You're shadow boxing. I never said Apple isn't engaging in abusive business tactics. They clearly are. I just think the result benefits the open web by taking power away from Google.
And I pointed out that they don't help the open web, they stifle innovation of the web by abusing their power for profit.
Which I think is far worse than anything you think Google is trying to do.
I'm not giving Google a free pass here, sure they can be abusive, I hated "AMP" and I'm glad it got thrown on the junk pile. That was clearly abusive. But implementing Web Bluetooth? Not abusive, it's progress. And it's too bad Apple abuses their power and stifles progress in this case.
I can't say anything other than "I disagree"; I think it does help the open web. You already admitted that you in your day job has been forced to make your site work in non-Chromium browsers thanks to Apple's authoritarian stance. That's a purely good outcome in my book, as much as I dislike the lack of user freedom that's behind it.
>You already admitted that you in your day job has been forced to make your site work in non-Chromium browsers thanks to Apple's authoritarian stance.
I did not say that at all. I'm not supporting iOS at all for the features that Apple won't implement in Safari. Tough titties Apple users. And why should I? iOS and MacOS world-wide are a small percentage of all users. And Apple doesn't care what their users don't get to access, so long as Apple is making money.
Apple is not the good guy here.
They are actually doing the opposite of you want, not sure how you can't see that. "The web" is now essentially all Apple will allow it to be, for their own greedy reasons.
I don't think it does benefit the open web. If consumers can't get value from the web, they'll go where they can find it. That is currently native apps, which is a closed and proprietary ecosystem. This causes the market itself to shrink, which means fewer and fewer people will invest in the web [1].
> I do, frankly, think that mobile Safari couldn't compete that well in an open market, just like desktop Firefox can't.
Couldn't compete isn't a justification to exploit platform control and ban competition. If Apple's so worried that Safari usage will fall off in favor of Chrome, then they can invest in Safari to make it a level playing field to keep their user base.
