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Alex Russell

This post from @chriscoyier (via @tomayac) frames an urgent problem I've spent many years working to solve, often with push-back from the frontend community who would variously claim that "Apple isn't anti-web" and "Google should want the web to win":

chriscoyier.net/2023/01/04/wha

While Chris is crisp about the problem and the consequences of not solving it, he doesn't have answers for why Google and Apple act the way they do, working to snuff out the mobile web.

Allow me...

4 Jan 2023 at 18:02 | Open on toot.cafe
12 comments
Alex Russell

Apple's motives are easy to understand over the macOS -> iOS arc, as Apple is now a mobile company that happens to make computers. The A-series -> M-series chips are stunning proof of that.

But I digress.

When Apple was a niche PC maker, it needed the web as a way to help potential customers de-risk the purchase of luxury computers. While it enjoyed outsized influence, the Mac never had enough share to create a sufficiently large software ecosystem w/o the web.

/cc @chriscoyier @tomayac

4 Jan 2023 at 18:10 | Open on toot.cafe
Alex Russell

In this era (~'98-'12), the web provided a bridge over a moat formed by a competitor's proprietary stack winning through momentum and network effects. The web went "over the top" of both Macs and PCs, and while Apple desperately coveted native app builders for the Mac, was at least savvy enough to know that if it could add the universe of great web apps to the Mac experience, it would be a market-reality help at point of sale.

/cc @chriscoyier @tomayac

4 Jan 2023 at 18:13 | Open on toot.cafe
Alex Russell

The Mac is *still* a niche computing product to this day, and it's fascinating to me that the web continues to play this role for Apple in it's smaller business.

Then iOS happened.

Many older web developers pass down a story of how iOS isn't actually anti-web because Jobs initially pitched it as a web-first OS. As someone who was in the room for the unveil, I can tell you that was also my first impression, but it wore off a year later when iOS 2.0 launched.

/cc @chriscoyier @tomayac

4 Jan 2023 at 18:16 | Open on toot.cafe
Alex Russell

What Jobs et. al. *didn't* ever say (but was later confirmed in court documents) is that the reason the iOS 1.0 homescreen and first party apps weren't web based is that inside Apple, the web had already lost by the late '07 release of the iPhone.

There had been parallel tracks, and prototypes of a truly web-based OS, but they didn't launch. Cocoa was already Plan A when Jobs described the web as a "great application platform" at Moscone.

/cc @chriscoyier @tomayac

4 Jan 2023 at 18:19 | Open on toot.cafe
Alex Russell

This was *also* a bridge strategy play, FWIW. Smartphones seem ubiquitious now, and they felt like a potential future at the time, but were anything but a high-volume proposition at the iOS launch. So having first-rate access to that bridge corpus of content and apps was a massive advantage in de-risking the early iPhone which, again, was a luxury novelty.

/cc @chriscoyier @tomayac

4 Jan 2023 at 18:22 | Open on toot.cafe
Alex Russell

With the App Store and iOS 2.0, as well as Push Notifications in iOS 3.0 ('09), Apple created a capability gap between it's preferred proprietary platform and the open web. That gap persists to this day, and is a large part of why we talk about Safari leadership as a historical novelty despite Apple's overwhelming capacity to produce a world-beating browser.

What keeps them from doing it? Strategic antipithy towards a platform it doesn't own and can't tax.

/cc @chriscoyier @tomayac

4 Jan 2023 at 18:25 | Open on toot.cafe
Alex Russell

It seems likely that the success of the App Store was a surprise even to Apple, but once it took root (thanks in no small part to Push, and later IAP), Apple could fully pivot it's web strategy: the leader doesn't need a bridge; best to burn/deprecate it and dig an ever-deeper moat.

This is what Apple has done via its strategic under-investment in WebKit for the past decade.

/cc @chriscoyier @tomayac

4 Jan 2023 at 18:29 | Open on toot.cafe
Alex Russell

Some folks still offer tortured arguments for why Apple is on the side of the angels, but they're transparently nonsense:

infrequently.org/2022/06/apple

Apple, in 2023, keeps it boot on the neck of the web because it saw what the web did to Windows and wants anything but that for iOS. An open, interoperable meta-platform would reduce Apple's power to tax, and we just can't have that, now can we?

/cc @chriscoyier @tomayac

4 Jan 2023 at 18:30 | Open on toot.cafe
Alex Russell

This brings us to Google.

Why in the world has Google been more than complicit in nerfing the web's chances on mobile?

To answer this you need to grok that Google, like Apple and every other big company, is an agglomeration of small companies that happen to send their revenues to the same place, but probably don't have any love for each other.

And Android comes from an acquisition: Danger.

/cc @chriscoyier @tomayac

4 Jan 2023 at 18:49 | Open on toot.cafe
Alex Russell

Think back with me to 2008 when Apple had launched the iPhone and Google had the struggling Android system.

This was a multiple-miracle moment: because AT&T had an exclusive w/ Apple for US iPhone distribution, every telco and handset vendor was FREAKING OUT.

/cc @chriscoyier @tomayac

4 Jan 2023 at 18:57 | Open on toot.cafe
Alex Russell replied to Alex

If you were in the US in late '09 and consumed any mass media at all, you might still have dreams where Verizon flogs the Motorola Droid at you with teenage boy imagery. Real Lynx body spray territory.

That happened on the back of this same of desperation. Giving up the fundamental software stack, and doing heavy co-marketing for a single vendor's hardware launch, was not where telcos wanted to be (spoiler: still isn't, which is why we can't have nice things).

/cc @chriscoyier @tomayac

4 Jan 2023 at 19:01 | Open on toot.cafe
Alex Russell replied to Alex

For its part, the Android team played this freakout like a fiddle. In a truly ungoogly way, they demanded separate infrastructure, separate cafes, etc. etc. And they got it. There are lots of reasons to loathe Andy Rubin, but what he (and the Plus crew around the same time) helped do to the culture can't be overstated. He wanted a little kingdom to run like a petty tyrant, and he got it. Android was Not Google.

/cc @chriscoyier @tomayac

4 Jan 2023 at 19:04 | Open on toot.cafe
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