Safari is the new IE • Hacker News Board

Re: Safari is the new IE

#61

Post by vdaniuk » Tue, Jun 30, 2015, 1:54 PM UTC

Tloewald wrote: post #45

criswell wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely agreed. They want the web to lose.

Absolutely disagree. Apple wants to make the best experience for users because then they'll keep buying Apple products. If users want the web, then they make the browser better. If Apps are more appropriate, then they make apps better. Apple prioritizes stuff users care about -- battery life > IndexedDB, accessibility > WebGL. Until you understand this and stop thinking like a conspiracy theorist, you won't understan…

Apple wants to make the best experience for users while maintaining vendor lock-in.

iOS users invest hundreds of dollars in apps and games and enjoy exclusive products. This creates a very significant barrier to switch to another mobile platform.

Quite obviously increased switching costs for users are important for iOS to maintain leadership in platform wars.

Therefore, rapid advancement of web apps user experience to the level of native apps in some categories would be detrimental to Apple's competitive positions.

Making web lose -> stronger competitive advantage.

Re: Safari is the new IE

#62

Post by jfoster » Tue, Jun 30, 2015, 1:55 PM UTC

NietTim wrote: post #38

Nolan, I'm not familiar with what you do or have done, but have you ever tried to make a website back in the day? Ever tried to support IE6? 7? 8? IE literally broke the web. CSS rules which worked in every browser ever wouldn't work in IE. Entire webpages weren't formatting correctly, having to spend hours, days, on workarounds. Comparing Safari to IE is just wrong. Safari doesn't break the web, it 'just' lacks supp…

If it lacks very basic functionality, isn't the effect the same as breaking the web?

I think one unfortunate aspect of the article is that it focuses on some of the less common deficiencies of Safari. I would have called out mobile Safari being unable to download files, or Apple's insistence against video codecs that all other vendors are aligned in agreement on when it comes to video.

Re: Safari is the new IE

#63

Post by leephillips » Tue, Jun 30, 2015, 1:56 PM UTC

dmd wrote: post #53

exelius wrote: post #34

Disagree with this assessment. IE was so bad because Microsoft tried to go off and create its own standards that were incompatible with Mozilla / Firefox / etc. (I'm thinking of IE6 specifically). And this was big, core functionality like page layout and CSS; not some data structures that can be implemented in other ways (albeit with a performance hit). This was doubly bad because "enterprise" companies (SAP, SAS, Or…

> significantly less power This is the big issue for most people, I think. I would love to use Chrome, but when I do, (a) thighs burn to a crisp if my machine is on my lap directly and (b) the battery depletes, literally, 1.5x as fast.

I've noticed this using Chrome on Ubuntu. Is Firefox the best alternative, (is it significantly more efficient?) or can you suggest something else?

Re: Safari is the new IE

#64

Post by chii » Tue, Jun 30, 2015, 1:57 PM UTC

dmd wrote: post #53

exelius wrote: post #34

Disagree with this assessment. IE was so bad because Microsoft tried to go off and create its own standards that were incompatible with Mozilla / Firefox / etc. (I'm thinking of IE6 specifically). And this was big, core functionality like page layout and CSS; not some data structures that can be implemented in other ways (albeit with a performance hit). This was doubly bad because "enterprise" companies (SAP, SAS, Or…

> significantly less power This is the big issue for most people, I think. I would love to use Chrome, but when I do, (a) thighs burn to a crisp if my machine is on my lap directly and (b) the battery depletes, literally, 1.5x as fast.

why is that? does safari use some undocumented api, or that chrome sucks up more computing power in the name of rendering speed/responsiveness?

Re: Safari is the new IE

#65

Post by binarymax » Tue, Jun 30, 2015, 1:57 PM UTC

Hey Nolan, It was good to "meet" you at edgeconf (really we were just throwing the mic back and forth, and I couldnt make it to the afterparty). I really enjoyed your panel intro and insight.

