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Safari 14 added WebExtensions support, so where are the extensions?

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Re: Safari 14 added WebExtensions support, so where are the extensions?

#131

Post by dwaite »

chipotle_coyote wrote: post #122
danShumway wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay, but then you're going to have to be content with the fact that extension developers are largely going to just ignore Safari. There's a little bit of mutual blindness that happens here both with anti-Apple commenters and pro-Apple commenters. It's absolutely true that Apple's tight integration and control over how developers work allows them to do things with their platform that no one else can do. It is also tr…

> As an Apple critic or at least an Apple skeptic (even though I do some development on Mac hardware), I am curious what the future of Mac as a development platform is going to be. As an Apple fan -- albeit one who came back to the platform after years with FreeBSD, Windows 2000/XP, and BeOS (yes, full-time for over a year) and who uses Linux via ssh daily -- I am concerned what the future of the Mac as a development…

> I'm also not sure why Apple won't at least support Vulkan in addition to Metal, but that's probably a different discussion.

Likely for the same reason Microsoft doesn't support Vulkan - they want to have full control over their own graphics API.

The only commercially licensed/supported platform that requires Vulkan AFAIK is Android 10+ on 64-bit devices. However, I don't believe Google ever stepped up to standardize high performance graphics, so Vulkan was their best jump after OpenGLES started to sink.

Re: Safari 14 added WebExtensions support, so where are the extensions?

#132

Post by jamil7 »

mrweasel wrote: post #128
apple_innocent wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah but there's nothing that says the Xcode experience has to be so painful[1] or that people have to pay Apple or that software has to be approved by Apple in order to preserve this flexibility. Purchasers should have options, including the option to write software (for themselves) that works on the computer they paid for but might not work if Apple introduces computers based on a new architecture, which the existi…

I haven't used Xcode much, so it's not for me to say if it's good or bad. However, I would assume that Apple uses Xcode internally, if it was a pain to use, in general, would Apple fix it? At least to save on development cost internally. Of cause it could be that Xcode is very finely tuned to Apples needs, which may be radically different from those of 3. party developers.

They do use it internally and a lot of teams do complain about it. I hope there is some real work going on to improve some parts of it (how about shipping patches rather than an entire 11gb binary every version). I think a lot of devs also pin certain issues on Xcode that are actually issues with the Swift compiler (slow or missing autocomplete, unhelpful error messages or slow compilation times for example) ObjC is far far quicker to compile.

Re: Safari 14 added WebExtensions support, so where are the extensions?

#133

Post by sneak »

chmod775 wrote: post #71

As someone who has (re-)implemented and shipped quite a few native applications across ecosystems (Apple, Android, Windows, Linux) all I can say about this is: Xcode development, the Apple Developer Program, and the whole experience of trying to ship your application on the Apple ecosystem is the fucking plague . I will do it if I'm paid for it - I generally charge twice my hourly rate for anything Apple - but I cert…

To top it off, if you put a donation link in your about box when you release your totally free software in their App Store, they will reject it in review. Free apps are not allowed to include a donation link to their own website.

It's to the point where they won't even let people enrich their ecosystem for free unless you dance to their tune. It's very, very hard to take anything other than a dim view of such despicable behavior.

Re: Safari 14 added WebExtensions support, so where are the extensions?

#134

Post by Veen »

ramraj07 wrote: post #116
coldtea wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Xcode development, the Apple Developer Program, and the whole experience of trying to ship your application on the Apple ecosystem is the fucking plague. That's because you're a developer that works in different platforms ("Apple, Android, Windows, Linux"). So you probably spend most of the time working in some other platform, and doing macOS work for you is just an annoyance, having to context switch to another pr…

While you might be true in that Apple tries to cater to a different band of Devs dedicated to their eco system, let's also not kid ourselves that they have had their experience at heart when making decisions about their platform. Are you telling me that dedicated apple devs have the greatest dev enviroment and experience there is? Or are you merely saying that they have a less shittier experience because they decided…

> Are you telling me that dedicated apple devs have the greatest dev enviroment and experience there is?

