Apple is Holding the Web Back with 'Uniquely Underpowered' iOS Browser, Says Google Engineer (wccftech.com) 150
On iOS, Apple wants all the browsers to run WebKit. Even Google Chrome is forced to use WebKit on iOS devices. Alex Russel, Google's engineer, in a blog post outlines his case: Apple's iOS browser (Safari) and engine (WebKit) are uniquely under-powered. Consistent delays in the delivery of important features ensure the web can never be a credible alternative to its proprietary tools and App Store. Alex has cited an example of this by mentioning Stadia and other cloud gaming services. Apple did not allow those services to be available on the App Store and pushed them to use the web instead, which requires Apple to allow gamepad APIs so controllers can be used with these new web apps. That is a function that other browsers have offered for a long time except on iOS. He writes: Suppose Apple had implemented WebRTC and the Gamepad API in a timely way. Who can say if the game streaming revolution now taking place might have happened sooner? It's possible that Amazon Luna, NVIDIA GeForce NOW, Google Stadia, and Microsoft xCloud could have been built years earlier. It's also possible that APIs delivered on every other platform, but not yet available on any iOS browser (because Apple), may hold the key to unlocking whole categories of experiences on the web. Blog WCCFTech adds: Alex has also talked about how iOS browsers are underpowered in several other places compared to the competition. For starters, iOS browsers lack push notifications, standardized Progressive Web App (PWA) install buttons, background sync, and numerous other tools that make it easier for developers to make fully functional web apps. Access to hardware such as Bluetooth, USB, and NFC are also not easily available. Last but not least, the royalty-free AV1 standard is also not available.
Kudos to Apple (Score:5, Insightful)
"It's possible that Amazon Luna, NVIDIA GeForce NOW, Google Stadia, and Microsoft xCloud could have been built years earlier. "
Considering those services are just trying to lock you into a monthly payment and give you the idea that you don't own anything, I say THANKS APPLE.
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All that really does is reinforce Apple's walled garden. Safari on iOS has been the new IE6 for years now, and Apple has kept it that way for the same reason Microsoft did: The web is a threat to their monopoly.
Re:Kudos to Apple (Score:5, Informative)
Nope. Not at all.
The core goal of iOS is performance and battery life. Otherwise everyone would still be using flash as a video player and ads. Apple has forced the hand of everyone who wants to be on iOS, let alone ALL mobile devices to not make their apps garbage using garbage development processes.
What is holding back things is not Apple Safari, but Google. Google is the one pulling the web in directions that nobody wants, and then dropping features from the browser that would allow it to run Mobile Webapp's.
Re: Kudos to Apple (Score:4, Insightful)
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Nope. Not at all.
The core goal of iOS is performance and battery life. Otherwise everyone would still be using flash as a video player and ads. Apple has forced the hand of everyone who wants to be on iOS, let alone ALL mobile devices to not make their apps garbage using garbage development processes.
I think you misspelled "to not sell anything without giving Apple a cut".
The reason everybody is trying to do web apps is because Apple's App Store is just about the most expensive way to sell things electronically that you could possibly come up with, with the exception of other companies' similar app stores. And any limitations in features that hold back web development have the effect of reducing the set of apps that could potentially run in the browser, resulting in higher profit margins, rather than g
Re: Kudos to Apple (Score:3)
Itâ(TM)s nothing like IE6: it doesnâ(TM)t have 90% of the browser market, not even 50%. And what proprietary extensions has Apple added to lock out other browsers?
I canâ(TM)t say Iâ(TM)ve missed any one of the listed âoefeaturesâ, but Iâ(TM)m pretty sure my privacy and battery life have done better for not having them.
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Itâ(TM)s nothing like IE6: it doesnâ(TM)t have 90% of the browser market, not even 50%.
It doesn't need that much. Many anti-trust cases have successfully prosecuted companies with way lower portions of a market, IIRC somewhere around 35%; that is plenty to cause harm to consumers. I realize you worship that phone sitting in front of your face and refuse to see anything that it can't or won't show you, but if you pay attention to the Android camp, we've got web browsers that do a lot more than yours does. For example, being able to install addons that, among other things, protect your privacy
Re: Kudos to Apple (Score:2)
Of all the misplaced fallacies in your post, this one comment sums up how little you know, especially of how I use my phone. Hint: try in future to avoid prejudice and gross generalisations.
