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Comment by romanoderoma | Hacker News Reader

But is it Apple's call?

I mean, removing features of course makes software more secure

I argue that disabling JavaScript would only bring great benefits to humanity

If Apple had a dominant market position in smartphones then one could argue that end customers don't have much of a choice, but Apple only has at most 50% market share in the US and much lower globally. For my own smartphone usage I would much rather Apple choosing which features and APIs that third-party developers (of apps and websites) can use rather than those developers being able to do whatever they want. I think it's pretty clear that developers tends to have a much more hostile relationship with their end users than Apple does with their customers.

The argument is not about market domination, but about money power

Apple market is rich, it is the richest tech company, with the highest market valuation ever, one cannot avoid it

So it's gonna drive adoption no matter what

Like it did for Flash (right or wrong, they did it)

I was writing web applications during the 90s, they were called intranets back then, IE wasn't bad, it was simply unavoidable

And being unavoidable halted competition for more than a decade

On another side: having a platform that doesn't obey to common standards creates tech segregation

I remember seeing japanes phones 20 years ago, they were ahead of time,but unusable outside of Japan

Last but not least, having a flag that says "allow me to shoot myself in the foot of I want to" it's less hostile than "you don't know what you're doing let me handle it for you"

So then write for all browsers, support what you can for each, and don’t promote Chrome anymore? If you continue to promote a one size fits all browser and the market moves that way then we’ll shortly be having this same discussion about Google. If you were writing websites in the 90s you should know this.

> So then write for all browsers, support what you can for each, and don’t promote Chrome anymore?

WOW

That escalated quickly

I never promoted Chrome, in fact I'm an old time Firefox users and in the 90s I owned a Netscape 3 gold license.

I don't write fronted software anymore, but writing for every browser means adhering to the standard

Apple has steered away more than any other vendor lately

So...

> I don't write fronted software anymore, but writing for every browser means adhering to the standard.

Yes, which you’ll find if you do Safari adheres to quite well. Finding examples where it doesn’t is easy, just like on chrome. Which is why we have media queries and poly fills because it’s simply impossible to have a unified platform without one entity owning it. If you found out Chrome doesn’t render the same on linux as it doesn’t on windows, would you call this not adhering to the standard?

> Yes, which you’ll find if you do Safari adheres to quite well

They don' t

Apple refused to implement 16 web API in Safari

> Which is why we have media queries and poly fills because it’s simply impossible to have a unified platform

And that' s why big players like Apple hat control a closed ecosystem shouldn't be allowed to be assholes

At least on Android I can install other browsers and other browser engines

Do you see the difference?

> Chrome doesn’t render the same on linux as it doesn’t on windows

that' s not true

Windows and Linux that have simply different font rendering engines and different native widgets

That's all

> would you call this not adhering to the standard?

absolutely NOT!

In no part of the standard rendering is formalized

It wouldn't make sense

The way things are rendered is standardized, not the way they should look

https://www.w3.org/TR/2014/REC-html5-20141028/rendering.html

> HTML is intended to apply to multiple media (it is a media-independent language). User agent implementors are encouraged to adapt the suggestions in this section to their target media.

> Apple refused to implement 16 web API in Safari

OK and these APIs don’t stop real work.

> And that' s why big players like Apple hat control a closed ecosystem shouldn't be allowed to be assholes

And putting all that power into the hands of a single browser will not end well, so stop promoting Chrome or saying other browsers should be like Chrome. FF isn’t going to win.

> At least on Android I can install other browsers and other browser engines Do you see the difference?

Yes, next question, do I care?

> that' s not true

100% true, read the dev blogs and understand the WM on linux is fundamentally different than windows or mac, therefore rendering is not exactly the same.

Standards help align, they do not force alignment. If safari implemented a p element as a span, then this is not following the spec. Choosing not to implement a portion of a modular spec, is still following the spec.

> But is it Apple's call?

Yes, just like you’re free to never visit an annoying website asking to spam notifications you’re free to take away Apple’s decision making power you grant them by simply not buying an iphone.

> you’re free to take away Apple’s decision making power you grant them by simply not buying an iphone.

That's a very common argument

But it doesn't get any less stupid with time.

I never owned an iPhone.

Because I am an adult homo sapiens that can take decisions for himself.

But you should know that if a standard exists, and the standard has been approved by a consortium, a consortium where Apple is a very important member, they should at least support what they signed for, instead of forcing developers to go through hoops just to support their platform.

When Elon Musk make Teslas he has to put airbags in them, stop lights, front lights, safety belts, they must pass crash tests, because that's the standard, otherwise he couldn't sell them as cars.

So if Apple believe that the standard that they approved is too dangerous, they can make their OS more secure, instead of putting the blame on developers.

Developers are not jumping through hoops to support their platform. I’m a full stack dev, I understand what it takes to support safari and a majority of the time is actually Chrome being fast and loose with the standard, not Apple. Is it a partial implementation, sure. But the features lacking don’t stop meaningful work at all. Just like hearing my statement is old, so is yours.

> Developers are not jumping through hoops to support their platform

They are

> I’m a full stack dev, I understand what it takes to support safari and a majority of the time is actually Chrome being fast and loose with the standard

I am as well, I understand a closed platform when I see one.

> But the features lacking don’t stop meaningful work at all.

If only it was true...

It' s not lacking, it has been removed on purpose.

The web engine Safari is built from already supports those features.

I can play this game too, Nope.

Nope, apparently you can't play the game.

You don't even understand the rules.

Sorry.

Notification APIs are in Webkit, the open source implementation of Safari.

proof: https://github.com/WebKit/webkit/blob/89c28d471fae35f1788a0f...

Can you prove that Apple didn't remove standard APIs from their browser?

So this somehow keeps other HTML from rendering and CSS just doesn’t display correctly right? Look around, you’ll find very little care for that API except from sites trying to spam devices, something apple is against. So again, no, safari is following the spec just fine.

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