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Safari is now probably the influential wild card browser for user privacy

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Re: Safari is now probably the influential wild card browser for user privacy

#101

Post by nwienert »

ArchOversight wrote: post #91
saurik wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No: you would--at worst--be asked more often than you would like to approve notifications for random websites, all of which you would click no on; this feature doesn't just magically cause notifications... hell: it already even exists on desktop Safari and I just click "no".

Yeah, having to click no all the time on desktop Safari is terrible. Also websites have realized that I am going to click No in the browser, so now they popup first asking if I want to allow push notifications in JavaScript so when I click no, they can ask me again later, vs if they popped up the browser and got a "No" there they could never ask me again.

Did I accidentally disable this or something? I’ve never seen it.

Everyone acts like

1. For some reason it has to be some sort of pop up, it could easily be a small icon in your bar

2. Apple couldn’t/wouldn’t design this so that it was unobtrusive

3. If the way they did design it was still too annoying, they wouldn’t make it less so, or make it easy to turn off

Why do so many on HN argue from “if it existed it would obviously be in form X that already exists and therefore be bad and therefore I never want it and will oppose it vehemently” it’s a total lack of capability of even the most incremental innovative thinking.

Re: Safari is now probably the influential wild card browser for user privacy

#102

Post by camdenlock »

Folks in these comments seem to be missing the point re: Safari lacking features, specifically features which would allow for 1) greater access to the hardware, and 2) PWAs.

Apple isn’t just lagging behind. They very intentionally do not want web APIs to become a viable app development platform on their hardware ecosystem.

Other hardware vendors are rapidly catching up to Apple in terms of hardware quality, so the main remaining differentiator for Apple becomes quality of software experiences. This is, of course, precisely the arena in which Apple currently dominates, owing to their investment in making their app dev stack the best in the world. More than anything else, they do NOT want to lose that advantage.

So, a non-proprietary app dev platform which matches or exceeds the quality of their own? Yikes. If they allow Safari to become a gateway to such a platform, it would truly be an incomparable existential threat to their app development and distribution model.

I personally think it’s inevitable, but... you can better believe Apple will fight it as hard as they can, for as long as they can. My money’s on their next CEO slipping up and allowing a full glorious Web implementation to be built. There goes any advantage to developing software experiences for the proprietary Apple platform, and that’ll be the true beginning of the end for the modern successful Apple.

Re: Safari is now probably the influential wild card browser for user privacy

#103

Post by nwienert »

bleachedsleet wrote: post #37

I love Safari as a browser, but I hate the fact that it neuters the web and makes it feel much less powerful. Web Bluetooth and webUSB are ignored by Safari and unsupported. Notification support is lacking last I checked. No PWA functionality to speak of and webNFC won’t be added. Extensions are lacking largely due to being basically native apps that bring with them all the cost and overhead of being such. As a brows…

In this sense, it’s actually a good thing Chrome and others aren’t allowed on Apple. As someone whose fought against the App Store lockdown, I think I’ve come around a bit. The web is in a weird way a better place for apple locking down the browser choice.

Re: Safari is now probably the influential wild card browser for user privacy

#104

Post by jeffchien »

JohnBooty wrote: post #64
fragile_frogs wrote: post #33

> Conversely, if Safari refuses to implement some alleged 'feature', it becomes much less useful even if Chrome does implement it. How is Safari not implementing standards seen as a good thing? While I do acknowledge that there might be privacy concerns when it comes to Chrome, I do appreciate that Google is trying to push the Web forward, while Apple is trying to hold the Web back. Safari truly is the worst browser,…

Ohh and you are on Windows and wan't to debug something on Safari? Forget it. Yeah, this utterly baffles me. You'd think Apple, out of sheer self-interest, would offer some sort of "Safari for Developers" that runs on Windows/Linux. Even if it's some kind of klunky suboptimally-performant thing. Just make it really obvious in terms of it's branding and theming that it's devs-only.

My hypothesis is that Apple is probably getting enough money from companies having to buy their devs Macbooks that they don't feel like releasing Safari on Windows/Linux (much less Xcode).

Re: Safari is now probably the influential wild card browser for user privacy

#105

Post by paulmd »

bleachedsleet wrote: post #37

I love Safari as a browser, but I hate the fact that it neuters the web and makes it feel much less powerful. Web Bluetooth and webUSB are ignored by Safari and unsupported. Notification support is lacking last I checked. No PWA functionality to speak of and webNFC won’t be added. Extensions are lacking largely due to being basically native apps that bring with them all the cost and overhead of being such. As a brows…

The only thing I really miss on Safari is a good adblocker. Everything else is fine, I don't use my mobile browser the way I do on desktop.

