[HN Gopher] Google and Mozilla are working on iOS browsers that ...
___________________________________________________________________
Google and Mozilla are working on iOS browsers that aren't based on
WebKit
Author : Liriel
Score : 29 points
Date : 2023-02-07 10:00 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theregister.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theregister.com)
| JohnDeHope wrote:
| Technical question: What would a third party browser rendering
| engine allow, that using the safari renderer doesn't? I figure if
| you make a browser by just wrapping the safari renderer then you
| can make it do whatever you want it to. Why does the renderer
| make such that big of a difference?
| kevingadd wrote:
| Actual extensions (like ublock!), bleeding edge/experimental
| web features like new webassembly or web APIs (firefox and
| chrome usually implement these before Safari does), stuff Apple
| has decided to sabotage because it threatens the app store
| (like fullscreen).
| scarface74 wrote:
| Safari has supported "actual extensions" for two yeass.
| jwitthuhn wrote:
| Yes but their API is very limited and by design doesn't
| allow a good ad blocker like ublock to be built.
| scarface74 wrote:
| The actual "extension" framework does. It's used by
| 1Blocker. Not just the "we send you a JSON set of rules".
|
| But on the other hand, if you care about your privacy,
| why would you trust a third party to intercept all of
| your web traffic?
| commoner wrote:
| > But on the other hand, if you care about your privacy,
| why would you trust a third party to intercept all of
| your web traffic?
|
| uBlock Origin is free and open source, and its code is
| thoroughly reviewed by many contributors every release. I
| trust uBlock Origin over a filtering mechanism built into
| a closed source browser such as Safari.
| scarface74 wrote:
| WebKit is also open source and you can see exactly how it
| works.
|
| But did you personally download the open source version
| review the code and install it?
| [deleted]
| dmitriid wrote:
| > web APIs (firefox and chrome usually implement these before
| Safari does)
|
| What you meant to say: Chrome implements its own non-
| standards against strenuous objections if both Firefox and
| Safari.
| kevingadd wrote:
| I said what I meant to say, I've literally drafted web
| standards before and Safari is often the last to implement
| them. I'm not talking about WebUSB or WebGoogleAnalytics or
| whatever
| robertoandred wrote:
| So what are you talking about? Sticky? Has? Subgrid?
| creatonez wrote:
| Firefox addons on iOS, ported directly from the desktop
| versions with no modifications, will be possible. Gecko has a
| lot of under-the-hood knobs and dials that simply don't exist
| in Webkit, but are needed by the addon ecosystem.
| gnicholas wrote:
| That would be great! Is it currently available on FF for
| Android?
| Mogzol wrote:
| Yes, you can run standard desktop Firefox extensions on FF
| for Android. There was a whitelist of extensions Mozilla
| allowed you to install though, I'm not sure if that still
| exists on the most recent versions.
| rektide wrote:
| Your scope is way way off.
|
| It's far from just the render engine that's being constrained.
| The whole virtual machine is restricted. The DOM, the js
| engine, the wasm engine, anything at all running or touching
| web code is locked the heck down.
|
| There's a couple places browsers can add or supplant web
| platform features, but it largely prevents browsers from doing
| much at all to add to the web platform in any way.
|
| In the rendering case, there's always work on css features &
| especially tuning that the browsers are up to. Just being
| faster, lighter weight, having more or better tuning is a great
| capability, a place where more than one small in-group should
| be able to experiment & improve & explore.
| shmerl wrote:
| Good. But Apple shouldn't get away with just allowing it. They
| should pay for violating competition law for years. Otherwise
| this law is a joke.
| fabrice_d wrote:
| Here's a video of the GeckoKit demo:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VE-4b082Upw
| chadlavi wrote:
| oh good I can't wait to have to support more mobile browsers,
| great
| WirelessGigabit wrote:
| Safari, especially on iOS is the new IE.
|
| What I really like to see next to this is the requirement that
| when I tap a link in an app that it opens in the default browser.
|
| Too many apps, such as Reddit open with the WebView of Safari,
| which sucks. I'm not signed in there, it doesn't add to my
| history, and most importantly, they get to inject a whole bunch
| of tracks that I don't want. See [0].
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32514793
| tristan957 wrote:
| Doesn't Android open the Chrome web view too? On F-Droid I
| think you can get a Bromite web view, but I'm not sure how
| these web views work, and if I can get a Firefox one.
| Kwpolska wrote:
| When you open a link in an app, you're often directed to a
| Custom Tab (you can recognise them by the menu in the upper
| right corner being the browser's). Those are handled by your
| default browser. I'm using Firefox Focus in that capacity and
| it works great.
| NotYourLawyer wrote:
| Would love to have real Firefox on iPhone. I hope Chrome gets
| banned from the App Store though.
| vhanda wrote:
| Could you please elaborate why you hope 'Chrome gets banned'?
|
| I understand not being fond of the its ubiquity, especially
| with many Websites now requiring Chrome. And Google is
| _allegedly_ abusing their dominant position. But banning it?
| Why?
| NotYourLawyer wrote:
| Browser monoculture = shitty internet future.
| lxgr wrote:
| And the solution to that is (almost certainly illegal,
| under the new regulations) market manipulation by a direct
| competitor?
| NotYourLawyer wrote:
| Hey I'm just dreaming here, not like offering legal
| advice.
| kelnos wrote:
| So the solution to a browser monoculture is to... approve
| fewer browsers? Seems backwards to me.
| NotYourLawyer wrote:
| Yes, that's right. Not fewer at random though.
| amelius wrote:
| > Apple could still conceivably impose limitations on the way
| these browsers work
|
| God damnit it's my device.
| vehemenz wrote:
| But it's not your decision to buy an Android phone?
| kevingadd wrote:
| A significant % of people who buy iPhones are not able to
| make a truly informed decision about this at the time. They
| find out way later what the actual consequences of apple or
| google's walled gardens are, and can only escape the garden
| if they have an android phone with an unlocked bootloader
|
| It's not cheap to swap ecosystems
| tehwebguy wrote:
| > A significant % of people who buy iPhones are not able to
| make a truly informed decision about this at the time
|
| I mean the devices change year to year but are people
| seriously finding themselves surprised by what iPhone can
| do but Android can't or vice versa?
|
| If we were talking about a college tuition loan or a
| mortgage then yeah I'd say `not able to make a truly
| informed decision about this at the time` but this is like
| the lowest stakes decision possible no?
|
| > It's not cheap to swap ecosystems
|
| Is that true? Seems like there is always a nearly free
| phone deal out there and your network will probably migrate
| everything for you anyway.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > If we were talking about a college tuition loan or a
| mortgage
|
| Why are you giving examples where all of the terms are
| explained completely, up front, by law?