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Of all the misplaced fallacies in your post, this one comment sums up how little you know, especially of how I use my phone.
Dude, you're using webkit.
Re: Kudos to Apple (Score:2)
Sorry, I donâ(TM)t get it: what has that got to do with whether or not I use an app? And for the record, I donâ(TM)t use many apps, instead preferring private browser windows.
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if you had more personal control over how the mobile web was presented, you wouldn't depend so much on stupid apps that give you all of zero control.
Of all the misplaced fallacies in your post, this one comment sums up how little you know, especially of how I use my phone.
If you use an iDevice, then the commenter is generally correct, since you are not permitted to load any actual browsers onto it, only skins for the system browser. They aren't correct that you have zero control, but it is true that you have much less control than someone who can load whatever browser they want.
Why do we need "Apps" at all? (Score:3)
For doing things like banking, facebook.
Those are essentially web applications. And HTML5 now allows local persistence and off line execution.
But web apps are still not quite as good as native ones. Why is that, really?
There are some things that will probably always be apps because they integrate tightly with the device. But most do not.
Apple knows this. No apps means no app store. Worse, HTML 5 runs on Android.
That said, all the cool kids know they need an app for that. They do not used web browsers
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The app duopoly on either platform is holding back the mobile web. 85% of the apps on my Android phone could trivially be implemented in HTML5.
[I miss my Mozilla Flame. I used Firefox OS for 18 months as a daily driver; it was becoming polished and more complete with every release before Mozilla middle management killed it.]
Chrome OS on a phone, Mr Google engineer, how can I install it?
Re:Kudos to Apple (Score:4, Informative)
"On iOS, Apple wants all the browsers to run WebKit. Even Google Chrome is forced to use WebKit on iOS devices."
I don't expect people to RTFA but at least read the summary before commenting?
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I personally use Firefox, though on iOS they're subject to the same limitation: Your only choice is to offer a re-skinned Safari. If apple doesn't want a given feature to work, then it's not going to work no matter which browser you choose.
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You didn't even read the summary, did you?
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I did actually, thanks for checking.
Re: Kudos to Apple (Score:3)
Chrome is literally the iE6 of this generation!
But instead of stagnation, they went to plaid, in order to kill all other browser.
They just hate that they can't kill Apple. That's all.
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I don't use chrome, but that doesn't make any sense. IE6 stagnated the web because Microsoft never updated it to support new W3C standards. Apple is doing exactly the same thing. Chrome (via Blink) is always adding support for new W3C standards. Safari isn't.
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Well, Chrome is the new IE6 in a few other ways. Like Microsoft, Google is throwing their weight around, trying to redefine the web standards to something that suits them at everyone else's expense. And like back in the IE days, there's a bunch of web developers who only test against Chrome, and the response to anyone complaining that their site doesn't work in any other browser is to "just use Chrome". The only reason the latter hasn't completely taken over is Apple's walled garden and the iDevice marke
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Google is clearly trying to do the same thing. Use our buggy inefficient tools to build your games and web apps, and we will provide cover by
Re: Kudos to Apple (Score:2)
Considering Chrome is ALSO based around WebKit as is Edge, and they couldâ(TM)ve easily built a native app, I think itâ(TM)s just an excuse as to why Stadia/Geforce etc isnâ(TM)t catching on.
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If you read the summary you will notice that Google couldn't simply build a native app. Apple doesn't allow native game streaming apps on iOS.
Alex has cited an example of this by mentioning Stadia and other cloud gaming services. Apple did not allow those services to be available on the App Store and pushed them to use the web instead, which requires Apple to allow gamepad APIs so controllers can be used with these new web apps.
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"It's possible that Amazon Luna, NVIDIA GeForce NOW, Google Stadia, and Microsoft xCloud could have been built years earlier. "
Considering those services are just trying to lock you into a monthly payment and give you the idea that you don't own anything, I say THANKS APPLE.
Two wrongs don't make a right.
