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Comment by hobobaggins | Hacker News Reader

Not if Apple has its way. They've consistently regressed, failed to implement standards, implemented them brokenly, delayed/delayed/delayed, stated that a feature was bad for privacy|security|performance, etc. Just an endless stream of roadblocks.

For example: photo and file uploads (yes, really! remember "iOS doesn't have a filesystem, so no uploads" which really damaged craigslist because Browse didn't work on iPhone for many years), webrtc, PWA add-to-home, sticky/fixed positioning, scrolling through notch (it worked, and then it didn't), service workers, push notifications, and so much more than I can't even remember (maybe someone else can list their favorites).

Even when eventually we got the features, they were often broken in order to keep pushing people into the App Store.

Does the author REALLY believe that Apple won't instantly drop support for any feature that could seriously disrupt the App Store? Not on your life.

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My wife has had to listen to me complain for the last week about what a pain it is to get the absolute orientation of an iPhone from the browser.

On Android you can use AbsoluteOrientationSensor or deviceorientationabsolute event. These will provide a quaternion or Euler angles describing how to rotate the device from the default orientation (flat on the ground, screen up, with the top pointing north) to its current orientation.

The situation on the iPhone has almost reduced me to tears. As far as I can tell, it only provides Euler angles relative to some implementation defined reference frame, along with the actual compass heading. In practice, the Euler angles given are absolute with respect to gravity, but always treat north as the direction the phone was pointed when the first sensor reading took place. To deal with this, you can use the actual compass heading to rotate the relative orientation to the absolute orientation. But this will have problems near the poles, as the Euler angles and heading will give conflicting values. Beyond this the compass heading field is really weird. If you want to experience its behavior for yourself, take the iPhone compass app and starting from flat, rotate the phone 360 degrees through the pitch axis. Notice at what points the heading flips between its start heading and start heading+180. I bet it will surprise you!

Are you saying you have to fight gimbal lock just to find which way to rotate the screen on iPhone? That was a problem on the 1960s lunar missions, no idea it'd happen in such a mundane application

Pretty much. The iPhone browser api only exposes compass data in one dimension, around the z-axis. So there is indeed gimbal lock-like behavior near the axis. Which is crazy since the magnetometer is 3 dimensional.

This is why orientation should always be reported as a unit quaternion (or if you strongly care about using only 3 vs. 4 numbers, using "modified Rodrigues parameters", the stereographic projection of a unit quaternion).

To me it sounds like the solution is "We have detected you're using an unsupported browser, iOS does not allow websites to properly access device orientation and therefore this app cannot function"

I wish I had come to that conclusion a week ago, but I'm in too deep now. It's for a little side project, and it seems like the majority of people I want to show it to have iPhones.

Or even just not caring about users at the poles? How many users are you expecting to have in Greenland or Antarctica?

I should have said zenith, not poles. The issues occur when the device is pointed up at the sky or down at the ground. Edit: Though I would imagine it won't work too well at the poles either!

Can you use media queries and guess orientation from screen width?

Same thing I thought.

For my use case, I want to know the exact way the phone is pointed in all three axis. Which requires more information than determining the screen orientation (and which I believe can be done as you say). Unfortunately, the term "orientation" seems to be overloaded and used to describe both concepts.

Makes sense. Then it's 100% because Apple wants to force developers to implement an app.

Just out of curiosity because you might know: does the deviceorientation event (without absolute) work on iOS? Because I've just used it for a toy website of mine and have no iPhone to test.

I have used in this app: https://mhealth.jmir.org/2020/1/e13756 it's OK for relative orientation, but not for absolute values

Agreed, the deviceorientation does work fine for relative orientation. I've been able to hack it for absolute orientation. What I am doing is: 1) taking the relative orientation euler angles from the event and converting them to a quaternion for easier manipulation. 2) taking the webkitCompassHeading from same deviceorientation event. 3) Calculating the "relative heading", eg how far the relative orientation is from its fake north. 4) calculating the difference between the relative and actual heading. 5) building a quaternion to describe the bearing difference, eg how far the relative orientation need to be corrected by spinning around the z-axis. 6) Multiply the two quaternions to get the final absolute orientation quaternion. This does work, though has the issues I mentioned previously, and relies on the undocumented fact the the relative orientation is actually absolute with respect to the down/gravity vector.