| kevingadd wrote:
| Walled garden policies make full migration not possible,
| at least for free. Things like your music library,
| ebooks, in-app currency, etc are often not allowed to
| move.
|
| If I were to move to iPhone now, I'd have to spend at
| least a hundred bucks finding and buying alternative
| apps.
| saurik wrote:
| FWIW, in my case, I would also lose access to all of the
| books, music, movies, and--very notably--apps that I have
| purchased over the years.
| scarface74 wrote:
| Where is this narrative coming from? Only about 20% of App
| Store revenue coming from non game in app consumables (came
| out in the Epic Trial) and the other big money makers are
| from services like Netflix and Spotify where you can easily
| use your app cross platform. Even Apple Music is available
| for Android.
|
| Most users aren't complaining about any "walled garden"
| kelnos wrote:
| Buying an Android phone certainly allows you to run other
| browsers that use their own rendering engines, but Android is
| hardly open; you are still restricted in many ways from doing
| what you might want to do, with little recourse. Installing a
| third-party OS image is possible, but then removes your
| access from some things that you might still like (any app
| that requires SafetyNet to pass, for example).
|
| The bottom line is that there is no open phone platform out
| there that even remotely provides feature parity with Android
| or iOS. Anything you do is going to be a trade off, and for
| some people, there is no way to satisfy 100% of their needs
| and wants. That doesn't mean we aren't allowed to complain
| about the bits that can't be satisfied.
| detaro wrote:
| And if they'd bought one, and were unhappy about some aspect
| of that, you'd be here and write " _But it 's not your
| decision to buy an iPhone?_". We don't live in a world were
| you can get your perfect choice with no compromises, and
| having made a compromise does not imply that you can't
| criticize decisions made by the system you choose.
| irrational wrote:
| You could have chosen any device. This is just the consequence
| of choosing the wrong device (for you).
| amelius wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ergo_decedo
| detaro wrote:
| And you have no way of knowing if a "non-wrong" device exists
| for their criteria among the "any device" they could have
| choosen from.
| irrational wrote:
| It is simple, choose an Android device. There are many
| premium android devices.
|
| If you don't know by now that on iOS devices all the
| browsers are running the same engine under the hood,
| especially on a tech site like HN, then there isn't much
| hope for you.
| kelnos wrote:
| I'm a reasonably-satisfied Android user, but Android is
| nearly as locked down as iOS. Sure, I can (and do) run
| "real" Firefox on my Pixel, and can (and do) side-load
| apps, but there are quite a few things I can't do.
|
| For example, my Pixel 4 just fell out of Google's 3-year
| support period, so I no longer get security updates. I
| would be completely happy to run LineageOS or some other
| alternative that would extend the life of the phone with
| regular updates, but I can't if I still want to be able
| to use Google Pay and other apps that require the phone
| to pass SafetyNet. Those sorts of apps are a part of my
| day-to-day, so being unable to use them would be a
| showstopper. (I've read various things about tricking
| apps into believing the phone passes SafetyNet, but none
| of the methods seem particularly reliable, and for every
| user who says it works, there's another person who
| couldn't get it to work.)
|
| So sure, it is technically possible for me to treat the
| phone as "open" and run whatever OS image on it I want,
| but then I become restricted in other ways as to what I
| can do on it. Maybe you don't care about being able to
| pay for things using your phone (etc.); that's fine. But
| I do, and I consider it a critical feature these days.
| lxgr wrote:
| Given that there isn't an individual vote on each property of
| a device/ecosystem, iOS is probably the least evil rather
| than a completely optimal choice for many (if not most!)
| users.
|
| Just imagine that type of reasoning applied to other parts of
| life, like politics, work, interpersonal relationships...
| "Love it, change it, or leave it" has three components, not
| two.
| saurik wrote:
| People in this situation could also have chosen to not buy a
| cell phone in the first place, eschewing that benefit for
| using landlines or cordless phones; and yet, I don't think we
| would consider that a reasonable limitation, right?
|
| Clearly, then, there is some line that we must draw where
| people are buying something they think they want and yet
| should still get to have full access to, and I don't see why
| it would correlate with Apple vs. Google.
|
| In my case, I barely wanted a phone: I want a good camera
| attached to a good touch screen; I have requirements past
| that largely dictated by size, weight, and durability. That's
| the device I am looking for.
|
| The devices which satisfy my needs are mostly from Apple or
| Samsung, both of whom lock down their devices. (Can I install
| an alternative browser on a Samsung Android device? Sure. But
| is it my device? No. No it is not and it has never been, by
| far. Samsung is only ever so slightly better than Apple with
| respect to that shit.)
|
| The reality is: every device should be open. It shouldn't be
| some trade-off in the space where you don't get to have a
| device with any of the other key properties you want just
| because it is _always_ a better business model to build a
| walled garden and then shill your services, charge a usage
| tax, or run advertisements.
|
| That said, in a world where it _is_ allowed to build closed
| devices, and it _is_ some random set of tradeoffs that we all
| have to tolerate, we have to get to complain about it,
| because then it is just yet another property of the device,
| and we get to complain about all of the shitty decisions we
| had to put up with, whether that 's the pricing, the
| functionality, the quality, the experience, the "tactile
| feel"... or whether it is open or not.
|
| So like, I don't really see the framework in which this one
| axis is something where people don't get to complain because
| "they should have gotten some other random shitty device that
| isn't at all what you wanted but was open"... this seems to
| just be some broken narrative--mostly pitched by people who
| clearly aren't also tracking the anti-trust work against
| Google and haven't been a part of the fight to jailbreak all
| of the random locked down Android devices--pitched by people
| who seem to just like locked down stuff and Apple's
| puritanical control over morality :(.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| Where in your mind does an OS cease its responsibility to
| maintain device security and performance standards?
| goodSteveramos wrote:
| Why doesnt mozilla work on a privacy protecting replacement for
| third party cookies? Because they are funded by google.
| LarryMullins wrote:
| They did. _about:config - > privacy.thirdparty.isolate = true_
| throwawayapples wrote:
| at least they made that really easy to find and do.
| LarryMullins wrote:
| Follow the money.
| dralley wrote:
| It breaks things because a lot of websites expect it to
| work. If websites stop working then Mozilla will lose
| marketshare even faster. Still, it's not that difficult for
| people who know what they're doing to find.
| kelnos wrote:
| I see a _privacy.firstparty.isolate_ , but no _thirdparty_
| variant. Was that just an error on your part, or is it a pref
| that needs to be manually created, even?
| LarryMullins wrote:
| > _Was that just an error on your part_
|
| Yes, sorry about that. It's _privacy.firstparty.isolate_
| jeroenhd wrote:
| Because Firefox has a tiny user base and nobody is going to
| follow their standards as long as other browsers do enable
| third party cookies. Also, there are alternatives to third
| party cookies for most use cases, they're just more difficult
| to implement.
