My car's browser is Safari on iOS6... why?

[Mildredop]

My car (Range Rover Velar) has a web browser. Today I googled "What's my browser" and it came back "Safari running on iOS6".

I thought Apple software only ran on Apple hardware, so why does my new car have such an old version of iOS?

 

[akash.nu]

Can you provide your search result?!

“What’s my browser ” does not sound like a good search term to be honest.

 

[sahnert]

My car (Range Rover Velar) has a web browser. Today I googled "What's my browser" and it came back "Safari running on iOS6".

I thought Apple software only ran on Apple hardware, so why does my new car have such an old version of iOS?

Safari is based on open source WebKit, so perhaps your car’s browser is based on a WebKit release from the iOS6 era

 

[Mildredop]

Can you provide your search result?!

What do you mean? How can I provide you with it?

 

[theluggage]

What do you mean? How can I provide you with it?

Try this page: (...but beware any big, friendly, deceptive buttons on the banner ads you might see at the top*. Problem is that the 'real' form and button on this page are very plain so the banner ad is extra deceptive. Its depressing how many 'respectable' sites accept syndicated ads that try to pull that one... I guess its that or no ad income... )

https://browscap.org/ua-lookup

You'll see a line saying "User agent" - this is the string that your browser sends out to identify itself (and, yes, even Safari and Chrome say "Mozilla" at the beginning... and Chrome includes the name 'Safari'). It is partly a 'laundry list' of other browsers that your browser may be compatible with, so a site can choose the 'best fit'.

If you click on "Look up" you'll see what the commonly used 'browscap' database identifies your browser as.

Its not an exact science - there's a long patchy history of sites misinterpreting what they receive and browsers fudging what they send to get around it. As others have said - its most likely that your car has a generic webkit-based browser and 'Safari on iOS 6" is just some website's best guess.

See also:
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Headers/User-Agent

(* I bet MR readers can guess which particular bit of infamous Mac 'cleaning' software I got an ad for... that's if you can count a honking great "GO NOW" button with the name of the actual product in microscopic print underneath as an 'ad').