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That statement is also like saying:
"If Apple had invented the iPhone 10 years earlier imagine where we would be at now."
We could be in the exact same place. We could be in a better place. W could be in a worse place. Until someone invents a time machine or can peer into alternate universes we can only go forward from our current situation.
Re: Kudos to Apple (Score:3)
We wouls be even more retarded.
The iPhone was one of the biggest steps back for human evolution since the invention of refined sugar.
It threw the entire concept of humanity's intelligence improving until using an actual computer trivial for anyone out of the window.
And I mean an actual computer for automating your work away. Not an app app-liance for apping apps.
This is coming from Google (Score:3, Insightful)
FUCK YOU GOOGLE.
And I say that as not an Apple fan in the least.
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Yeah. I read this as "Google engineer upset that Apple doesn't put all the technologies he works on in their browser."
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FUCK YOU GOOGLE.
Important message need to be repeated.
I'm just waiting (Score:2)
For them to get dropped for the Microsoft Argument. Bundling your browser proved to be a bad idea..
Probably when some legislator feels insufficiently compensated by their megacorp bosses.
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Prior to the anti-trust cases against Microsoft for bundling the browser, tech companies didnt lobby politicians much.
You all fucked up. Now they send millions/year at all levels of politician.
Re: I'm just waiting (Score:2)
No they don't. Nowadays, the politicians *are* their lobbyists. No need to bribe, when you can just inject your true believers into the government. (And then make people hate the government, like leatherface trying to make you hate whoever's face he's wears, while loving him as your savior, and actually succeeding.)
Re: I'm just waiting (Score:4, Insightful)
Microsoft had a de facto monopoly on desktop computers. Apple has no such monopoly on smart phones, mobile devices, or desktop/laptop computers. So they can bundle all they want and it's just synergy.
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Microsoft, at the time, was in the position of being able to prevent other web browsers from working because MSIE was integrated into the Windows Explorer in a way that makes a webview look quaint. Remember ActiveDesktop? Basically you could have html anywhere in the OS, from help pages to folders in the drive, which enabled all kinds of "evil" crap possible.
Microsoft's about-face on this around the time of MSIE 8 really shows you how much long-lasting damage propietary features impose. We are seeing round
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Other browsers like Netscape worked just fine.
Re: I'm just waiting (Score:2)
Stop parroting that bullshit.
Lock-in is a form pf monopolism.
Being localized does not make it any less taking people's freedoms and ruining the market's freedom.
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Apple is the darling underdog! The darling 1 TRILLION DOLLAR underdog.
Browser Push Notifications... (Score:5, Insightful)
... not being available for iOS devices is a feature, not a bug.
Every time I sit down on a chrome computer I am constantly barraged by pointless notifications that no same person would ever sign up for.
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Re: Browser Push Notifications... (Score:2)
I've used Chrome for probably a decade, but I have no idea what you're talking about when you say "notifications". Is this like a site opt-in thing that someone opted into? If so, what's the issue?
Re: Browser Push Notifications... (Score:2)
He probably decided to not click accept. Why didn't you? Did you do so in error? It's quite easy to revert...
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Re: Browser Push Notifications... (Score:2)
"a chrome computer"
. . .
Are we really there already?
I remember my grandma calling the screen the computer and the browser the Internet. But even she knew that the browser was not the computer.
That's a Feature (Score:5, Insightful)
For starters, iOS browsers lack push notifications, standardized Progressive Web App (PWA) install buttons, background sync
I never thought I'd be tempted to switch to Apple products. They should offer Alex some kind of a commission.
Re:That's a Feature (Score:4, Informative)
Firefox on the desktop does not even have PWAs, and push notifications can be disabled.
Re: That's a Feature (Score:2)
It does, for some definition of PWA... a very similar one to iOS, it seems.
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The lack of all the modern browser "features" combined with a commitment to many years of updates (and security updates that last longer) are huge selling points to me for the iDevices.
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For starters, iOS browsers lack push notifications, standardized Progressive Web App (PWA) install buttons, background sync
I never thought I'd be tempted to switch to Apple products.
Why? Safari in iOS has supported installing PWAs since iPhone OS 1.0, give or take. The only thing missing is a way to expose that via the web UI so that it's not an utter pain in the backside.