|
| Neither Google, nor Microsoft, nor Apple seem to care much
| about re-engineering third party cookies. Until that changes,
| any attempts from Mozilla to change the standards is a waste of
| time and effort, really.
| dmitriid wrote:
| Apple and Mozilla did a lot to restrict the scope of third-
| party cookies: isolation, partitioning etc.
|
| It's hard to change them without breaking most of the web.
| baq wrote:
| 1% of a billion is 10 million.
| kevingadd wrote:
| What makes you think we need a replacement for third party
| cookies when we can just disable them?
| orangecat wrote:
| Yeah, I've never understood this. Disabling third party
| cookies is the first thing I do with any new browser (uBlock
| Origin is second). It takes 30 seconds and very rarely causes
| problems.
| yorwba wrote:
| You might be interested in learning about state partitioning:
| https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Privacy/State_P...
| [deleted]
| aidenn0 wrote:
| It seems that the way iOS implements W^X protection would prevent
| a performant JS JIT from being created. It will be interesting to
| see if/how this is worked around.
| nashashmi wrote:
| An anti antitrust move?
| fabrice_d wrote:
| Here's a demo of the Gecko port from some years ago:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VE-4b082Upw
|
| Most of the code needed is still in Gecko's repo at
| https://searchfox.org/mozilla-central/source/widget/uikit but
| probably doesn't build anymore. Would not be surprising if
| someone had an up to date branch in a private tree somewhere
| though...
| LarryMullins wrote:
| I look forward to seeing if any of the dire predictions from
| Apple fanboys who once vehemently opposed this sort of thing will
| come true. Will confused proverbial grandmothers get tricked into
| using firefox and then pwned by scammers? Will everybody abandon
| Safari and give Google a total browser monopoly?
|
| Guess we'll find out!
| crazygringo wrote:
| That is a total strawman, and please don't use the perjorative
| term "fanboys".
|
| Not many Apple fans have ever defended Apple's exclusivity on
| the browser engine. It's long been an annoyance, honestly.
|
| But it also has never had anything to do with scamming
| grandmothers. That's always been an argument for not allowing
| arbitrary untrusted app downloads and/or 3rd party app stores.
| Nothing to do with browser engines, where Apple's (weak)
| argument has always been about the risk of unknown browser
| vulnerabilities allowing malicious code to escape the app
| sandbox.
|
| And if iOS browser share winds up mirroring macOS browser
| share, then it'll go to about 2/3 Chrome.
| snailmailman wrote:
| My "confused proverbial grandmother" has already been tricked
| away from using safari. She does all of her web browsing
| through the Google app.
|
| Not the Google Chrome app. The Google app. :facepalm:
|
| I've tried to explain why this isn't necessary but as far as
| she knows, google is the internet. And I cannot say anything to
| convince her otherwise. After all, every search in safari will
| re-advertise to her "hey you should be doing this in the google
| app" and she will click the button without even thinking.
| echelon wrote:
| I'd like to take a moment to appreciate how we're afraid of
| which search interface Grandma uses.
|
| A hundred years ago, we'd be worried about getting knifed by
| strangers, bear maulings, starving to death, being homeless,
| eating food laced with botulism and lead, influenza,
| tuberculosis, diphtheria ...
|
| Things are pretty good.
| ultrarunner wrote:
| To be fair, I think the origin of the worry may be that the
| elderly and less technically inclined are prone to being
| taken advantage of (rightly or wrongly). You're very
| correct that things are better than ever, as it were, but
| vulnerability seems to have endured in some ways.
| gnicholas wrote:
| Just like mine, who also accesses her photos by unlocking her
| phone, going to the camera app, and then to her photo roll.
| She never goes to the Photos app directly.
| twobitshifter wrote:
| My wife seems to only use the Google app as well. The G app
| has a confusing multiple back button design. The normal
| safari back button takes you back to Google homepage and the
| other back button iPad the bottom in your history. Whenever
| she shows me something in the Google App I always pick the
| wrong one.
| vehemenz wrote:
| I don't make the connection between "Apple fanboys" and
| preventing a Chrome monopoly. Surely one's opposition to a
| monopoly is independent of one's choice of operating system.
|
| But yes, most likely this will result in a Chrome monopoly.
| The_Colonel wrote:
| It's just a strange notion that we will fight google monopoly
| by _forcing_ people to use Safari.
| vehemenz wrote:
| It would be strange to force Apple to allow its competitors
| to establish footholds on their own platform, against their
| will, only for a Chrome monopoly to emerge months later. A
| web monoculture will be harder to undo than enacting
| smarter antitrust legislation.
| [deleted]
| mrtksn wrote:
| > Will everybody abandon Safari and give Google a total browser
| monopoly
|
| This one is scary. People who don't know history like to think
| that IE was a backward browser and MS forced it upon people but
| what actually happened is that IE was very innovative until
| Microsoft diverged from the standards and lock people into it.
| When the ecosystem(websites) integrates enough that your
| platform(the browser) is the only way to run all that(through
| Google services for Chrome?), they stop innovating and start
| monetising.
|
| "Works with Chrome" is the new IE, not Safari.
| nicoburns wrote:
| The difference being that Chrome is open source (ok fine,
| Chrome is closed source but the important parts like the
| rendering engine are open source as Chromium). So they can't
| lock anyone into anything. If they try that they'll just get
| forked. Indeed we _already_ have Edge as a well-maintained
| fork.
|
| Which isn't to say that Safari and especially Firefox aren't
| important drivers of competition. But the situation is
| nothing like the situation with IE.
| ssss11 wrote:
| There is lock in it's just more subtle than the IE
| situation. Have you seen the chromium codebase?
|
| It may be open source but no individuals or small teams
| would be able to manage a competing product, you'd need
| huge investment to compete. There's a barrier to entry all
| the same.
|
| Plus keeping up with the constant updates while trying to
| build a competitor...
| shkkmo wrote:
| This point doesn't make any sense.
|
| The standards and functionality that are required in a
| modern browser are already far beyond what "an individual
| or small team" could build from scratch.
|
| The existence of Chromium absolutely makes it much, much
| more feasible to launch a Chrome competitor than if
| Chrome was entirely closed source.
| kitsunesoba wrote:
| Anything forked from Chromium can't be significantly
| different from Chromium, because any change of that
| nature increases divergence from Chromium and makes it
| more difficult to keep pace with the firehose of changes
| being pumped out daily by Google's massive Chrome/Blink
| team. It means that forks can never be anything but
| mostly-cosmetic reskins unless the party forking sinks
| resources equally large as Google's into the fork, which
| gives Google power to shape the web as they please
| unopposed.
| cassianoleal wrote:
| > unless the party forking sinks resources equally large
| as Google's into the fork, which gives Google power to
| shape the web as they please unopposed.
