John Gruber lays out a nice chain of logic that explains why Safari (and through it, Apple) does not control the web. Instead, it has the same veto power as the other web standard bearers:
The web today is nothing like that. No single browser (or rendering engine) has an overwhelmingly dominant position. Four browsers/rendering engines share the world: Microsoft’s IE/Trident (and now the modernized Windows 10 browser, Edge), Mozilla’s Gecko, Apple’s Safari/WebKit, and Google’s Chrome/Blink. In a world where one rendering engine does not rule the entire web, conflicts between the various popular engines are inevitable.
Apple can stand in the way of a web standard that acts against its interests (that’s a veto). But Apple cannot force a standard on the other players. And that’s a critical difference.
Head over to Daring Fireball and read this for yourself.
That may be true on the overall web, but with ~60% share on mobile, they most certainly could force a standard on the mobile web.
Which is why all publishers are having a hissy fit about ad blocking.
Not convinced by Marco Arment pulling his Peace app.
I think this is more about his ego.
By pulling it he’s created the Flappy Birds of Ad Blocking.
They, being Apple, can only force a standard on THEIR software / hardware. Apple cannot force a web standard on Mozilla or Google.
I’m not giving apple the defacto stamp of approval for all they do but at some point, companies and web developers have to understand the bloat (of the web) has to stop. Its not just about ads…there is all the other javascript stuff running in the background. That’s bloat and its NOT getting any better for users / customers.