Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Focus by Firefox, a Content Blocker for iOS

blog.mozilla.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

251–260 of 272 posts

Re: Focus by Firefox, a Content Blocker for iOS

#251

Post by stephenr »

patmcc wrote: post #201
mikeash wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still does. Apple continues to completely fail at any sort of distributed system. It amazes me that Google is able to index the entire web so quickly that I can post a comment on a random web site and have it show up in search results two minutes later, while Apple takes hours and hours for something to show up in their store after you push a button on their own control panel.

Google has the same problem; submit changes to a Play Store listing (or a new version) and it takes a couple hours to be universally visible. So it's not an Apple vs Google issue. Source: I've done far too many app deployments for work (200+)

You're just letting the facts get in the way of a good apple bashing.

/sarcasm

Re: Focus by Firefox, a Content Blocker for iOS

#252

Post by comex »

MBCook wrote: post #222
0x38B wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Content blockers seem to work on 32-bit devices if you compile for them: "Yes, but I'd guess it's an arbitrary limitation—at least it seems to be for A6 devices. BlockParty works perfectly on my iPhone 5C and apparently on @wadetregaskis' iPhone 5, both of which are 32 bit A6 (and not officially supported). I get all the relevant menus, and it does block ads (even the huge easylist conversion works, albeit poorly)."…

Apple chose not support 32 bit devices in their blocking API, which isn't too unreasonable. I imagine it kept the code quite a bit cleaner (or avoided having to run parallel implementations to get good speed).

As the parent says, the API works fine as is, today, on 32-bit devices - you're just not allowed to submit code to the App Store that takes advantage of this. There is no JIT or anything else inherently architecture specific in the WebKit content blocker implementation. Thus the restriction comes either from a semi-arbitrary determination of the speed of Apple's first 64-bit processor, and/or the amount of RAM that came with it, as the boundary below which content blockers might cause unacceptable performance regression (despite their /improving/ performance on many sites)... or from some odd marketing plan to sell newer devices. Hard to say which.

Re: Focus by Firefox, a Content Blocker for iOS

#254

Post by mikeash »

stephenr wrote: post #251
patmcc wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google has the same problem; submit changes to a Play Store listing (or a new version) and it takes a couple hours to be universally visible. So it's not an Apple vs Google issue. Source: I've done far too many app deployments for work (200+)

You're just letting the facts get in the way of a good apple bashing. /sarcasm

The fact that Google does it badly with their store too doesn't make it any better. Google search was just an example of how a much harder task is done far more quickly. I didn't even think of the Google/Apple rivalry in this space.

Re: Focus by Firefox, a Content Blocker for iOS

#255

Post by stephenr »

mikeash wrote: post #254
stephenr wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're just letting the facts get in the way of a good apple bashing. /sarcasm

The fact that Google does it badly with their store too doesn't make it any better. Google search was just an example of how a much harder task is done far more quickly. I didn't even think of the Google/Apple rivalry in this space.

Have you considered that maybe it just isn't quite as simple a problem as you imagine?

Re: Focus by Firefox, a Content Blocker for iOS

#256

Post by mikeash »

stephenr wrote: post #255
mikeash wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that Google does it badly with their store too doesn't make it any better. Google search was just an example of how a much harder task is done far more quickly. I didn't even think of the Google/Apple rivalry in this space.

Have you considered that maybe it just isn't quite as simple a problem as you imagine?

Of course. And my conclusion is that, while the problem is hard, it can be solved. That it's not solved is either a lack of skill or a lack of will (or some combination thereof), not because it's an impossible task.

On Apple's side, they don't care in the least about the poor experience of third-party developers, as has been proven many times throughout the years. They're also struggling to keep a massive system going which has diverged substantially from its original scope and purpose as the iTunes Music Store. Combine a hard problem with zero motivation to improve it and you get what we have.

Re: Focus by Firefox, a Content Blocker for iOS

#257

Post by TazeTSchnitzel »

comex wrote: post #252
MBCook wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple chose not support 32 bit devices in their blocking API, which isn't too unreasonable. I imagine it kept the code quite a bit cleaner (or avoided having to run parallel implementations to get good speed).

As the parent says, the API works fine as is, today, on 32-bit devices - you're just not allowed to submit code to the App Store that takes advantage of this. There is no JIT or anything else inherently architecture specific in the WebKit content blocker implementation. Thus the restriction comes either from a semi-arbitrary determination of the speed of Apple's first 64-bit processor, and/or the amount of RAM that c…

Personally, I doubt it's a marketing thing. Apple do sometimes restrict software features to specific devices (Siri when it launched originally), but this is rather oddly processor-dependant. So I assume it's a performance thing.

Re: Focus by Firefox, a Content Blocker for iOS

#258

Post by TazeTSchnitzel »

mikestew wrote: post #141
feld wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

is it doing its own ad blocking or is it doing ad blocking as a safari ad block extension? There is a very specific high-performant ad block mechanism in iOS now.

If it's anything like the ones I looked at a while back, it goes through a proxy to strip the ads. So all of your web browsing goes through a 3rd party. I'm no technical wiz on such things, but I can't think of how else it could work without being an Apple-approved Safari extension.

It could run a local proxy on the device itself, perhaps. I know iPhone apps can expose HTTP servers to other devices on WiFi for file sharing, so I wouldn't be surprised if you can expose it to localhost too.

Re: Focus by Firefox, a Content Blocker for iOS

#259

Post by TazeTSchnitzel »

pvg wrote: post #72
inglor wrote: post #24

I'm so confused here - I thought Apple added the ability to create content blockers to reduce revenue on the web so that more content providers resort to ADs and they get a bigger slice of the pie. Why would Mozilla help them in their goal? Wouldn't it mean less reliance on the web and less Firefox in the long run? What am I missing here?

I thought Apple added the ability to create content blockers to reduce revenue on the web so that more content providers resort to ADs and they get a bigger slice of the pie. There's no non-tinfoil evidence of this. A much simpler explanation is that Apple did this because mobile browsing was becoming unusable. Nothing Apple does by tweaking their browser is going to get them a 'bigger slice of the pie' than the 40%…

Yes, it's hard to show off your superfast 64-bit chip performance and incredible LTE bandwidth when the browser is bogged down by loading several megabytes of JavaScript from 76 distinct origins. And the user experience isn't great when half the screen is ads.

(Hyperbole, obviously, but.)

Post reply on HN