|
| I imagine even this already very unlikely outcome would
| also depend on said fork having a big slice of market
| share before they even try to drift away from Chromium,
| otherwise it won't have any effect and will likely die
| exactly because of said differences.
| kitsunesoba wrote:
| That's true. No matter the situation, the fact that
| Chromium/Blink is open source changes little due to the
| sheer amount of power Google wields.
| esperent wrote:
| Right, but it doesn't need Google or Microsoft scale to
| compete.
|
| Firefox is a clear example that a smaller organization
| can manage the complexity of a modern browser.
|
| There's plenty of other examples too - like linux - which
| show hugely complex open source projects are possible.
| kitsunesoba wrote:
| Firefox is great, but it's barely hanging on at ~4%
| marketshare. That might skewed by Firefox users having
| tracking mitigations set up, but the result is the same
| regardless: devs and the suits above them calling the
| shots will see the tiny usership and ask why they're
| spending _anything_ on supporting it. It's barely
| competing at all.
| taftster wrote:
| Yes, but in the case of both Mozilla and Linux, they had
| a huge running start and have developed their moats (for
| what they are) over a long period of time.
|
| A new organization coming in fresh and thinking, "hey I
| know what, let's fork Chromium", does not seem like a
| very long lived effort. I also don't see any new
| operating systems coming out from an unknown team anytime
| soon.
|
| The open source projects you use as examples are
| entrenched, and it's going to take a major shakeup and/or
| cracks in the large organizations for something new in
| the browser or operating system space to emerge.
| sbuk wrote:
| Chrome uses the blink engine, which is a fork of Webkit,
| which is open source.
| kimixa wrote:
| Which in turn was a fork of khtml
| babypuncher wrote:
| I always knew Konquerer would eventually take over the
| browser market.
| sbuk wrote:
| I don't see what relevance this has to the discussion.
| dcow wrote:
| You don't see how adding another parent node to browser
| engine code lineage is relevant in a subthread about
| browser engine code lineage?
| sbuk wrote:
| I'm the OP. I'm questioning the relevance, which is in
| response to the assertion that _" The difference being
| that Chrome is open source (ok fine, Chrome is closed
| source but the important parts like the rendering engine
| are open source as Chromium)"_. _My_ aim is to point out
| that WebKit is also open source, and that the engine
| being touted by the GP is actually a fork of Webkit. Its
| provenance in this case irrelevant.
| kimixa wrote:
| Just pointing out there's a whole family of HTML engines,
| and Webkit wasn't the origin. It's also likely that it's
| the reason why Webkit is GPL, and we're able to have this
| discussion.
|
| In my experience, Apple haven't exactly been very open-
| source friendly - I know working with them there's a
| rejection of any GPL dependencies, even if well separated
| and unmodified, or even just tools used in the build
| process if they're GPL3+.
|
| I don't doubt if Apple developed a html engine from
| scratch it would use a different license, and the entire
| landscape of browsers would look very different today.
| MayeulC wrote:
| About as relevant as the parent... Not very relevant, but
| since the parent gives a short overview of browser engine
| history, we might as well point out that it started with
| the then-excellent khtml from the KDE project, that
| powers konqueror. That's little known, and a very
| interesting history tidbit.
| kajecounterhack wrote:
| Up until forking, Google was the largest contributor to
| Webkit. Google made Blink open source as well.
| scarface74 wrote:
| WebKit is just as open source as Blink.
| [deleted]
| WorldMaker wrote:
| Have you ever seen a serious "fork war"? Open Source may be
| possible to fork, but that isn't a guarantee that
| everything will be hunky dory after a hard fork. The drama
| and chaos of "we need a trustworthy fork" after a bad actor
| does something unsociable can be awful (especially if that
| bad actor remains in play). Security/safety/IP audits of
| past code pre-fork after a major fork has become necessary
| isn't free or cheap and takes resources. Drama can draw
| weird boundaries between project attempts and create a lot
| of internecine fighting among the "survivors" of the
| "upstream crash". There's so much sociopolitics that may be
| involved. Open source projects still involve a lot of
| people, at the end of the day, not just code. Open source
| applications _have_ died in a fork war.
|
| The situation is different from IE, but there's still a lot
| of similarities and open source isn't necessarily the balm
| it appears to be. They code may still "be there", but code
| still needs people to believe in it/trust it/work on it.
| cptskippy wrote:
| > But the situation is nothing like the situation with IE.
|
| Google isn't trying to kill the web and grow desktop App
| development, so yes it's different. And also people weren't
| complaining about Internet Explorer while it was innovative
| and competing against Netscape Navigator with annual
| releases. It was after 5 years of stagnation, not
| supporting new W3C standards, and unfixed bugs.
|
| Google learned from Microsoft's mistakes. They participated
| in standards, they update often, and resolve bugs quickly.
| Everything Microsoft didn't do.
|
| They also implement new features outside of standards but
| just as temporary experiments mind you. If developers
| happen to adopt them and implement them on their sites,
| well Google's hands are tied and y'all might as well make
| them standards (e.g. SPDY, QUIC).
|
| Or, because the control the standards process they can
| propose a change to a private list, push it to WHATWG and
| get representatives from Apple and Firefox to pull it into
| the "living" standard without any public discourse or
| feedback (e.g. removing alert();).
|
| This isn't to say everything they're doing is bad, but that
| doesn't mean they aren't working in their own self
| interest.
| mrtksn wrote:
| Of course they can, it's about the marketshare and not the
| code. They can make some part of the browser running in
| their cloud services and no matter how much you look into
| the Chromium code the websites which support this will run
| in Chrome only.
|
| Why would websites support this? Well, it can provide good
| rankings in search or some other goodie like speeding up
| the loading times through Google CDN or something and works
| for %90 of the people(because they use Chrome). Once enough
| websites integrate this, it's over.
| warning26 wrote:
| Sure, but forcing people to use Safari against their will
| isn't the right way to approach that problem.
|
| If Google is indeed leveraging their market position in an
| anticompetitive way to push Chrome, then they should be
| stopped from doing _that_.
| mrtksn wrote:
| They surely can get a few billions of a fine in 10 years.
| benced wrote:
| Allowing a dominant OS to foist a bad browser on all of us is
| not a good way to prevent a dominant internet search company
| from potentially foisting a bad browser on all of us.
| dcow wrote:
| Safari is just as bad about not following standards though. I
| could sympathize a lot more if your argument was between
| Firefox and Chrome/Safari. In my mind Chrome/Safari are the
| hegemony.
| mrtksn wrote:
| I agree that Safari should do better but Embrace, Extend
| then Exterminate is a real thing and lacking functions is
| not the same as having alternative "standards".
|
| "You need to download Chrome" is the scariest thing these
| days, especially if you see it in Firefox.
