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Why we are suing Apple for better HTML5 support in iOS

nexedi.com

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

#171

Post by pvg »

SCdF wrote: post #160
aljones wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their financial statements are pretty clear. Hardware is highly lucrative. Services, like the app store, are only recently consistently profitable. They definitely wouldn't intentionally make their devices less desirable to customers to increase service revenue.

Do you have any thoughts as to why they don't allow people to install things from outside of the app store? Or why they require all purchases through apps to go through their payment methods where they take a 30% cut? Because it is definitely making devices less desirable. I presume you still can't buy books from the Kindle iOS app, for example. I know you can't sub on twitch on iOS. To continue with the kindle examp…

Because they want control over their platform and one (but not the only) reason for that control is to deliver a consistent and safer experience to their users. The app store is a part of that control but it's not some moneymaker.

The fact that you can't install random apps from anywhere on an iPhone doesn't make the device less desirable to anyone, statistically. Incidentally, if you have source, you can install an app on your phone without paying a dime to anyone.

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

#172

Post by duncanawoods »

aljones wrote: post #63
geocar wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple is the single biggest manufacturer with a 41% share of the US market. http://www.comscore.com/Insights/Market-Rankings/comScore-Re...

Do you believe this makes them a monopoly?

40% is a threshold for "abuse of dominant position" enforcement actions in the UK.

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachm...

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

#173

Post by simonh »

keyle wrote: post #86

Remember when Apple was bashing Adobe for Flash and how they were about standards? (I'm going to get downvoted for this) Anyways you were a fool for believing it.

I remember Google I/O 2010 when Google made a big push to drive Flash support as a differentiator for Android, but every single attempt to demo Flash on a mobile device crashed it.

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

#174

Post by sarreph »

lasfter wrote: post #136
sarreph wrote: post #111

When I see someone suing a company for not innovating fast enough and opening with sexist terminology[0] I just close the tab and move on. [0] - "Anyone running html5test ( http://html5test.com/ ) on his iPhone"

I think it may have more to do with the article being written by a native French speaker than sexism. One of my friends routinely says things like "a woman has rights to his body" when speaking in English because in French possessives agree with the object not the subject, and the French word for body, "corps", is masculine. In this case, since iPhone starts with a vowel, in French you'd say "son iPhone", so "his iPh…

Yes, of course! Thank you for pointing this out. I guess I'm the ignorant one for not doing my research on the author/company before making such a loaded statement.

On your point about it being "extremely unlikely that anyone would think, consciously or otherwise, that women don't have iPhones", I was more referring to the older (20th century) authoring style where masculine references were used as a default rather than generalising such as "their iPhone".

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

#175

Post by st3fan »

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…

There is not a single browser that implements 100% of all HTML standards out there. Lets sue them all for violating human rights.

The browser landscape is complicated. Firefox is ahead in some ways, behind in others. WebKit has fantastic support for some things that Edge does not do. Chrome lacks some things that Firefox does.

Does any browser lack "basic internet access"? Nope. They all provide a solid foundation that lets everyone use the web. Are some experimental standards missing? Sure. It's complicated.

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

#176

Post by cageface »

pvg wrote: post #114
SCdF wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't it obvious? If they supported things like PWAs and other mobile web initiatives, people could build applications that run seamlessly on their phone, look like native apps etc, and they wouldn't go through their highly lucrative app store. As phones get more and more powerful and things come along and mature like webgl etc, the reliance on native apps drops more and more. As does Apple's control. Maybe I should…

For Apple, the App Store is not 'highly lucrative'.

It is, because having a superior app ecosystem is one of the strongest selling points of Apple devices vs the competition.

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

#177

Post by Millennium »

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…

>Is this just speculation, or is there actual case law?

France is a civil-law system, so case law is in theory irrelevant. In practice it isn't so irrelevant these days, but it still doesn't carry nearly the same weight that it does in common-law systems (like most of the US, though not Louisiana). On the one hand, this makes it much easier to ignore previous rulings by clearly corrupt judges. On the other hand, it makes consistent interpretation of the law much harder to achieve. It's a tradeoff.

In other words, Nexedi knows that case law is against them in the US, so they cherry-picked a location for the lawsuit that would allow them to circumvent this obstacle.

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

#178

Post by Millennium »

jbmorgado wrote: post #127

This actually could be something to hold up in court at least in EU. It's not really different from when Microsoft was doing something similar with their browser, using their market position to force people using IE. Apple could be forced to open their rendering engine and allow real fully fledged browsers to be used in iOS, because at this point, just fixing the compatibility to HTML standards on iOS may not be enou…

Apple's rendering engine is already open. That isn't what the lawsuit is about. It's about opening the operating environment to other browsers (or rather, other rendering engines).

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

#179

Post by jakelazaroff »

sgtpepper43 wrote: post #157
madeofpalk wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can definitely build a slider natively... Nope http://caniuse.com/#search=snap

"Build natively" means to create it yourself in vanilla JavaScript, like this http://meandmax.github.io/lory/ . What's the use of a native element that only one browser has when you need cross browser support anyway?

Isn't that the point of this article? I don't think it's fair to criticize Apple for lagging HTML5 support in iOS, then say "what's the use of this element?" when it cuts the other way.

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

#180

Post by fenomas »

publicfig wrote: post #143
keyle wrote: post #86

Remember when Apple was bashing Adobe for Flash and how they were about standards? (I'm going to get downvoted for this) Anyways you were a fool for believing it.

Apple bashing Adobe was for much more than standards, but for keeping aspects out of their mobile browser that they felt caused either security or performance issues. I feel that their stance on this is honestly fairly consistant with that.

Well, Apple was bashing Adobe for anything and everything. I remember they bashed Adobe for being late to finish moving to Cocoa, at a time when some core Apple products hadn't moved yet (e.g. Finder, IIRC).
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