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I got some spam, sorry… a “promotional email”, in my Gmail account telling me that Apple’s Safari browser is “Blazing fast. Incredibly private.”
O RLY?!?!
More power, more performance…
Kyle Pflug is a Product Manager on the Microsoft Edge Web Platform team, and they’ve been prototyping what an iOS browser using real Chromium (using Blink rather than WebKit) can achieve. As well as supporting many more APIs and features immediately (as you’d expect) their experiments show a Chromium/Blink engine running on iOS is 28.6% faster than Safari in Speedometer page responsiveness tests.
Kyle wrote
I was excited to see the great showing for Chromium here, especially in Speedometer, which is widely seen as the most representative real-world responsiveness benchmark.
So, just for fun, I figured I’d try some stiffer competition: Can Chromium on my iPhone 17 Pro Max (A19 Pro) beat Safari on an iPad Pro (M5)? I wandered into a local Apple store to re-run the Speedometer test. It’s closer, but my iPhone’s lead holds. I think this might make my iPhone the world record holder for Speedometer score on an iOS device?
Now Microsoft engineers have documented a performance tax – the performance hit that iOS users today endure because Apple requires iOS browsers, with theoretical exceptions, to use the WebKit browser engine that powers Safari.
The performance tax comes to 28.6 percent, almost as much as Apple’s 30 percent commission rate.
Speedometer is a test suite primarily developed by Apple, results of which it has used in regulatory filings to claim users don’t need and/or wouldn’t benefit from real browser competition.
It’s notable that this is a prototype, without any attempts to make it fast. Also, there are many outstanding bugs in BrowserEngineKit, the middleware that Apple requires other browser engines to use.
In response to Kyle’s post, the Principal Engineer at Chrome, Rick Byers, wrote
Given how Chromium and WebKit are always vying for the top spot in Speedometer on MacOS, it’s really striking how big the gap is on iOS! And we haven’t even really tried to optimize performance for that platform yet! IMHO this is what you should expect to see when there’s a lack of competition!
…But you can’t have it.
Even if the Apple bugs were fixed and optimisations were completed, you are not allowed to have this much faster iOS browser. This is solely because of Apple’s self-preferencing rules: either the ridiculously anti-competitive Web Browser Engine Entitlement (in EU and Japan) or Rule 2.5.6 (“Apps that browse the web must use the appropriate WebKit framework and WebKit JavaScript”) elsewhere.
For your comfort and security
Since about 2020, Apple has emphasised Privacy and speed in its marketing materials. In its market investigation, the UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) wrote in its paper The requirement for browsers operating on iOS devices to use Apple’s WebKit browser engine [PDF]
Overall, we have not to date seen clear evidence that the WebKit restriction improves privacy on iOS devices.
…the Webkit restriction limits the ability for browser vendors to innovate and differentiate themselves from Safari, including on privacy. Different stakeholders appear to interpret privacy differently, compared to security, in relation to which there is more alignment across stakeholders.
But while it hawks “privacy” to consumers (conveniently glossing over the fact that for over a year Apple has known about –but not fixed– a ‘Hide My Email’ vulnerability that reveals peoples’ real email addresses), to regulators across the world Apple cites “security” as the reason it should be allowed to maintain its iOS browser engine monopoly. (Google and Apple’s anti-DMA lobbying strategy goes all-in on Security and Privacy.)
On security, too, the CMA found Apple’s claims to be weak:
Overall, we have not yet seen clear evidence that the WebKit restriction confers a significant improvement in security compared to a situation where other browser engines would be allowed on iOS. The WebKit restriction may create security benefits for Apple devices (albeit these could be potentially extended, at least to some extent, to rival browser engines), through enabling closer integration between WebKit and device hardware, and providing Apple with greater control over browser engines such that it can ensure browsers use an up-to-date browser engine and do not implement features that may create a security risk. However, as explained in Section 3 above, the restriction limits the ability for browser vendors to improve their browsers and differentiate themselves from Safari, including on security.
The CMA’s final decision report[PDF] says
Evidence also indicates that all the major browser engines take a stringent approach to testing for and fixing security vulnerabilities. Apple’s submissions that it is the only browser engine developer that could be trusted to perform this function on iOS therefore seems weak.
Apple’s claims for WebKit’s superior speed, privacy and security don’t stand up to scrutiny. It’s time for the regulators to strike down Apple’s restrictive terms and conditions, and compel Cupertino to fix BrowserEngineKit, so we can have genuine competition on iOS. Apple customers deserve a browser that’s genuinely blazing fast, private and secure.