Is Apple stifling progress in Web standards?
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Is Apple stifling progress in Web standards?
1–10 of 151 posts
Re: Is Apple stifling progress in Web standards?
#2Are 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: only Google supports that.
Re: Is Apple stifling progress in Web standards?
#3Are 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…
Are they really? ... It's a Microsoft-backed spec that only Microsoft supports.
Exactly, you've hit the nail on the head.
It seems a bit strange to single out Apple when there are plenty of other vendors also not implementing it.
That said, I know very little about the history of mobile browser development; have Apple historically dragged their feet on mobile Safari?
Re: Is Apple stifling progress in Web standards?
#4Playing 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.
Re: Is Apple stifling progress in Web standards?
#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 decide to not implement a standards-proposed API. If that API is the greatest thing since sliced bread, web developers will start using it, and Apple will be forced to follow suit or be left behind. If that API is rejected by web developers, then why should Apple waste time implementing it?
Obviously if Apple throw their weight behind an API, that makes developer support much more likely, but I don't see why they should be obliged to expend resources championing an API they don't like, and which is not yet being used by developers. Let browser implementers that see the value in the API do the experimental work, and if it turns out to be popular, Apple can follow along later. I don't see that anybody is being harmed or "stifled" by such a course of action.
Re: Is Apple stifling progress in Web standards?
#6Are 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…
>only Google supports that
You should read the other HN post about this issue.
http://www.quirksmode.org/blog/archives/2015/02/tired_of_saf...
I just hope that Mozilla will get a proper implementation of Pointer Events so I can use that. It's sad to see Apple leveraging it's market share like this, but I can't say I'm surprised.
Re: Is Apple stifling progress in Web standards?
#7"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…
It's not in Apples interest to advance the web. They want less web and more native. Unfortunately.
No one will use a standard that's not available for 30% of the users, the point is to unify things, not to make yet another useless standard. Also unfortunately.
So we like it or not, Apples participation is kind of important here. I would risk that its more important than the quality of the standard itself.
Re: Is Apple stifling progress in Web standards?
#8Are 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…
I would say Mozilla refusing to implement h254 support was a similar issue, although their reasons were much clearer.
Re: Is Apple stifling progress in Web standards?
#9The 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 speaking, it adopts new features and standards somewhat later than FF and Chrome, primarily I expect because of the slower release cycle, but it does seem to eventually come on-board.
Re: Is Apple stifling progress in Web standards?
#10I've noticed recently that Apple removed support for the High Resolution Time API (performance.now and friends) in iOS Safari 8.1. It was fully supported in iOS Safari 8.0. Not sure if I've ever seen a vendor unimplement a (HTML5) feature before.