Apple are too sick with lock-in mentality, so of course they'd sabotage any effort if that helps them retaining some grip on the market. The fact that they ban competing browsers on their mobile systems clearly demonstrates the point. And their negative attitude to free codecs is known as well. They are too stuck in their petty hate for interoperability.
Is Apple stifling progress in Web standards?
61–70 of 151 posts
Re: Is Apple stifling progress in Web standards?
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
Apple is singled out because they're the driver behind all of this. Touch Events was born from Apple's initial work to touch-enable Safari on the iPhone. W3C moved to standardize it but Apple declined to be involved in the effort. Then they blocked the WC3 from releasing it as a standard using their patents, which they were unwilling to offer a royalty free grant for users of the spec. Pointer Events was first propos…
> Their stated rationale was that because Apple was unlikely to ever support Pointer Events and Apple is the dominate force in the mobile web; Touch Events would always be required. That's only one of their reasons. https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=162757#c... https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1qRqLKQjOnGgrM-UkMAb2... In particular, see the notes in slide 6. They have several reasons that incl…
From the first link:
Very briefly, pointer events has 3 main drawbacks relative to the alternative:
1) Mobile-first web: Pointer events would likely never supplant touch events on the web (especially without support from Safari). Since touch events are here to stay, supporting another largely redundant input model has a high long-term complexity cost on the web platform.
2) Performance: The hit testing model required by pointer events imposes a non-trivial performance penalty (hit test on every movement event) that neither Android, iOS or touch events has. We're not willing to add any feature that increases the web's performance disadvantage relative to native mobile platforms.
3) Richness: Pointer events requires that scrolling and event handling are mutually exclusive. This precludes some UI effects which are common on on mobile platforms (eg. pull to refresh). Recently strong developer feedback has lead us to change Chrome in the opposite direction here - enabling event handling while scrolling (see issue 293467 ).
Re: Is Apple stifling progress in Web standards?
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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
Re: Is Apple stifling progress in Web standards?
#64This article's title got me thinking that Apple, as a company, could actually be interested in suppressing the advancement of the web. Their apps are a shockingly effective alternative to the internet, and the store becomes more comprehensive by the year.
Even at this point, Apple's apps can replace all but some long-tail usages. So, despite the fact that suppressing the progress of the web will hurt the user experience of its own web browser users, that affects users of all operating systems fairly equally. But in the meantime, Apple can keep improving their OS, the app development process, &c; and they could steadily crowd out the web until iOS becomes the primary (or, if Apple gets it way, the solitary) source of networked information distribution/consumption. And after a while, all of what are currently thought of as web or web 2.0 companies would all be at the mercy of Apple. They would, for all intents and purposes, privatize the web.
Re: Is Apple stifling progress in Web standards?
#65This article's title got me thinking that Apple, as a company, could actually be interested in suppressing the advancement of the web. Their apps are a shockingly effective alternative to the internet, and the store becomes more comprehensive by the year. Even at this point, Apple's apps can replace all but some long-tail usages. So, despite the fact that suppressing the progress of the web will hurt the user experie…
This can't possibly happen because regardless of how big Apple is, it is tiny compared to the Internet and everyone who depends on the open Internet, from Amazon, Facebook, Google, Netflix to whitehouse.gov and data.nasa.gov
Re: Is Apple stifling progress in Web standards?
#66Are 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 i…
That could easily just be a justification for not supporting it that sounds better than "we'd rather not support two separate models for touch/mouse events". Especially if they really would rather not support it but feel that they would have to if Apple did jump on board.
Re: Is Apple stifling progress in Web standards?
#67I saw windows applications come and go. I saw ActiveX come and go. I saw Java applets come and go. I saw Flash come and go.
To me, iOS apps don't feel like a threat. Apple does not even have a monopoly like Microsoft had.
Re: Is Apple stifling progress in Web standards?
#68What is difficult to argue against, and I'm surprised isn't mentioned in this article, is that Apple have completely eliminated market competition from happening around web standards on the iOS platform. It is impossible to ship e.g. Chromium on iOS right now. We just collectively buy the arguments put forward by Apple to support that position without appreciating the ramifications of not allowing market forces to dr…
Why is it impossible? If you want JavaScript support you have to use Apple's JavaScriptCore, but I don't recall any rule that prohibits using a custom web rendering engine paired with JavaScriptCore.
So if anyone wants to build a version of Chromium that uses JavaScriptCore instead of V8, you could presumably ship that.
Re: Is Apple stifling progress in Web standards?
#69This article's title got me thinking that Apple, as a company, could actually be interested in suppressing the advancement of the web. Their apps are a shockingly effective alternative to the internet, and the store becomes more comprehensive by the year. Even at this point, Apple's apps can replace all but some long-tail usages. So, despite the fact that suppressing the progress of the web will hurt the user experie…
This can't possibly happen because regardless of how big Apple is, it is tiny compared to the Internet and everyone who depends on the open Internet, from Amazon, Facebook, Google, Netflix to whitehouse.gov and data.nasa.gov
That's not what I'm saying. Amazon, Facebook, Google and Netflix would be victims of this. People would still use their services, but they'd use their services through the dedicated iOS app, not through a browser. Then Apple will have become a necessary middle man for the consumption of the content that those companies distribute. And who knows what Apple would be able to get away with at that point. Charge Facebook $100mm whenever the push out an updated version of their app? All Amazon purchases must be made with ApplePay? Who knows.
Re: Is Apple stifling progress in Web standards?
#70This article's title got me thinking that Apple, as a company, could actually be interested in suppressing the advancement of the web. Their apps are a shockingly effective alternative to the internet, and the store becomes more comprehensive by the year. Even at this point, Apple's apps can replace all but some long-tail usages. So, despite the fact that suppressing the progress of the web will hurt the user experie…
> apps can replace all but some long-tail usages
Yeah some long-tail usages like everything those 90% of phone and tablet users do that are not on iOS. And 100% of what desktop users do. And 100% of what laptop users do.