So they have all the infrastructure to support web apps installed on the home screen, but then they make them hard to install, so that they won't compete with the overpriced, overly restricted iOS App Store. It's pure anticompetitive behavior, IMO, designed to maximize revenue for Apple in an anti-consumer way.
Why
Re:That's a Feature (Score:4, Informative)
So they have all the infrastructure to support web apps installed on the home screen, but then they make them hard to install
How to add a web app to your iOS home screen:
I suppose "hard" is relative, but this doesn't exactly require a PhD in computer science.
Both a good idea and really stupid (Score:3)
If you think about how many people have iOS devices, and how few major security incidents that are wide spreading they are. It kinda shows that Apple may be onto something good. Also being that most App coders are really poor programmers, forcing them to use Apples Framework help discipline these coders to make their code more uniform with others. Having alternate web components in an App could lead to a security nightmare, where remote flaws are introduced, and Apple had little control to mitigate or fix them.
However the iOS products is rather popular and diverse with iPhones, iPad and iPad pro which use iOS as a desktop computer. That means the people are doing more with these devices than what Apple would think they should be doing with them.
When the iPhone was released you only had a fixed set of Apps. Jobs wanted you to use HTML5 websites for anything else... Shortly after that they created the App store, but was super strict on what can get posted, This is the key reason why I switch to an Android Device, I wanted access to a Terminal, and to Emulators and programming features.
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That reminds me of what Merkel said about communism
https://www.reuters.com/articl... [reuters.com]
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I never view my phone as a GP Computer, so having terminal access isn't a feature for me. I want my phone to have huge uptime. The ability to look up things on the internet is also nice.
On a tablet, maybe I want to put random things. But my phone is a communications device.
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If you think about how many people have iOS devices, and how few major security incidents that are wide spreading they are. It kinda shows that Apple may be onto something good. Also being that most App coders are really poor programmers, forcing them to use Apples Framework help discipline these coders to make their code more uniform with others.
This part is true, at least insofar as the OS itself enforces a security model that's reasonably well thought out, for the most part.
Having alternate web components in an App could lead to a security nightmare, where remote flaws are introduced, and Apple had little control to mitigate or fix them.
This is no more of a problem in a web app than in a traditional web app that uses web views. The only differences between the two approaches are in the lack of access to native-only features and whether you can sell in-app purchases without going through Apple.
All browsers are overpowered (Score:5, Insightful)
For me, all browsers are overpowered. They allow front-end devs to do way more than a browser should ever be asked to do. We end up with tabs taking GBs of RAM and wait times of several seconds for an e.g. clothes site to load, while my laptop fan starts spinning from the taxed cpu. Not to mention that while the page is loading you can't click on anything as things suddenly rearrange multiple times so you will be pressing the wrong thing.
Remember how pages were becoming faster as we were getting faster internet connections? And most sites tried to make you get a sort of general fixed layout instantly and then fill it in so the sites are immediately usable? Now they are getting slower and slower and harder to use, just because "browsers can do it".
Yeah, I know, you can dismiss me for being too old...
Re:All browsers are overpowered (Score:5, Informative)
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Firefox has that built-in. Just press F9 or click the reader icon in the address bar.
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Safari also has it built in. Obviously, via a GUI element, but you can turn it on by default or per-domain as well as per view.
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yup, thats why i like "reader mode" in browsers, there are several chrome/chromium/vivaldi extensions for reader mode, it kills all the video and animations leaving only text & static images & URLs (check em out, find one you like) it makes intolerable websites more tolerable
Firefox has that built-in. Just press F9 or click the reader icon in the address bar.
To kill all the video and animations in Chrome, just hit Alt-F4.
:-)
Re: All browsers are overpowered (Score:2)
Unusable, ever since I found out it randomly skipped bits of the articles that I was reading. Like code examples, or pictures, or just somethinf in a different style, like a right floating table of information without which the article made no sense.
The decisions for what it hides do not follow any pattern I could recognize, and certainly didn't align with the stated goal.
It clearly is just a huge and ugly hack.
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Firefox has that built-in. Just press F9 or click the reader icon in the address bar.
