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Apple's intentional crippling of Mobile Safari

pwa.gripe

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Re: Apple's intentional crippling of Mobile Safari

#161

Post by shalanah »

troupo wrote: post #106
FormularSumo wrote: post #97

It's a cool page, although somewhat limited in scope. If you want a more complete picture of all the web progress Apple is holding back, not "just" PWA and more advanced capabilities, this is probably a better site for comparison: https://ios404.com It includes dates for when these things were first shipped, explanations for that they do, and what kind of standards (or not) they are.

Note how it doesn't list which of these are Chrome-only non-standard APIs that Firefox doesn't support either. Oh wait. You don't care about small details like that. None of these Chrome shilling websites do.

Hi! Creator here (of iOS404) - you can filter level of standard and compare to FF Android (or compare to Safari Desktop, or any mix) instead if you'd like.

Re: Apple's intentional crippling of Mobile Safari

#162

Post by FormularSumo »

troupo wrote: post #106
FormularSumo wrote: post #97

It's a cool page, although somewhat limited in scope. If you want a more complete picture of all the web progress Apple is holding back, not "just" PWA and more advanced capabilities, this is probably a better site for comparison: https://ios404.com It includes dates for when these things were first shipped, explanations for that they do, and what kind of standards (or not) they are.

Note how it doesn't list which of these are Chrome-only non-standard APIs that Firefox doesn't support either. Oh wait. You don't care about small details like that. None of these Chrome shilling websites do.

Did you try opening the page? Each feature says which spec it's part of (e.g. "W3C Draft", "W3C Candidate") with a link to it. It also shows which browser implemented a feature first. Often it's Chrome, but sometimes it's Firefox, Opera, or even desktop Safari!

Likewise, you can click on the Chrome icon to change comparison browser. Here's a list of features implemented in Firefox on Android but not in Safari on iOS (and therefore, not in Firefox on iOS either):

https://ios404.com/?browsers=andff

Fwiw, I've been a Firefox user for about 9 years. I would love to see Firefox be able to ship their engine on iOS. The main reason Firefox haven't implemented as many features as Chrome is that they lack the resources to. Anti-competitive behaviour has hurt them a lot, and being forced to use a sub-par, undifferentiated browser engine on iOS - the world's most valuable and influential OS, has played a big part in this.

Re: Apple's intentional crippling of Mobile Safari

#163

Post by otterley »

rejhgadellaa wrote: post #130
otterley wrote: post #82

For those of you who believe support for PWAs is critically important: in what way does it impact you? What kind of solution are you providing (or, put another way, what problem are you solving) for customers, and why would a PWA app be better than a native one for them ? (As opposed to, say, convenience for you .)

Businesses tend to relay costs onto their customers (someone has to pay the bills). - The app store tax - The extra work of maintaining at least 2 separate apps (iOS, Android, optionally(?) desktop web app) - Dealing with app store rules Some of these are not just costs. I have experience with native apps that have to make things worse for users (compared to the web app) or risk getting booted off the app store.

What outcomes are worse for users that arise out of you offering native apps?

Re: Apple's intentional crippling of Mobile Safari

#164

Post by rejhgadellaa »

mort96 wrote: post #159
rejhgadellaa wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Mobile safari is arguably the only thing standing between Google and total browser dominance "Apple Is Not Defending Browser Engine Choice" https://infrequently.org/2022/06/apple-is-not-defending-brow...

You seem to be conflating my opinion of "iOS's lack of browser choice has the consequence of preventing Chromium from achieving total dominance" with some imaginary other person's opinion of "iOS's lack of browser choice is a benevolent act where good guy Apple valiantly defends the open web". I do, frankly, think that mobile Safari couldn't compete that well in an open market, just like desktop Firefox can't. (Not p…

> I think Chromium out-competing every other browser engine is a bad thing.

Hmm. I believe that Apple can compete with Google if they want to. They have the money, they have the marketing chops, they have the incentive ($20B search engine deal) and they are the default browser.

(also, they have trained iOS users that Safari is the only default browser on iOS for 14 yrs by not allowing other browsers to be set as the default)

All Apple has to do is actually compete, not just rely on their monopoly.

I mean, keeping one monopoly at bay (Chromium) with the other (WebKit requirement) isn't really how this is supposed to work, right?

