I’d appreciate someone pointing out what the significance of this article is. The whole thing seemed like platitudes in borderline unreadable English - but there must be some reason it reached the front page.
I think the article it has its merit. I'm following a few podcast and news outlets and they seem to be very blind to what's actually missing from iOS or Apple's influence, in that sense it is a better take than most I've seen.
In particular, on browser engine most people seem to brush it off as a "every will just choose Chrome and it will all be the same" when there's a lot more to it. In particular it makes it a lot more interesting to keep Firefox on the desktop as we get history sync.
The other parts (e.g. DEX) are also usually brushed off as things people don't use, but I'd wager the fact that the dominant mobile OS doesn't support it has a lot to do with that state.
> Although iOS is better served with good apps, some Android exclusives are missing.
The broader point here is that this appears to be a very low quality/effort article, and so question was genuine: what am I missing? It clearly resonated with some folks.
Your comments were so rude that at first I thought to ignore, but then I decided I’d like to let you know. I’d rather write “incomprehensible English”* than being this mean on someone I don’t even know.
* allegedly; everyone else seem to understand what I wrote.
Agree — this is a deeply under-informed article, and most comments hours in don't seem to realize it.
While the policy limits mentioned are real, most supposed technical limitations mentioned and alleged to be solved by openness are not real. Others have made such apps or features when they put in the work to leverage libs/APIs already provided.
For instance:
“Every time I open Firefox on my testing Android phone, with its cool extensions and the Gecko engine, I remember the iOS version, much inferior because it lacks the features that make Firefox on Android an alternative capable of, over there, competing with Chrome.”
Kagi Orion browser, which implements Firefox extensions on iOS, shows that Mozilla could have implemented Firefox extensions on iOS.
A majority of readers believe, and repeat, that such things can't be done, yet they have been implemented by others and available for some time.
And so Firefox on iOS is indeed much inferior, but that appears to be because the original goal seemed to be a minimum viable app that would nevertheless sync Firefox bookmarks, not because one can't implement Firefox extensions.
Counter-examples exist for most every technical claim the article makes, where it says you can't, others already do.
It's specious.
- - -
As for gecko versus webkit, that's a battle both sides should consider a detente, there are larger stakes, and both sides should be keeping their eye on that ball.
If someone made a vertically integrated Mozilla phone -- something like palm phone hardware + Mozilla client suite + Proton services for instance -- that blocked any other engine and controlled the OS integration points for security and privacy reasons, I would support that Maker's right to market that thoughtfully engineered pro-human experience.
( I do want a Palm + Mozilla + Proton phone so tightly integrated it's impervious to Pegasus type attacks. Like the original PalmOS phone, and original iPhone design intent, I want the only "apps" it runs beyond the core communicator capabilities it ships with to be sandboxed fully open HTML5 PWAs: https://www.flyingcowdesign.com/web-design-services/html5-is... )
Here are just two reasons of many reasons I support maker choice to continue to market a product that becomes very successful, where choices within the product offering are made by the maker:
(a) If the last barrier to corporate web products abandoning all but one rendering engine being everywhere falls away, neither WebKit nor Gecko will be targeted by banks, utilities, travel, government sites, etc., and Google fully controls web standards. You have no farther to look than their various adtech "privacy" standards proposals to see where that ends up: blink (by whatever name) and consumer profile everywhere. It's bad for the web, and it's bad for humans.
(b) I don't believe in forced decomposition of a product experience's hardware, firmware, operating system, and software. There are experiences that uncoupling prevents, and consumers should have a right to purchase tools that make no compromises from firms with a right to market them.
Removing either the Steam + Linux + DIY gaming parts or the PS5 console experience from the market would be a disservice to free choice.
Ironically, draft legislation exists pushing both agendas and any incremental laws towards no DIY (think of the children and our security!) or only DIY (ban vertical integration!) collude at eroding the more fundamental right to make, market, and own, your choice.