Unfortunately, it is shit. Most of the time when I engage reader mode I lose all but the headline, or maybe the top paragraph.
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One one hand, I'd agree with you that most websites should be blazing fast, crazy simple and use a very limited amount of memory.
On the other hand, we should also see that applications which used to be desktop apps are now moving to the browser, so something like a video game which was eating all of your CPU and GPU in the past, would now run in the browser (hence also eat all of your CPU and GPU). So I'm not sure what there is to be against here: it's the same app as before, just having the possibility to
Re: All browsers are overpowered (Score:2)
There is NO justification for pushing what are clearly applications through the meat slurry grinder eye of a needle hole of HTML and JS with a huge mess of hacks to make it do something *that* badly fitting to its actual original purpose.
Just make a safer implementation of WebStart to skip the installation procedure.
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There are plenty of reasons to do so, as I mentioned, multi-platform multi-arch being one.
Now you can argue this is not a good enough reason and HTML and JS sucks because they're a "huge mess of hacks", but that's your opinion.
And that is also dependent on where you draw the line. Make a banking app with HTML? Perfectly valid. Make a video player in HTML (YouTube) ? Seems ok now ; would not have been ok 20 years ago probably, as video playback was considered a CPU intensive task. Make a video game in HTML
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so something like a video game which was eating all of your CPU and GPU in the past, would now run in the browser (hence also eat all of your CPU and GPU).
Why it should be the same thing that's used for web sites?
In the end, browsers are now doing a big part of what operating systems do.
Which is a bad thing from security standpoint. Browser is exposed to "outside" it should be simple and bug-free instead of being so complex it can almost run Windows on a VM inside it.
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I feel the same way. Glad to hear I'm not alone.
"P.S. I am not a crackpot" :-)
You are welcome on my lawn.
Re: All browsers are overpowered (Score:2)
Re: All browsers are overpowered (Score:2)
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Yup. Have you ever tried to compile Chromium? Jeez, that takes a crapton of disk space, swap space, and RAM.
Re: All browsers are overpowered (Score:2)
Android does this bullshit too.
Everything is constantly popping in and out below your finger. And half the time you miss the damn things and tap something that triggers a complete context shift, like a search bar or the home button at the bottom. Worst of all, the fake-imaginary-buttons keyboard popping up and hiding and making you hit things where you expected it to be. Like Slashdot's freaking submit button!
And why the fuck does an OS in freaking 2021 not have universal undo and universal selection of thi
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That's the fault of incompetent web developers creating bloated sites, and their bosses demanding all this unnecessary functionality. And this has always happened, years ago it was done by just having lots of unnecessarily large images which took a long time to download on the dialups of the day.
Developers tend to test locally on high performance machines, and conclude that the performance is fine. Rarely do they bother to simulate actual real world users with slow connections and outdated hardware.
I smell bullshit!! (Score:5, Informative)
Consistent delays in the delivery of important features ensure the web can never be a credible alternative to its proprietary tools and App Store
Says the guy who works at a place that has hijacked the W3 committees with their own engineers to push "open standards" approved by Google. Says the guy who works at a place that literally has their own set of proprietary tools that just happen to have an HTML5 front end. Says the guy who works at a place that also has their own "app store" that they thrust onto users.
Bought a Chomecast? Cool, you only get to use it if we're allowed to collect your location information. Got an Android phone? Cool, you only get to have apps by signing up up with us. Like browsing the web? Cool, we're so ad based we decided to create our own ad standard called FLOC and we're actively trying to force everyone into using it.
Suppose Apple had implemented WebRTC and the Gamepad API in a timely way. Who can say if the game streaming revolution now taking place might have happened sooner?
Google isn't fucking doing that either!
Google Stadia
Is a fucking joke that you all made and have left to fallow, like literally every other fucking service Google has ever invented. I mean it takes two seconds to head over to YouTube, type Google Stadia into search, and see that everyone is thinks the service is a fucking joke that Google constantly ignores doing anything to fix.
