WebShield – A new wide-spectrum content blocker for Safari

I like projects like this since Safari is probably the biggest competitor to Chrome, but historically Apple hasn't been kind to these sorts of extensions. I hope they're able to find a way to make it work, because Safari is well-integrated into the iOS ecosystem.

Wipr2 does a pretty good job.

While everything you're saying is correct, Safari is only the biggest competitor to Chrome because Apple is going out of their way to make it hard or even impossible in the case of iOS for developers to develop well-oiled browsers for their OSes. Just wanted to add that, because I'm pissed.

No; it’s because then, the internet would go from 80% Chromium, to 95% Chromium.

Allowing alternative browser engines does not mean Firefox gets a footing. It means Chromium gets a footing even on iOS, and we start seeing Electron apps on iOS, with every app bundling their own Chromium renderer.

If Apple were forced to allow 3rd party engines on iOS, they might as well shut down WebKit. All hail Blink, the universal engine.

Eh not quite. I switched off Chrome many years ago (on macOS) because it had gotten so bloated and was constantly running my fans.

I remember reading that Chrome had worked on fixing a lot of that bloat (so did FF). But Safari was a breath of fresh air in how fast it worked and didn't seem to constantly kill my battery.

Yes it has the occasional quirks. But I do like that Apple focuses more on UX than just DevEx by trying to implement everything and the kitchen sink web standards.

As others have said, we definitely need alternative browsers and browser engines.

But at the end of the day, it's just mostly WebKit (and Blink derived from it) and Firefox, so it's not like there's all that much competition.

> But at the end of the day, it's just mostly WebKit (and Blink derived from it) and Firefox

Blink is a separate engine, as it has significantly diverted from WebKit.

Yeah, that's the downside. I'm all for Apple to open up their platform. But the browsers will be dead, and everything will be Chrome

Since they dropped the old web extension support perhaps 10(?) years ago, the new extension system has only grown new capabilities. They even added the ability to dynamically execute JS, which is what enabled these blockers to do things like block YouTube ads.

Good! because people prefer Chrome. People have to go out of their way to install it and they do.

If Safari was better then Safari would stay #1 on iOS. They shouldn't be allowed force this any more than Microsoft was allowed to force IE.

If 3rd party browsers were allowed we'd have had WebGL2 on iOS 4 years earlier. WebGPU 2 years earlier. WebXR several years earlier (Apple is only adding it now and only for Vision Pro), and many other features.

I'd rather have an open platform with free choice (including the side effect of Chrome taking even more market share) instead of Apple forcing users to use their browser. I definitely dislike Chrome and you may unfortunately be right with your projection, but forcing people to use a different browser does not help the greater cause IMO.

That's true, I'm mostly pissed about Apple locking down the iOS browser ecosystem, which is not the case on macOS. While I think Firefox and Chrome did not have a level playing field especially the release of the M1, because Apple has started optimizing Safari for their arm64 platform for example way earlier than FF/Chrome even could. Also, obviously, Safari can focus on a single OS while Chrome/Firefox has a lot more to manage here. But I mean, that's not Apples fault.

Still, while I also experienced the problems you referenced with Firefox on my M1 for months or a year, it has greatly improved and IMO is at this point on par with Safari. With the plus of being open, having a huge community and heavy customization options, and privacy. But with the minus of being ugly in comparison to Safari, I must say.

So yeah I mostly am in line with your opinion, apart from one thing:

> so it's not like there's all that much competition.

This, at least this is my opionion, is no argument. It's playing down the importance of free choice IMO. It should not be more okay to disallow alternative browsers based on the existence of alternatives. I mean, if they never allow it, there will never be any. We can just hope that at some point some competitors will rise again, maybe Firefox will get a bigger foothold, or Ladybird, or Servo, or whatever. I'm just trying to keep my hopes high here, haha.

I agree, I'm just sad it has come down to this

How significantly could it actually change? Maybe the process model, etc but I doubt most of the layout algorithms etc have changed much.

Blink forked from Webkit more than a decade ago. There are tests that try to measure their compatibility, like https://wpt.fyi/results/?label=experimental&label=master&ali... (part of https://web-platform-tests.org/). They also have different JS engines these days (V8 vs JSCore).

That said, as a frontend dev, I very very rarely run into real world issues between Safari and Chrome. More often it's Firefox/Gecko that lags behind, usually in some sort of graphics optimization (SVG and canvas stuff). Also some differences in WebGL and webgpu support, but those are niche enough that it's not a big deal yet.