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Apple's intentional crippling of Mobile Safari

pwa.gripe

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Re: Apple's intentional crippling of Mobile Safari

#301

Post by raw_anon_1111 »

fennecfoxy wrote: post #282
raw_anon_1111 wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny enough, I just replied to someone who posted a link to the great lengths Slack is going through to make it use less memory on the desktop. https://slack.engineering/reducing-slacks-memory-footprint/ When the obvious answer I gave about how to reduce the memory footprint and make it more performant was “to stop using fucking [web technologies]” and create a native app But the question I always ask people who say…

To your last point surely it makes sense that they'd probably be rolling something like RN or similar where at that point they may as well build for Android app as well right? Versus with proper PWA support across the board, a single button on the company's site that installs a PWA no matter which platform your customers are on.

Papa John’s doesn’t need a website seemingly and everything you can do on the app you can do on the website. Why is the app so much faster? I can say the same for banking apps, Airbnb, hotel apps, etc

There must be some reason that every major company decided to have an app even though today all of the same functionality is available on the web.

Re: Apple's intentional crippling of Mobile Safari

#302

Post by jakeydus »

raw_anon_1111 wrote: post #215
pilif wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox is not in a position where it is the only browser allowed to run on a platform. On iOS, you’re either doing a native app, sharing 30% of your income with Apple, or you’re restricted to Safari’s feature set. No browser in iOS can use anything but WebKit

It came out in the Epic trial that 90% of App Store revenue comes from loot boxes and other pay to win game mechanics - cry my a river for those companies. The other companies that are making money from mobile are usually front end for services that don’t monetize directly through in app purchases or give you the option of not paying through the App Store. The first million in revenue is 15% not 30% But also if it is…

Also let’s not forget that Google’s app store fees are also 30%

Re: Apple's intentional crippling of Mobile Safari

#303

Post by pokot0 »

hu3 wrote: post #293
pokot0 wrote: post #80

You might want your browser to do Bluetooth, NFC, Background stuff, Face Detection but I don't. I like to use Apple products for things that are commodities to me because I am not gonna look into the details of those and when I do Apple reasoning often make sense to me (just like this list). There is a lot more we can criticize about these big tech corps (including Apple) than a product decision for a company that is…

Then don't use it? These features require explicit permission.

exactly what I do. they are still annoying because providers want to me to be engaged on their terms and keep pushing these features and don’t offer a broad “never use bluetooth on any website ever” kind of option. Magic of KPIs

anyway the point here is that I don’t really care if Safari is behind in support. The article was about blaming Safari for being behind.

Re: Apple's intentional crippling of Mobile Safari

#304

Post by hasanhaja »

cromka wrote: post #284
omnimus wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it's not. The percentage of people who actually can use alt stores is so small that nobody will really dedicate money to make browser build for iOS. Why would they when Apple would just make the work impossible anyway. It's pure malicious compliance from Apple. Anybody defending Apple on this is simply delusional.

Alt stores and web engine stuff are two separate things: https://developer.apple.com/support/alternative-browser-engi... Browsers with alternative engines can be offered in regular AppStore. That's why I wonder why isn't this a thing. At the end of the day, browser makers probably want to reduce confusion and complexity of maintaining two vastly different applications under the same name. This most likely isn't a cas…

I think malicious compliance is a fair interpretation of the situation: https://open-web-advocacy.org/blog/apples-browser-engine-ban...

Re: Apple's intentional crippling of Mobile Safari

#305

Post by hasanhaja »

mort96 wrote: post #214
leptons wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Letting my users have access to the Web Bluetooth API is not making Google somehow take control of the web. If Apple won't implement it, and they won't allow other browsers on their platform, that's plainly an abusive business tactic. It's far worse than what Microsoft did by simply include IE with Windows - Microsoft never forced every browser application to use Internet Explorer. Can you imagine the outrage if they…

You're shadow boxing. I never said Apple isn't engaging in abusive business tactics. They clearly are. I just think the result benefits the open web by taking power away from Google.

