Safari is released to the world • Hacker News Board

Re: Safari is released to the world

#121

Post by ricardobeat » Sat, Jan 12, 2013, 4:31 AM UTC

michael_miller wrote: post #42

Don, a great blog post! It's really fascinating to hear about what goes on between the inception of a project and its release at an Apple keynote. I would be interested in hearing more about the technical side of WebKit. How does it work at a high level? How are touch events handled? What fancy things are done (within your NDA restrictions) to make scrolling so fast on the iPhone? It would be really awesome if you wr…

webkit.org has many posts detailing bits of the implementation. Here's a series on rendering: https://www.webkit.org/blog/114/webcore-rendering-i-the-basi...

Re: Safari is released to the world

#122

Post by podperson » Sat, Jan 12, 2013, 4:42 AM UTC

ConstantineXVI wrote: post #84

podperson wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You notably left out Adobe who use it for Adobe AIR.

Adobe is more or less neutral, though (they just want you to buy their tools). Apple, Nokia, RIM, Samsung, etc. all would very much like the others to cease existing; yet they're all contributing to a project that keeps each other on a level playing field (in the context of HTML/JS engines, anyway).

I think the point is that Apple didn't treat Safari/Webkit as being a competitive advantage so much as nullifying a competitive disadvantage -- it was a defensive play, not an offensive play. (A nice analogy is Android, which Google developed out of fear they would miss out on the mobile market rather than out of any desire to "own" the mobile market. Google didn't want Apple or anyone else to own its destiny, just as Apple didn't want Microsoft to own its destiny.)

Re: Safari is released to the world

#123

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Jan 12, 2013, 4:57 AM UTC

bennytjia wrote: post #119

mikeash wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't actually address either of my questions.

so please tell me how safari is important?

[deleted]

Re: Safari is released to the world

#124

Post by micampe » Sat, Jan 12, 2013, 4:57 AM UTC

bennytjia wrote: post #119

mikeash wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't actually address either of my questions.

so please tell me how safari is important?

Not Safari. WebKit.

Re: Safari is released to the world

#125

Post by bulletmagnet » Sat, Jan 12, 2013, 5:13 AM UTC

It is ironic that the only Apple product we're getting an overdose of play-by-play insider information about development and launch is the one people care the least about: Safari.

Re: Safari is released to the world

#126

Post by sbuk » Sat, Jan 12, 2013, 7:57 AM UTC

bulletmagnet wrote: post #125

It is ironic that the only Apple product we're getting an overdose of play-by-play insider information about development and launch is the one people care the least about: Safari.

As pointed out earlier in the thread, the significance is not Safari but WebKit, which is now used by the majority of the software that is used to view web content. The reason WebKit was originally developed is Safari.

Re: Safari is released to the world

#127

Post by mrich » Sat, Jan 12, 2013, 11:52 AM UTC

diminish wrote: post #18

donmelton wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surprise, I would hope. :) And lack of recognition, I suppose.

Don, i am trying to understand why you (not you in person but Apple) went the open source route for safari but not for itunes etc. Can it be that, at that moment when you made the decision, web sites 'made for internet explorer', were too many. And you wanted the rendering engine on Mac to be widespread by getting from and giving to an open source project.

Apart from the legal reasons that may have forced them to do so, they also got other people contributing to the codebase and fixing bugs. Other companies can also use the component, which is a great thing for a rendering engine - it will get more popular and websites will have to test and optimize for it.

Regarding iTunes, Apple wouldn't want anyone to release a competing program. You could probably outsource some common libraries/components, not sure if this is done. But anything specific will not be used or improved upon by others anyway, so there would be no benefit in opensourcing it.