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Apple is hiring engineers to bring WebRTC to Safari

jobs.apple.com

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Re: Apple is hiring engineers to bring WebRTC to Safari

#31
post #5
post #4

At last. Where have they been all this time, under a rock? Does it mean they'll start supporting Opus as well?

Apple need to move Safari to the App Store. A Browser only being updated with the OS in 2016 is ridiculous.

More or less ridiculous than the App Store? As a side note, I haven't had anyone else's developer notifications for about 3 weeks now. "In review" notifications for other people's products coming to me is a little disconcerting.

Re: Apple is hiring engineers to bring WebRTC to Safari

#33
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple need to move Safari to the App Store. A Browser only being updated with the OS in 2016 is ridiculous.

A lot of things Apple does is ridiculous, or at least they seem ridiculous - they seem so to me at least (or maybe I just find them frustrating). But I think (and I don't have a detailed theory regarding this) it works well for Apple's walled garden business strategy. Good or bad, they seem to be selling well. As it has been said many times - they sell "experience", not merely products. Now, in today's tech market th…

I partially agree.

I know that Safari does not support everything say Chrome does, but if you do not need those features, what does it matter? An example: I use Safari without having flash installed. I rarely need flash. If I do need it, I would rather open Chrome and close it when I am done with the flash thing and go back to Safari. Why? Why not use Chrome all the time since it supports (almost) everything Safari does and more? Well, because in my opinion, for what I use a browser for 99% of the time, Safari works better. I think it looks, performs, functions and feels better overall. So I would rather use Safari and switch to Chrome when I need something Safari does not do, or Chrome does better, even though on the paper spec, Chrome is the better browser.

It is the same reason I use an iPhone even though Android "has the same and more features".

Re: Apple is hiring engineers to bring WebRTC to Safari

#34
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of things Apple does is ridiculous, or at least they seem ridiculous - they seem so to me at least (or maybe I just find them frustrating). But I think (and I don't have a detailed theory regarding this) it works well for Apple's walled garden business strategy. Good or bad, they seem to be selling well. As it has been said many times - they sell "experience", not merely products. Now, in today's tech market th…

I partially agree. I know that Safari does not support everything say Chrome does, but if you do not need those features, what does it matter? An example: I use Safari without having flash installed. I rarely need flash. If I do need it, I would rather open Chrome and close it when I am done with the flash thing and go back to Safari. Why? Why not use Chrome all the time since it supports (almost) everything Safari d…

Flash is a poor example because Flash really should be gone for good already. The problem is not "features" but Apple holding back technology progress. That's simply bad. There were some recent articles calling Safari "the new IE" because of this.

Re: Apple is hiring engineers to bring WebRTC to Safari

#38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really know anything about this topic, but the parent comment leads me to believe that you would use a UDP proxy to hide your address. Instead of sending out your address, you'd send out the proxy's address. When the proxy receives data, it would pass it to you. That way the other party doesn't know your address; they only know the proxy address. This is just a guess based on how I assume proxies would work,…

Who is going to pay for the proxy's bandwidth? Apple, Google, Mozilla? Good luck. The site owner? Well, the site owner now has your IP!

People are typically okay with site owners having their IP, because site owners tend to not be malicious. You could only connect with people that you completely trust, but with many applications the users might be complete strangers or merely internet acquaintances. Given the power, there would be malicious users taking advantage of it. This was a big deal with Skype because people weren't aware that adding a contact could reveal their IP to that person, and/or were not aware that revealing their IP could lead to DDOS attacks or other forms of abuse/stalking.

Re: Apple is hiring engineers to bring WebRTC to Safari

#39
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of things Apple does is ridiculous, or at least they seem ridiculous - they seem so to me at least (or maybe I just find them frustrating). But I think (and I don't have a detailed theory regarding this) it works well for Apple's walled garden business strategy. Good or bad, they seem to be selling well. As it has been said many times - they sell "experience", not merely products. Now, in today's tech market th…

I partially agree. I know that Safari does not support everything say Chrome does, but if you do not need those features, what does it matter? An example: I use Safari without having flash installed. I rarely need flash. If I do need it, I would rather open Chrome and close it when I am done with the flash thing and go back to Safari. Why? Why not use Chrome all the time since it supports (almost) everything Safari d…

Remember when IE was the gloomy figure in the corner of the room that every developer knew was there, but there was nothing they could do about it?

People didn't catch on that IE was bad until almost a decade later, by then it had finally gotten not bad. These days I don't even have to think about it because my websites work better in it, more often than not, when I open them in it for the first time.

Safari is the one I have to worry about now. It isn't just features, it's page rendering. Not having WebRTC is something all on its own.

But web technology is extremely complex.

If you fall off spec, and then find yourself needing to support those off spec 'features' it holds everyone back for a long time. How long will it be before Safari users find out how frustrating they can be to web developers?

Re: Apple is hiring engineers to bring WebRTC to Safari

#40
post #39
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I partially agree. I know that Safari does not support everything say Chrome does, but if you do not need those features, what does it matter? An example: I use Safari without having flash installed. I rarely need flash. If I do need it, I would rather open Chrome and close it when I am done with the flash thing and go back to Safari. Why? Why not use Chrome all the time since it supports (almost) everything Safari d…

Remember when IE was the gloomy figure in the corner of the room that every developer knew was there, but there was nothing they could do about it? People didn't catch on that IE was bad until almost a decade later, by then it had finally gotten not bad. These days I don't even have to think about it because my websites work better in it, more often than not, when I open them in it for the first time. Safari is the o…

I think the perspective is skewed, because who are websites for? Not the developers, that's for sure. It's for the users, and if the users think that Safari is better, than there might be a reason for this madness, and the other browsers should adjust their goals.

I'm a developer myself, and did webdevelopment professionally for 7 years until I switched paths 3 years ago. I know all about supporting multiple browsers and what not. But the thing is, Chrome just doesn't feel and look elegant and smooth like Safari does. The same with Firefox. That's why I use Safari 99% of the time.

There's a balance between functionality and design, and chrome seems more skewed towards functionality, and Safari towards design. When this is so, and Safari does all I need better than chrome 99% of the time, I naturally choose safari.

...and yes, Safari should be more standard compliant, I'm not disagreeing with you on those points.

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