alt Hacker News> to put a stranglehold on innovations on the web
I think that's the hypothetical part, it's not reality. Safari continues to be a fully modern browser. It doesn't release new features quite as fast as Chrome, but it does generally adopt them.
If Apple were attempting to put a "stranglehold on innovations on the web", Safari's feature set would look very different. But that's not what's happening.
Like I said, Apple does lots of anticompetitive things. I'm not blind to what they do with the app store. I just don't think that the single browser engine policy is motivated by this, or has much effect on it, given how Apple does keep maintaining Safari as a modern browser.
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Safari is the modern IE. the fact that PWAs didn’t take off in the last decade js purely due to Safari.
The only reason Apple has banned alternative engines and continues to hold back on major web technologies is anticompetitive behaviour.
It absolutely is reality. Safari is the worst browser by far, it's been compared to Microsoft's old Internet Explorer browser. But don't take my word for it, lots of people have written about it...
https://www.google.com/search?q=safari+is+the+new+ie
And Apple purposely will never implement lots of APIs that only their native apps allow (which other browsers implement), specifically to force many developers to create a native app to use these APIs, so that Apple can force the developer to give them a percentage of any purchases made through the app. They can't force a developer to give them a cut of purchases made through a web browser, which is why they purposely hobble the Safari browser engine and then force all other browsers to use this engine. If you can't see how bad this is, then you've been taken over by the reality distortion field.
It's spelled out in the DOJ lawsuit against apple, among many other anti-competitive practices.
Microsoft got sued and lost in an antitrust suit for bundling IE with Windows. Apple bundles Safari with iOS but forbids any other browser engine but their Safari engine. Can you imagine if Microsoft forbade any other browser from being installed on Windows? It's time Apple was brought to justice over their abusive anti-competitive practices.
Here's the whole DOJ suit against Apple:
https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/media/1344546/dl?inline