| klodolph wrote:
| I don't know why you think that, it certainly sounds wrong
| to me. Like, not just wrong in a technical sense, but like,
| crazy wrong.
|
| Did you live through the IE5 and IE6 days? Does the term
| "quirks mode" mean anything to you? Do you remember how Mac
| IE was completely different from Windows IE? Internet
| Explorer, back in the early 2000s, was a serious support
| burden for anyone doing web development at the time. Around
| 2010, Google dropped support for IE6 (in apps like GMail +
| Youtube) and a ton of other sites followed suit. It made a
| big splash across all the news sites and all the web
| developers breathed a sigh of relief, because they could
| say "we're dropping IE6 support because Google did."
|
| Meanwhile, there was a parallel world of IE-only sites.
| Some of them were built on future widespread web
| technologies like DHTML, others were built on stuff like
| ActiveX. ActiveX ended up in the trash bin (where it
| belongs) and DHTML became normalized. It was... common, and
| annoying, to deal with corporate sites that only worked in
| IE, and then build your own site and fight to get it
| working in IE. It was not a fun time to be a web developer.
|
| Maybe 6 or 7 years ago, I remember that Safari was missing
| some of the newer features that Chrome or Firefox had, but
| when I investigated, it usually turned out that I was using
| some future/experimental feature in Chrome or Firefox, and
| it wasn't a problem with the standards-compliance of Safari
| per se. Or sometimes I was relying on behavior that was not
| part of the standard at all). Nowadays, my sense is that
| Chrome tends to have more experimental stuff available and
| a better set of dev tools, but otherwise, most stuff works
| in Safari or Firefox with little to no modification.
| bityard wrote:
| > what actually happened is that IE was very innovative
|
| We remember things very differently, then.
|
| IE was hardly innovative, unless you count things like the
| <blink> and <marquee> tags, and the ActiveX which their
| blatant attempt to tie the web to Windows.
|
| The other thing IE was known for was missing, incomplete, or
| out-right broken support for extremely basic HTML, CSS, and
| Javascript functionality that other browsers had no issues
| with. Leaving web developers to scatter their code/markup
| with IE-specific workarounds. Compounding this problem was
| lack of regular releases and updates. Except for security
| fixes, Microsoft considered IE to be part of the OS and
| refused to issue updates for it between OS releases, for the
| most part, which is why IE stuck around so long.
|
| Nobody _wanted_ IE. It was just there as part of the OS at
| the same point in history that Internet access became a
| mainstream thing.
| tempestn wrote:
| You're just talking about different time periods. IE was
| innovative back when it supplanted Netscape. Then it
| stagnated.
| sbuk wrote:
| You used AJAX-based websites, right? _That_ was first
| available in IE. Initially, IE unto version 6 was
| _extremely_ innovative. Then Microsoft won, and they
| stopped trying.
| mrtksn wrote:
| No, the innovation was things like XMLHttpRequest which
| allowed for the early "single pages web apps"
| nicoburns wrote:
| Yes, and contenteditable which allowed for rich text
| editing.
| WorldMaker wrote:
| Also `box-sizing: border-box` was how IE designed CSS box
| sizing (to be simpler to math for the CSS writer rather
| than simpler math for the Renderer programmer). The fact
| that it is now just about "required" boilerplate in most
| CSS reset/normalization steps to throw in a `* { box-
| sizing: border-box; }` rule to opt in to "do it the IE
| way" is a massive, vestigial, lasting testament to IE's
| innovation in CSS in the early CSS standards.
| nashashmi wrote:
| They innovated on the side of the user. Not the rendering
| engine. I loved the IE interface.
|
| But if one window crashed, the whole IE crashed. Then
| Firefox tabbed browsing took over hungry for system
| resource. But at least it didn't crash, right?
|
| I remember IE research pane. Innovation in the browser
| became from a toolbar thing. Remember google toolbar? It
| was the number one bar in many countries.
|
| But then Firefox extensions took over hungry for system
| resource, but not like Chrome hungry.
|
| IE had addons. Some of them slowed the browser. And it had
| plug-ins.
|
| It had everything independent innovation needed to thrive.
| It just didn't have any vision for the "open web". No one
| understood what that was then anyways.
|
| And where ie could not innovate on the web, they used
| active X plug-ins. This was the Microsoft way. You can't
| blame them for being themselves.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| Agreed that IE did innovate at its time.
|
| "It had everything independent innovation needed to
| thrive. It just didn't have any vision for the "open
| web"."
|
| But it didn't had an open source core and was windows
| only. The vision was microsoft only (forever).
|
| "This was the Microsoft way. You can't blame them for
| being themselves. "
|
| So the argument is, "yeah, Microsoft is a big monopolist
| who do everything they can, to lock people on their
| system, you cannot blame them for it, this is just the
| way they are"?
|
| Either way, in this case luckily their monopol strategy
| failed and IE died because of it.
| nashashmi wrote:
| > But it didn't had an open source core and was windows
| only. The vision was microsoft only (forever).
|
| Right. I never would have understood the love for open
| source if Microsoft hadnt left so much thirst for deeper
| complex innovation in my mouth.
| berkut wrote:
| IE 4 and 5 were innovative (IMO as someone who used both at
| the time - 1998-2000 - and actively converted family
| members to IE) compared to Netscape: it had a cache which
| worked consistently (important in 28.8 modem times) -
| Netscape would ignore the cache in some situations, i.e.
| resize the browser window and it would re-download images,
| even though it had them in its cache, and also IE had
| things like smooth scrolling which helped make things
| "nicer" to scroll and feel better from a UI perspective,
| and things like "make favourites available offline"
| feature, where it would download a bunch of full pages
| (whilst you were dialed up), and you could browse them
| after you disconnected.
|
| After IE 6, things when downhill fast with the stagnation,
| but before that point, IE was a good browser.
| cogman10 wrote:
| The biggest issue with IE is it was HEAVILY integrated
| into windows. That in turn made it really slow to move.
| To get IE 6, you needed windows 2000, to get IE 7/8, you
| needed XP, to get 9+ you needed Vista.
|
| That particularly became a problem because the time gap
| between XP and Vista was huge (and a lot of people
| skipped it and went to 7/8/10). In the meantime firefox
| and chrome came up and started innovating rapidly. Chrome
| started it with the evergreen model and FF quickly
| adopted that model.
| anthk wrote:
| IE6 worked in w98 too.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| Chrome got popular because IE grew to be terrible and Firefox
| became bloated and slow over time. Opera was a decent
| alternative but their alternative renderer couldn't keep up.
|
| If Apple keeps their browser compatible, I doubt they have
| much to fear. Linking users to the app store because your
| site doesn't work is a great way to drive them away from your
| website, I doubt there will be much push for installing
| Chrome.