I don't think it does benefit the open web. If consumers can't get value from the web, they'll go where they can find it. That is currently native apps, which is a closed and proprietary ecosystem. This causes the market itself to shrink, which means fewer and fewer people will invest in the web [1].

Here's a good podcast episode with people from the Open Web Advocacy: https://changelog.com/jsparty/316

> I do, frankly, think that mobile Safari couldn't compete that well in an open market, just like desktop Firefox can't.

Couldn't compete isn't a justification to exploit platform control and ban competition. If Apple's so worried that Safari usage will fall off in favor of Chrome, then they can invest in Safari to make it a level playing field to keep their user base.

[1] https://infrequently.org/2023/02/the-market-for-lemons/

Re: Apple's intentional crippling of Mobile Safari

#306

Post by rpdillon »

mort96 wrote: post #218
_aavaa_ wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let Google dominate the web. If that’s a problem we can sort that out. But two wrongs don’t make a right.

> Let Google dominate the web No thanks

Indeed, that would be a disaster.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Environment_Integrity

Re: Apple's intentional crippling of Mobile Safari

#307

Post by hasanhaja »

SllX wrote: post #247
nerdjon wrote: post #53

I am curious why Safari in particular is getting a lot of the hate here when firefox supports even less of the features which leads me to believe that the reason many of these features have not been accepted is because they have not been accepted by the larger ecosystem and is just google pushing their own things as standard (Feels like IE days in many ways). That being said, I am not sure why I would actually want m…

Because it’s essentially propaganda. By conflating “Not Implementing something Google did” with “Intentionally Crippling”, they hope to pressure Apple by through either the general public (the PR game) or through Government mandates (the lobbying game). This has been going for at least as long as Blink was forked off WebKit. And why Apple? Because Apple’s the only other browser giant, and they do have motivation to n…

They don't need to implement it though. They just need to unban browser vendors from shipping their own engines.

Re: Apple's intentional crippling of Mobile Safari

#308

Post by hasanhaja »

JimDabell wrote: post #120
leptons wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which browser engine are you getting on iOS when you install Firefox? If you answered Firefox, you are WRONG. You get Safari , because Apple forces all browsers on iOS to use their own crippled browser engine. Apple also is part of the W3C board that gets to decide which APIs get to become standards, so they also influence what other browser makers do. This would be a non-issue if Apple didn't force all browsers on i…

No, you get Firefox. There is much more to a web browser than just its rendering engine. When you install Firefox on iOS, you get Firefox. It uses the WebKit rendering engine, but it’s still the Firefox browser. To be frank, it’s pretty insulting and dismissive to all the people putting huge amounts of work into building browsers only to for you go around telling people that all their work is really just a mirage.

The problem is that it has to use the WebKit rendering engine, and not that it happens to.

I think it's more insulting to browser vendors that they have to throw away their browser engines to appease the monopolistic tendencies of one company.

Re: Apple's intentional crippling of Mobile Safari

#309

Post by godelski »

archerx wrote: post #243
godelski wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a non-web developer I'm interested if anyone can answer this question: If you're designing for browser, how hard is it to make it work on browser? Answering with at least {Chromium,Safari,Firefox} Because if it's hard when targeting Chromium and adapting to {Safari,Firefox} but easy when targeting Safari and adapting to {Chromium,Firefox} then honestly it seems like Chromium is the problem. What I want to distingu…

Making things work in chrome and Firefox is trivial and is never hard but when it comes to safari you have to figure out the special dance to make things work properly even when targeting it first. No developing for chrome does not encourage browser incompatibility.

Odd, because I hear so much about Firefox breaking. I'm a daily user so I don't know what they're talking about but still

Re: Apple's intentional crippling of Mobile Safari

#310

Post by _aavaa_ »

mort96 wrote: post #218
_aavaa_ wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let Google dominate the web. If that’s a problem we can sort that out. But two wrongs don’t make a right.

> Let Google dominate the web No thanks

Fix their dominant position through legislation, not with more monopolies and anticompetitive behavior.
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