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Apple is top funder of lobby group that says it represents small developers

arstechnica.com

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Re: Apple is top funder of lobby group that says it represents small developers

#191

Post by modeless »

fingerlocks wrote: post #189
modeless wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LOL you think it would be easy to just recompile Blink/V8 for iOS and get a browser you could actually use day-to-day? How many web browsers have you worked on? I have done several years of work on both Chromium and WebKit and I'm here to tell you that an iOS port of Blink and V8 good enough to actually use as a replacement for WebKit on iOS is going to require a huge coordinated effort of a large number of engineers…

Well fortunately the JIT-less work has been done already. One entitlement and a compiler flag away from being done! https://v8.dev/docs/cross-compile-ios

... except even just in that page there's at least one important feature listed as not supported on iOS (pointer compression) and I'm willing to bet that there are many other issues you'd need to fix before you could call a fully functional V8 iOS JIT port "done". And V8 is only one of dozens of components in the whole browser engine. You are vastly underestimating the complexity of these projects.

Re: Apple is top funder of lobby group that says it represents small developers

#192

Post by fingerlocks »

modeless wrote: post #191
fingerlocks wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well fortunately the JIT-less work has been done already. One entitlement and a compiler flag away from being done! https://v8.dev/docs/cross-compile-ios

... except even just in that page there's at least one important feature listed as not supported on iOS (pointer compression) and I'm willing to bet that there are many other issues you'd need to fix before you could call a fully functional V8 iOS JIT port "done". And V8 is only one of dozens of components in the whole browser engine. You are vastly underestimating the complexity of these projects.

Are you sure my first link I originally posted wasn’t a full rendering engine? I know I had read it was included a few years ago. Looks like a custom renderer to me:

https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src.git/+/refs/he...

Re: Apple is top funder of lobby group that says it represents small developers

#193

Post by smoldesu »

bruce511 wrote: post #151
cowtools wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In the current model, the barrier to entry is pretty low. $99 gets you xcode, plus you need done hardware. Hundreds of dollars in apple hardware and software compared to zero dollars for MSVC community, zero dollars for android developer studio, zero dollars for linux toolchain or whatever. >Once you've made something you need to reach a market. A good market place (like a regular super market) brings together supp…

>>What do you want them to do, throw their hands in the air and say "welp, them's the rules, I guess we can should never try to use our leverage or negotiate better rules cause that's just how it is I guess." They can choose not to play. If Apple is not offering any value for their 30% then simply don't publish on IOS. If all the developers stop developing for IOS then the rules would change. Of course small develope…

> Which is likely to fail,because Apple is better at govt than they are.

Oh my sweet summer child.

Re: Apple is top funder of lobby group that says it represents small developers

#194

Post by smoldesu »

natch wrote: post #171
jasonm23 wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But its your choice to join their game, or not. There's no bait-and-switch here. You are saying flagrantly anti-competition without saying it directly. Android platform has multiple sources of apps, and side-loading. Ruthless exploitation of a market has never been tolerated for long.

But from what I hear of it Android is a mess, rife with malware, and a blatant rip-off of the success of iPhone and iOS. The sideloading support while convenient also opens up opportunities for abusive apps like spyware that unethical people use to track their household members without permission. I would not hold any of that up as a model.

Have you actually used it? Android with free software stores like F-Droid is pretty comfy. It's community-curated, so none of the garbage asset-flips that Apple loves to greenlight makes it onto the platform. It's also entirely transparent with regards to who gets removed, and doesn't allow you to use harmful proprietary software that infringes your personal liberty as a user. There are no ads when you search for things, and malware is removed when the community spots it, rather than when Apple decides to remove it.

Remind me of how Apple is doing a better job here, again?

Re: Apple is top funder of lobby group that says it represents small developers

#195

Post by smoldesu »

natch wrote: post #173
realusername wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't want to use xcode either, their tooling is terrible and the only reason I use it is because of Apple intentionally obfuscating their build and release process. That's strange people think as it's providing some kind of "value" which needs to be paid, in reality it's the opposite, it's a problematic byproduct of the monopoly which I would get rid of given the choice.

Just compile with command line tools and use any editor you want. The xcodebuild command line tool, which is distinct from Xcode lest there’s any confusion, is pretty well documented. Under the hood it uses clang, which was developed with Apple support and which I guess has some value…

> which was developed with Apple support and which I guess has some value…

Clang was a community project, same as LLVM. Apple came along and threw money at it because of FOMO (very similar to CUPS) and eventually a XNU toolchain followed. Apple didn't really provide any value beyond support that already existed for FOSS operating systems.

