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Safari is the new IE

nolanlawson.com

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Re: Safari is the new IE

#321

Post by lambdasquirrel »

Okay, I'm getting on this a little late, but this is where I have to say, Hacker News, you are full of shit. Every time someone comes up with an anti-Apple title, it gets several hundred points. I'm seeing 600+ right now. And the evidence does not corroborate the claim.

In the beginning of the article, the author points out this set of techs as stuff that Apple does not support: {Service Worker, Web Components, Shadow DOM, Web Manifests}.

Well, you can go to caniuse.com, and see that for all of those (except Web Manifests, which doesn't show up), they are only well-supported by Chrome and Opera. Firefox usually has it disabled by default, and it's noticeably absent from IE.

I think the real issue here is something we might all find a little uncomfortable, and it's that the web isn't as important as it used to be, and Google is the only company really pushing it as a platform. Certainly, Microsoft may be repentant, but Microsoft either doesn't care to catch up, or they think it's not going to help them even the ground against Apple. And that doesn't deserve the title or the comments we're seeing here.

Re: Safari is the new IE

#322

Post by demarq »

lambdasquirrel wrote: post #321

Okay, I'm getting on this a little late, but this is where I have to say, Hacker News, you are full of shit. Every time someone comes up with an anti-Apple title, it gets several hundred points. I'm seeing 600+ right now. And the evidence does not corroborate the claim. In the beginning of the article, the author points out this set of techs as stuff that Apple does not support: {Service Worker, Web Components, Shado…

> web isn't as important as it used to be

How on earth did you come to this conclusion?

Re: Safari is the new IE

#323

Post by TazeTSchnitzel »

Amezarak wrote: post #257
kedean wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't need to be. MS in the late 90's dominated, and you could not do work with someone using MS products unless you also used MS products. One person having an iOS device and another having an Android device does not cause any issues between the two, they are fully able to communicate by the nature of cell phones. I would bet that the lawsuits against MS would not go through if they were brought up today (and,…

I can't tell you how many times I've had to help people who switched away from their iPhone and then saw eternal, intermittent issues with not receiving text messages because their friends iPhones were convinced they should be sending iMessages and not SMS. The situation gets even worse with group messages.

https://selfsolve.apple.com/deregister-imessage

Re: Safari is the new IE

#324

Post by samdroid »

snuxoll wrote: post #265
leephillips wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Epiphany works pretty well for me, I've been forced to customize the User-Agent string to that of Chrome to make certain things like Outlook Web App treat it like a Real Browser(TM), on occasion I have to use Firefox still (Plex doesn't work in epiphany) but overall it works fine. I should note that Epiphany is the only Linux web browser that seems to interact with touch screens correctly, drag-to-scroll works wonder…

Epiphany is also based upon GtkWebKit, which is a Gtk port of the same engine that runs Safari.

Re: Safari is the new IE

#325

Post by aceperry »

demarq wrote: post #322
lambdasquirrel wrote: post #321

Okay, I'm getting on this a little late, but this is where I have to say, Hacker News, you are full of shit. Every time someone comes up with an anti-Apple title, it gets several hundred points. I'm seeing 600+ right now. And the evidence does not corroborate the claim. In the beginning of the article, the author points out this set of techs as stuff that Apple does not support: {Service Worker, Web Components, Shado…

> web isn't as important as it used to be How on earth did you come to this conclusion?

I think fanbois just make up stuff to support their argument. Doesn't have anything to do with reality.

Re: Safari is the new IE

#326

Post by azakai »

lambdasquirrel wrote: post #321

Okay, I'm getting on this a little late, but this is where I have to say, Hacker News, you are full of shit. Every time someone comes up with an anti-Apple title, it gets several hundred points. I'm seeing 600+ right now. And the evidence does not corroborate the claim. In the beginning of the article, the author points out this set of techs as stuff that Apple does not support: {Service Worker, Web Components, Shado…

I think you are wrong that the web matters less, and also wrong that only Google is pushing it.

First, you forgot IndexedDB, another example from the article, which disproves your point. Other examples include fullscreen and WebAssembly.

Web Components/Shadow DOM and Service Workers happen to be two technologies that Google is pushing. There are of course plenty of examples where Google is behind: Nested Workers, asm.js, ES6, etc. etc.

It might be true that the web matters less to Apple than it used to, and that isn't very surprising - Apple's native apps on iOS are massively successful, and it makes sense for Apple to focus more on that. And that does mean the web matters less on mobile, since Apple is huge there, but the web is still just as important as it always was on desktop.

