On the ad-blocking side, Android fans are blowing this out of proportion.

First of all, Safari’s content blockers, while far less capable than uBO, are pretty adequate for the time being. In my experience, iOS Safari + Wipr is fine.

Also, and this point is underrated, content blockers work in most app web views. For example Twitter’s or Gmail’s. Not all web views of course. Facebook for example chooses to use a web view, for opening links, that doesn’t have support for ad blockers.

Moreover, alternative browsers, such as Firefox, or Edge, or Brave, or Vivaldi, could still implement ad blocking. Not via an extension, but built in. And they in fact do. Microsoft’s Edge included.

Firefox on iOS is a little weak of course. They are only blocking domains meant for tracking, and they use the Disconnect list. Which is rather short. But they do take care of common ad exchanges, when in strict mode.

Also, Safari itself blocks third party tracking by default. It doesn’t block the requests themselves, but it does block the cookies they set. So it doesn’t block a request to Google Analytics, but it does block its cookie. New in iOS 14 is that this capability became available to all web views. So including Firefox on iOS. Users have to opt-out if they don’t want it.

Also iOS 14 has disabled the advertising ID, by default. Users have to opt-in explicitly, screwing the plans of Facebook, whose SDK is used by a lot of apps to gather metrics.

I would love to have full Firefox on iOS, but truth is, this is a false narrative. Given Firefox’s popularity on Android, I can tell you that iOS users are in fact more protected from trackers and ads, out of the box.

And it’s not just about Firefox’s popularity btw, I’m a huge Firefox supporter, but on Android it sucked in terms of performance, behavior, and compatibility with the web. From simple things, like pinching to zoom, with the fonts getting all blurry. As a technical user, you might live with that, but you wouldn’t subject your parents to it.

You make it seem like on Android you have choices. Well, not really. Most people use Chrome, or Samsung’s browser.
On iOS, did you know that the only browser without ad blocking capabilities is Chrome?

Not to mention that you can also do DNS-level blocking, via NextDNS, or Pi-hole.

And there’s another aspect. My son has an Android and a majority of games are ads-driven. Imagine a drawing app that forces kids to click for more ads in order to receive clues/rewards, without which they can’t advance in the game. Quite brilliant if you ask me. It also forces them to disable any ad blocking that their parents installed ;-)

Well, on iOS people actually spend money on apps. And Apple has a new subscription even, called Apple Arcade, which gives people access to a collection of games without any ads, or in-app purchases. Just pay a subscription, and the games can’t play tricks on you. This is what curation does.

Unfortunately my son wanted an Android for now. So I’ll have to wait about 2 years, until his Android tables becomes unsupported and obsolete. And in the meantime my iPad Pro from 2015 will still be upgradable to the latest iOS.

If you’re saying that you can’t trust iOS’s ecosystem more than Android, for you children, then you’re seriously unfamiliar with it, sorry.