Apple is falling behind other browser makers in implementing web standards in Safari
Safari is the new IE — Last weekend I attended EdgeConf, a conference populated by many of the leading lights in the web industry. It featured panel talks and breakout sessions with a focus …
Context & Ripple Effects
At EdgeConf, the working diagnosis among web-industry veterans was that Safari has become the new IE — the browser whose slow standards adoption and refusal to engage with contentious API proposals drags the whole platform backward. The label matters because it inverts a decade-old dynamic: the laggard role has passed from Microsoft to Apple, while Chrome sets the pace.
Apple's stated rationale is privacy — it has declined to implement 16 Web APIs it says enable fingerprinting — so the standoff is not neglect but a deliberate veto over where the open web can go. The later record shows the cost landing elsewhere: developers and even Google's own apps increasingly optimize for standards that ship first in Chrome.
First-order effects
- Web developers building against Safari must ship degraded or forked code paths, pushing them toward Chrome-first development and making Apple's own platforms the worst place to experience modern web apps.
- Apple absorbs reputational damage at exactly the moment its benchmark position erodes — Google claims Chrome 99 on macOS beats Safari on WebKit's own Speedometer 2.0 test by 15%, removing the 'WebKit is fast' defense.
Second-order effects
- Google gains de facto standard-setting power: when Safari stalls, Chrome-first shipping becomes the default strategy, and the open web's roadmap converges on whatever Google implements first.
- Regulators read Safari's stagnation as evidence that WebKit's forced monopoly on iOS harms users, strengthening the case for choice screens like the one Apple was later compelled to add in the EU for default third-party browsers and alternative engines under iOS 17.4.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, the browser market splits structurally: a Chrome-defined de facto web plus an Apple-curated subset, with interoperability decided less by standards bodies than by whichever vendor can afford to wait out the other.
- Forced engine choice in regulated markets converts WebKit's exclusivity from a moat into a liability, pressuring Apple to either accelerate standards work or cede the mobile web to competing engines entirely.
The trend: Browser competition is shifting from feature velocity to platform governance, with Apple's privacy-driven vetoes, Google's Chrome-first standard-setting, and regulators forcing engine choice all pulling on the same web platform.