Re: Safari is the new IE

#327

Post by craigvn »

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…

What your comment says to me is that you were not actually there back in the day. When IE6 was released it was the best, most compliant, fastest browser. That wasn't the problem. The problem is they then didn't update it for 5 years and people eventually wanted more which IE couldn't deliver, just like Chrome and Firefox really suck at HTML6 at the moment.

Re: Safari is the new IE

#328

Post by lambdasquirrel »

azakai wrote: post #326
lambdasquirrel wrote: post #321

Okay, I'm getting on this a little late, but this is where I have to say, Hacker News, you are full of shit. Every time someone comes up with an anti-Apple title, it gets several hundred points. I'm seeing 600+ right now. And the evidence does not corroborate the claim. In the beginning of the article, the author points out this set of techs as stuff that Apple does not support: {Service Worker, Web Components, Shado…

I think you are wrong that the web matters less, and also wrong that only Google is pushing it. First, you forgot IndexedDB, another example from the article, which disproves your point. Other examples include fullscreen and WebAssembly. Web Components/Shadow DOM and Service Workers happen to be two technologies that Google is pushing. There are of course plenty of examples where Google is behind: Nested Workers, asm…

The end user doesn't care about IndexedDB. Just because web folks like you push new technologies doesn't mean that those technologies matter. It doesn't mean that the web will stay forefront. People have to want to use those technologies, but most of my non-tech friends don't even surf Facebook on the web. They check Facebook on their phones. A lot of people don't even book AirBnBs on their computers.

Now, you guys can plug your fingers in your ears and call me a fanboi, but I'm just pointing out that non-tech folks don't know the difference, and they couldn't really care. The native experience on iOS massively trumps the app experience on Android, as well as the web experience on iOS and on Android.

Now for me, as a dev, I would rather code for the web than for iOS or for Android. But the wider world does not care about me. The wider world would feel that the web is much too late to the game with all these techs, when the same experience (or possibly better) was available with native apps years ago.

Re: Safari is the new IE

#329

Post by Tloewald »

jessaustin wrote: post #307
Tloewald wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's ignore the fact you didn't address my argument. There are diminishing returns. It's not like Apple has provided a web browser that basically doesn't work but has great battery life. Most people consider Safari to be the best mobile browsing experience there is. (I just googled to make sure I wasn't quoting outdated opinions and it's still true.) Safari in 10.11 has added a feature which tells you which browser…

Safari in 10.11 has added a feature which tells you which browser tab is making noise so you can close it. Just now I was so wishing for it (in Chrome -- which is my primary browser, since I'm a web developer). http://chrome.blogspot.com/2014/01/everyone-can-now-track-do... Good grief. The smiley b^) means it's a joke. At this point I have to wonder who is trolling whom...

That's great -- I didn't know because chrome doesn't display those things if the tab is narrower than the caption, and I usually have a lot of tabs open. Argh!

(Especially with the trend to wide-screens, the placement of tabs on the top vs. the left side seems to me to be a gigantic misstep on everyone's part)

Not trolling -- just ignorant. (And the implementation is kind of flawed. Sufficiently flawed that I've never seen one of the icons. I wonder if Safari's is any better -- can't be bothered installing the beta.)

Not a big fan of your "b^)" emoticon -- doesn't look like anything to me, and doesn't show up in lists of common emoticons. But OK your most outrageous comment was in jest; fair enough.

Re: Safari is the new IE

#330

Post by briandear »

collyw wrote: post #170
streptomycin wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What rules that had been there for tens of years were broken by IE6? IE6 was the best browser available when it was released, and the web standards ecosystem was nothing like it is today. I think the analogy is very clear. If you want to code like it's 2000, supporting IE6 is easy, because IE6 is a very good 2000 browser. If you want to code like it's 2010, supporting Safari is easy, because Safari is a very good 201…

"Another difference is that MS never blocked you from installing a better browser, but Apple does that on iOS. That policy is becoming increasingly ridiculous..." Why has that not resulted in anti competitive behavior lawsuits? MS got in to a fair bit of trouble for similar things. They didn't stop you installing an alternative.

So on one hand people say that Android has more market share, on the other hand they're anti-competitive with iOS and Safari. Is Apple preventing you from using another device? is Apple using its position to put Chrome out of business?
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