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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

#231

Post by Ar-Curunir »

CameronNemo wrote: post #41
Nextgrid wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean by "useful"? I've been using Safari exclusively for years now and the lack of push notifications hasn't been a problem. It's actually good because it shields me from all kinds of shitty websites demanding notification permissions while having no good reason to send any.

Why are we optimizing the case of users browsing bad websites? Why not cater to good websites instead? Isn't a notification receiver of the most important uses of a phone?

The number of terrible websites a far higher than the number of good ones. The former category includes many different news websites, streaming sites, etc

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

#232

Post by merdadicapra »

tobr wrote: post #228
enumjorge wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The parent comment didn’t say their PWA stops working on Safari, only that it doesn’t have a full set of features on it. For some applications, features like push notifications are essential.

They said Safari is > the reason why we can't have nice things like progressive web apps I.e. implying that progressive web apps are only possible if a specific set of features are supported everywhere. It’s like saying that accessibility is only possible if no users have disabilities.

You're overthinking it.

It's the other way around.

Apple is saying that the only way to make secure software is remove features that they don't want or don't know how to implement in a secure way.

It's like saying that cars are safer if you remove the wheels.

In your analogy, you are implying that progressive web apps are possible only if they support the smaller set of shared features among all the vendors.

Meaning that a single actor can ruin the game for everybody else.

I think that if a vendor is the only one refusing to support something that is common everywhere else, it's the vendor that is at fault, not the developer.

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

#233

Post by EvilEy3 »

onion2k wrote: post #131
EvilEy3 wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it offers superior experience.

Apps don't (or shouldn't) need to be native to offer a good user experience.

Yes they need and should be native, if you don't want to reinvent OS integration yourself.

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

#234

Post by sdfhbdf »

yunohn wrote: post #128
asaddhamani wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about sending notifications over email?

This speaks to your inexperience in making applications for the average user - they barely use email.

> This speaks to your inexperience

Please be kind and not sneer as the guidelines suggest.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

You could easily reword you comment to.

> In my experience the average user barely uses email.

Unless you know parent commenter personally I don't think you're competent enough to judge their experience in an online discussion.

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

#235

Post by mda »

3np wrote: post #61
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...

Maybe your app is a rare exception, but apart from chat apps, any use of notifications I’ve seen are undesirable and abused to spam users. Even those that do have a legit use-case still abuse it by pushing non-desirable (from user perspective) messages. I think apart from Gitter I’ve never wanted a notification, as a user.

lichess notifies when it is your turn, quite useful. There are many legitimate uses of this feature especially business environments.

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

#236

Post by tinus_hn »

SahAssar wrote: post #230
tinus_hn wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with browser engines is that they require just-in-time compilation to be fast, and Apple wants all code in an app to be signed and available to inspection. JIT compilation requires a way to add new, unsigned code to the process. That’s a rabbit hole of DLC, plug-ins and vulnerabilities they don’t want to go into.

If that's true then why do they have safari? What's the difference in this regard between safari and other browsers?

They control that the Safari JIT doesn’t enable DLC or plugins because the web view control it runs in can’t be used to implement this.

With regards to vulnerabilities, they are mitigated as much as possible by making sure the JIT runs in separate, unprivileged processes. And anyway it is easier to secure one Javascript engine that is included in OS updates than it is to keep a multitude of engines up to date which came with apps most people don’t even think of as a browser.

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

#237

Post by sbuk »

luckylion wrote: post #211
sbuk wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn’t express an opinion either way. But it’s clear to me that there are some amongst us that believe that a difference of opinion must mean everyone who disagrees must therefore be in a cargo cult. That is what I am taking issue with. It’s also against the guidelines here.

I'm still struggling to find out the non-cult reason for "the feature must be banned from the browser, just being able to disable it for all time with a single click is not enough".

It'll be the same reason as the "cult" of "what I want should be the norm and anyone who disagrees, for whatever reason, must be in a cult"

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

#238

Post by ksec »

onion2k wrote: post #145
ksec wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>to exist in their own little world. Today, the iPhone has 66% market share in the United States, 75% of U.S. App Store revenues, and over 80% of time spent on the mobile internet.

Apple sell phones globally, so really you should be using global statistics to determine what Safari needs to implement.

Are we going to include stats from Africa and India where the target market are not within the current pricing bracket of entry level iPhone?

And even if you do, it is still 25%+, hardly a minority.

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

#239

Post by sbuk »

littlestymaar wrote: post #49
djrogers wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s a very long, thoughtful, and detailed document. Linking to it without any context at all isn’t super helpful. What exactly are you referring to when you claim Apple ‘spies on its [sic] users’? Every bit of data Apple has about me is a) made explicitly clear, b) used for a specific purpose or feature, and c) isn’t sold to or used in any adtech bs. That all sounds good to me…

> c) isn’t sold to or used in any adtech bs What makes you think so? Because the privacy policies you agreed on allows them to (in the the Apple’s Sharing of Personal Data section): >Partners. At times, Apple may partner with third parties to provide services or other offerings. Yes, that's it (there is an “Example” section following, but this is non-binding). Any kind of partner, for any kind of “other offering”. Pa…

The difference, of course, is that if I message someone about an iPhone in messages.app, I'm not inundated with "targeted" ads for phones everywhere I go. Or, if I'm talking to someone about a recipe, my devices don't suddenly start displaying recipes (looking at you, Echo). Anonymized analytics, the type that Apple are informing you about in that document, are fine. Searching the App Store for a productivity app and being shown a single ad for a productivity app at the top of the search results is fine. What you are doing is trying to convince the world that the Emperor is naked, when in fact they merely have their top shirt button undone.

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

#240

Post by TheAdamAndChe »

melq wrote: post #217
onion2k wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The default setting for notifications in Chrome is "Sites can ask to send notifications", but you can set that to false in "Preferences > Privacy and security > Site settings > Notifications" and you'll never see the browser popup again. This is a feature that Chrome has had for about 6 years. The fact you haven't discovered it shows Chrome's UX could be better, but the fact you haven't searched for it might alsp sho…

You don't seem to understand what "I don’t want websites to be able to send notifications to my phone." means.

The point is that you don't represent everybody, yet the browser gives you a choice instead of forcing you to do something.
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