Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

iOS allows alternative browser engines in Japan

developer.apple.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

341–350 of 431 posts

Re: iOS allows alternative browser engines in Japan

#341

Post by realusername »

crazygringo wrote: post #162
realusername wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Safari is a minor browser by overall market share and is broadly standards-compliant. It's officially compliant but in practice there's a lot of buggy implementations in Safari and you'll spend lots of time on workarounds and debugging. It's also the last non-evergreen browser being tied to the OS so it's the slowest to update, compounding that effect. > So then why aren't PWA's super-popular on Windows and on Andr…

If those are the extent of complaints, then I think Safari's doing just fine. That's nothing like the next IE, and shows that PWA still have their own problems regardless of Apple.

I worked through the IE days and Safari definitely has a IE feeling that you can't shake off.

IE had a lot of browser features which officially were there but in practice didn't fully work.

I had issues with forms, zIndex, SVGs, backgrounds and localStorage with Safari. All of which I consider basic browser features which should always work.

Of course it's not as bad as IE but Safari is clearly lagging very far behind Chrome and Firefox

Re: iOS allows alternative browser engines in Japan

#342

Post by simianparrot »

socalgal2 wrote: post #233
lokar wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you explain how? Poor standards implementation? Performance? UX?

No full screen API so impossible to make lots of types of game experiences. No orientation API so impossible to make games and other experiences that require a certain orientation No WebXR (though Apple will allow it on Vision Pro) No support for ResizeObvserver devicePixelContentBoxSize so impossible to get correct rendering reguardless of user's zoom level. No simple PWA installation. Requires an obscure incantatio…

The world hasn’t ended but it arguably got worse with most of those features. Good enough reason to not implement them.

Re: iOS allows alternative browser engines in Japan

#343

Post by simianparrot »

panstromek wrote: post #249
jonhohle wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hear this a lot, but have used Safari as my since it was launch in 2003.Performance has always been great. UI has always been minimalist, out of the way, and has never upsold me on anything. There are times where it lags and times where it leads standards. There may be a a site every now and then that doesn’t work, but iOS makes that less likely. The only thing I can ever think of is that it’s not or doesn’t have .…

It might look ok from user's point of view, but lot of the problems fall on web developers who have to work around a bunch of these issues to make their pages work in Safari

Been working with web related tech since the early 00’s. Safari has just never been a problem except for invasive ads, like back in the Flash days.

Re: iOS allows alternative browser engines in Japan

#344

Post by mdhb »

MBCook wrote: post #302
s3p wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Until websites block you from logging in, completing transactions, ordering items until you open it with Chrome

Or just get buggy. I have absolutely run into sites that work on mobile Safari but not on desktop Safari. Because they don’t test it and don’t care. You HAVE to use Chrome or possibly Firefox. We’ve always seen what Firefox is doing, they’re not going to be our saviors again.

There’s a meaningful amount of blame here that sits squarely at the feet of Apple.

1. They produce the world’s buggiest browser by far. Look at this chart that shows the number of bugs that ONLY OCCUR IN A SINGLE BROWSER. https://wpt.fyi/results/?label=master&label=experimental&ali...

2. They don’t support any modern testing protocols like WebdriverBiDi

3. They don’t make their software available to anyone who isn’t using Apple’s hardware.

The core root of the problem is very clearly Apple who’ve done nothing other than make the world’s buggiest and least accessible browser and then tried to hold everyone hostage who was previously forced to use it until courts had to stop them and they had no choice.

Re: iOS allows alternative browser engines in Japan

#345

Post by mdhb »

userbinator wrote: post #277
Jach wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People didn't mind when IE was muscling in and adding useful new features. They abandoned Netscape because the features made the web better. It wasn't until they stopped adding features to the browser itself that it really started to become a problem. They would still add features, but too much relied on ActiveX -- which wasn't necessarily evil, there's a grand vision there of component re-use across the OS and varie…

It wasn't until they stopped adding features to the browser itself that it really started to become a problem. Only for those misguided "push the web forward" idiots who just wanted the latest shiny shit, aided by Google's plans to control the Internet itself. Plain HTML worked well enough for everything else. Google's weapon is change. They have the resources to outcompete everyone else by churning the "standards" a…

This is silly IMO.