The have some approximation of the best environment given Apple's priorities, where customer experience, security and privacy, and the bottom line are considered significantly more important the developer experience.

Re: Safari 14 added WebExtensions support, so where are the extensions?

#135

Post by doctor_eval »

oblio wrote: post #127
kitsunesoba wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Xcode with Swift is a bit odd in that its performance varies greatly depending on project structure and as nonintuitive as it may be, the way the developer writes code. For instance a sprawling project with an even split of Objective-C and Swift that constantly call into each other can bring SourceKit to its knees, as can some CocoaPods setups. Going Swift-only or even just reducing the surface between Objective-C an…

To summarize, this is the most Apple of arguments, that you're making: "You're holding it wrong."

I think the parent was just trying to help. I’ve had similar problems with IngelliJ when I had the wrong project view open.

Re: Safari 14 added WebExtensions support, so where are the extensions?

#137

Post by Nextgrid »

floatingatoll wrote: post #30

The most popular web extensions are those that deprive sites of direct and indirect revenue, which necessarily means they can’t charge for the service or their userbase would revolt and steal their rule sets (which is easy to do for a web extension). Having to pay money for such things goes against the grain of those users, and the sort of breakage that people think is acceptable for content blockers isn’t quite as a…

So your argument is that there's no market for paid browser extensions on Safari and thus no incentive to make extensions? But how do you explain that Firefox & Chrome have thousands of free extensions?

Re: Safari 14 added WebExtensions support, so where are the extensions?

#138

Post by josephg »

oblio wrote: post #127
kitsunesoba wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Xcode with Swift is a bit odd in that its performance varies greatly depending on project structure and as nonintuitive as it may be, the way the developer writes code. For instance a sprawling project with an even split of Objective-C and Swift that constantly call into each other can bring SourceKit to its knees, as can some CocoaPods setups. Going Swift-only or even just reducing the surface between Objective-C an…

To summarize, this is the most Apple of arguments, that you're making: "You're holding it wrong."

Yeah its 2021. There's no excuse for shipping software you know crashes every few hours of normal use. Or lags so badly you can't type sometimes. I doubt XCode in its current form would make it through Apple's own app store review process. Fix your software or replace your staff with people who can.

I choose to abandon programming for Apple's devices entirely rather than put up with xcode.

Re: Safari 14 added WebExtensions support, so where are the extensions?

#139

Post by vbezhenar »

JohnBooty wrote: post #80
coldtea wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Xcode development, the Apple Developer Program, and the whole experience of trying to ship your application on the Apple ecosystem is the fucking plague. That's because you're a developer that works in different platforms ("Apple, Android, Windows, Linux"). So you probably spend most of the time working in some other platform, and doing macOS work for you is just an annoyance, having to context switch to another pr…

That's also why (forcing more people to use XCode and thus the official APIs, BitCode, and so on), they can introduce a whole new architecture like AS and have macOS apps support it from day one, or old x86 apps running smoothly translated. It's a failure of HN culture that posts like this get downvoted. You can like it, loathe it, or feel somewhere in the middle. However, this is factually true, and it is a relevant…

Linux with gcc supported plenty of architectures without much fanfare.

Re: Safari 14 added WebExtensions support, so where are the extensions?

#140

Post by Veen »

danShumway wrote: post #94
coldtea wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Xcode development, the Apple Developer Program, and the whole experience of trying to ship your application on the Apple ecosystem is the fucking plague. That's because you're a developer that works in different platforms ("Apple, Android, Windows, Linux"). So you probably spend most of the time working in some other platform, and doing macOS work for you is just an annoyance, having to context switch to another pr…

Okay, but then you're going to have to be content with the fact that extension developers are largely going to just ignore Safari. There's a little bit of mutual blindness that happens here both with anti-Apple commenters and pro-Apple commenters. It's absolutely true that Apple's tight integration and control over how developers work allows them to do things with their platform that no one else can do. It is also tr…

> am curious what the future of Mac as a development platform is going to be.

iOS is the future of Mac as a development platform. You can't develop for the iPhone without a Mac, many more developers care about iPhone than Mac, and Mac now offers (bad) support for running iPhone apps and cross-platform apps with Catalyst.

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