> On the other hand, this denies me from using an actual Mozilla Firefox web browser on iOS.
At the same time, most desktop computer users are able to use Firefox and we can see how often they choose to do so.
At the same time, most desktop computer users are able to use Firefox and we can see how often they choose to do so.
https://github.blog/2022-06-10-how-we-think-about-browsers/
Of course this is just part of the story. In every country it's different. In some EU countries Firefox is up to 20%. In UK it's almost non-existent. Local markets shape the browser support. If a few major websites are too lazy to support a browser properly, users will leave, and then others can say "there are no users, so we can stop supporting!".
1. Whether this is an overt policy or simply choosing to skimp on testing, it's a choice.
The workarounds are to use Chrome, download files in tiny batches (much fun with 500 photos in the folder), or work out through trial and error that Google wanted the Safari tracking prevention disabled before it would download a file.
Desktop-using software engineers can write software for desktop users in a ton of different ways. There's so much freedom and there exist multiple mechanisms and platforms to deploy your code.
Desktop-using software engineers are not free to choose how to deploy software to mobile audiences. They've got to go through Apple to reach 50+% of the US market. Apple sets unreasonable rules.
Unfortunately, Americans spend most of their time computing with mobile devices now. We've been forced into this situation.
Both Apple and Google have made our industry worse and more locked down than Microsoft in the 90's and 00's, and they both deserve to the the target of smartphone and browser antitrust lawsuits.
How? As a user I’m able to do the things I want with reasonable guarantees of privacy and security. Most developers that release iOS software seem to be doing ok with those “unreasonable” rules. And the user benefits. If I wanted Android, I would have bought Android. I bought Apple specifically because I see value as a user to those unreasonable rules.
Surely given survivorship bias that means very little though?
If you did a survey today of living people you'd discover a 0% death rate, clearly humans are immortal.
https://open-web-advocacy.org/files/OWA%20-%20Bringing%20Com...
without data, we can't assume either of our justifications are what go through buyers minds
Why would you post a document refuting your own point?
I explicitly do. not. want. my web browser to have access to the bluetooth and NFC APIs. Nor the screen orientation lock and full screen APIs. I absolutely do not want website notifications.
I don't know how to be more explicit. Those are things developers want. Those are not things users want. And no amount of gaslighting about invisible harms is going to convince us that what you want is what we want.
They can tax it. They can starve the entire landscape of innovation capital and prevent other companies from ever growing large. They set the rules, and they have enough human and financial capital to keep the game going forever.
That's not good for capitalism, the free market, entrepreneurs, or innovation. In the ten years since smartphones came about, we've seen a contraction of other forms of computing. A contraction in the number of smartphone manufacturers, too! The world is worse for it.
This type of duopolistic advantage also creates a system where Apple and Google can grow close to governments and become a surveillance and control apparatus. That's scarier than anything a developer could do to slight you.
The status quo is great for Apple and Google shareholders, but bad for those trying to innovate and those wanting personal freedom and privacy.
Almost all of computing connects to these two companies now, and that's a fragility that benefits these two giants to the rest of our detriment.
> I explicitly do. not. want. my web browser to have access to the bluetooth and NFC APIs. Nor the screen orientation lock and full screen APIs. I absolutely do not want website notifications.
Easy enough to turn all of these things off. You're describing a setting.
Can you turn off all of these in Chrome?
Google Play puts $50 billion into devs’ pockets, and Apple App Store delivers another $85 billion. Mobile gaming puts another
“Overall independent app developers’ average monthly revenue is $1,500, medium-size company developers make $7,500 a month and large studios developers teams generate on average $44,000 monthly.”
Seems like capitalism is hale and healthy in this duopoly.
https://www.businessofapps.com/app-developers/research/ios-a...
I don’t understand why everyone is like OMG apple is crippling iOS they don’t have push notifications on safari.
God the last feature I ever want on safari is push notifications. I want less notifications. Not more.
Both Firefox and Safari are against most hardware APIs for many reasons including technical ones. Only Chrome is reckless enough to enable them even though no consensus has been reached on them.
Those specs are nowhere near to being standard. They are "Draft community reports". And yet you list them there as if they were standards and as if Apple absolutely had to implement them for greater good (and not because the dominant browser implemented them)
Edit. I can't even begin with the laughable "Edge differentiates from Chrome" because it removed a few Google-specific things like Google Pay.
OWA was formed to ensure that mobile Web Apps become viable, if you disagree with that as the premise, all the best.
Ad hominem is not as good as argument as you want it to be.
