Apple already shipped attestation on the web, and we barely noticed

Yesterday, the sentiment on Google's early proposal was "company breakups start to make a lot of sense", "Go f yourself, Google", "It's maddening and saddening", "[the people involved] reputations are fully gone from this".

Today it turns out Apple not only proposed but implemented and shipped the actual feature last year. "It could be an interesting opportunity to reboot a few long-lost dreams". "I kind of get both sides here". "I guess I personally come down to leaving this turned on in Safari for now, and seeing what happens". Granted, the overall sentiment is still negative but the difference in tone is stark. The reality distortion field is alive and well, folks.

Apple is big but insular. I never bought any Apple device so I never had Safari (*) and any attestation affecting Apple's customers didn't affect me. Web sites could harass them but not everybody else. Google is a different beast. Their browser engine can't run on iOS but it runs on Macs and on every other major OS.

(*) there was a Safari for Windows in the early days of the iPhone. It had a Mac UI which was horrible to look at inside Windows. Maybe it was the time Jobs thought web sites were the way to go for the iPhone. Then he realized that an app store would make a lot of money. Nobody gets everything right all the times.

Apple released Safari on Windows when a majority of Windows users were still using IE7. It was a genuine play for a pie of the Windows browser market and its search revenue. It had nothing to do with web apps. When it happened, Jobs positioned its release as a way to make Safari even better, since more people would use it and report issues and bugs.