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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

#221

Post by eipi10_hn »

JimDabell wrote: post #120
leptons wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which browser engine are you getting on iOS when you install Firefox? If you answered Firefox, you are WRONG. You get Safari , because Apple forces all browsers on iOS to use their own crippled browser engine. Apple also is part of the W3C board that gets to decide which APIs get to become standards, so they also influence what other browser makers do. This would be a non-issue if Apple didn't force all browsers on i…

No, you get Firefox. There is much more to a web browser than just its rendering engine. When you install Firefox on iOS, you get Firefox. It uses the WebKit rendering engine, but it’s still the Firefox browser. To be frank, it’s pretty insulting and dismissive to all the people putting huge amounts of work into building browsers only to for you go around telling people that all their work is really just a mirage.

You didn't answer his question at all.

> Which browser engine?

There's no Firefox engine, there's Gecko engine. That's the core of Firefox' extension APIs.

Now, tell me how do you implement `webRequest.filterResponseData()` API for content blocker extension with WebKit: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Add-ons/Web...

Re: Apple's intentional crippling of Mobile Safari

#222

Post by leptons »

raw_anon_1111 wrote: post #216
leptons wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Even so, conflating "Safari is holding the web platform back by not implementing standardized web features" with "Safari is holding the Google platform back by not implementing non-standard Google features" is kind of disingenuous. You missed the point completely. Apple >forbids any browser engine on iOS other than their own Safari. So you can't just install Chrome on iOS, because when you do you get Safari instead.…

Guess what? You not having the resources to have anything but a shitty PWA is not my problem. Do you really think that you are going to get any level of monetization by forcing users to first download a hypothetical web browser that has all of the features you want? That web browser doesn’t exist on any mobile platform

You have no idea what my web application is, or whether it is shitty or not. So thanks for the troll - it reminds of my days on reddit, but now this pointless internet interaction is over.

Re: Apple's intentional crippling of Mobile Safari

#223

Post by cosmic_cheese »

godelski wrote: post #201
archerx wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You clearly haven’t tried to design anything complicated that has to run on safari iOS. Safari iOS is a massive piece of shit. I’ve been working on a web game for a while now using canvas and most of my pain comes from making it compatible with safari. So much stuff is broken on safari so you have to find work arounds. Like a simple but annoying one, CSS filters don’t work on canvas so you have to write all those fil…

As a non-web developer I'm interested if anyone can answer this question: If you're designing for browser, how hard is it to make it work on browser? Answering with at least {Chromium,Safari,Firefox} Because if it's hard when targeting Chromium and adapting to {Safari,Firefox} but easy when targeting Safari and adapting to {Chromium,Firefox} then honestly it seems like Chromium is the problem. What I want to distingu…

> Because if it's hard when targeting Chromium and adapting to {Safari,Firefox} but easy when targeting Safari and adapting to {Chromium,Firefox} then honestly it seems like Chromium is the problem.

Exactly. Test and develop against Firefox and/or Safari first and Chrome afterwards. If it’s not a true web standard and isn’t widely implemented, don’t use it.

The web worked fine for decades without smart fridge integration or whatever weird thing Google has decided that browsers must be capable of most recently.

Re: Apple's intentional crippling of Mobile Safari

#224

Post by cosmic_cheese »

frizlab wrote: post #170
cyberrock wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Google’s choice to exclude extension support on Android can’t be a coincidence. Great example of conflict of interest with a web ad giant running a web browser.

Re: Apple's intentional crippling of Mobile Safari

#225

Post by cosmic_cheese »

rejhgadellaa wrote: post #86
chuckadams wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The third column is your current browser and platform, and for me it's showing Firefox on macOS missing a lot of features. When I switch over to Brave, I see Chrome on macOS. Interestingly, Chrome on macOS apparently supports vibration, despite the hardware for it being nonexistent.

But on macOS you can switch to a browser that can do all these things. A company could ask you to use a different browser (not ideal, but if the web app requires a specific API, it's not an unreasonable). Safari is in a very special position because it controls what the web can do on iOS (all browsers on iOS have to use Apple's WebKit engine, they can't add web features). Apple is not just gatekeeping native (through…

If you ask me to run a different browser, if at all possible I’m going to use a more reasonable competitor instead. I’m not about to return to the bad old days of sites badgering me to install IE because the dev thought it was a great idea to use ActiveX or whatever.

Re: Apple's intentional crippling of Mobile Safari

#226

Post by mort96 »

leptons wrote: post #220
mort96 wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're shadow boxing. I never said Apple isn't engaging in abusive business tactics. They clearly are. I just think the result benefits the open web by taking power away from Google.

And I pointed out that they don't help the open web, they stifle innovation of the web by abusing their power for profit. Which I think is far worse than anything you think Google is trying to do. I'm not giving Google a free pass here, sure they can be abusive, I hated "AMP" and I'm glad it got thrown on the junk pile. That was clearly abusive. But implementing Web Bluetooth? Not abusive, it's progress. And it's too…

I can't say anything other than "I disagree"; I think it does help the open web. You already admitted that you in your day job has been forced to make your site work in non-Chromium browsers thanks to Apple's authoritarian stance. That's a purely good outcome in my book, as much as I dislike the lack of user freedom that's behind it.

Re: Apple's intentional crippling of Mobile Safari

#227

Post by raw_anon_1111 »

leptons wrote: post #222
raw_anon_1111 wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Guess what? You not having the resources to have anything but a shitty PWA is not my problem. Do you really think that you are going to get any level of monetization by forcing users to first download a hypothetical web browser that has all of the features you want? That web browser doesn’t exist on any mobile platform

You have no idea what my web application is, or whether it is shitty or not. So thanks for the troll - it reminds of my days on reddit, but now this pointless internet interaction is over .

A web app has never in history been as performant as a native app.

Re: Apple's intentional crippling of Mobile Safari

#228

Post by cyberrock »

frizlab wrote: post #170
cyberrock wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It doesn't have to be an either/or situation and I certainly want both in my mobile browser!

Ad hominem is also not a valid argument against NFC. One of my friends built a whole automatic mahjong table with NFC tags. NFC apps are used in access control for offices, college dorms, apartment complexes. Businesses have obvious use cases for it, from inventory management to payments. Governments want to use NFC for government functions and visitor prearrival processing. Sure, maybe some of them want you to install apps for other reasons, but I can assure you not all of them do, so it's a shame that this function is so exclusive.

I think western users using NFC for payment, transit, gym access, etc. are not aware how apathetic the rest of the world would be if phones start taking out NFC, and one of the ultimate causes is that it's so difficult to work with across all users. It's just so much easier to make a website that shows a QR code that your PoS system or gym access gate can scan. Bottom of the barrel Android phones in India and China already ditched it and that's just going to exacerbate the issue. If it goes the way of the 3.5mm and microSD card in the next decade, we can put this in its autopsy report.

Re: Apple's intentional crippling of Mobile Safari

#229

Post by Klonoar »

pilif wrote: post #61
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…

Firefox is not in a position where it is the only browser allowed to run on a platform. On iOS, you’re either doing a native app, sharing 30% of your income with Apple, or you’re restricted to Safari’s feature set. No browser in iOS can use anything but WebKit

A significant amount of apps can get the 10% rule rather than 30%.

It doesn’t necessarily change the point in the end but it is worth noting.

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