I haven't tested it on iPhone, but on Android my browser code for Euler angles works just fine. You can find the demonstration at the end of this blog post https://dandanua.github.io/posts/the-spin-of-a-human-body/

You're overlooking the important point of the post: He's suggesting that Apple should allow non-Safari browsers (with different engines) to make the browser space more competitive, and media should push the narrative in that direction. That's exactly because Safari not being competitive enough.

I'm not surprised if Microsoft (the author's employer) is quietly preparing Edge for iOS with a non-Safari engine (ex. Chromium.)

Safari's iOS exclusivity and resulting ~18% market share is probably the only reason Chromium based browsers don't have 95+% of the market. Some stick to whatever default they get but I think most would just immediately jump to Chrome(ium), with a very, very small minority like me going for Firefox. The mobile segment doesn't concentrate techy users like the desktop does so Firefox would see even lower (that the current ~3%) figures there.

A world absolutely dominated by Google's control over the browser scares me more than Apple's control over the AppStore.

The solution is better anti-trust, not giving Apple a real monopoly because of Google's potential monopoly. Good anti-trust will handle both.

If you are correct, let's ensure the browser duopoly is broken up first, rather than forcing Apple to open the market for Google to corner it. Then it will truly be a monopoly and all consumers lose.

Why would the Chrome engine being dominant be all that problematic? And as a user, I'd like to make that choice for myself.

Also, Safari wouldn't vanish just because you'd be able to use a different browser engine. I strongly disagree with your "scary" (not scary) scenario: Only a small percentage of users is ever going to change defaults.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browser_wars#Second_browser_wa...

The growing number of device/browser combinations in use, legally-mandated web accessibility, as well as the expansion of expected web functionality to essentially require DOM and scripting abilities, including AJAX, made web standards of increasing importance during this era. Instead of advertising their proprietary extensions, browser developers began to market their software based on how closely it adhered to standards.

As soon as one browser dominates, one company gets to dominate how the web works. If you, as a user, want to be able to choose your own browser you should oppose one engine becoming dominant.

Apple's monopoly is currently harming competition/consumers. Why should a potential monopoly that doesn't exist (yet) and doesn't hurt competition or consumers be a higher priority?

As an Apple user and web dev, I like some of their restrictions because I prefer incentive to build native apps for things I do all the time. They’re usually showing a lot more polish and integration.

Every time Twitter or Instagram bring up their custom share sheets I get super annoyed it’s not the default. PWA’s can probably get a lot of that, but a ton of web UX is arbitrary, unique, and more likely to feel janky in ways.

Even for well done web apps, like Notion, it stands out like a sore thumb when parts of the editor don’t work like normal Mac input controls.

I think PWA’s will have a lot of uses, but I don’t want them to take over either or Google get a browser monopoly. It’s bad enough how many devs don’t use anything but Chrome when testing. The web is what it is because it is not beholden to one company like the IE6 days

> The solution is better anti-trust

....how? Just saying "better anti-trust" isn't a usable solution.

Chromium is an open source project. What's the government to do, split the codebase in half/thirds? Chromium got to where it was because of the downstream decisions of developers not wanting to waste months/years of their lives reimplementing something that was already implemented.

"Someone else had already done the laborious legwork with Chromium, let's just use that."

----

If you want to actually solve this problem:

- Purge and ban software patents & copyrights. No entity should have total control as to how to implement efficient H.264 playback in the browser, nor native GPGPU support.

- Rewire human behaviour to inherently fear any market share of > 60%. Humans will continue to want to concentrate around a few choices as a result of network effects.

- STOP WITH WANTING NEW FEATURES. Every new shiny object that you desire will inevitably be replaced by the next shiny object, with only 10% of them sticking around in relatively popular use for any notable period of time. Browser devs, meanwhile, can't have the luxury of dropping support for <rarely used feature X>, and have to keep maintaining each one for some niche case.

----

I've already said my response to this: STOP wanting more features. The number of features that a browser dev has to support right out of the box is the major contributor for there being so few browser engines to choose from.

