Comment Re:"Open" how? (Score 5, Informative) 132
Fuck developers.
Apple sells products for customers who use them. Developers are only a secondary markets and a tiny fraction of users. If a developer is unhappy with WebKit, they can go buy something else.
Fuck developers.
Apple sells products for customers who use them. Developers are only a secondary markets and a tiny fraction of users. If a developer is unhappy with WebKit, they can go buy something else.
What part of "web developers" didn't you understand in that sentence? Developers buying different hardware changes nothing.
By not keeping up with standards, Apple is literally holding the entire web back, because until Safari on iOS supports a new web technology, nobody can realistically use that technology on public-facing websites, because they would lose a huge percentage of their users if their site is nonfunctional on iOS.
And by not allowing true third-party browsers that are more than just thin skins on WebKit, no app developers have the ability to create competing browsers that offer those technologies, the existence of which would otherwise put pressure Apple to support those new technologies on Safari/WebKit on iOS. And that doesn't just hurt developers. It limits what functionality websites can offer to end users, which harms end users, whether they know it or not.
More importantly, Apple's heel-dragging is entirely self-serving. By making Safari/WebKit be a second-class citizen in the browser wars, they end up forcing lots of things that could otherwise be websites to be native apps instead, bloating their own App Store with unnecessary crap and taking a profit on things that they really shouldn't be taking a profit on, which then harms users directly through their pocketbooks.
Now do you understand why not allowing non-WebKit browsers is important?