|
| Currently, Chrome for iOS has a slither of the market share
| that Safari has. Most people don't even know you can install
| another browser at all. Unless Apple makes/keeps their
| browser uncompetitive, they won't lose a serious amount of
| market share.
| timeon wrote:
| Firefox did not became bloated. It was plugin based. Chrome
| came with new concept (tab=process) and marketing. That is
| it.
| mrtksn wrote:
| > and marketing.
|
| If I recall correctly, Google was paying 1$ per install,
| so everyone was promoting Chrome and Chrome was actually
| better than Firefox.
|
| Firefox then made a lot of missteps, tried to make a push
| open video and audio codecs for idealistic reasons and
| lost. They also failed to catch on Chrome's performance
| for quite a long time. They spent a lot of resources into
| experiments that went nowhere.
| luckylion wrote:
| Don't forget that batteries will drain immediately, another
| often-stated argument for why Safari needs to be the only
| available browser.
| dontlaugh wrote:
| The difference in battery usage is very noticeable on macOS.
| gnicholas wrote:
| I use Brave and don't notice a difference at all. Is it
| only supposed to be happening on Chrome/Firefox, or any
| non-Safari browser?
| cassianoleal wrote:
| I use Firefox and it's fine on the battery.
|
| I have used Arc browser for a bit. It's Chromium-based.
| It didn't seem to have a bad effect on the battery.
|
| I haven't used Chrome in a few years now, but it used to
| be a major CPU, memory and battery hog. I don't know how
| it fares these days.
| Spivak wrote:
| I don't know if that's a good reason but it's definitely a
| true reason. Chrome on Android devours power.
|
| The thing people are worried about is being forced to use
| Chrome and Chrome being a worse experience than Safari. If
| web developers en masse say "oh thank god finally we can drop
| support for Safari" then we're in a worse situation for
| everyone involved. We've done nothing but trade a lack of
| choice for a different lack of choice and ensured that the
| already dim situation for web apps being ported to non-Chrome
| browsers will get even worse.
| luckylion wrote:
| Would Safari on Android (and with the same features) eat
| less battery though?
|
| I agree in general regarding it being better if multiple
| engines are available. On the other hand, when I build
| something, and I'm developing it on Firefox, it usually
| just works on chromium-based Browsers. Safari tends to be
| the odd one out that has some weird behavior, although it's
| much less common and much less bad than it was in the IE
| days.
|
| Also: not having to buy a Mac every few years just so I can
| test things in Safari sounds sweet, too.
|
| Web developers wouldn't drop support for Safari as long as
| a significant amount of users use it (and especially not if
| those users are premium users, which they tend to be:
| higher disposable income, better trained to pay for things
| etc), so I don't think that's an actual risk. At least for
| anything I'm involved with: we'll drop Firefox before we
| drop Safari, and we pretty much keep Firefox only because
| some developers and some PMs are using it.
| kitsunesoba wrote:
| > Would Safari on Android (and with the same features)
| eat less battery though?
|
| Yes, probably. WebKit browsers on other platforms like
| GNOME Web/Epiphany on Linux is easier on battery than
| Chrome or Firefox. WebKit is generally speaking more
| efficient than Blink and Gecko.
| someNameIG wrote:
| On macOS where you can get the full Chrome experience Safari is
| still dominant with 60+% marketshare. I presume it will be the
| same for iOS.
| jiripospisil wrote:
| Source?
| crazygringo wrote:
| That's incorrect.
|
| On macOS, Chrome is dominant by far, with 66.22% as of
| January 2023.
|
| Safari is 2nd place with 27.72%.
|
| https://netmarketshare.com/browser-market-
| share.aspx?options...
| LarryMullins wrote:
| Yes I think so. I predict that Apple will stop neglecting
| Safari now that they're forced to compete, and also that most
| users will stick with the default anyway.
| scarface74 wrote:
| Yes because of the great choice of browsers on Android,
| companies of all sizes are eschewing native apps and
| telling Android users just to use their website. On the
| other hand they are being forced to create apps for iOS.
|
| Oh wait. That's not happening at all.
| LarryMullins wrote:
| On Google's android, everybody uses Google's browser. On
| Apple's iOS, most everybody will use Apple's browser.
| alexklarjr wrote:
| The thing I was never understand how can one use chrome
| on android when its not allowing ads blocking? Zillions
| of notifications and pop ups, fraud ads that have more
| space than information you want to read. Trackers that
| slow down your pages and destroying battery by sending
| every move to google several times a second. Constant
| redirects to google store, constant attempts to subscribe
| you to mobile provider premium services. Android users
| living in spyware hell.
| dmitriid wrote:
| That's why Google's apps ask you in which browser to open
| links, with Chrome being the first, and default, choice.
| And conveniently "forgetting" the user choice.
|
| Don't forget about Google search which will push Chrome
| every chance it has. And Youtube.
| vetinari wrote:
| As someone who has used Firefox on Android as the default
| browser for years, one thing that I must say is that
| Android never conveniently forgot my choice.
|
| Which cannot be said about Windows.
| scarface74 wrote:
| What does that have to do with the narrative that PWAs
| are a great alternative on Android yet no company seems
| to take advantage of the fact and they still all create
| an iOS, Android and web app?
| freedomben wrote:
| Indeed. Don't overestimate the power ofr 15+ years of
| conditioning. People aren't suddenly going to switch for no
| reason.
| dang wrote:
| Can you please not post in the flamewar style? It's not what
| this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| pcdoodle wrote:
| Finally. Can't wait to use my favorite extension UBO.
| someNameIG wrote:
| What surprises me about this is that they have only started this
| recently. At least with Google I thought they probably had an
| internal build of Chrome for iOS using Blink, even just for
| testing.
| bgirard wrote:
| A Mozilla engineer had a working toy build in ~2011 and it
| didn't take them a lot of work from what I recall when they
| showed me.
| christkv wrote:
| They already have an android version so I can't imagine it
| will take them long to port it.
| spandrew wrote:
| Cross browser compatibility is already such a slog. This is going
| to make that much worse. Maybe that's OK given WebKit's firm grip
| on things.
|
| I've been using Arc browser since December and it's... strange?
| But good. Lots of interesting ideas.
| malermeister wrote:
| Why would that make it worse? It's not like they would use new
| rendering engines, they'd just use the same ones they're
| already using on desktop. You should make sure your site is
| compatible with those engines anyways.
| nicce wrote:
| It depends. Power efficiency on Safari with iOS is quite
| optimized and many features are integrated to iOS. E.g. some
| authentication workflows to Apple services.
| kelnos wrote:
| Why does that matter, though? Web developers don't assume
| the entire world is "Safari on iOS". They have to handle
| all the various desktop browsers, as well as everything
| that runs on Android.
|
| If it's not possible to do a particular Apple-specific
| authentication workflow in Firefox on iOS, then users will
| fall back to whatever else is already implemented for other
| platforms.