(Copied from a previous comment I made before: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37733053)

> There's an argument to be made that the extreme breadth of scope that modern web browsers are obliged to support (in order to gain/retain market share) heavily contributes to there being no worthy contenders against Chromium's web monopoly.

> https://drewdevault.com/2020/03/18/Reckless-limitless-scope....

> When you're the leader, you can further widen your lead by bolting on additional functions & features that require at least X amount of effort to implement. Any new contender will have to put in SUM(X effort for each feature) to match feature parity with the existing leader, and existing competitors will have to put in at least X effort to catch up. Existing OSS work can help bridge the gap, but only for what's already been done.

"most would immediately jump" and why is that? because Safari is a subpar experience.

You can try to justify it all you want because "Google Bad" (and not that I disagree at least in spirit) but at the end of the day? Apple is giving users a worse experience as a method to lock them into the App Store and get their 30% cut.

Cool story ad-tech bro. Apple not supporting “features” designed to track/steal data isn’t a subpar experience. No one is forced to buy an iPhone, just like no one is forced to buy an Xbox which also takes a 30% cut via its locked down online store.

Don’t worry, the M$ CEO will bring back windows phone soon because he now realizes how it can be ad/spyware filled junk like windows 10/11/12 and Solitaire…

Safari, without hesitation doubt or debate, is subpar compared to the alternatives. You can claim "privacy" all you want but at the end of the day Safari is lackluster and neutered to "nudge" people into the Apple Store so Apple can get a 30% cut.

Privacy? Riiiiiight. Apple isn't using it's market place to stifle competition and limit choice out of the kindness of their hearts.

"M$ CEO" yeah... good thing you have IE 2024 installed on phones without the alternatives available that existed on Windows. Nope... you're stuck like a good slave who's $mart enough to not use M$ and instead you get the joy of being a good donator to Apples bottom line instead of Googles.

At the end of the day... nothing in your response changes the fact that Apple limits choices and holds the industry back with Safari which is a shit option that couldn't compete against real options.

"XBox" xbox is a gaming console not a phone. It's tied to a TV and not the center of your life. It also has competition in PS, Nintendo and gaming alternatives like Android and iPhone.

XBox doesn't have shitty safari on it as a core app to force people into the XBox store. You can also load CDs/DVDs into it purchased outside of it. Can you resell iPhone games? No? didn't think so. tons of reasons why "derp xbox" is a bad comparison.

I'm personally okay extending forcing alternative app stores onto XBox... but the scope is different and you know it - no matter that you try to deflect from how shitty Safari is. Your hate of "M$" doesn't make Apple any better.

> and why is that? because Safari is a subpar experience.

I think that's an oversimplification and mostly wrong. People don't uniformly use one reason for things. Some are too lazy to change a default, are used to one browser, genuinely like it, use it reluctantly because the big company developer is doing its best to hobble the competition (hey, here's a challenge, guess which one I'm talking about), or simply think Google (Chrome) is the internet. Based on usage alone compared to Google Chrome every other browser offers a subpar experience right? I don't agree with that. To take the most obvious example, the fact that Firefox allows me full control over the adblocking experience is the single biggest quality of life improvement over Chrome in using the internet.

> You can try to justify it all you want

I didn't "justify" anything. What works for me doesn't have to work for you. Two things can be true at once. My personal data and privacy are a priority for me so Google cheating me out of them trumps any fuzzy argument that doesn't hold water even over a two line comment. Because...

> Apple is giving users a worse experience

Wait, let me try your argument for size. Apple is close to being the biggest phone manufacturer on the planet, as voted by people with their wallets, despite making the most expensive phones. And why is that? Because everyone else offers a subpar experience, right? I voted for Firefox and I'd rather use Safari than Chrome because we have different priorities and definitions of what makes for a good experience.

Sibling comment had the right idea. The only fix for this is one that globally addresses via regulation the issues any company's dominant positions poses.

"mostly wrong" except it's not. Safari is under developed, restrictive and... bad.

"Based on usage" Chrome is doing something right but that doesn't mean better options don't exist. JS exists and is massively popular but that doesn't make it the "best". Most popular also doesn't mean it's not horrible in its own right - like Safari (and JS, etc).

"firefox" You use firefox because it's better... better than what? Safari for one.

