But I see way too many people using Chrome on iOS or the Google App as their main web browser. If it was really about the underlying technology then nobody would download alternative web browsers, but they do, so surely people decide to use these browser apps based on their features like password support, tab design and functionality, etc.
I don't understand your point. All browsers on iOS use the same underlying technology (Webkit) so the only relevant features between iOS browsers is those other features like password support, tab design, etc.
No, Safari is the new IE. There are better browsers but due to it's market share (forced by Apple) developers are forced to limit themselves to it's feature set.
And the reasons are the same as well: Microsoft saw the browser as competition to their OS and Apple sees it the same way. So they both limited development of their browser to keep their platform supremacy. The situation is not the same with Google -- the web is their platform. This has it's own issues but it's not history repeating itself.
Firefox is a better browser but people are stuck with chrome cos everything works in chrome. Google controls chromium.
Its absolutely history repeating when Google adds is own standards.
People whine about iOS Safari but the reality is it works really well and most of the complaints are “it works in chrome but not safari and I don’t want to spend any amount of time looking at it so I won’t support it”
That's a load of crap. I use safari for all my browsing with the one exception of using Firefox for read.amazon.com. It's perfectly fine. I'm never working on my computer an thinking, "damnit safari, why can't you just be like chrome/firefox." That never happens. I vastly prefer safari to chrome or Firefox.
At work I'll use chrome because some of our web apps only support chrome for whatever reason. But they're garbage IBM puts out, not something you'd use by choice.
Developers make sure their sites work in Safari. Just like developers made sure that their sites still worked in IE11 for almost a decade. Because it works for you is exactly why it's holding back development.
If developers made sure their sites worked in Safari we wouldn't have submissions to HN for sites that only work in Chrome with "oh yeah it doesn't work in Firefox or Safari because I didn't test it".
The number of developers who do their work on Chrome and call it a job done and never test in another browser, far outweight the number of developers who do test cross-browser.
The reason people tested in IE11 and less was because they were forced to. They liked Chrome but the users were using the shitty browsers, and older OS didn't yet support Edge.
Now the majority use Chrome and the devs no longer care.
We need more competition in the browser space, Safari and Firefox provide that. And neither are holding web development back.
Apple actively cripples Safari so that developers are forced to make apps for the App Store and give them a cut of all revenues. Safari is an extremely cynical product, much more than Chrome. Developers should not support Safari. Let the sites break.
What does Twitter do that requires an app that doesn’t work on safari? What did Reddit do that requires an app that safari can’t do? LinkedIn? Steam? EBay. Amazon. Google maps. Discord. Slack. What do these do that can’t be done on safari on iOS?
I can't think of any websites that don't work with Firefox. It was hell back in the IE days because a lot of sites required ActiveX or whatever that nonsense was.
triaged & root-caused quickly, then sat around for a while until what looks like an [MS Edge!] dev picked it up and fixed it 2 days ago (merged 4 hours ago).
IE this is not.
if anything is like IE(6), it's Safari and iOS Safari, where standardized APIs go unimplemented and bugs go unfixed for years with radio silence. and when bugs do get fixed, it requires a full OS update, just like IE.
That's entirely my point. People don't use Chrome on desktop because it uses Blink and V8 - they use it because of the UX and UI decisions, and the same goes for Chrome on iOS.
If a hypothetical real Chrome for iOS existed that -- like this thread is about -- let you run native quality apps with access to features that Safari doesn't allow then people would switch over. Imagine actually getting notifications from your apps!
If they don't like the UI/UX, I'm sure they'd find hypothetical Chromium variant that suits their needs. Eventually browsers without better underlying technology would just cease to exist.
I use Firefox myself but if it stopped keeping up with modern web standards eventually I'd have give it up.
People use chrome because it works. In some hypothetical future where many sites are broken with chrome for some reason, some other browser will take over. On iOS that can’t happen.
Chrome on iOS basically has to suffer almost all the same bugs and issues as Safari on iOS because only one underlying browser engine is allowed by Apple on their iOS devices (Webkit, which is maintained by Apple).
In this case the window-dressing is different but the technology underneath is largely the same.
