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

Why we are suing Apple for better HTML5 support in iOS

nexedi.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 238 posts

Re: Why we are suing Apple for better HTML5 support in iOS

#51

Post by fermigier »

pflats wrote: post #32

A few years ago, France passed a Law to protect small companies such as Nexedi against large companies that try to impose unbalanced contracts. [...] Not allowing the publication in Apple's AppStore of web browsers that are not based on Apple's own Webkit raises in our opinion the same issues as if Carrefour (a company similar to Walmart) was not selling any beans but those based on Carrefour's seeds. This may be leg…

Some legal comments on the law (in French): http://www.efl.fr/actualites/affaires/contrats-regles-commun...

Basically, if there was a clause in the Apple Store contract that said "to publish your software on our platform, you must give us three fingers of your right hand and your first born son", a judge could declare it void.

Re: Why we are suing Apple for better HTML5 support in iOS

#52

Post by NicoJuicy »

kbart wrote: post #49
NicoJuicy wrote: post #46

Looks like a pr stunt. But, here is another point of view (perhaps it can help, i'd love to see html 5 support improve on iOS). Internet Access is a "human right" and according to the United Nations ( https://www.article19.org/data/files/Internet_Statement_Adop... ) , they condemn countries that intentionally take away or disrupt its citizens’ internet access. Perhaps by not allowing "basic internet access" ( html 5…

I really doubt you could pass HTML5 compatibility as a "basic internet access".

HTML 5 IS part of the web, so why shouldn't it? By not having several html 5 functions, you actually disallow access/usage to certain websites.

Re: Why we are suing Apple for better HTML5 support in iOS

#53

Post by duncanawoods »

daenney wrote: post #20
0xmohit wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It certainly appears to be an abuse of one's monopolistic position. Edit: That is not allowing an alternate browser to be the default.

Certainly? How so? I'm also very curious about the monopoly. iOS has an estimated 13% market share.

I wonder what it would take for Android and IOS to be treated as distinct markets so that we can make progress on the plethora of anti-consumer and anti-competitive issues. For a market as large, valuable and consequential as "mobile platform", only ever looking at percentage seems too simplistic.

Android is not a like for like replacement. A customer is not "free" to change platform because there are large financial penalties if they have invested in an ecosystem due to deliberate decisions to create lock-in - they lose all the media, software and peripherals they have purchased.

Re: Why we are suing Apple for better HTML5 support in iOS

#54

Post by o_____________o »

simonh wrote: post #22
sgift wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hard to know. If a court decision forces them to allow other browser (engines) on iOS and people start moving away from Safari Apple may decide that it is in their best interest to make Safari the best web experience if they want to (re)attract those customers. See Microsoft and Edge.

Right, but I know Apple has argued at W3C against certain web standards and for others on the basis of security in a mobile context, power efficiency and functional alignment with touch UI behaviours. We don't know why Apple has chosen to implement some features (so far) and not others. Do you really want French courts deciding those kinds of technical decisions or taking those decisions away from mobile platform ven…

Apple's lack of support goes far beyond conscientious protest like you're suggesting. Mobile Safari has simple, egregious bugs that have been open for years. We're talking about things like being able to crash the browser with CSS or file selection, etc. I know this discussion is more feature oriented, but it's impossible to make the case that Apple is just rejecting features for the sake of the user.

Re: Why we are suing Apple for better HTML5 support in iOS

#55

Post by languagewars »

daenney wrote: post #20
0xmohit wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It certainly appears to be an abuse of one's monopolistic position. Edit: That is not allowing an alternate browser to be the default.

Certainly? How so? I'm also very curious about the monopoly. iOS has an estimated 13% market share.

In the US, all of the anti-competition laws more or less get described as monopoly law or anti-trust law. But distributor and partner programs have to be careful about laws in this category that have more to do with cartels and avoiding a situation where independent companies are agreeing not to compete. Those laws are more carefully enforced on monopolies but often hit individual manufacturers, etc.

Re: Why we are suing Apple for better HTML5 support in iOS

#57

Post by josefresco »

madeofpalk wrote: post #45

It's really hard to believe that Apple is holding back the 'mobile web' when it's shown time and time again that they have the best performing web platform in the market. It was true when iPhone was introduced in 2008, it was true in 2015[0] and it is still true now[1]. "In a nutshell, the fastest known Android device available today -- and there are millions of Android devices much slower than that out there -- perf…

Both can be true.

Re: Why we are suing Apple for better HTML5 support in iOS

#58

Post by sturgill »

FussyZeus wrote: post #41
sturgill wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you feel the same way about Microsoft bundling Internet Explorer and trying to crush all competition in the browser market? Or do you only feel this way because it's Apple's sandbox? At least with Microsoft you _could_ install Netscape. What's your choice here? Buy an Android? I don't know you; this is a legitimate question. I don't actually know that I have an opinion on the underlying issue (I'm quite libertaria…

> Do you feel the same way about Microsoft bundling Internet Explorer and trying to crush all competition in the browser market? Not a comparison. Windows was effectively a monopoly at the time where iOS is a strong but far from dominating force in mobile. However if you want to make this comparison, honestly? Yes. I think the suit against Microsoft was justified simply because of how blatantly obvious their practice…

Hard to argue they are not decreasing competition and not being anti-competitive when the TOS you quote specifically disallows competition. They literally prevent people from creating apps that compete with their own system apps. Again, at least you had the option of installing Netscape on Microsoft.

And I'm writing this from my iPhone. I don't love or hate Apple. But I don't think what they're doing is different than Microsoft.

Re: Why we are suing Apple for better HTML5 support in iOS

#59

Post by aljones »

DougWebb wrote: post #35
daenney wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Certainly? How so? I'm also very curious about the monopoly. iOS has an estimated 13% market share.

Yeah but Safari has pretty much 100% market share among iOS users. As a web developer, Safari is a huge pain for me. Most of the time I can develop on Firefox and stick to the standards and most of the modern and/or commonly used browsers are fine. But Safari will have issues, and since I don't own any Apple devices and can't run Safari on the devices I've got, it's difficult to figure out which standard Safari isn't…

When you develop in X you usually have problems with not X. Even when Safari and Chrome were working together on WebKit there were still differences.

Re: Why we are suing Apple for better HTML5 support in iOS

#60

Post by onion2k »

madeofpalk wrote: post #45

It's really hard to believe that Apple is holding back the 'mobile web' when it's shown time and time again that they have the best performing web platform in the market. It was true when iPhone was introduced in 2008, it was true in 2015[0] and it is still true now[1]. "In a nutshell, the fastest known Android device available today -- and there are millions of Android devices much slower than that out there -- perf…

Speed is an important metric, but only up to a point. Once a browser renders a page faster than a user can interact with it any further improvement has very little impact. Any phone released in the past year or two meets that criteria for a well constructed page (obviously a badly written site is always going to perform badly, even on the best hardware.)

So, while it may be true that an Android phone is 5x slower than a new iPhone, that doesn't make a difference to the end user. They see the website working well on both devices. At that point it starts being about features, so iOS's lack of support for WebRTC, Beacons, Gamepads, Fetch, etc means the experience is worse. Not that Android supports everything, but if you compare iOS Safari to Chrome on Android[1] it's very clear that Safari is behind, even if it's faster.

[1] http://caniuse.com/#compare=ios_saf+10,and_chr+51

Post reply on HN