Re: Safari is now probably the influential wild card browser for user privacy

#106

Post by [deleted] »

adrr wrote: post #38
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #5

This is why, despite it being monopolistic, I hope Apple can continue their requirement on using Safari's rendering engine on iOS. It's the sole remaining defense against a far worse monopoly. Neither the Mozilla nor Edge teams have the backbone to resist Google's web platform initiatives.

People choose to install chrome it doesn't come with Windows Machines or Macs yet is a very popular CHOICE of browser. IOS we have no choice and forced to to use Safari.

[deleted]

Re: Safari is now probably the influential wild card browser for user privacy

#107

Post by ArchOversight »

nwienert wrote: post #101
ArchOversight wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, having to click no all the time on desktop Safari is terrible. Also websites have realized that I am going to click No in the browser, so now they popup first asking if I want to allow push notifications in JavaScript so when I click no, they can ask me again later, vs if they popped up the browser and got a "No" there they could never ask me again.

Did I accidentally disable this or something? I’ve never seen it. Everyone acts like 1. For some reason it has to be some sort of pop up, it could easily be a small icon in your bar 2. Apple couldn’t/wouldn’t design this so that it was unobtrusive 3. If the way they did design it was still too annoying, they wouldn’t make it less so, or make it easy to turn off Why do so many on HN argue from “if it existed it would…

> 1. For some reason it has to be some sort of pop up, it could easily be a small icon in your bar

It is a popup right now... it is in your face and requires immediate action.

An example:

https://imgur.com/a/GfqUuAZ

Using:

https://www.bennish.net/web-notifications.html

> 2. Apple couldn’t/wouldn’t design this so that it was unobtrusive

It is obtrusive in that it is a full-window popover and you can't go to any other tabs until you have completed the action.

> 3. If the way they did design it was still too annoying, they wouldn’t make it less so, or make it easy to turn off

You can currently disable it browser wide in Preferences -> Websites => "Allow websites to ask permission to send notifications".

However, that doesn't stop various websites from displaying their own JavaScript based popups and requests before even attempting to use the Web Push Notifications API to see if the user wants to grant access using the native API's.

This way they can nag the user over and over to enable notifications whereas if you deny it once in the browser you need to take a bunch of manual steps to remove the website and grant them access.

Re: Safari is now probably the influential wild card browser for user privacy

#108

Post by millstone »

genericstorage3 wrote: post #89
diebeforei485 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great. Take their phone number and text them. Amazon charges what, $0.00645 per SMS?

What a terrible ux

Why? Text messages are great because they pop up on my Mac too.

Re: Safari is now probably the influential wild card browser for user privacy

#109

Post by heavyset_go »

Google234 wrote: post #95
heavyset_go wrote: post #17

> (Conversely, if Safari refuses to implement some alleged 'feature', it becomes much less useful even if Chrome does implement it.) The fact that Apple refuses to implement basic features in mobile Safari that Firefox and Chrome have had for years now, and the fact that they refuse to allow other browser engines on iOS is the reason why we can't have nice things like progressive web apps. I recently worked on a heal…

I don’t want websites to be able to send notifications to my phone. Sites abuses this and are always asking on my computer and it’s too easy to accidentally say accept.

> I don’t want websites to be able to send notifications to my phone.

You might not, but our users requested desktop and mobile notifications. The notifications let sick patients know when their prescriptions are ready, facilitate care-provider check ups, etc.

Re: Safari is now probably the influential wild card browser for user privacy

#110

Post by millstone »

phreack wrote: post #58
heavyset_go wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For this specific use case, it's missing the Web Push API[1], which can be used to implement push notifications, and the Web Notification API[2], which can also be used for the same thing. [1] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Push_API [2] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Notificatio...

I'm willing to go as far as to say it's The one feature that's singlehandedly holding back PWAs entirely. Most apps that you use every day needs notifications for one reason another, mainly communication apps, and if you could do them with a web app it'd be a game changer. But Apple is holding us all back and has been for years.

I don't understand why Apple is holding anyone back. Just build an app that doesn't work on iOS. There's lots of apps exclusive to iOS and Mac - why not exclusive Android?

If the app really is a game changer, if it's that compelling, Apple will absolutely change its tune.

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