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It's OK for Apple to block Firefox, but wrong when Microsoft does it

blogs.computerworld.com

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Re: It's OK for Apple to block Firefox, but wrong when Microsoft does it

#81

Post by Someone »

ajross wrote: post #46
billpatrianakos wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you're missing here is that Apple bans everyone equally while Microsoft does not. What I mean by that is the App Store doesn't discriminate on an individual basis. Apple is generally consistent in their "unfairness". Looking at what Microsoft is doing, their decision to restrict Firefox immediately struck me as an anti-trust monopoly issue. They're not restricting Firefox on the basis of some policy that applies…

You don't think Apple decided to restrict third party browsers so their browser "can have a leg up?" (Yes, yes, I know the answer will come back "a unified browser is a better user experience". And my response is: why not let the market make that call?) That sounds awfully naive. Apple certainly does protect its turf (c.f. banning Google Voice after approving dozens of VoIP apps) , and to argue otherwise is just sill…

"Yes, yes, I know the answer will come back "a unified browser is a better user experience". And my response is: why not let the market make that call?"

Looking at the continuing success of iOS, so far, the market isn't really shouting out loud that not allowing third party browsers is a good thing.

Also, I think there is a valid technical argument for not allowing multiple competing libraries on a mobile device: memory usage. All else being equal, if I have multiple apps, each using a HTML renderer, I would prefer them to share code, browser cache, etc, just as I would prefer all my applications to share their font rendering code, 3D graphics library, etc.

Someone arguing for inclusion of Firefox on iOS or Windows Should, IMO, put convincing arguments on the table why that "all else being equal" phrase does not hold.

Re: It's OK for Apple to block Firefox, but wrong when Microsoft does it

#82

Post by jack-r-abbit »

Someone wrote: post #81
ajross wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't think Apple decided to restrict third party browsers so their browser "can have a leg up?" (Yes, yes, I know the answer will come back "a unified browser is a better user experience". And my response is: why not let the market make that call?) That sounds awfully naive. Apple certainly does protect its turf (c.f. banning Google Voice after approving dozens of VoIP apps) , and to argue otherwise is just sill…

"Yes, yes, I know the answer will come back "a unified browser is a better user experience". And my response is: why not let the market make that call?" Looking at the continuing success of iOS, so far, the market isn't really shouting out loud that not allowing third party browsers is a good thing. Also, I think there is a valid technical argument for not allowing multiple competing libraries on a mobile device: mem…

> I would prefer

I think that right there is the best argument that can be made for not locking it down so much. You used it twice in your reply. Clearly you value your preference. Why do others not get the same consideration?

Re: It's OK for Apple to block Firefox, but wrong when Microsoft does it

#83

Post by pbz »

Terretta wrote: post #51
wvenable wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple blocks all non-Safari browsers from the store. Opera Mobile doesn't exist in the App store, only Opera Mini which uses a remote server for rendering. Other browsers in the store use iOS webkit and are effectively shells around the Safari rendering engine.

What's wrong with the webkit rendering engine? Chrome started as "effectively a shell" around webkit. As far as most end users are concerned, the difference between browsers is the UI, not the rendering engine. I use iCab on iOS for its UI and amazing feature set (including Adblock and extensions), and apprececiate the choice. In fact, it syncs with Firefox bookmarks. Atomic is also nice. It would be very interesting…

Nobody said there's anything wrong with it, only that you can't use any other engine.

Re: It's OK for Apple to block Firefox, but wrong when Microsoft does it

#84

Post by contextfree »

sp332 wrote: post #10
TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #2

>"The difference here is that Microsoft is using its Windows monopoly power in the OS market to exclude competition in the browser market." Some might see it that way. Personally, I don't think that's Microsoft's goals at all, it's just an unintended consequence of them trying to slowly phase out the Win32 API and Desktop applications, and switch entirely to Metro-style WinRT-based apps.

That would make sense except that they specifically exempt their own browser from the restrictions that will apply to every other browser.

No, it makes sense (not that it's necessarily the main or only reason) - it's much easier to break APIs when the only clients are internal.

Re: It's OK for Apple to block Firefox, but wrong when Microsoft does it

#85

Post by ynniv »

ozten wrote: post #59

(Disclaimers: I work for Mozilla) There is a huge difference between iOS and other platforms. Apple, in legal terms, makes Firefox on iOS impossible. This was not the case with Windows; Microsoft was using covert means to undermine user choice. To make a blanket statement that Mozilla thinks Apple's banning Firefox from iPad and the iPhone is 'not a problem' is wrong and disingenuous. We have active projects around w…

On what grounds is Firefox not allowed in the App Store? Or does the restriction on JIT simply make performance unappealing?

Re: It's OK for Apple to block Firefox, but wrong when Microsoft does it

#86

Post by RandallBrown »

kalleboo wrote: post #75
ozten wrote: post #59

(Disclaimers: I work for Mozilla) There is a huge difference between iOS and other platforms. Apple, in legal terms, makes Firefox on iOS impossible. This was not the case with Windows; Microsoft was using covert means to undermine user choice. To make a blanket statement that Mozilla thinks Apple's banning Firefox from iPad and the iPhone is 'not a problem' is wrong and disingenuous. We have active projects around w…

> To apple's credit, they've provided a web standards based browser to a mobile landscape that didn't have one (at the time) and which spawned many other web standards based browsers like Chrome. As I recall it, Nokia started using WebKit on Symbian before the iPhone came out.

Apple forked KHTML to create WebKit. They kept it open source though and now lots of companies (Nokia, Google, etc.) contribute to it.

Re: It's OK for Apple to block Firefox, but wrong when Microsoft does it

#88

Post by georgemcbay »

cletus wrote: post #25

I wonder how many people throwing opinions around this were "of age" in the early-to-mid 90s and thus remember what an unstoppable behemoth Microsoft was. This was a time when they had 95%+ of the desktop OS share and you basically couldn't run a home computer with Windows. This was the early days of Linux (IIRC in ~1994 I downloaded SLS running Linux 0.99.x onto ~30 floppy drives over a 2400 baud modem!). Macs were…

I was around during the time period you're talking about and in my personal experience, Microsoft had plenty of help in killing Netscape from Netscape itself.

I switched to MSIE3 not because of bundling or FUD but because it was a much better browser.

Microsoft has been a bad actor at times when it comes to business practices, but I think a lot of people overestimate how much that helped them and underestimate how much competitor mistakes helped them. Netscape Navigator post-2.0 was a piece of garbage until Firefox rolled around.

Re: It's OK for Apple to block Firefox, but wrong when Microsoft does it

#90

Post by halostatue »

ynniv wrote: post #85
ozten wrote: post #59

(Disclaimers: I work for Mozilla) There is a huge difference between iOS and other platforms. Apple, in legal terms, makes Firefox on iOS impossible. This was not the case with Windows; Microsoft was using covert means to undermine user choice. To make a blanket statement that Mozilla thinks Apple's banning Firefox from iPad and the iPhone is 'not a problem' is wrong and disingenuous. We have active projects around w…

On what grounds is Firefox not allowed in the App Store? Or does the restriction on JIT simply make performance unappealing?

No downloadable executable content. You can have an alternative programming language interpreter in your program (now), but it can only run scripts that are already in the application bundle.

It's a reasonable restriction from a user's point of view—you don't want to allow arbitrary code execution that may expose vulnerabilities in badly coded applications. It sucks from a developer's point of view.

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