"let me try your argument for size" Just because people pay doesn't mean it's better and because it's popular doesn't mean it's better. People buy ripped up clothes at a massive markup because it's "better". You keep saying Firefox is better even though it's not "in" or cool.

Nothing in your response addresses the fact that SAFARI is subpar amoungst its peers because Apple uses that to push people to the App store. Likewise, they "pair bond" stuff to phones so 2ndary markets can't fix their stuff. Not because safari is better... not because their parts are better... because they get 30% on the store and they get the fees for fixing stuff "properly". Same for their custom connectors (which are on the way out)

Your focused on Safari vs Firefox. You're ignoring the forest for the tree.

Apple as a whole can be a better product (arguably, the complete package is "better" because it's more consistent and "secure" and all that than say Android) while also having parts that are worse. Safari is a part that's worse (and as incentive, the 30% cut on app store $$$).

"different priorities" I'm all for better regulation and some places are headed in the right direction (IE: USBC requirements, sideloading requirements, banning google from monopoly practices on their store, etc)... but that doesn't change the fact that safari is the IE of today - forced on customers, ignored by its creator and clearly worse as you admit in your stalwart defense of Firefox.

Hmm I would hope that the richest company in the world could build a better browser than anyone else and market it like no one else.

Except they didn't. Apple relied on their browser ban on iOS, on users not being able to set a default browser for 14 freakin' years.

Sorry, this is their own fault. Safari could be competitive, but if it turns out it isn't, it's on Apple and no one else.

> Does the author REALLY believe that Apple won't instantly drop support for any feature that could seriously disrupt the App Store?

I'm fairly sure that he doesn't have particularly much faith in Apple, no: https://infrequently.org/2022/06/apple-is-not-defending-brow...

But they're not counting on Apple's good heart; they're counting on regulators. From the article:

> Apple will, of course, attempt to delay the entry of competing browsers through as-yet-unknown strategies, but the clock is ticking.

If the problem is just Apple, then why do modt companies make iOS apps, Android apps and web apps instead of telling Android users to just use the web apps?

It came out in the Epic trial that 90% of App Store revenue came from in app purchases of play to win games. Those apps aren’t going to the web because it’s much easier to convince whales to buy coins and loot boxes using in app purchase than put a credit card on a website.

> play to win games

pay to win games, I can never find a game that has fixed cost and doesn't push advertising or self advertising, you know, an app safe for kids; they all have full screen ads with tricky close buttons

BTW, why is App Store such a shit show? It's 99% crap. Where is the concept of pay to own.

I understand you're referring to the Apple store but in case other non-apple users find this. On the Google Play store at least these are relatively easy to find. Pick your category, games, then scroll the tabs at the top to "Premium".

No-Bullshit Games [1] is a good resource for finding quality fixed-cost / premium games.

[1] https://nobsgames.stavros.io/

A great resource - It is VERY out of date though.

Any good pick since then? I also hate IAP

not really, sorry.

Apple Arcade?

It's more annoying really. Most companies refuse to let you see their website from android or iOS phones because they want you to download the app. The app... that is just a wrapper for their fucking website anyway.

Not true! Apps enable so much more, notification spam, access to contacts and wifi networks, data collection and privacy invasion.. SO much easier when it's an app!

Also all those banks - if they just had a website they wouldn't be able to enforce that you cannot access your banking from your rooted Android phone. Thanks to the additional power of apps, they can.

All of this is under the user control and you have to explicitly give apps permission

>If the problem is just Apple, then why do modt companies make iOS apps, Android apps and web apps instead of telling Android users to just use the web apps? Because they're forced to in order to do business since Apple controls their platform?

Hell, there was (and still is I think) even all the ridiculous rules around "can't link to a website payment outside of your app" and "definitely can't tell the user it's cheaper not to buy it thru the app where Apple takes a 30% cut"

I distrust Microsoft and Google as much as I distrust Apple, but damn do people give Apple so many passes "yeah well they use that 30% cut to pay for all the security and services they offer!111" you really believe that? How come so many 0-days & other exploits are found by GOOGLE'S project zero? Does Apple not pay enough for their own research into that stuff?

Can you name one retailer that is going to allow you to advertise that you can get something cheaper somewhere else?

