#Not on iOS because Apple doesn't allow other browser engines on iOS

[wunthyll]

Again, there are 5 actively developed browser engines and only 4 have a significant market share, and two of them are forks of another one.

The most common is Blink. This is the underlying tech for all chromium based browsers. This includes Edge, Brave, and Opera, some of the most popular Chrome alternatives. They don't report their data back to google necessarily, but they all have the same flaws as Chrome.

The next most common is WebKit. This is what Apple uses for Safari. The only reason it's so common is because EVERY browser on iOS has to be a WebKit view. The only difference between browsers on iOS and iPadOS is the bookmark sync, and some extra features. The core is still WebKit. A fun fact though is that Google's Blink is actually a fork of WebKit.

Then we have Firefox's engine: Gecko. There used to be a ton of browsers and products that relied on Gecko, and it's the oldest engine on this list, starting life as part of NetScape Navigator. However, the only major browser that still runs on Gecko is Firefox, which Mozilla has changed its versioning to be in lockstep with Firefox, no longer recognizing it as a separate component. Goanna is a fork of Gecko from 2016 in an effort to further differentiate their Pale Moon browser from Firefox. If you haven't heard of Pale Moon, that's not surprising. I didn't even know about it until I did some fact checking on this.

The cool thing about these four engines is that they are all free, open source software. Blink and WebKit however have a slightly less open GNU LGPL license. That allows open source code to be modified and made proprietary pretty easily. Gecko and Goanna are both using the Mozilla Public License which allows a mix of open and proprietary code, but if it started open under the MPL, that part has to stay open and part of the MPL, regardless of changes. These both differ from the GPL where all of the project must be open and all code shared.

Different from all that though, is Flow, a new and entirely closed source (other than the SpiderMonkey Java engine licensed from Mozilla.) It doesn't appear to be a contender any time soon, mostly showing up on TV's and set top boxes, as well as a version for the raspberry pi and other embedded devices.

So there's kind of 5 browsers, but right now Safari and Firefox make up just around 8% of the desktop market, and Chromium based make up over 88%. In mobile it's not as dire, but that only because iPhone's don't have anything other than WebKit, and that's 31%, Firefox has .5%, and everything else is chromium.

This gives google pretty much total control of the web. This is a VERY bad thing, and you should do your level best to avoid it when possible. Download and use Firefox on Windows, Linux, and Android. On Apple stuff use Firefox or Safari. Hell, pick up Pale Moon or LibreWolf if you're really concerned about privacy. Just don't use a chromium browser. The industry needs competition if we want to maintain freedom AND innovation.

Ok everyone time for the big question:

[kodicraft]

This is just a trend in everything they do tbh, especially their software. Trying to use an Apple device to do anything that's not one of the few workflows they force you to use is actually painful.

Let's say you're on an iPhone and want to do something as simple as change your ringtone, you can either:

Buy a ringtone for 2.99$ off of iTunes

Take your audio file, trim it, convert it to another format, all on your computer (you cant do it on the phone) and use the proprietary iTunes app to transfer it over

For comparison, in stock Android the ringtones selection menu just has a "Custom..." button that allows you to load any sound file.

Want to use a different browser than safari? You can't actually, Apple doesn't allow browser engines other than safari's for security reasons (because the security in iOS is really bad). You have to use safari's web engine and every other web browser on iOS is just a reskin.

Want to download an image file? Well you can chose to either: Download it, save it to your files or save it to your images. All of which are completely different, accessed through different apps, and apps need to use different APIs to access them. This means that some apps can only access the Images, the Downloads, or the Files, and if you want to download a file to use it in another app you have to make sure the location you download it to is the one it can use. Sometimes you can't even do that so you need to download the file in one location, navigate to it, "export" it, and use it in your other app. This creates redundant copies of your data btw, which could be completely avoided by just having a functional, transparent file system like what Android does.

Want to watch pornography? Well you can use your browser to do it, and that's it. They don't allow apps that could display 18+ content on the appstore, which is why on Tumblr for instance you have to use the Desktop website to configure your account to show 18+ content and even then some of it is still unavailable.

Apple's whole design ideology is that you can do some very specific things somewhat well and that's it, you don't get to do what you want, you just get to do what apple have planned for you in advance. If your needs or situation stray from what they engineered, tough luck! Maybe use an Android device and run Linux on desktop because god knows Microsoft wants your ass too.

Why is dealing with Apple such a fucking chore all the time?