Except they can't be. Native apps don't offer the same freedoms that the web does. And so, we keep stacking technologies on top of web browsers to alleviate the problem. It's a bad situation, and both Google and Apple are gruesomely complicit in making this situation worse.
> Can you please give a concrete example of what Apple should do, in your opinion, to expand their API targets?
Stop browser lockdown. Allow sideloading. You know, the basics of computing that we had figured out since the mid-90s or when we sued Microsoft.
We don't know that. Maybe Microsoft could maintain their own browser engine if Google hadn't provided one on permissive open-source licensing terms that met their needs.
MS can afford it financially. The desire to put in the effort to is not there.
This is why Apple really came out of the blue with Steve Jobs' razor focus on quality above all. Microsoft's goal is never to be 'best in class'. Because they don't need to be. People will buy it anyway.
The solution (to me) is simple - fix native app distribution. Make platform targets operate the same as they used to, and give people control over their computer again. The only ones preventing us from a platform-agnostic utopia is Apple and Google, both of whom profit off the artificial difficulty of distributing applications.
So, here we are. Google is poisoning the web while Apple refuses to swallow their pride. Everyone is hurting, and nobody stands to gain anything but the shareholders. A hopeless situation, but let's not pretend like everything here is morally grey.
Are people now using Edge because of this change?
Users, trusting the ad company that provides them free email, search, video, photos etc. will action on the suggestion and install Chrome.
More users gives google the market power to dictate web standards
Just use Firefox. It works just as well as Chrome (*), but it's based on a completely different engine which was built from the ground up.
(*) On desktop at least (on Android I still use a Chromium fork for now)
>It works just as well as Chrome () Not on anything* I use, it doesn't, so "No....thank you".
Tbf, I do keep trying ff, but...clunky, jeepers! 'Fraid I'll hang on until my Brave jumps it's particular shark and then maybe I'll hop over to something else, but for now, and as long as I can still use UblockO, Brave it is.
Even Opera is looking interesting again....
What browsers have you been daily-driving to come to that conclusion?
That's a really unfair(and untrue) statement. Brave also removes some code they find privacy violating, built in a best in class adblocker, built a full cross-device sync system that works perfectly, some UI tweaks and enhancements, built Tor connectivity in, etc. Probably a lot more that I'm leaving out.
I am def not a fan of crypto or BATs or whatever they were pushing, but you can use it fine ignoring all of that.
Normally this might just be a platitude of the sort, "Go check it for yourself." But in this case that's not what I'm saying. Brave is going to be used by large numbers of tech focused users with a privacy/security bent. And they are also competing against Google who will make sure even the slightest slip by Brave is promoted across the entirety of the web.
That code is scrutinized heavily. That the worst you can find about Brave is people making false statements about crypto stuff (it is entirely optional and opt-in with 0 coercion or dark patterns to push you there) speaks incredibly highly as to the current state of the Browser. Might that change in the future, as you seem to be suggesting? Yip! And when it does there will be a new Brave. But for now they continue to stay on an excellent path forward.
If they still don't work, they're doing some messed up stuff on those sites.
People like to shit on advertising, but much of the internet exists today because of advertising. Do you think Youtube could exist at that scale without ads? I don't think so, personally. At least, not without another way to monetize.
Brave is the only player providing an alternative monetization strategy. Crypto or not, to me, that is by far the most interesting thing a browser has done in a long, long time.
I think I overestimate the amount of broken sites due to the adblocker messing them up, not Firefox.
What chromium fork is on android and actually better than Firefox for android? I use Firefox for the best possible experience on android and would like to be aware of another option.
From my (anecdotal) experience, Bromite is faster than Firefox on my phone, but your mileage may vary.
I was originally using Firefox due to its uBlock Origin support, but Bromite has ad-blocking built-in (unfortunately it's not quite up to par with uBO but it works well enough).
I would suggest that you try both and see which one you prefer.
I want to but in Firefox developer tools there is no option for developer tools to follow new tabs.
Apparently this has been an open bug with Firefox for a while.
But it is what keeps me from using Firefox vs Chromium's full time
Is that a practical sustainable long-term business practice though? Firefox was only able to be free because Google was paying Mozilla. Browsers are some complex software and software developers wanna get paid. I know that the in's and outs of history of browser software has conditioned us to expecting browsers for free but that doesn't reflect the reality of developing the software.
Surely there's space in the browser market for a model akin more to how Wikipedia operates.
Donations by corporations, and edited by powerhungry users (ryulong) and bots?
The Internet being global makes this challenging, and almost all countries (including so-called democracies) wanting to drink as much authoritarian juice as they can get away with does mean that there is plenty of risk here as well. But letting one or a few giant megacorporations entirely dicate the primary intrastructure for information interchange is so much worse.
The problem with this approach is that it’s impossible to get a safe binary that isn’t downloaded from “libfree.cxcc.gg” or whatever. The other option being to build from source, which is an absolute nightmare for Chromium.
Signatures available from whom?
The point being that a web browser is a very special case of software that has to absolutely 100% trustworthy from a reputable commercial entity (that is, someone that can be sued). The only other thing with that level of trust is your operating system.
Do you not trust kernel.org? Or the GPG signatures of the commits?
What about Mozilla?
As for "someone that can be sued", have you read any of the EULAs of the commercial entities that you think are "reputable" and "100% trustworthy"? You can't sue them.
Similarly, do you trust all of the CAs that have certificates in your OS or browser trust store?
Those were the days.
Any Browser can be a reality.
Others like me would. And resource-constrained devices. An eco-system of low-tech sites could emerge with a label signaling them as simple and virtuous.
Dillo
Links
NetSurf
I'm sure people said the same thing when Edge was in beta. "How is Microsoft Chrome(2)?"
(And I think Edge is worse than being Chrome(2).)