s funding any day.
I will say as a former Mac developer who came of age and experience during the Carbon Y2K transition days, the fact you can just expect some form of availability regardless of Linux or iOS or macOS or Chrome or Safari is a genuine fucking achievement for the human race, how far and low we’ve come.
