There were news that the EU has begun to ask for developers' opinions about the death of PWAs too. Apple doesn't want the EU to ask for developers' opinions.
For sure Apple doesn't want anyone to know how it has crippled the web for over a decade, prevented browser competition, and just tried to kill web apps once and for good, that's why they tried to sneak this change without even making it public before two weeks after it was introduced in iOS beta.
As absurd as it is, Apple forcing people to use Webkit/Safari is, at the moment, good for the browser landscape. You already have websites that say browsers that aren't chromium aren't supported, if iOS didn't force Safari on people this would be way more common as people would flock to chrome and websites decide it isn't worth it to support other browsers.
I use Firefox on my non-work machines ... in an ideal world, enough people would do that to prevent the "best in Internet Explorer" web of the dark ages, but I'll take getting forced to use Webkit on my phone over that, even if I'd prefer a "true" Firefox.
> You already have websites that say browsers that aren't chromium aren't supported
Is Webkit really so far diverged from Blink that the rendering result is different? I realize that Webkit doesn't support a bunch of stuff that Google pushed into Blink (like Web bluetooth, for instance), but I thought the end result wasn't that different.
Blink was forked 12 years ago, and the size of the team behind Chrome is probably at least ten times the size of the team behind Safari. So yes, there are major differences between two, and it's not just additional advanced APIs like Web Bluetooth. WebKit is lagging behind in all areas and ridden with bugs.
I doubt it's "at least 10 times the size" and probably somewhere closer to 5X tops with a 2X core that's the realistic measure since those are the non-rotating folks with real expertise who make things go. That team is probably about the same size as Mozilla's which is also non-rotating.
There are enough weird divergences to make targeting iOS annoying. Off the top of my head I can recall that Safari PWAs can't get callbacks from pages spawned in a new window. Things have a tendency to fail in strange and unexpected ways.
Worse yet, many people have older iPhones with outdated Safari. You can't tell them to just install another browser, because under the hood Apple mandates that all other browsers are still the same outdated Safari engine.
If you want to track these issues down, you need to invest in an Apple based set up. You can't run Safari outside of the Apple ecosystem to track these issues down. It is bad enough that people are now offering pay as you go Safari instances for testing. Apple gatekeeps, Apple invents problems and developers are stuck with the bag.
Apple banning browser engines is what has prevented the web from becoming relevant on mobile, and the reason why browsers like Firefox cannot distinguish themselves from Safari and end up becoming irrelevant.
So no, it is not in anyway good for the browser landscape or the web, it only serves the interest of one company: Apple.
Look at some overall browser/os usage stats and say again that the web isn't relevant on mobile, and look at browser usage stats for desktop and android and claim again that firefox would have a relevant market share on ios if browser choice was free. Those claims seem pretty disconnected from reality.
