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Chrome is Not the Standard

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Re: Chrome is Not the Standard

#451

Post by RobertRoberts »

alwillis wrote: post #413
RobertRoberts wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that Google's Chrome tactics can be perceived as evil, I won't discount that, because it causes issues when you are forced to use a particular browser. But if your client only runs iOS for their entire business, you can't even complain about Chrome to them. And if their browser doesn't support something as simple as offline html5 features properly, and you need this, across multiple platforms (cause they have…

Sounds a little paranoid, especially since Service Workers are on by default in the latest Safari Technology Preview: https://webkit.org/blog/8042/release-notes-for-safari-techno... . You might want to check the WebKit status page; you might be pleasantly surprised: https://webkit.org/status/ . When Safari has complete support for PWAs in 2018, you guys will have to come up with a new Apple conspiracy against the web…

Thanks for the link to the webkit status.

When do you suppose this will end up in the Safari in iOS 10? I suspect never. Since my clients literally have thousands (maybe 10s of thousands) invested in devices that will never get any updates past iOS 10, they are forced into a hardware upgrade because Apple won't allow 3rd party browsers on their devices, and tie their browser version to their OS version.

If you see another way around this, I'd really like to know.

Re: Chrome is Not the Standard

#452

Post by sodosopa »

gaius wrote: post #384
voidlogic wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>developers grouse about the other browser makers who are “holding the web back.” Oh get off my lawn! Anyone to complains about Chrome vs. FF Quantum vs MS Edge doesn't know or remember the dark of days of IE 5 and IE 6. The lowest common denominator these days is exponentially better than it has ever been. Slight tangent, but I was happy to see the other day the Google hangouts works on Firefox again (I don't know i…

doesn't know or remember the dark of days of IE 5 and IE 6. I remember that when IE6 was first released it was the fastest, most reliable, most standards compliant and feature rich browser. That's why it took over the corporate world. It was the Chrome of its day, if you will. How did that work out?

> I remember that when IE6 was first released it was the fastest, most reliable, most standards compliant and feature rich browser. That's why it took over the corporate world.

Most companies run Windows by default, that's why IE took over the corporate world.

Re: Chrome is Not the Standard

#453

Post by gaius »

sodosopa wrote: post #452
gaius wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

doesn't know or remember the dark of days of IE 5 and IE 6. I remember that when IE6 was first released it was the fastest, most reliable, most standards compliant and feature rich browser. That's why it took over the corporate world. It was the Chrome of its day, if you will. How did that work out?

> I remember that when IE6 was first released it was the fastest, most reliable, most standards compliant and feature rich browser. That's why it took over the corporate world. Most companies run Windows by default, that's why IE took over the corporate world.

Most companies run Windows by default, that's why IE took over the corporate world.

Netscape's plan was to so totally abstract the underlying OS that it didn't matter what it was.

Re: Chrome is Not the Standard

#454

Post by SZJX »

NightlyDev wrote: post #169

"Safari ships new features on a much slower cadence, but they’re usually solid and always perform incredibly well" Well, clearly this person doesn't have much experience with web development... The webengine in iOS is the biggest pile of crap I've ever worked with since IE6. "Oh? You want to click this? OK, let's wait for 300 ms just in case you want to double tap to scroll!" "We finally fixed it, no more delay on cl…

Exactly. I find Safari extremely unpleasant to use in many cases. Firefox Beta on Android at least makes me feel much better.

Re: Chrome is Not the Standard

#455

Post by alwillis »

RobertRoberts wrote: post #451
alwillis wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds a little paranoid, especially since Service Workers are on by default in the latest Safari Technology Preview: https://webkit.org/blog/8042/release-notes-for-safari-techno... . You might want to check the WebKit status page; you might be pleasantly surprised: https://webkit.org/status/ . When Safari has complete support for PWAs in 2018, you guys will have to come up with a new Apple conspiracy against the web…

Thanks for the link to the webkit status. When do you suppose this will end up in the Safari in iOS 10? I suspect never. Since my clients literally have thousands (maybe 10s of thousands) invested in devices that will never get any updates past iOS 10, they are forced into a hardware upgrade because Apple won't allow 3rd party browsers on their devices, and tie their browser version to their OS version. If you see an…

When do you suppose this will end up in the Safari in iOS 10? I suspect never. Since my clients literally have thousands (maybe 10s of thousands) invested in devices that will never get any updates past iOS 10, they are forced into a hardware upgrade because Apple won't allow 3rd party browsers on their devices, and tie their browser version to their OS version.