|
| If users don't like how Firefox or Chrome on iOS drain
| their battery, then they'll stop using them and go back to
| Safari.
|
| Giving people more choice doesn't hurt.
| scottlamb wrote:
| > The correlated activity from Google and Mozilla could suggest
| that they're expecting Apple to drop its restrictions on third-
| party browser engines in the near future, or the companies could
| simply be hedging their bets.
|
| Ugh, imagine being an engineer on the project if it's the latter.
| At a company strategy level, it may be wise to put resources into
| having this ready to go. [1] At an individual level, putting tons
| of effort into something like this with less than average hopes
| of launching seems extremely demotivating (and doesn't look so
| hot for "impact" in perf either).
|
| I wonder how much effort it is combine the iOS UI layer and the
| non-iOS blink layer. I'm terrible at estimating effort even for
| my own projects so it's hard to speculate.
|
| [1] A bit less wise to do speculative projects while
| simultaneously laying off 12,000 people with no warning.
| aikinai wrote:
| Google engineers often spend years on less exciting and
| interesting projects that get canceled or don't succeed. Plenty
| of people would enjoy working on this whether or not it
| launches, and it's also a high-profile bet, so I'd say it's in
| the very top tier of desirable projects.
| tgv wrote:
| > Ugh, imagine being an engineer on the project if it's the
| latter.
|
| OTOH, no users means no bugs.
| Birkeholm wrote:
| [flagged]
| [deleted]
| summerlight wrote:
| The actual launch (or landing) probably doesn't really mean
| much for less senior employees as long as they would get enough
| attention from their management. But for those managers and
| above, it might.
| voytec wrote:
| If Apple will be forced by law to allow apps from outside
| AppStore, vendors will possibly have less restrictions.
| bendiksolheim wrote:
| Quite the opposite! I would find it highly motivating to work
| on something like this, even if it was just a 5% chance it
| would make it onto actual phones. You certainly need the right
| types of people who are motivated by the right factors, but
| that is not unique for this case.
| dheera wrote:
| > even if it was just a 5% chance
|
| It would be more motivating for me if in the 95% event that
| Apple rejects it from the app store, a PR disaster can be
| launched against Apple for it, and instructions are published
| to install it on a jailbroken phone.
| United857 wrote:
| Don't even need to jailbreak, nowadays you can
| build/sideload using a free iOS developer account,
| especially if the projects in question are open source.
| rcme wrote:
| What's the latest iOS version that can be jail broken? With
| all of the exploits on iOS, I'd be pretty nervous running
| an old iOS version.
| jedberg wrote:
| Isn't it a requirement that the iOS be exploitable so
| that it can be jailbroken?
|
| Is your hope that the exploit for the jailbreak is the
| one and only flaw? :)
| rcme wrote:
| True. I guess my point was that, given the insane number
| of zero-click iMessage exploits there have been, you'd
| have to really not care about any of your data to use a
| jail broken phone.
| bawolff wrote:
| Why though?
|
| I mean, i could understand if you were working on some sort
| of research prototype that might fail, or otherwise something
| new and unique, but just porting an existing browser engine
| hardly seems to be instrinsically exciting in and of itself,
| so what would the motivation be?
| Consultant32452 wrote:
| Seems like a great grift gig to me. Low pressure, possible
| chance of high reward.
| drewg123 wrote:
| I'm looking forward to running "real" firefox on ios. If only so
| that there is another alternative if a page renders poorly in
| webkit.
| coldpie wrote:
| Real Firefox is the thing I miss most when I switched from
| Android. Browsing the web without NoScript suuuucks.
| dcow wrote:
| I really hope firefox retains support for real web extensions
| through this manifest v3 bs.
| godshatter wrote:
| Mozilla makes $400 million a year from Google, would they
| really cut off this revenue stream if Google told them to
| only support manifest v3 or else?
|
| Mozilla should never have gotten into a situation where 90%
| of their funding comes from their biggest competitor.
| kajecounterhack wrote:
| Sadly, they're probably headed into a worse situation,
| where they lose most of that 90% of their funding since
| their browser marketshare is at an all time low of 3-4%.
| Renegotiation is this year.
| [deleted]
| imiric wrote:
| I'm not that optimistic that Mozilla is capable of building a
| good iOS browser. It's been a few months since I last used it,
| but the issues of Firefox on iPadOS were not because of the
| engine. Tabs would frequently lose order, closing a tab would
| close some other tab, broken keyboard shortcuts,
| cursor/selection issues in the address bar, random non-
| responsiveness and just janky UI. The issues were so obvious
| that it felt like it was built without any QA process, so I
| resorted to using Safari most of the time, which worked
| perfectly.
|
| Firefox Focus on Android works much better, but it's also a
| simpler browser. I haven't used the full Firefox on Android, so
| can't comment on that.
| shantara wrote:
| Unfortunately, I had the same experience with iOS and iPadOS
| versions of Firefox. Very janky, lots of bugs that went on
| unfixed for months and years, and general lack of polish and
| thoughtfulness in the UI. Despite using Firefox on every
| other platform, I had much better experience with Safari, and
| kept Firefox installed only for an occasional password
| lookup.
| ben174 wrote:
| Once the native engine is available to the general public,
| there will be more users. When there are more users, there
| will likely be more resources thrown at development.
| ridiculous_fish wrote:
| Why hasn't this happened on Android?
| leni536 wrote:
| Firefox is the best Android browser, for the sole reason
| of being able to use uBlock Origin with it.
| wdb wrote:
| Sounds more like a switch of domination at the iOS platform from
| Webkit to Chromium.
|
| Personally, I am really happy with Safari but I am not convinced
| Firefox make a big dent.
| FoxBJK wrote:
| Wonder how long it'll take for Blink to overtake WebKit on iOS
| in terms of usage.
| astlouis44 wrote:
| About time. The way to free developers from the 30% app tax on
| iOS is through the web. Apple has been doing their best to drag
| their heels in order to keep grip over revenue from in-app
| purchases inside their walled garden, but the writing is truly on
| the wall at this point.
|
| As an aside, for anyone interested in WebAssembly and the future
| of gaming in the browser - my team and I at Wonder Interactive
| are bringing the full power of native gaming to the web. We're
| building out a platform and suite of tools that allows developers
| to publish, host, share, and monetize their games directly to
| their players online, without any middlemen.
|
| The current focus is on the Unreal Engine (4.24, 4.27) and UE5
| support which is coming later this year. Other engines will
| follow such as Unity, Godot, Open 3D Engine, and custom engines
| we can provide porting for on our paid plans. We're building out
| a WebGPU backend for UE5, to really enable high end desktop and
| console quality games in HTML5. The goal is to free developers
| from storefronts that charge a 30% tax on distribution.