Re: Apple is top funder of lobby group that says it represents small developers

#196

Post by modeless »

fingerlocks wrote: post #192
modeless wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... except even just in that page there's at least one important feature listed as not supported on iOS (pointer compression) and I'm willing to bet that there are many other issues you'd need to fix before you could call a fully functional V8 iOS JIT port "done". And V8 is only one of dozens of components in the whole browser engine. You are vastly underestimating the complexity of these projects.

Are you sure my first link I originally posted wasn’t a full rendering engine? I know I had read it was included a few years ago. Looks like a custom renderer to me: https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src.git/+/refs/he...

I am absolutely certain. Chromium on iOS wraps WebKit and adds some features mentioned in the comments in that file, such as translation. But it's still just a wrapper and the rendering engine is still WebKit, not Blink. If you don't believe me, here is the implementation of CWVWebView where it creates the underlying WKWebView: https://source.chromium.org/chromium/chromium/src/+/main:ios...

Re: Apple is top funder of lobby group that says it represents small developers

#197

Post by smoldesu »

Apocryphon wrote: post #48
musicale wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nice idea, thought it would presumably shift the dispute over platform fees to a dispute over "Apple botanical society dues."

That is true. I wonder what the payment structure is for Apple Authorized Service Providers or Apple Authorized Resellers. The economics definitely change when it comes to software. Consider a hypothetical iOS version of F-Droid: if such a third party store doesn't charge developers to host their apps, what kind of dues do they owe upstream? Apple would still claim that F-iOS is benefiting from the app distribution A…

> if such a third party store doesn't charge developers to host their apps, what kind of dues do they owe upstream?

In an ideal world? Nothing. Apple builds these APIs because they want people to use them, not because they expect a return on their investment. We established that precedent when Google litigated Oracle so many years back.

Of course, Apple will claim they need whatever they can get. Their lack of candid conversation with the community is exactly why we need to respond by taking away their taxman hat.

Re: Apple is top funder of lobby group that says it represents small developers

#198

Post by natch »

smoldesu wrote: post #195
natch wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just compile with command line tools and use any editor you want. The xcodebuild command line tool, which is distinct from Xcode lest there’s any confusion, is pretty well documented. Under the hood it uses clang, which was developed with Apple support and which I guess has some value…

> which was developed with Apple support and which I guess has some value… Clang was a community project, same as LLVM. Apple came along and threw money at it because of FOMO (very similar to CUPS) and eventually a XNU toolchain followed. Apple didn't really provide any value beyond support that already existed for FOSS operating systems.

In name it was a community project. Chris Lattner was an Apple employee and it was his job. After which he also started Swift…

Re: Apple is top funder of lobby group that says it represents small developers

#199

Post by EMIRELADERO »

Dracophoenix wrote: post #165
EMIRELADERO wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Of course, trying to regulate crypto will bring everyone against (individual) privacy and freedom out in opposition, and forcing companies to not tie functionality to their private keys / force them to make public those keys would also make you an enemy of the "security" industry. This seems easy to solve. Just mandate that the end-user/purchaser of the hardware should have the same level of control over the code e…

>Just mandate that the end-user/purchaser of the hardware should have the same level of control over the code execution as the manufacturer does after the sale. Whatever the manufacturer can do to your own unit after it's in your posession, you should be able to do as well. I don't see how this changes much except to mandate Apple or any other hardware manufacturer to leave privilege escalation bugs in their software…

You're looking at it the wrong way.

The point of the regulation would be to force manufacturers to officially give users the same level of code execution that they have over the sold devices as themselves.

If Apple, via software updates, can control what software runs on the iPhone of the user, then the user should also have that control, to install whatever OS/bootloader they desire, the same way as Apple can.

Re: Apple is top funder of lobby group that says it represents small developers

#200

Post by Dracophoenix »

EMIRELADERO wrote: post #199
Dracophoenix wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Just mandate that the end-user/purchaser of the hardware should have the same level of control over the code execution as the manufacturer does after the sale. Whatever the manufacturer can do to your own unit after it's in your posession, you should be able to do as well. I don't see how this changes much except to mandate Apple or any other hardware manufacturer to leave privilege escalation bugs in their software…

You're looking at it the wrong way. The point of the regulation would be to force manufacturers to officially give users the same level of code execution that they have over the sold devices as themselves. If Apple, via software updates, can control what software runs on the iPhone of the user, then the user should also have that control, to install whatever OS/bootloader they desire, the same way as Apple can.

You're shifting goalposts. You were arguing for the same level of code execution after sale of the device, not at point of compilation. By the time every iPhone leaves the factories in China and India, they're already locked down. The consumer only has as much ability to execute code as any bugs allow in the initial OS release.

Also, Apple doesn't have the ability to install any OS/bootloader as the hardware is specifically tailored to one OS. Even if you had an Apple-sanctioned root mode, it's likely the hardware won't run AOSP images or android compatible bootloader as it's only guaranteed to work with iOS. The same can be said of game consoles.

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