Apple and WebRTC need each other | Hacker News Reader

Apple and WebRTC need each other

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54 pointscpncrunch17 comments

Relax everyone—WebRTC is in on WebKit's to-do list: https://webkit.org/status/#specification-webrtc.

Pweh... You had me worried there. I thought it would languish for years after the spec had been accepted and other major vendors had implemented it.

WebRTC is not only on the to-do list; it’s listed as "In Development": https://webkit.org/status/#specification-webrtc

There is a webphone library from mizutech which offers webrtc whenever possible with failback to others when webrtc is not available (native plugin/flash/java): https://www.mizu-voip.com/Software/WebPhone.aspx

Apple please, please add WebRTC support to Safari. I have a business that relies on WebRTC and not a day goes by where customers don't ask me if it will work on iOS devices. I have to explain the situation all the time. It is expecially hard for clients to understand since apple allows other browsers in the iOS store but they are just wrappers around Safari and have the same limitations.

You can use OpenWebRTC on iOS to provide support there.

OpenWebRTC (by Ericsson) has a number of LGPL dependencies, and the way apps are packaged on iOS (eg, totally locked down) makes it difficult to completely follow through on the requirements of the LGPL, from a technical perspective. I'm not sure if iOS dynamic linking makes this easier?

That's without getting into the question of whether the LGPL is legally compatible with the App Store TOS. While the LGPL's use/redistribution requirements aren't as stringent as the GPL's, I'm not qualified to make that analysis, and IIRC it hasn't been tested anywhere.

The WebRTC implementation found at webrtc.org, which is used by Chrome, can also be used by mobile apps, including iOS. It's BSD licensed and used by many mobile apps.

(I work on the WebRTC team)

Is there a way to reasonably compile it out as its own so? I looked into it last year and it seemed you could not build Chromium's webrtc independently at all. Mozilla uses it by literally cloning and building Chromium trunk and taking the so out of it.

I'm really hoping Apple will get it into gear soon enough that I don't have to develop a separate iOS app.

It's in development: https://webkit.org/status/#specification-webrtc

Maybe Apple is happy protecting their customers from arbitrary third parties who want to map their internal networks via webrtc. There are plenty of problems with webrtc, especially from a security perspective, and the benefits do not necessarily outweigh the costs. If a developer wants to build "webrtc-like" functionality on the apple platform, he can build an app using the many networking libraries available in iOS.

Just like an iOS app, a browser WebRTC app won't leak internal network information without a user's permission, and if you really want to, you can force WebRTC traffic to go through your VPN as well and not leak anything.

There's really no need to be an Apple apologist about this — their job listings show that a fixed WebKit is on the way.

Permission needed? Hit https://www.browserleaks.com/webrtc and see ;)

You're right. Then again, an iOS app doesn't need to request permission to get that data either. Both need permission to access the camera.

What's the bandwidth usage of WebRTC compared to Facetime? Facetime seems to be substantially better than Facebook Messenger or Skype. [0]

[0] http://tech.kateva.org/2016/03/bandwidth-use-over-5-min-vide...

Last time I tried on a Firefox videochat with a Chrome machine, it was substantially higher than on Google Hangouts or plain old Google Talk. I tried to tweak Firefox internal options, without much luck.

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