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Comment by criddell | Hacker News Reader

> The browser is essentially the operating system for most computing today

You're right, and it's such a bummer. I often think about how interesting it would be if we didn't end up with the Chrome/Safari browser duopoly and Windows/macOS duopoly on the desktop and Android/iOS duopoly for mobile. How cool would it be to see what the Amiga, Atari ST, Spectrum, OS/2, BeOS, etc... could have become with another couple of decades development. Even Windows and macOS would probably be different if they had to compete in a healthy, diverse ecosystem.

Instead, further concentration is probably going to happen once Apple allows alternate browsers. At that point, there isn't much to stop Google's Chrome from becoming the only application platform that really matters.

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If we didn't have an OS duopoly, we'd have a programming language duopoly, GUI library duopoly or something of that sort.

It's just not reasonable to expect every company to maintain more than two or three completely different versions of their apps, and most would vastly prefer to maintain just one, hence Electron and React Native.

It would be a constant incompatibility hell, and most code would be littered with #ifdefs and polyfills.

You can argue that companies producing software tools would specialize, so you would use Microsoft image editing tools on Windows, Foo's image editing tools on Amiga, Adobe's image editing tools on Mac etc, but that argument breaks down when it comes to banks, movie and music streaming companies, games etc.

I think as software matures, we will settle on free software. We more or less already did server side.

Then it will be up to the OS maintainers to make sure the software is compatible with their operating system, like how it works with FOSS systems already.

A man can dream anyway...

Working in the streaming media space, I can tell you what happens when there isn't a duopoly. It sucks.

Making an app means:

Android (and Android TV being more work), iOS, web, Roku, Fire TV, Tizen, Vizio, WebOS (LG), and multiple set top box vendors who all have horrible underpowered CPUs.

Some companies try do to cross platform, and that sort of works, but it is janky and customer complain of the sorts of UX issues that always pop up with cross platform apps, and for any decent functionality you end up writing per-platform shims. Also some platforms (Roku) you have to write an app for anyway because the platform requires using a custom language. Other platforms (Set top boxes) are so underpowered that you can't really run anything resembling modern code on them.

It sucks. It is a huge waste of engineering effort for no real gain. Most customers don't choose a smart TV based on its OS, a large % of people choose based on what is on sale at Costco, and another demographic chooses whatever they are told is "the best" by reviewers.

Mobile app developers dealing with a duopoly have it easy, but even that dramatically increases barrier to entry compared to the 90s where you just had to write one app for Windows and so long as you only used documented APIs, Microsoft would move heaven and earth to make sure your app kept working between major OS updates.

> Instead, further concentration is probably going to happen once Apple allows alternate browsers. At

Not if the DoJ forces Google to abandon Chrome. Which they should.

Apple and Google should lose their app store monopolies (including first party default preference), Google should lose the Chrome monopoly. These are incredibly harmful to technology and competition.

Each company has plenty of money, attached user base, and engineering headcount to continue to be wildly successful and profitable without operating in a way that damages the rest of the tech sector.

I’d probably add WebOS to that list too even though it’s currently living on in LG tvs.

The idea of WebOS is strong enough it seems to have lived on through Palm, HP, LG and now also a forked version.

It really was late to the mobile os race, but ahead of its time.

https://www.webosose.org/docs/tutorials/web-apps/developing-...

And more generally:

https://www.webosose.org/

It was so ahead of it's time, that I've _recently_ seen Apple and Google "invent" paradigms it was using all those years ago.

Very true.

The designer of WebOS now works on asteroid too, though.

WebOS absolutely belongs in that list.

>How cool would it be to see what the Amiga, Atari ST, Spectrum, OS/2, BeOS, etc..

But all of these systems did exist. And for whatever reasons, they did not survive in the market. So the market decided they were not what was wanted.

> So the market decided they were not what was wanted.

No, the competition decided what they wanted, by using shady-as-shit (as well as out right illegal) tactics to squash everyone else.

People _loved_ their Amigas, STs, Be boxes, etc. They loved them so much that there are still some nutjobs out there trying to keep Amiga alive! Do you think there'd be that kind of devotion for Windows 40 years later, if it died around 3.1?

No, the users didn't choose. A loose hand on monopoly law did.

How much of that was the market decision and how much was illegal anticompetitive practices that got Microsoft in trouble a few decades ago? Paying manufacturers that used them while penalizing this that made other OS's available, amongst other practices. Hell the only reason Apple is around today is Microsoft bailed them out so the could point at apple and claim in court there was a compatator and therfore were not a monopoly back in the 2000s

Or the market remained irrational longer than they could remain solvent. It's an economic system, it's not omniscient.

People using invisible hand / the market decided arguments gloss over the fact modern capitalism is yet to produce truly fair markers without corruption.

