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Comment by threeseed | Hacker News Reader

1. It's not Safari only. It's Webkit only and there are legitimate security reasons for this.

2. The idea that UNIX is antithetical to what Apple stands for is just ridiculous. It is still at the core of iOS and MacOS and is one of the areas where Apple continues to innovate.

3. Apple licensed MacOS in the past. It nearly killed the company since third parties like PowerComputing went straight after their core base and did nothing to grow the ecosystem.

4. You can see what your iOS device is doing. Plenty of apps allow you to see what processes are running, file system behaviour etc. Apple just doesn't build it in.

5. Anyone who thinks the Mac is dead needs to go have a lie down with some chamomile tea. Apple even today doubled down on the Mac with the new Air + Mini. And they will continue to grow and invest in the platform since content creation will always be largely done on a Mac.

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There are not legitimate security reasons for Webkit only. That makes zero sense. Chrome has hands down beat every other browser on security for years. Go read the CVEs. There is absolutely zero reason to believe that iOS webkit has a better track record than webkit at large. Therefore it's nearly certain your iOS device is less secure browsing the net with webkit/Safari than if Apple allowed real chrome to run there.

You misunderstand. Apple can fix WebKit bugs, but they can't force Google to fix Chrome bugs.

Also for Apple to allow v8, they would have to permit 3rd party unsigned executable code (JITed in this case). Apple doesn't want to allow that.

This is not about CVEs, it's a meta discussion of not outsourcing the security of the platform.

> Also for Apple to allow v8, they would have to permit 3rd party unsigned executable code (JITed in this case). Apple doesn't want to allow that.

And how does that pertain to security? Android doesn't seem to have a problem with JITed code in sandboxed store apps. Neither does Win10.

Actually UWP does not allow for JIT code, other than Chackra, as you should know.

Hence MDIL in WP 8.x and .NET Native on WP 10 onwards.

WinRT sandbox has always allowed for JIT'ted code, all the way back to the original Windows 8 release - all .NET Store apps back then were running on a JIT. .NET Native is a later addition that is there solely to improve performance, and it is still opt-in.

Now, Win8.x did not allow for third-party JIT compilers in the sandbox; it was only CLR or Chakra. But UWP does - look for the "codeGeneration" capability here:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/uwp/packaging/app-c...

WP 8.x did not JIT code on device, hence the whole MDIL and cloud compiler on the store.

WP 8.x only did dynamic linking at installation time and when OS updates were done, by replacing symbolic labels with the actual target destinations. Everything else was already compiled at the store and downloaded as binary into the devices. This was the whole point of MDIL.

There is a BUILD session and a further Channel 9 deep dive interview showing how MDIL deployment works on WP 8.x.

So Chakra was the only JIT in town.

Since the comment does not allow for editing any longer.

"BUILD 2012, Deep Dive into the Kernel of .NET on Windows Phone 8"

https://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Build/2012/3-005

"Mani Ramaswamy and Peter Sollich: Inside Compiler in the Cloud and MDIL"

https://channel9.msdn.com/Shows/Going+Deep/Mani-Ramaswamy-an...

Oh, I meant Windows, not Windows Phone (for 8.x, that was a big difference still).

Either way, code generation is there today.

> You misunderstand. Apple can fix WebKit bugs, but they can't force Google to fix Chrome bugs.

If apple could make their browser the defacto browser of tomorrow in the way chrome is today then google would surely work harder to fix the pain points apple identifies

Google has a track record of fixing Chrome bugs far far faster than Apple fixes Safari bugs so the point still stands. You'd be safer and more secure if allowed to run real Chrome on iOS than Safari by every measurable metric. In other words it's effectively provable the restriction is not about security.

> Apple doesn't want to allow that.

Yes, that's all it's about. Apple's control. Other excuses people make up for their reasons are demonstrably false.

Which are both control issues not security issues.

There's no actual security reason for iOS to be locked to Apple's webkit exclusively and there's no actual security reason for iOS to not allow JIT'd code. Those are both control issues, not security ones. JIT in particular is purely a control issue - the process itself is already sandboxed which is the one and only actual security boundary here. Preventing a JIT doesn't prevent arbitrary code execution, after all, especially if there's an interpreter in play which Apple sort of allows.

>4. You can see what your iOS device is doing. Plenty of apps allow you to see what processes are running, file system behaviour etc. Apple just doesn't build it in.

Do you have any examples? I've never seen anything like this in the app store.

Some apps give you limited access to their filesystem but (as a Jailbreaker) I'm pretty sure the larger system isn't viewable under normal circumstances.

Search for Lirum. Tons of apps like this.

Apple was always focused on their own platform, even Steve while at NeXT saw UNIX just as a way to lead developers into their hardware, but the real juice was in NeXTSTEP Objective-C world not POSIX.

What is happening now are those that only discovered the Mac world after OS X, don't care about Objective-C/Swift development, now feeling that their pretty UI Linux replacement is no more.

Apple naturally cares about their Objective-C/Swift developers in first place.

I do feel it odd to say content creation will be done on a desktop OS rather than a mobile OS when it seems that more and more people are using their mobile OS as a primary means of creation and sharing. Maybe in a less powerful way, but mobile OS apps and hardware have really democratized content creation and I don't see that trend reversing.

> "mobile OS apps and hardware have really democratized content creation"?

Democratized? Is that because you perceive mobile devices as more affordable? Have you checked the price of a new iPad Pro?

The majority of "new content" is being created with mobile OS apps today. Family photos, social media, etc. The fact that it's mostly all low quality junk is orthogonal to that reality.

Mobile systems have democratized content creation not because of price (though that too; not everyone buys the most expensive device) but because they are demonstrably easier to use for content creation than anything that came before them.

Source: personal experience with multiple over-65 people for whom an iPad or iPhone is the first internet-connected computer they've ever owned.

"Content creation" isn't usually referring to "family photos and social media". Besides, family photos are made with digital cameras, not mobile apps.

In the context of this thread, the target user of iPad Pro is more than someone taking pictures of their kids and pets on weekends.

As for my opinion on this, I believe in using the right tool for the job, AND using multiple tools to get the job done. Sometimes an iPad Pro might be fine for certain stages of a project, for sketching out backgrounds or initial ideas for a design, and then importing that into another system such as animation pipelines or other applications on desktop or laptop or workstations. Depends what the job is.

I've never met a professional designer who works only on their tablet. Professionals love their workstations, multiple screens, and all the comforts and power of a proper setup. If you're just marking up a PDF, I wouldn't count that as professional work!

> "Content creation" isn't usually referring to "family photos and social media".

I wish I agreed with you, but I can't but see that as elitist condescension against unsophisticated content.

> the target user of iPad Pro is more than someone taking pictures of their kids and pets on weekends.

I wish I agreed with you, but in reality the iPad Pro is marketed as a tool for "serious professionals" but in reality that's just an aspirational message and a large number of iPad Pro buyers will use them to take pictures of their kids and pets on weekends.

The same is true of DSLRs. They're supposed to be professional work tools but the overwhelming sales numbers are to amateurs taking photos for trivial reasons. (That said, the DSLR market has now matured to the point where they do target the amateru audience.)

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