Also, really complaining about Apple’s security compared to Android? Seeing that most Apple has been publishing security patches for 10 year old phones and Google abandons its own hardware.

Apple is more than the retailer. Apple owns the whole mall, the fire department, the police, the chamber of commerce, and basically the whole town where most of your family and friends live.

Don't like it? Just move to the only other town there is, and write them letters and visit occasionally. If you don't like it there too, well they say there are other places if you take a long boat ride.

As to Google, despite all their many faults at least they haven't gas lit me claiming I'm holding it wrong.

Now we are bringing something up from 2010? Yet it proved to be another *Gate. Apple sold the same phone - the GSM iPhone 4 for three years.

Apple isn't just "a retailer", and regulators seem to agree. Also, Google provides seven years of updates for their current Pixel devices.

Congratulations? Apple released a security update for the iPhone 5s released in 2013 early last year.

What about all of the other devices it sold in the last decade.

And Google only sells a tiny fraction of Android devices. What about the other literally 97%

Microsoft hasn’t had a problem keeping PCs updated that it doesn’t sell for a decade. Heck I got Windows updates for my pre-Bootcamp x86 2006 Mac Mini for years after Apple abandoned it

To add to this... it's not just that they've failed to implement standards: They have actively denied the ability to install alternatives.

It's one thing if Chrome was Chromium and was simply blocked from low level stuff because "reasons"... but that's not where we are.

Chrome, for example, is at its core on the Apple Store a reskinned Safari because alternatives simply aren't allowed.

This isn't a regression and failure to implement standards... this is active activity to lock people into a lesser experience while actively blocking better.

This is worse than IE on Windows as at least with IE on Windows you could install alternatives.

maybe at a certain point subjects will stop spending money to enrich the king and will pick something where they at least can install whatever they want

The overwhelming majority of users couldn't care less about this stuff as long as their phones play the content that they and their peers are into right now. If the alternative works well, is easy to switch to and is affordable then maybe they can be persuaded by their more tech savvy friends but if any of those three are compromised then you won't get much adoption.

SharedWorkers too

> Browse didn't work on iPhone for many years

The web API always allowed you to choose photos from your camera roll.

No, it did not, not until iOS 6 (!!)

And Steve Jobs ensured that Flash uploaders popular at the time could never work on the iPhone, either.

Example: https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/4104/is-it-possibl...

Ironically, Microsoft had tried to kill the web off with Internet Explorer just a few years before, but no one noticed what Apple was doing, because they did it so well... they got 400,000 and then a million apps in their app store, completely bypassing the web altogether.

And as evidenced by your comment on this very technical forum, even now, people still might not have noticed what Apple was doing.

You’re really complaining about something that was fixed over a decade ago?

What next, complaining about 8.3 character filenames on Windows 3.1?

The point is that it was broken on purpose until they finally had to cave to pressure because it was such a pain in the butt. Being able to choose a picture to upload from a phone wasn’t new or hi-tech, and could be done just fine on feature phones where the number pad was 3x the size of the screen and WAP meant wireless application protocol instead of the new thing.

Yes and we all know how Apple “caves in to pressure” and knew they were going to lose sells to Android if they didn’t allow photo uploads from the browser

my beef with 8.3 was that THEY WERE ALL UPPERCASE

when ASCII went from 6 bits to 7, they should have redefined 0x41-0x5A to lowercase. the 70s and 80s would have been so much nicer.

This is literally something from 10+ years ago.

IME WebSockets work fine on Firefox but not on Safari, at least not naively

Yes. One person said "feature X always existed" and the reply was "not until iOS 6", which is corroborated by their link.

Based on what people are saying in that link, iOS existed for something like 6 years before it got working web page picture uploads. Meaning the person saying the feature has always existed was incorrect.

And iOS 3 introduced the App Store? And iOS 2 introduced copy paste? This doesn’t seem like much of a delay.

In the grand scheme of things. In a world billions of years old? 3 years isn't much of a delay. And those features, with the small "delay", still weren't "always" available - which was the claim ("the api always had those features").

>Microsoft had tried to kill the web off with Internet Explorer

Why would they need that?

They wanted their own proprietary network they controlled (MSN). They also wanted people to develop Windows apps with their technologies, not things that worked everywhere.

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