Re: Apple's intentional crippling of Mobile Safari

#166

Post by JumpCrisscross »

rayiner wrote: post #64

Google has become the developer-focused company that Microsoft used to be, and I don’t mean that positively. Developers are lazy and want to inflict low-effort crap on users. Microsoft always made it easier to do that. Google is now doing the same thing. Offering developers more and more ways to cobble together box-checking functionality in web apps instead of developing proper native apps.

> Google has become the developer-focused company

They’re the advertiser-focused company. Bluetooth and NFC aren’t being exposed for developers first.

Re: Apple's intentional crippling of Mobile Safari

#167

Post by rejhgadellaa »

nozzlegear wrote: post #158
rejhgadellaa wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The people don't like apps built with web tech Then why do most people spend > 90% of their time in a browser (or web-powered app) on desktop?

Irrelevant, we're talking about mobile here.

How is that irrelevant? Isn't it important to ask the question "why did this thing work on desktop, but not on mobile?"

Re: Apple's intentional crippling of Mobile Safari

#168

Post by mort96 »

rejhgadellaa wrote: post #164
mort96 wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to be conflating my opinion of "iOS's lack of browser choice has the consequence of preventing Chromium from achieving total dominance" with some imaginary other person's opinion of "iOS's lack of browser choice is a benevolent act where good guy Apple valiantly defends the open web". I do, frankly, think that mobile Safari couldn't compete that well in an open market, just like desktop Firefox can't. (Not p…

> I think Chromium out-competing every other browser engine is a bad thing. Hmm. I believe that Apple can compete with Google if they want to. They have the money, they have the marketing chops, they have the incentive ($20B search engine deal) and they are the default browser. (also, they have trained iOS users that Safari is the only default browser on iOS for 14 yrs by not allowing other browsers to be set as the…

> Hmm. I believe that Apple can compete with Google if they want to.

I don't think that would happen. I don't have much faith in Apple's abilities in this area, and their incentives are structured such that the less viable web apps are as a replacement to native apps, the more money they get from their 30% cut.

Again, your arguments would make sense if my opinion was: "good guy Apple valiantly defends the open web from Google out of the goodness of their hearts". But that isn't my argument. I don't care whether Apple could compete with Google if they tried. I care whether Apple would compete with Google, and they wouldn't.

> I mean, keeping one monopoly at bay (Chromium) with the other (WebKit requirement) isn't really how this is supposed to work, right?

WebKit isn't a browser monopoly, it has less than 20% of the browser market share. That 20% share is big enough to push web developers towards making websites work in browsers other than Chromium, but it's not big enough that there's a danger of web developers thinking, "everyone uses WebKit anyway so we won't bother testing on anything else".

Sure, it's a monopoly on iOS, but I don't see how this is relevant to my argument. The web is more important to me than iOS is.

Re: Apple's intentional crippling of Mobile Safari

#169

Post by rejhgadellaa »

genthree wrote: post #160
rejhgadellaa wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The people don't like apps built with web tech Then why do most people spend > 90% of their time in a browser (or web-powered app) on desktop?

No choice.

Funny you would say that. Because businesses and users have only one choice on iOS: native apps, because the web app isn't viable (and/or available) on iOS.

Re: Apple's intentional crippling of Mobile Safari

#170

Post by frizlab »

cyberrock wrote: post #126
nerdjon wrote: post #53

I am curious why Safari in particular is getting a lot of the hate here when firefox supports even less of the features which leads me to believe that the reason many of these features have not been accepted is because they have not been accepted by the larger ecosystem and is just google pushing their own things as standard (Feels like IE days in many ways). That being said, I am not sure why I would actually want m…

Some of Mozilla's positions are based on Apple's, such as the refusal to implement Web NFC [0]. Since Webkit has been the only engine allowed on iOS, ultimately this is a disagreement on app distribution. I can see Apple and Mozilla's argument regarding Web NFC, but I also don't want to write a whole app so my friends and I can play around with NFC tags. I find it irresistible to draw comparisons to the new Android s…

And chrome still does not support plugins on android, to my great surprise, while Safari has them on iOS. I honestly much rather have plugins than web nfc, or whatever the chrome bully decide should go in a browser.
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