If only it was as simple as letting buying power decide.

Is it really? Many people today seem to be living in a world almost purely of apps. Besides using The Google to find a piece of trivia, I hardly see anyone living in the browser to the extent that they are treating it like an OS in and of itself. If anything, the browser is seen as antiquated. The decision of browser makers to expose so many non-document APIs seems to not be closely connected to direct consumer demand for them.

How many of those apps are wrappers around a browser through?

Kind of doesn't matter since such wrappers routinely use native code or "plugins" to allow for behavior nonstandard to browsers, although your point is totally fair.

The only viable alternative to iOS/Android apps are web apps. Apple fights it by limiting number of features you can use in the browser on mobile phones and no alternative browsers. Google - by saying, ok, go with it, you will use tech, that we control anyway.

The current amount of hacks needed to make the native desktop apps compatible across even the same operation system, but different versions, is kinda scary. Pretty sure the similar situation for mobile apps too.

Huh? But there's so much diversity in the desktop space. You have Windows/Mac, but then Debian/Rhel, Free/Net/OpenBSD, SteamOS, ChromeOS, Tails, NixOS, Qubes, Solaris Family, ReactOS and that's just the ones I've actually seen people use at conferences.

The browser space has never been more diverse as well, most of them use Chromium under the hood but who cares, Chrome was Webkit was KHTML when it started too. A browser's success is only somewhat related to its engine. Having a base you can build on that guarantees all current and future website will work and be performant on has allowed for crazy levels of experimentation.

> most of them use Chromium under the hood but who cares

We should all care, because people start writing apps that work on Safari and Chrome only rather than to a standard. The web wasn't meant to be controlled by two companies, the idea was using standards anybody can implement.

Use Firefox and see what sites you are using regularly that doen't work because they are chrome sepcific.

I've been Firefox only for more than a decade now (although tbf not on iOS) and I've still yet to find a site that straight up doesn't work. I've had some sites where I've had to tell it I'm using Chrome because of poor user agent sniffing but it's been a long time since that was necessary. Ahh Netflix when it still used Silverlight.

The site which lists available COVID vaccination times for this region of Sweden does not work in Firefox but does work in Safari: https://www.vgregion.se/ov/hitta-vaccinationstider-vgr/vacci...

I don't know the reason for the Firefox failure.

The Adobe site https://new.express.adobe.com/tools/generate-qr-code# says it does not work with Firefox, but if I change the User-Agent it does work.

I ran into both in the last month.

Your experience for most of that decade was when Firefox was much more widely used than it is now, so had a higher support priority.

That first one "works on my computer", and the second one also works (but is purported not to).

I've long been confused when reading how Firefox doesn't work everywhere. Now I'm even more confused, because you posted an example that doesn't work on your computer, but does on mine. Do I have some kind of Ultra Firefox or something?

Could you describe what "works" means?

On Firefox (I am using the most recent version for macOS) I see only only about a paragraph of text, plus header and sidebar.

In Safari I also see pull-down menus for "Kommun" and "Tidsperiod för bokningsbara tider", plus other input items, and a description like "Antal mottagningar: 23" plus a list of locations.

I see menus at the top, a heading, a paragraph of text, some dropdowns like "kommun" and "Tidsperiod för bokningsbara tider", checkboxes under "Visa mottagningar som har", and then what I think are a bunch of boxes for locations for appointments? When I click on one, I go to that location.

Are you missing any of that?

Got the same response with Firefox, temporarily disabled uMatrix and it no longer complained.

It's just a shitty as website by a shitty corporation for shitty ends I guess... I never have such issues with sites that benefit me when I visit them :P

How curious!

I don't have uMatrix or other ad blocker installed.

I turned off all "Enhanced Tracking Protection" and still see nothing in Firefox.

I don't know what you mean by "by a shitty corporation for shitty ends ... sites that benefit me". It's run by the regional council (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V%C3%A4stra_G%C3%B6taland_Regi...), which is the political organization responsible for the area's public healthcare system. The page lists available COVID vaccination appointments, which benefits me as I was looking to get a booster shot and wanted to know where to go.

I'm sorry, I should have made clear I was referring to the Adobe site :/ Which, to be fair, I didn't attempt to actually use, it's just that disabling uMatrix made the message that it doesn't work with Firefox go away, but I didn't attempt to use it further.

Ahh. That was the one where it actually does work, if I change the User-Agent.

There are plenty; anecdotally, I run into them more than not.

My bank is doing some security theater fingerprinting (instead of something actually secure, like 2FA, but that's a different story), which in the end means I can't login to my bank account using Firefox anymore these days.

Chrome/Safari isn't a duopoly, it's the same browser (Webkit).

Not at all.

While they have shared origins, Chrome (Blink) and Safari (WebKit) have been going separate ways for quite a few years now.

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