It's also possible that APIs delivered on every other platform, but not yet available on any iOS browser (because Apple), may hold the key to unlocking whole categories of experiences on the web
Has this person been on the fucking web? It's "please review our cookie policy overlays that never go away until you answer all 418 questions about which cookies you want (or you could just push this 400x200px button that says accept all)." and "forty-seven words and then a <div> with an autoplay video, then forty-seven more words of the thing that you're trying to read followed by yet another autoplay video. And then poof some piece of shit autoplay video with float css styling that just took forever to load pops in." We don't need more fucking APIs. We need less, damnit!! We are literally adding shit to our browsers to have less of your shit, and then you all go and break that shit that prevented your shit from being blocked.
For starters, iOS browsers lack push notifications
This is like that "don't trust a bald barber" thing. The inability for some website to ring my phone isn't a "bad thing". And you have to really question the wisdom of those who think otherwise.
standardized Progressive Web App (PWA) install buttons
Yes. Because yelling that someone is overly pushing their app store and then yelling that they aren't adopting a standard API to provide an "install the app" button on their website, is super helping your argument.
Access to hardware such as Bluetooth, USB, and NFC are also not easily available
Why does a web browser need access to that shit? Remember that whole we need less APIs not more? Yeah, Google is god-tier at feature creep when it comes to the web. No fucking wonder, nobody wants to implement their own web browser and just ctrl+c/ctrl+v Chrome, Google is making sure that you need a goddamn HTML driven OS to open a webpage.
I mean don't get me wrong, Apple is still a shit company. But this Google guy ain't the answer either. He's just making arguments for more of why a lot of people fucking hate using the web.
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Google is actually pretty good at making all these enhancements provide a better user experience on their services (eg, Google Docs and Sheets weren't possible until Google pushed new features in Chrome and open-sourced a faster JS engine)
However, Google is really bad at recognizing the obvious use cases that a lot of unscrupulous companies will use to drive really bad user experiences (like using push notifications for invasive advertising which was blindingly obvious to everyone but Google)
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Seriously? It was blindingly obvious to google as well..that's why they pushed it. The more ad's that get shoved down everyone's throat the more money they make. Don't forget they're in the advertising business.
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Google Docs and Sheets weren't possible until Google pushed new features in Chrome and open-sourced a faster JS engine
Worked fine in Safari and Firefox from day 1. There is *nothing* Google did that enabled those tools.
Re:I smell bullshit!! (Score:5, Interesting)
Why does a web browser need access to that shit?
Because we're doing more with the web than just serving static pages. It's been that way for a very long time, but we don't have Java, Flash, or any of those sorts of things anymore. It's not 1996, after all. The time for complaints has long past.
The world has been transitioning away from native apps for at least the last 15 years. How many of your companies internal/intranet apps changed to web apps over that period? I'd be the answer is 'most of them'. For CRUD apps, it doesn't make sense to do anything else. Not only does it make deployment easier, it makes it trivial to support Windows, Linux, ChromeOS, iOS, and Mac simultaniously. It's also why we're seeing so many new applications starting off online only. There are even online video editing programs.
Not just new programs either, but older ones as well. Microsoft's Office and Intuit's Quickbooks both have fully functional web apps. In the later case, even one of the native apps is just a packaged web app. I expect there to be no native option at all in a few years.
Hell, even compilers have moved online. Arduino users write code in a web-based editor, compile it in the cloud, and flash their hardware all through the browser. Granted, it still needs a small native component for that last step, but with better API's the browser would be all you need. We could be there now, as web USB has been a thing for some time now.
I expect the same thing to happen on mobile as soon as PWA's or some new standard is usable on the major platforms. I don't know many developers that are particularly happy with either the app store fees or the control Apple and Google have over their business.
There are a lot of reasons to worry about this trend. You can complain about all of them except the platform. We had alternatives, but everyone here campaigned loudly against them. Now all we have left is the web and it no longer has any meaningful competition.
"May your wishes be granted"
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Honestly, I'm looking forward to things shifting back toward the way it used to be. The "cloud" is basically nice vt-102's; and sooner, rather than later, there's not going to be a whole lot of need for local applications... and better yet, less concern about local processing power and the associated waste of the upgrade cycle.
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I hope you also enjoy paying subscription fees for every piece of software then. Thanks but no thanks.
