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That's simply a misunderstanding of how features come to the web. There is no immaculate conception for web APIs. No magical room in which they are dreamt up, or spring fully-formed from the head of Zeus.

Instead, they come from open, honest, iterative design (when done well), and shipping ahead of others is risky, but that's why we designed the Blink Launch Process to demand so much pre-work (specs, tests, origin trials, good faith attempts to include other vendors in design, etc.) in order to launch that way.

Some background on these points here:

https://infrequently.org/series/effective-standards-work/

https://youtu.be/1Z83L6xa1tw?si=939PBH4_idtZGI6Y

As to, "should Apple follow Chromium's lead", perhaps ask "how would that be different than today?"

See:

https://infrequently.org/2023/02/safari-16-4-is-an-admission...

And:

https://infrequently.org/2025/06/the-ghost-of-christmas-past...

discuss

wtallis|6 months ago

You're still dodging the issue. Your article title accusing Apple of an "assault on standards" is implicitly treating Google's proposals as a fait accompli that Apple is resisting, which is not at all what the situation is for many of the Chrome features you are trying not to be specific about.

You say that shipping ahead of others is risky, but can't seem to acknowledge when the negative outcome comes to pass and other browser vendors aren't interested in adopting questionable feature proposals.

slightlyoff|6 months ago

I'm simply pointing out that Apple declined to try to constructively solve the problems developers expressed, demurred from engaging in design work in many areas, and did not ship alternatives instead (as it could have, and did in the past when Safari/WebKit were not on a starvation budget).

The downsides to this are not lost on me. Why do you think I'm making an issue of it publicly now? We tried literally everything else. This is last resort stuff. The goal is always more collaboration, and through it, better, better-funded, and more capable browsers. Apple is the unique obstacle to all of that today.