Technologies like HTTP and Wasm are truly excellent tools for cross platform software delivery and browsers are an ideal sandboxed execution environment.

This idea that the web should only be for straight up HTML documents is a broken mental model.

Apple have a multi-billion dollar income stream that is firmly premised on the fact that nobody could deliver software on their platform unless they could steal 30% of the companies profits and as such spent a huge amount of time and effort undermining the idea that the web could ever be an app platform but you’re not compelled to cheerlead for Apple’s profit margins and anti-consumer bullshit.

Re: iOS allows alternative browser engines in Japan

#346

Post by mdhb »

pipeline_peak wrote: post #299
concinds wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't wait until regulators do their job and take away Apple's dictatorial control, in all areas , and all these doom-and-gloom predictions on all these tangential issues end up proving ludicrous. What kind of control would Chrome have over the web? Adding APIs doesn't force the billions of websites to adopt them. So what if a website adds WebBluetooth? You don't want the web to have that anyway, and if you keep us…

> What kind of control would Chrome have over the web? Do you remember Manifest Version 3? They did away with ad block extensions. If we all end up using Chromium, there’s no longer a web standard. It’s whatever conforms to Google’s standard because all sites will have to support Chromium. That means there will be an undocumented spec. It’s much too difficult for browser engine developers to compete with them, they d…

Just want to be super clear here… the other party in this question being Apple who is currently the worlds richest company who makes the worlds buggiest browser as seen here https://wpt.fyi/results/?label=master&label=experimental&ali...

The idea that you’re pushing is a hole that Apple themselves have dug on purpose, this is not an oversight but a very intentional decision of theirs to protect their profit margins that their main user retention strategy is that many courts in the world especially the US are never going to force them to compete freely in an open marketplace with consumer choice is a factor.

Re: iOS allows alternative browser engines in Japan

#347

Post by hdgvhicv »

concinds wrote: post #291
icehawk wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not even a day ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46454115 : > I want my browser to protect me from ALL those things. Ublock origin did precisely that, then Google went in to kill ublock origin. Ublock lite is nowhere near as good. > > I consider this betrayal - naturally by Google, but also by random web designers such as on the python homepage who consider it morally just to pester visitors when they do not w…

Why did you link me to a random comment? edit: I see now. Firefox still has uBlock Origin. You missed the point. If Chrome wants to make itself less attractive, you should celebrate.

Firefox onpy works because iOS means site owners have to support multiple engines

I wonder how many chrome fanboys remember the ie6 days.

Re: iOS allows alternative browser engines in Japan

#348

Post by mdhb »

simianparrot wrote: post #343
panstromek wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It might look ok from user's point of view, but lot of the problems fall on web developers who have to work around a bunch of these issues to make their pages work in Safari

Been working with web related tech since the early 00’s. Safari has just never been a problem except for invasive ads, like back in the Flash days.

This is such nonsense and everyone who’s a web developer knows you’re not being honest here but just to make it ever clearer for anyone else here’s a chart showing the number of bugs that only occur in a single browser.

https://wpt.fyi/results/?label=master&label=experimental&ali...

It’s undeniable that Apple makes a dogshit browser.

Re: iOS allows alternative browser engines in Japan

#350

Post by mdhb »

GaryBluto wrote: post #69

I'm surprised Apple haven't thrown in the towel and opened things up worldwide yet. It's only a matter of time until it becomes too confusing and problematic to try and run the same system relatively openly in one country and walled in another.

Apple is intentionally trying to make it frustrating in hopes that people will complain to relevant voices that “there’s too much regulation and you should just let Apple do its thing” which is something they've been pushing a lot in Europe the past few years for example
Post reply on HN