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I've always wondered why people really lack imagination, and assume this really defeatist attitude of "Well it'll all be subscriptions"? You know what, it very might well be the case that tools worth using might cost you a penny; somebody might earn some benefit for their labor. Or, like in all of human history, the concept of "ars gratis artis" applies, sometimes people just create and give because they can. I do.
Maybe it's because in internet years, I'm dead, but I remember way back when, when open sou
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Why does a web browser need access to that shit?
Because we're doing more with the web than just serving static pages. It's been that way for a very long time, but we don't have Java, Flash, or any of those sorts of things anymore. It's not 1996, after all. The time for complaints has long past.
No, USERS don't want the web to do more than just serving static pages, it was only desirable for data gluttons like Google who wanted to stick their fat fingers in other people's data. Users do not want ActiveX coming back with a different name. Google is now the new Microsoft, only 20 years later.
I don't want to worry about my phone being hijacked just because I opened a website to read something, and I don't want to worry about my family's phone being hijacked because they opened a link sent by their f
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USERS don't want the web to do more than just serving static pages
Reality begs to differ. Users have always wanted a lot more than just static pages. Think back to '95-96. It seems like we were doing everything except serving static pages! There were games, like BBS door games, that worked with forms and cgi. I even remember a chatroom that worked by reloading the page once a minute. Early web apps like Hotmail were changing the game. We also had Java applets everywhere. Oh, let's not forget about VRML. Virtual reality was in your browser! Interactive multimedia
Thank you, Apple (Score:5, Insightful)
Thank you, Apple, for holding the line and keeping the grubby Google hands and the unnecessary privacy-invading crap they push out of my browser and device.
Google - fuck off and die.
This is about FLoC (Score:2)
Google is attempting to shame Apple into updating Safari and support FLoC.
I don't know about... (Score:2)
...anybody else, but I don't want a "fully functional" browser on my phone. I'll use a desktop browser for that. On the phone I want one that is lightweight and uses little power.
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I disagree, I want a proper browser on my phone *. Mobile websites often deliberately suck because "best viewed in our app".
I turn off all that annoying heavyweight shit on desktop too. Here's a project for getting desktop Firefox working on small-screened Linux:
https://gitlab.com/postmarketO... [gitlab.com]
* posted from Android using Desktop Mode because Slashdot's "mobile" website doesn't work like classic.
Re: (Score:2)
I disagree. I don't want a "fully functional" browser on my desktop either.
Really? (Score:2)
Fuck Apple. (Score:2)
Let them be consigned to the trash heap of history. Where they belong.
As for Google, toss them there too!
This is a world I just wanna watch BURN.
Want an App? Build an App. (Score:3)
If you want to browse web pages, use a web browser. If you want to build an app, build an App. All those browser limitations are a feature, not a bug, to most iOS users.
The web is a *document* network! (Score:2)
Not a OS!
Get that through your thick skulls, Google!
It should NEVER have OpenGL and sockets and file access and freaking gamepad libraries! This is insane!
Oh, amd for all the kids out there: (Score:2)
The web. Not the Internet.
Google's engineer (Score:2)
> Alex Russel, Google's engineer
I bet many people at Google are going, "What am I, chopped liver?!".
Fuck browser notifications on Android (Score:2)
Apple and Google are fighting six year old kids (Score:2)
Google: You like to sniff farts.
Apple: You live in a dog house.
Google: You eat boogers.
Apple: Your sister doesn't wear underwear.
Google: Your father is a drunk hobo.
Apple: Your mother just got out of jail.
Google: Your parents are gone and left you here.
Well, doesn't that benefit him? (Score:2)
If Apple weren't the way they are, ChromeOS wouldn't stand a chance. But as it stands, ChromeOS is moving in big time as the poor mans macOS for non-experts. He should be thanking Apple.
One of the big things Apple still has going for it with IT opinion leaders is precisely that they do _not_ defer their desktop and their OS to the web. And they'll be damned if they do.
Point in case: I'm back on macOS because my new gig gave me the choice between Windows and a Mac, and I'll be damned if I use that crapfest o
Re: (Score:2)
Re: Thanks, but no thanks (Score:2)
That's what you are doing when you use a PWA...