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Is Apple stifling progress in Web standards?

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Re: Is Apple stifling progress in Web standards?

#21

Post by pcx »

matthewmacleod wrote: post #9

The answer is a gritty, in-your-face "no". We have a recurring situation where all vendors (save for Apple) show interest in standard, but because Apple does not express that same interest, the standard gets waylaid. That is literally not true – Google, by some metrics the biggest vendor, has also shown no interest in PE. Frankly, I don't see that much of a problem with Webkit and its' adherence to standards. Broadly…

> If we had Apple on board with PE, we’d still be on board too.

You entirely missed this quote in the article. How do you explain that?

Re: Is Apple stifling progress in Web standards?

#22

Post by dragonwriter »

TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #2

Are they really? Other browser vendors also refuse to implement things sometimes. IE has taken its sweet time on certain technologies, entirely deliberately. Google have tried to force standards with their marketshare. Pointer Events is an odd case. It's a Microsoft-backed spec that only Microsoft supports. Apple won't implement it, Google won't, Mozilla's implementation is unfinished. Touch Events is also weird: onl…

> Pointer Events is an odd case. It's a Microsoft-backed spec that only Microsoft supports. Apple won't implement it, Google won't, Mozilla's implementation is unfinished.

Google, per the Chrome rep quoted in the article, prefers PE from a technical perspective, and only doesn't support it because it won't be universal because of Apple's resistance.

Unfinished means WIP, it doesn't mean that Mozilla doesn't support it the way Apple doesn't. Apple is the only barrier to adoption here.

Re: Is Apple stifling progress in Web standards?

#23

Post by captainmuon »

dlib wrote: post #4

Playing the devil's advocate but isn't Apple hindering web standards a strategy to keep people using the apps from the AppStore. On mobile, where the iOS market share is huge and it's impossible to use any other rendering engine it would be hugely beneficial to stifle progress as native apps and thus the lock-in they provide, will keep the upper hand.

If I look at what features are provided and what are not in HTML5 (especially on iOS), I also get the impression that some features are "conveniently" missing, with the consequence that certain things can only be written as native apps.

Notably: - Network access. You can't write a BitTorrent or IMAP client in HTML. You could have with Java or Flash, but those have been axed (Apple was a major contributor to that). Of course there were good technical and security reasons for that, but it is a "convenient" side effect. - Last time I checked at least, touch input and rendering (WebGL/Canvas) was inferior to native.

Now, I'm not convinced there is a concious decision to keep HTML apps limited, but I do believe it plays a role when it comes to Apple supporting certain features and disallowing others.

Re: Is Apple stifling progress in Web standards?

#25

Post by tkubacki »

Apple is not going to support Web Components (Shadow DOM) as well.

FF is working on it and even MS has "under consideration" status.

Even if there were some issues with driving Shadow DOM standardization by Google I suspect that not supporting it by Apple is more defending iOS walled garden than real tech issues with specs.

Re: Is Apple stifling progress in Web standards?

#26

Post by mbel »

pcx wrote: post #21
matthewmacleod wrote: post #9

The answer is a gritty, in-your-face "no". We have a recurring situation where all vendors (save for Apple) show interest in standard, but because Apple does not express that same interest, the standard gets waylaid. That is literally not true – Google, by some metrics the biggest vendor, has also shown no interest in PE. Frankly, I don't see that much of a problem with Webkit and its' adherence to standards. Broadly…

> If we had Apple on board with PE, we’d still be on board too. You entirely missed this quote in the article. How do you explain that?

It seems worth noticing that this is more political than technological argument. Google choose not to implement Pointer Events and used Apple as a scapegoat.

I'm not happy with Apple's decision, but I'm even less happy with Google using Apple as some kind of feature implementation oracle.

Re: Is Apple stifling progress in Web standards?

#27

Post by mkozlows »

People are getting really bogged down in specific standards, but you don't need to talk about pointer events or flexbox or indexeddb or whatever, you can look at this at a macro level.

Here's the ES6 support table: http://kangax.github.io/compat-table/es6/

Safari and IE were laggards, but future IE is going to be very solid while future Safari is still going to be terrible.

Here's the HTML5 support table: https://html5test.com/results/desktop.html

Safari and IE are laggards, and both continue to lag.

Safari used to be a Chrome/Firefox-level "modern" browser, while IE was the consistent laggard, with its slow release cycles and bad standards support. The most optimistic thing you can say about Safari now is that it's on IE's level; and realistically, it's even worse than IE -- certainly the IE team is a lot more transparent about future plans than the Safari team is.

Re: Is Apple stifling progress in Web standards?

#28

Post by atacrawl »

How is this from Google...

"If we had Apple on board with PE, we’d still be on board too."

... anything else but a lame excuse? It's deeply unfortunate that Apple won't budge on this because I think PE is a step in the right direction, but Google using Apple as a crutch is just as ridiculous.

Re: Is Apple stifling progress in Web standards?

#29

Post by omeid2 »

taf2 wrote: post #16

I can't help but wish this was about WebRTC instead of pointer events. I can see so many applications using WebRTC but not so many using pointer events... Still I loath Safari, for locking so many features out of the mobile web.

They have conflicting interest with a better web: Apple Store.

Re: Is Apple stifling progress in Web standards?

#30

Post by lordbusiness »

kevincennis wrote: post #11
antimagic wrote: post #5

"Apple has shown no interest" Um, that's an assertion, without which the rest of the piece makes no sense. I would have expected a little evidence to back the assertion up, or are we all supposed to get our pitchforks out on Tim's say-so? That being said, let's assume that Tim is actually right, and that Apple are being capricious and trying to hold back the Web, because they can. Apple are within their rights to dec…

> Um, that's an assertion, without which the rest of the piece makes no sense. I would have expected a little evidence to back the assertion up... How, exactly, would you expect the OP to present evidence of Apple not showing interest? What would that "evidence" look like? I can't provide evidence that my golden retriever doesn't have an advanced understanding of quantum mechanics, but I don't think that would get hi…

The parent makes a solid point, and you're employing this logical fallacy, which is why I am down voting you.:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_ridicule

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