I obviously don't know your situation, but the newest iPad where iOS 10.x is its last operating system is the 4th gen iPad, which was introduced October 2012 and was discontinued October 2014. It shipped with iOS 6, so it's been through 4 major upgrades.

You make not like it, but that's about the general lifetime of computing devices today regarding their upgradeability. It's not like there are 5-year old Android tablets running the latest operating systems from Google either.

Apple’s modus operandi has been the same for the 10 years of iOS devices: all of the new features go into the latest version; the previous version only gets security updates and they don’t back-port those features to the previous operating system.

Mobile Safari 11 uses APIs and frameworks (like the machine learning for Intelligent Tracking Prevention) that only exist in iOS 11, which is why it won’t be ported to iOS 10.

In most mainstream work/production environments, 3-4 years is the useful lifetime for computers and the iPad is a computer. I did this for a living at MIT; I dealt with these exact issues for 14 years.

I get that it's convenient to blame Apple for not allowing 3rd-party web engines on iOS, but that's really the cover story, right?

The key issue here: iOS 10 was the last version to run on 32-bit A6 processors, which is what your iPads have. iPhones and iPads with 64-bit A7s (and newer) can run iOS 11. Unfortunately, you got caught in this hardware transition.

If these iPads are mission-critical for something, then there should have been some device lifecycle planning when the project started so you wouldn’t end up in a situation like the one you’re in.

BTW, both Google and Firefox stopped supporting 32-bit operating systems years ago, so even if iOS allowed 3rd-party browsers, you still wouldn’t have the option of running something that had today’s latest features like Service Worker anyway…

Re: Chrome is Not the Standard

#456

Post by RobertRoberts »

alwillis wrote: post #455
RobertRoberts wrote: post #451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the link to the webkit status. When do you suppose this will end up in the Safari in iOS 10? I suspect never. Since my clients literally have thousands (maybe 10s of thousands) invested in devices that will never get any updates past iOS 10, they are forced into a hardware upgrade because Apple won't allow 3rd party browsers on their devices, and tie their browser version to their OS version. If you see an…

When do you suppose this will end up in the Safari in iOS 10? I suspect never. Since my clients literally have thousands (maybe 10s of thousands) invested in devices that will never get any updates past iOS 10, they are forced into a hardware upgrade because Apple won't allow 3rd party browsers on their devices, and tie their browser version to their OS version. I obviously don't know your situation, but the newest i…

>It's not like there are 5-year old Android tablets running the latest operating systems from Google either.

Yah, you have a point with the hardware being old and 32bit, I am not an Apple guy by nature, so I have older hardware.

My issue is not with the OS, it's that I am blocked from installing specific software on that OS. Imagine if Windows didn't allow Chrome to be installed, everyone would be up in arms.

Why is Apple getting a pass in their regard?

Re: Chrome is Not the Standard

#457

Post by alwillis »

RobertRoberts wrote: post #456
alwillis wrote: post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When do you suppose this will end up in the Safari in iOS 10? I suspect never. Since my clients literally have thousands (maybe 10s of thousands) invested in devices that will never get any updates past iOS 10, they are forced into a hardware upgrade because Apple won't allow 3rd party browsers on their devices, and tie their browser version to their OS version. I obviously don't know your situation, but the newest i…

>It's not like there are 5-year old Android tablets running the latest operating systems from Google either. Yah, you have a point with the hardware being old and 32bit, I am not an Apple guy by nature, so I have older hardware. My issue is not with the OS, it's that I am blocked from installing specific software on that OS. Imagine if Windows didn't allow Chrome to be installed, everyone would be up in arms. Why is…

>Imagine if Windows didn't allow Chrome to be installed, everyone would be up in arms.

No pun intended, but this isn’t an apples-to-apples comparison—you can’t compare a desktop operating system to one that runs on phones and tablets.

I’m a web developer—I have the release, beta and canary (nightly) of Chrome and Firefox in addition to Safari and Safari Tech Preview on my iMac, which is no big deal on macOS or any other desktop operating system.

It’s very different on phones and tablets, which are closer to embedded operating systems.

This also enables Apple and others to lockdown security in ways which would be unacceptable for a desktop operating system. Given the unrelenting hacking from the kid down the street to nation states—China, N. Korea, Russia, Iran—more security isn’t a bad thing.

Apple isn’t getting a pass—at least not from normals.

It’s the supposedly aggrieved and paranoid libertarian techies’ narrative that Apple is getting away with something and their rights are being impinged upon.

