I believe politics is the reason here too, their strategy appears to be to hinder the browser on their iOS platform to encourage native app development which locks developers into their platform which then locks users of those developers' software into their platform.
This is demonstrated by making certain features of application development on their devices only accessible by writing native software.
The simple workaround would be to write your own browser and put it on their platform. That is expressly verboten or else I'd already be using an iPhone running Firefox, instead I use and android that runs firefox and which has extensions since it's what it's users want vs what the payers of the browsers developers salaries want.
So the strategy MS used to buy years of revenue for win+office was to bundle a default browser to control the web platform and strategically hinder it whenever it threatened their core income centers. The default opt-out required momentum plus the fact that netscape did themselves no favors led to a dark age of web platform innovation as MS corruptly controlled the space and acted as negligent stewards.
What is totally insane to me is that a large portion of the Microsoft anti-trust trial revolved around them simply providing a default browser, it is hard to imagine even they would have blocked netscape software from running on their platform outright.
And yet here we are 15 years later and the iOS platform is doing just that, Apple is embracing this Microsoft strategy and extending it to a whole new level by flat out banning 3rd party browsers and so we all run the risk of having this great renaissance in browser application innovation extinguished into a second dark age.
> I believe politics is the reason here too, their strategy appears to be to hinder the browser on their iOS platform to encourage native app development which locks developers into their platform which then locks users of those developers' software into their platform.
Well, this is expected from a business perspective. Apple can't profit from the web as much as they do from the App Store, the only way to "convince Apple" is either by dropping their sales, or by regulation.
This is demonstrated by making certain features of application development on their devices only accessible by writing native software.
The simple workaround would be to write your own browser and put it on their platform. That is expressly verboten or else I'd already be using an iPhone running Firefox, instead I use and android that runs firefox and which has extensions since it's what it's users want vs what the payers of the browsers developers salaries want.
So the strategy MS used to buy years of revenue for win+office was to bundle a default browser to control the web platform and strategically hinder it whenever it threatened their core income centers. The default opt-out required momentum plus the fact that netscape did themselves no favors led to a dark age of web platform innovation as MS corruptly controlled the space and acted as negligent stewards.
What is totally insane to me is that a large portion of the Microsoft anti-trust trial revolved around them simply providing a default browser, it is hard to imagine even they would have blocked netscape software from running on their platform outright.
And yet here we are 15 years later and the iOS platform is doing just that, Apple is embracing this Microsoft strategy and extending it to a whole new level by flat out banning 3rd party browsers and so we all run the risk of having this great renaissance in browser application innovation extinguished into a second dark age.