|
| Further reading, with demos attached:
|
| https://theimmersiveweb.com/blog
| galleywest200 wrote:
| For what it is worth...the rumor mill seems to believe that
| Apple will allow side-loading as of iOS 17.
|
| https://techcrunch.com/2022/12/14/apple-will-reportedly-allo...
|
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-12-13/will-appl...
| dsissitka wrote:
| I wonder how difficult they're going to make things.
|
| > To help protect against unsafe apps, Apple is discussing
| the idea of mandating certain security requirements even if
| software is distributed outside its store. Such apps also may
| need to be verified by Apple -- a process that could carry a
| fee. Within the App Store, Apple takes a 15% to 30% cut of
| revenue.
| throwawayapples wrote:
| So, basically they're still the gatekeeper and tollbooth
| operator, but it looks like the opposite. Nicely done,
| Apple.
| iib wrote:
| If this brings us non-Webkit browsers on iOS, I think
| it's still a victory.
| criddell wrote:
| Safari on iOS is basically the only thing stopping the
| future of the web from being controlled by Google via
| Blink.
| jaynetics wrote:
| Even if there is a choice, iPhone users might tend to
| stick with Safari anyway. Desktop Safari's market share
| is about 10%, roughly the same as macOS' market share,
| which seems to suggest limited appetite for browser
| customization.
| scarface74 wrote:
| > About time. The way to free developers from the 30% app tax
| on iOS is through the web.
|
| You mean like all of the developers who aren't creating native
| apps on Android and are creating PWAs?
|
| There are just three issues with this narrative:
|
| 1. It came out in the Epic trial that 80% of all app revenue is
| coming from games.
|
| 2. Most of the other revenue derived from the App Store is
| coming from services where no one pays through the App Store
|
| 3. Large companies have already abandoned in app purchases like
| Spotify and Netflix
| arcturus17 wrote:
| > You mean like all of the developers who aren't creating
| native apps on Android and are creating PWAs?
|
| I'm not sure I understand your wording right... Are you
| saying that devs creating PWAs are "free?" Because it's well-
| known that PWAs has been stunted by Apple and Google. The
| technology is _well behind_ its potential. PWAs could do
| significantly more if they had better access to system APIs.
| scarface74 wrote:
| So now there is a great conspiracy by both Apple and
| Google? Maybe web technologies just aren't as good as
| native?
|
| In the history of computing there has never been a cross
| platform general purpose GUI framework that didn't suck.
|
| Not to mention most Android devices in the wild are low end
| and don't handle complex web pages well
| arcturus17 wrote:
| > So now there is a great conspiracy by both Apple and
| Google?
|
| What conspiracy?
|
| They have huge economic disincentives to further PWAs -
| there is no need for any conspiracy.
|
| In the first presentation of the iPhone, Steve Jobs laid
| out a vision where the smartphone would run _web apps_ ,
| using fundamental web technologies (HTML, CSS, JS). He
| quickly backtracked when he realised Apple could impose a
| 30% tax on transactions in the platform.
|
| > Maybe web technologies just aren't as good as native?
|
| No one said they are, but that's no excuse to drag your
| feet in implementing simple things like push
| notifications.
|
| > In the history of computing there has never been a
| cross platform general purpose GUI framework that didn't
| suck.
|
| What GUI framework? I barely even know what we are
| talking about anymore. You don't need one with PWA -
| again, you're using fundamental web technologies, and
| enabling them to make system calls.
|
| > Not to mention most Android devices in the wild are low
| end and don't handle complex web pages well
|
| So that's another excuse to not further PWAs, huh?
| scarface74 wrote:
| > What GUI framework? I barely even know what we are
| talking about anymore. You don't need one with PWA -
| again, you're using fundamental web technologies, and
| enabling them to make system calls.
|
| Let me ask you this then. Name _one_ cross platform
| framework that wasn't meant to build command line tools
| that hasn't sucked?
|
| QT? Java Spring? React Native? Electron?
|
| > In the first presentation of the iPhone, Steve Jobs
| laid out a vision where the smartphone would run web
| apps, using fundamental web technologies (HTML, CSS, JS).
| He quickly backtracked when he realised Apple could
| impose a 30% tax on transactions in the platform.
|
| He "backtracked" because his "sweet solution" wasn't good
| and everyone wanted native apps and web apps were called
| "a shit sandwich" by developers.
|
| Do you know the history of creating "applications" using
| "web technologies"? They failed for RIM, Microsoft, and
| Palm. Web apps suck not to mention the clusterfuck of the
| front end ecosystem.
|
| Every single platform that went down the "we can do great
| web apps" backtracked. They have never been good enough.
|
| > So that's another excuse to not further PWAs, huh?
|
| You mean making an app that's actually performant on the
| majority of phones out there?
| arcturus17 wrote:
| > He "backtracked" because his "sweet solution" wasn't
| good and everyone wanted native apps and web apps were
| called "a shit sandwich" by developers.
|
| Sure, the 30% cut of all sales was just a sweet
| coincidence.
|
| > You mean making an app that's actually performant on
| the majority of phones out there?
|
| Twitter and Uber have PWAs for countries where low-end
| devices are the majority of phones.
|
| > They have never been good enough.
|
| Complete bollocks, there are plenty of excellent web apps
| out there, and it's one of the most important mechanisms
| for software delivery nowadays, in both the enterprise
| and consumer spaces. You are a fundamentalist and there
| is no point discussing anything here anymore
| rektide wrote:
| Brilliant move. Show what is possible. Let individual developers
| download the source & build themselves, and run it. Make it real,
| make the only obstruction a legal one, one that is increasingly
| full of holes as a small exterior/outside hobbyist community
| bypasses the longstanding trenchancy Apple has dug, has moated
| themselves in with. Give people that first whiff of freedom.
|
| And if someday hopefully some of the anti-trust anti-competitive
| legal moats do get torn down, Google will be ready.
| EMIRELADERO wrote:
| This has already happened. The walls have already been torn
| down. The EU's Digital Markets Act has made it mandatory for
| Apple to implement those changes by Q1 2024
| voakbasda wrote:
| Anyone care to speculate as to whether Apple will take that
| opportunity to permit users in other regions that same
| liberty? Personally, I would not bet on that outcome without
| similar legislation forcing the issue.
| EMIRELADERO wrote:
| They probably will. Google "Brussels Effect"
| voakbasda wrote:
| I can see how that applies for hardware manufacturers
| that don't want to build multiple versions of their
| products; however, software can easily be region locked
| using a simple flag without the same economic
| consequences.
| lxgr wrote:
| As far as I know, JIT is disabled on iOS at the moment, so one
| thing developers would notice right away is abysmal JavaScript
| performance. (Early versions of V8 didn't even have an
| interpreting or bytecode path, to my knowledge, so it wouldn't
| even run without major modifications!)
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