> If you start from a position that Web Apps should not be able to compete on mobile devices
If you start with ascribing thoughts and words to your opponent that your opponent never thought or said, you're not arguing in good faith.
> OWA was formed to ensure that mobile Web Apps become viable, if you disagree with that as the premise, all the best.
That is literally not what I said. However, you can't even see beyond Google's propaganda to understand what I wrote.
We’re trying to fix real world problems caused by anti-competitive behavior. Any debate needs to start with the premise that web apps are not competitively viable on iOS and that Safari is in a poor state.
Then the next step is to discuss potential solutions.
Yes, you keep copy-pasting that. As if that absolves you of factually incorrect statements.
> We have an exceptionally detailed understanding of the bugs and functionality issues of the browser.
And yet you fail to understand that hardware APIs are opposed by BOTH Safari AND Firefox. And yet you include them in your lists as if they were actual standards that Safari absolutely must implement. They are not. Same for a bunch of other Chrome non-standards.
In a recent discussion it turned out that you didn't even know what actual objections BOTH Safari AND Firefox have against them.
Same for pretending that Edge is different from Chrome because it removed Google-only services from it. It's not. It's a re-skin with very minor modifications.
You've listed over thirty things that Edge removed from Chrome to make a "different browser". Can you name 10 or 5 of them that are actually relevant to actual web?
Your entire OWA isn't arguing in good faith and is basically parroting Google's propaganda word for word.
> Any debate needs to start with the premise that web apps are not competitively viable on iOS and that Safari is in a poor state.
No. Any debate in good faith has to start with discussing the state of the open web and Chrome's utter dominance of it. As the top comment rightly said, "People keep arguing Apple is being anti-competitive. But no one seems to recon with the possible consequences of what they’re asking for." [1]
Should Safari be better? Yes. Should it be "better" by blindly implementing whatever Google throws over the wall and gullible developers eat up as if it was heavenly manna? No.
> Then the next step is to discuss potential solutions.
Breaking the web forward: https://www.quirksmode.org/blog/archives/2021/08/breaking_th...
Instead let’s focus on the core issues: 1. Severe underfunding of Safari 2. Bugs 3. Install Prompts/Banners 4. Push API
1. Apple has no incentive to fund their browser while they are not at any risk of losing market share to the competition on their primary OS.
2. Because of the underfunding and the fact users/developers can’t shift to other browsers, bugs that are either impossible to work around (or require a very high level of skills) have not been fixed. Some which were reported 7 years ago.
3. Users do not know web apps exist. They have no way to install them.
4. Notifications arrived for native apps in 2009, in 2022 they still are not available for web apps even though they are essential for many different types of apps. Apple has promised them in 2023 likely as a result of our advocacy work.
Without a viable web ecosystem on iOS mobile web apps are dead and the entire ecosystem gets shifted to native apps and webkit applies no competitive pressure on chrome/edge or Firefox. The status quo is the worse case scenario.
The fix for this scenario is competition. With a 60% market share on MacOS (the on my comparable market where Safari is the default), as long as apple meets developer needs then I can’t see them losing a majority market share on iOS.
A highly funded Webkit be able to contribute to the web ecosystem instead of holding it back.
I focused on some APIs I know about. There's nothing strawman about facts that you misrepresented in your diatribe. How can I be sure that you represented everything else correctly?
Oh. I can't. Because I also saw your section on "Edge differentiation".
Should I go through everyting else and discover same misrepresentation and falseness? I think I won't, these two are quite enough, thank you.
> Instead let’s focus on the core issues
You keep skipping from goal post to goal post, and each next argument you make isn't made in good faith.
> 1. 2.
I'm not even going to dignify this speculation with an answer
> 3. 4.
And again and again all comes down to literally one or two standards. That's it. That's all you really have.
Well, sometimes you have more, but then it's just a random dump of random standards that you are absolutely sure are actual standards (and not "Draft comunity reports" by Google) and that everyone must implement them now.
> Without a viable web ecosystem on iOS mobile
Please define a "viable web ecosystem". So far it looks like to you "a viable ecosystem" is "anything that Google implements, others be damned".
> web apps are dead
Yes, they are dead. For many reasons that have nothing to do with notifications.
> The fix for this scenario is competition. With a 60% market share on MacOS
Yes. Let's talk about competition. There is none, it's fully dominated by Google: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31905404
Oh wait. You don't really care about that.
> A highly funded Webkit be able to contribute to the web ecosystem instead of holding it back.
Webkit is contributing to the web ecosystem, and isn't holding it back. For the obvious reason that your definition of a viable web is taken straight out of Google propaganda, and has nothing to do with making the web viable.
