Apple is not defending browser engine choice
The article does an incredible job as painting Apple as a dystopian corporation that is strangling the web with forced WebKit, but spends so little time actually refuting the statement "if WebKit weren't mandated, Chromium would take over". It pretty much comes down to "if Apple were forced to open their platform, they would spend money improving Safari, and user's wouldn't switch because Apple has a gorillian dollars". The author seems to ignore that Google also has a gorillian dollars, plus the added inertia of Chromium itself, plus the pervasive network of Search and YouTube that would shove ads for Chrome down the throats of users. Money alone, even billions, cannot create a competitive browser engine. Microsoft tried. I'm not sure that, if you actually cared about browser diversity, that forcing Apple to open up iOS and then hoping they don't mismanage Safari trying to compete with Chrome is a losing bet.