Steve Best writes about the problems with only having one choice of browser rendering engine on iOS. Despite the fact that there are plenty of browsers competing on the platform, they all use Safari’s WebKit renderer. Which essentially means they are all Safari with different chrome and options. It also means, as Best points out in his post, that any WebKit security vulnerability affects all the browsers on iOS.
In a LOT of ways, Google gets this stuff right with Android. I will say that this situation really has me contemplating a move back to Android once my iPhone 11 and Apple Watch Series 3 are the end of their useful lives. Android offers the ability to “truly” use a different browser (not just set another version of a browser that uses Blink as the default), and browser updates are not coupled with the OS. Apple really needs to get with the times here.
I’ve always envied Android users having the option to truly have alternative browsers on the platform.