Factual points I started with:
- Both Firefox and Safari are against most hardware APIs for many reasons including technical ones.
- The section "Edge differentiates from Chrome because it removed a few Google-specific things like Google Pay" is laughable
Your "response" is, "oh, you don't believe in web apps" and "Our group was initially formed by a group of people who develop for iOS Safari on daily basis".
These are not factual points. These are attempts to dodge a conversation. And when the conversation seemingly starts happening, it's "the facts you provided are not facts, they are strawmen".
Yes. It truly is pointless discussing this. There are many, many, many issues we can discuss about Safari. With people who have done their research and don't willingly assume the role of Google's propaganda amplifier. Thankfully, as the comments to the original link show, more and more people are starting have a more sober outlook on what's happening.
tl;dr if you think your dignity is above responding to someone, don't.
Just as an example: do you believe web apps are currently treated by apple in a lower tier than native apps?
if so, do you think they should be n-class citizens, where n is the same class as native ios apps?
if you do not, then I can see why you do not personally want the things that come with it, like your other conversation partner said
Does this have anything to do with anything I said in my thread? No. So, this question is not in good faith, so why should I engage with it?
> if so, do you think
Do you think that ascribing thoughts and words to your opponent that your opponent never thought or said is a good argument?
It doesn't matter what I think or what I don't think when my argument literally began with finding incorrect arguments made in actual bad faith with no research in the "paper" made by OWA. Both you and OP couldn't care less, and you both try to deflect with "do you believe blah blah blah".
I could go with a not-so-fine-comb through the document and point out every misrepresentation, incorrect assumption and outright lies. I picked two. What followed is now open for the world to see.
https://open-web-advocacy.org/files/OWA%20-%20Bringing%20Com... (Section 5.6 and 5.8)
2. Safari is missing core functionality and significantly lags behind Firefox and Chrome / Edge. Sections 5.3 5.4
If you want to focus on specific functionality, then the ability to install a web app (Section 5.4.3.1 and Section 5.4.5 go into that in detail).
For evidence that Safari is significantly behind Firefox and Chrome/Edge see 5.4.1.
You clearly don't understand what "good faith" is, and certainly are not an unbiased judge of it, being 1 of the 2 people involved in the accusation. It means asking because you are legitimately interested in the answer. It does not mean "I, as self-appointed judge of this discussion, unilaterally deem your question irrelevant". Indeed, if the question and answer are actually irrelevant, you can trust the smart posters here to be the judge of that, so you need not fear answering truthfully and candidly.
In any case, _I_ am legitimately interested in the answer, but even without my admission, you are supposed to assume good faith on this forum (HN), versus your current, combative, antagonistic, almost litigious (OBJECTION, RELEVANCE! SUSTAINED, I RULE IN MY OWN FAVOR!) attitude towards your fellow posters.
you are the one who called him a google shill.
They both need to be stripped of their extraordinary powers so that user freedom and proper capitalistic competition can be restored.
It's likely that any regulatory action taken against Apple and Google will force the companies to innovate more and become healthier themselves.
The companies who should be punished for anti-competitive behavior are the telecom companies. Not only do they restrict what devices can be activated on their networks, but they force Android users to wait months, years, or forever for them to dribble out a garbage-laden, proprietary version of the OS for every specific model of phone, one at a time.
And then there's the idiotic locking of phones; it's not just that it should be illegal, but it's also backward: U.S. phone companies lock the phones of people who are UNDER CONTRACT. Talk about stupid. These people are contractually obligated to keep paying, so who cares if they take their phones to another network? That's a net win for the phone company, since they're paying for NO service!
Apple and Android are.
But Android is far more diverse than just Google's distribution.
I use different browsers for different things so I want to chose how to open external app links.
I would install a shim browser that does just that if I knew of one.
https://github.com/TrianguloY/UrlChecker
It also integrates ClearURLs functionality (https://gitlab.com/KevinRoebert/ClearUrls) to let you remove tracking from links before sending it to the browser or app. This feature is optional.
Previously,
1. you had the choice of activating the "tab queue" system for links opened with Firefox, i.e. the URLs would then only be saved in a list in the background instead of launching the full browser.
2. when sharing an URL with Firefox, you had the aforementioned choice of "actually open the link", "bookmark it", or "use Firefox Sync to send the URL to some other Firefox instance in your Sync account". The latter two choices happened in the background, so you didn't have to wait for the full browser UI+engine to start first, the page to load, etc. etc.