Is Chrome the New IE? (2023)

Mobile Safari is the new IE. Random idiosyncrasies that are poorly documented dictated by the whims of a single corporation. Apple has broken stuff multiple times in the past few years.

Then it would be quite different from IE. Microsoft was so averse to breaking backwards compatibility, that IE stopped innovating and stagnated.

I was thinking more of every web app needing one or more "if isIE() {} else {}" blocks somewhere in its codebase. Now we have the wondrous pleasure of doing the same for Apple.

I don't think that is true. They stopped developing it full stop. Keeping back compat was not the issue.

There are so many little bits of…weird in Safari.

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/WebKit_Exte...

Just this morning, I had to go down the WebKit pseudo-element rabbit hole to fix a layout bug in a very standard date-of-birth field.

Microsoft stopped developing IE when the government sued them for simply including IE with Windows, the same thing Apple does with Safari. But Apple is far more abusive and forbids any other browser engine on iOS, all browsers on iOS are forced to use Safari under the hood.

> Microsoft stopped developing IE when the government sued them for simply including IE with Windows

They weren't sued for simply including IE with Windows (bundling IE and business arrangements to prevent OEMs from replacing was one of several means of leveraging the Windows desktop OS monopoly to monopolize other markets in the antitrust suit), and they didn't stop developing IE when that suit was initiated.

> But Apple is far more abusive and forbids any other browser engine on iOS

Bundling wasn't the offense, illegally leveraging the desktop OS monopoly to monopolize other markets was the offense. Bundling was part of the means but the means itself want illegal, the ends to which the means were employed were.

Apple doesn't have an incentive to make mobile web better.

If they do, many apps would just be websites outside their walled garden.

> "The central issue was whether Microsoft was allowed to bundle its IE web browser software with its Windows operating system."

> "the DOJ built upon the allegation that Microsoft forced computer makers to include its Internet browser as a part of the installation of Windows software."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor....

It's the same exact situation with MacOS/iOS and Safari, but it's actually far worse with Apple and iOS Safari because people have no choice to install another web browser on iOS, all web browsers on iOS are Safari.

Now, finally, the DOJ is rightly going after Apple for doing this, and many, many other abusive business practices.