Even if there is an issue, it would hit every single website out there. Like, Option 1: the browser works the same way all of the others out there do. Option 2: All of the websites out there adapt to one browser. There is no way that Option 2 is a sane choice.

How did this happen, anyway?

kagis

https://old.reddit.com/r/iphone/comments/syyab1/the_reason_theres_no_back_button/

The reason there’s no back button:

To sum up the video, Steve Jobs wanted a back button but human interface designer Imran Chaudhri convinced him that the back button would be unreliable and complicated and create a “trust issue” for users. The argument was that on Androids the back button might perform different/inconsistent actions: return you to a previous menu, a previous app or the home screen.

Well, having websites individually implement a back button sure isn’t gonna be more-consistent from a UI standpoint.

EDIT: And I kind of suspect that swiping is probably also less-consistently-used, just because there are going to be programs where one can’t reasonably dedicate swiping to “back”, so this creates a situation where you have feature collision with entirely unrelated features.