I agree with your assessment that IndexedDB is laughably bad in Safari, but maybe they haven't bothered because its really not such a great solution in general? I'm going to reassert that I think we could do much better - since IndexedDB is too low-level for what it is, but too specific for alternate solutions. I've been kicking around a blog post that I haven't got out yet - but we really need something more stream like and generic than a NoSQL index in the browser - especially something fundamental to address the future influx of WebAssembly apps. Cheers!

Re: Safari is the new IE

#66

Post by fpgeek » Tue, Jun 30, 2015, 1:57 PM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #46

superiortoyou wrote: post #7

If Safari became a little too good, people might stop buying or developing apps.

Which has been stated again and again, but was never an issue with Apple. First because what they make from the App Store is spare change for them. Second because they did have the best browser for a while, and did very much to advance the state of the art (from WebSQL, to Canvas, CSS 3D and other stuff, all originating there, along with the original fast-JITed JS engine who started the JS-race to what we have know).…

It's not about the money from the app store, it's about the lock-in from apps, which is far more valuable.

Re: Safari is the new IE

#67

Post by biturd » Tue, Jun 30, 2015, 1:58 PM UTC

What if gmail or another large service implemented a reliance on these new features. Safari would be forced to add them in?

Re: Safari is the new IE

#68

Post by jfim » Tue, Jun 30, 2015, 1:58 PM UTC

superiortoyou wrote: post #7

If Safari became a little too good, people might stop buying or developing apps.

It's not as if it's the first time Apple does it either. They positioned OS X as the best platform to run Java, yet ditched it a couple of years later. Even back then, people were complaining about it [0].

Developing on Mac has always been a chore (at least back in the XCode 1.1 and 2.0 days), with poorly documented APIs and APIs that are just flat out broken (OpenGL comes to mind, and is still broken to this day apparently).

Our running joke back then was that "Macs are very user friendly, except developers don't count as users." Still true to this day apparently.

[0] http://www.artima.com/weblogs/viewpost.jsp?thread=13058

Re: Safari is the new IE

#69

Post by exelius » Tue, Jun 30, 2015, 1:59 PM UTC

VieElm wrote: post #54

exelius wrote: post #34

Disagree with this assessment. IE was so bad because Microsoft tried to go off and create its own standards that were incompatible with Mozilla / Firefox / etc. (I'm thinking of IE6 specifically). And this was big, core functionality like page layout and CSS; not some data structures that can be implemented in other ways (albeit with a performance hit). This was doubly bad because "enterprise" companies (SAP, SAS, Or…

Nothing you've said here really addresses the problem discussed and really you're looking at this from the perspective of the consumer and not the developer. > Safari is nowhere near that bad [as IE was in the past] Doesn't address the problems developers are having. > I have yet to run across a page that works in Chrome that doesn't work in Safari. Try any webpage that uses WebRTC, and there's a growing number of th…

> Nothing you've said here really addresses the problem discussed and really you're looking at this from the perspective of the consumer and not the developer.

That's entirely the point: developers and users have different needs. But the developers will follow the users to whatever browser the users feel is best. Apple's priorities are on improving battery life, page responsiveness, etc. If users value Apple's browser development model that prioritizes user-facing features over developer features, then the developers will simply follow the users. If you want to build a product around features that a major browser doesn't support, go ahead.

To use the dreaded car analogy, you don't build a car to be easy to work on just to make the mechanics happy. You build a car that consumers want to buy, and it's the mechanic's job to figure out how to work on it.

Re: Safari is the new IE

#70

Post by jccalhoun » Tue, Jun 30, 2015, 2:00 PM UTC

"There was one company not in attendance, though, and they served as the proverbial elephant in the room that no one wanted to discuss. I heard them referred to cagily as “a company in California” or “a certain fruit company.” Their glowing logo illuminated nearly every laptop in the room, and yet it seemed like nobody dared speak their name. "

Why wouldn't people just say "Apple?" Is this hyperbole or is there some reason why people are afraid to directly criticize apple at a conference that apple isn't even at?