Re: Chrome is Not the Standard

#458

Post by RobertRoberts »

alwillis wrote: post #457
RobertRoberts wrote: post #456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It's not like there are 5-year old Android tablets running the latest operating systems from Google either. Yah, you have a point with the hardware being old and 32bit, I am not an Apple guy by nature, so I have older hardware. My issue is not with the OS, it's that I am blocked from installing specific software on that OS. Imagine if Windows didn't allow Chrome to be installed, everyone would be up in arms. Why is…

>Imagine if Windows didn't allow Chrome to be installed, everyone would be up in arms. No pun intended, but this isn’t an apples-to-apples comparison—you can’t compare a desktop operating system to one that runs on phones and tablets. I’m a web developer—I have the release, beta and canary (nightly) of Chrome and Firefox in addition to Safari and Safari Tech Preview on my iMac, which is no big deal on macOS or any ot…

Sure, I can accept that generally speaking there is a difference between phone/tablet and desktop. But how about Android vs iOS. I can install Firefox on Android, but not on iOS. (It "looks" like FF, but it's Safari with a skin, same with Chrome.)

Can you offer a valid explanation on why it's technically not possible for a real Firefox browser to work in iOS, but works fine on Android?

Re: Chrome is Not the Standard

#459

Post by alwillis »

RobertRoberts wrote: post #458
alwillis wrote: post #457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Imagine if Windows didn't allow Chrome to be installed, everyone would be up in arms. No pun intended, but this isn’t an apples-to-apples comparison—you can’t compare a desktop operating system to one that runs on phones and tablets. I’m a web developer—I have the release, beta and canary (nightly) of Chrome and Firefox in addition to Safari and Safari Tech Preview on my iMac, which is no big deal on macOS or any ot…

Sure, I can accept that generally speaking there is a difference between phone/tablet and desktop. But how about Android vs iOS. I can install Firefox on Android, but not on iOS. (It "looks" like FF, but it's Safari with a skin, same with Chrome.) Can you offer a valid explanation on why it's technically not possible for a real Firefox browser to work in iOS, but works fine on Android?

Short answer: Google and Apple have different priorities when it comes to security, privacy, performance and power consumption. Same thing with Mozilla but to a lesser degree.

It’s also not accurate to say Firefox and Chrome are just “skins” over Safari. Sure, they have to use WebKit via various system APIs but they also add their own features, some of which Safari doesn’t have like support for Google Assistant and a built-in QR code scanner for starters.

Heck, Google Chrome on iOS supports the Payment Request API while Safari doesn’t, which means there are web platform features Google implemented that WebKit doesn’t have. Why are you complaining again? ;-)

Same for Brave, which does lots of things Safari doesn’t.

Remember, Chrome and WebKit share a common ancestral codebase; the vast majority of a site’s HTML and CSS renders exactly the same anyway, so it’s not like Google or users like you are actually missing out on anything of substance other than some misplaced sense of being restricted from shooting yourselves in the foot because you can’t use a browser engine that’s slower and consumes more power than what Apple ships—ditto for Mozilla.

For the overwhelming majority of the browsing anyone does, it makes no difference. It’s just a manufactured grevence of a vocal minority of Apple critics.

Re: Chrome is Not the Standard

#460

Post by RobertRoberts »

alwillis wrote: post #459
RobertRoberts wrote: post #458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, I can accept that generally speaking there is a difference between phone/tablet and desktop. But how about Android vs iOS. I can install Firefox on Android, but not on iOS. (It "looks" like FF, but it's Safari with a skin, same with Chrome.) Can you offer a valid explanation on why it's technically not possible for a real Firefox browser to work in iOS, but works fine on Android?

Short answer: Google and Apple have different priorities when it comes to security, privacy, performance and power consumption. Same thing with Mozilla but to a lesser degree. It’s also not accurate to say Firefox and Chrome are just “skins” over Safari. Sure, they have to use WebKit via various system APIs but they also add their own features, some of which Safari doesn’t have like support for Google Assistant and a…

I think you are dodging the central claim against Apple, they prohibit competition on their platform. If Microsoft or Google did this, they'd be accused of anticompetitive behavoir, or being a monopoloy.

In fact, MS actually did this with IE vs Netscape. Maybe you are too young to know or remember this. It's just astonishing that anyone could ignore the parralels.

Also, I asked if there was any "technical reasons" Apple couldn't allow real Firefox in iOS, and you ignored that. I suspect because you know the answer is "no". So, then it's purely for marketing reasons.

Please explain how it's better for end users to have only one choice of browser? If you want to say they already do, then you do not understand how browsers work. And if you want, I can do some googling for you to show you why FF and Chrome on iOS are _not_ any different at the core level than mobile Safari.

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