[webkit-dev] New iOS versions sending bogus User-Agent build data

[Ricky Young]

I can totally understand your intentions, it feels like that in 2018 UA should
not be a relevant piece of information, and especially not be a factor in the
decision if a server should serve a website to a certain request.

But UA is how the Internet currently works. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it feels
like you are trying to change the Internet. Are you trying to get rid of it for good?

I understand that these kind of drastic, revolutionary, changes might take casualties,
I feel like the industry was not given a chance to adopt to this change.
 

Sent: Thursday, April 26, 2018 at 6:22 PM
From: "Michael Catanzaro" <mcatanzaro at igalia.com>
To: "Ricky Young" <ricky at gmx.com>
Cc: "Anne van Kesteren" <annevk at annevk.nl>, "webkit-dev at lists.webkit.org" <webkit-dev at lists.webkit.org>
Subject: Re: [webkit-dev] New iOS versions sending bogus User-Agent build data
On Thu, Apr 26, 2018 at 7:15 AM, Ricky Young <ricky at gmx.com> wrote:
> I guess that soon it won't be possible to determine iOS version
> distribution using User-Agent sniffing. Right? Is there an
> alternative for the browser to tell the iOS version? 

Hi,

The very point of no longer sending the verison in the user agent is to
make it difficult for websites to determine the operating system
version.

We already have to deal with enough serious web compatibility problems
caused by the rest of the information in the user agent. I'm pleased
that the version number is now stable -- that's a huge improvement --
but I won't be happy until Safari and other major browsers start
sending fully-randomized UAs, or else a stub or blank UA
("Mozilla/5.0").

Michael