A web app could ask you to use a different browser (not ideal, but if the web app requires a specific API, it's not an unreasonable).
Safari is in a very special position because it controls what the web can do on iOS (all browsers on iOS have to use Apple's WebKit engine, they can't add web features). Apple is not just gatekeeping native (through the app store), but its competition, too (the open web, through the webkit requirement)
The very important part about this is whether or not these features are actually considered a web standard or is it Google pushing their own agenda.
Which is where whether or not any non chromium browser supports any of these on any platform. Which many of these features they don't.
That completely changes the conversation here, from Apple purposefully ignoring standards to Google pushing things that are not standards yet. Which I will admit that the reality is a bit of both here, but it should not be considered a negative when a browser does not support a feature that is non standard... we heavily criticized IE for exactly this and yet we celebrate Chrome for it?
Apple is on the W3C board that gets to decide what APIs become standards, so Apple is definitely pushing their own agenda on the W3C.
So you can't really complain that Google is pushing their own agenda with these APIs when Apple is the one refusing to make them a standard. In this case, Apple is the one doing shady shit by holding back things like web bluetooth for no good reason. No, "security" is not a reason, this API has been in use on other platforms for a very long time with no real security issues.
There are lots of other standard APIs that have been implemented, but Apple refused to let the ones that eat into their app store go forward.
>we heavily criticized IE for exactly this and yet we celebrate Chrome for it?
I remember when IE implemented XMLHTTPRequest, and it did a lot of good for the web.
I also remember when Microsoft got an antitrust case for simply bundling IE with Windows, yet Apple seems to get a pass for forbidding all other browser engines on iOS? Well, fortunately Apple has its own antitrust case in the DOJ now for its own abusive business tactics.
https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/media/1344546/dl?inline
We really need to stop putting google on a pedestal as if they are truelly on the side of an open web, like every company they are looking out for their own interests. Which is fine, they are allowed to do this.
That doesn't change that many of these are in fact not a standard according to W3C and should not be implemented in any browser until it is. A discussion about why it may not be standard is worth it, but that is also a very important distinction that is not made on this page. Right now it is framing it as google supports a standard that the other's (including Firefox) do not.
Just because Google does something it doesn't mean the rest of the industry should follow. If we did that in IE days we would still have ActiveX
That's not exactly how standards work. A browser (or anyone) comes up with a spec, a browser can ship it (to test the waters in an origin-trial, to gain traction if they believe in it), and the standard (often) comes after the fact:
"Working Groups don't gate what browsers ship, nor do they define what's useful or worthy. [...] In practice, they are thoughtful historians of recent design expeditions, critiquing, tweaking, then spreading the good news of proposals that already work through Web Standards ratified years after features first ship, serving to licence designs liberally to increase their spread."
https://infrequently.org/2025/09/standards-and-the-fall-of-i...
How is Web Bluetooth an evil agenda of Google??
It's making web browsers more capable. It's not some evil conspiracy to enrich Google. If Apple wants to let the W3C move forward in making it a standard, then all browsers would benefit, and all users that would like to use a bluetooth enabled web-app would benefit.
The only one that benefits from not allowing it to become a standard is Apple, because they get to force developers to make a native app, where Apple can extract a % of sales through the app.
>Just because Google does something it doesn't mean the rest of the industry should follow. If we did that in IE days we would still have ActiveX
IE was the first to implement XMLHTTPRequest. It changed the web fundamentally, and was the basis for "web 2.0". Everyone was glad that they created it, standards or not when it was first implemented.
If we didn't have browser manufacturers pushing the limits, we'd be stuck with "web 1.0" and browsers that did nothing interesting outside of loading animated gifs of dancing babyies.
