521–530 of 593 posts
How would you enforce device-wide content restrictions or parental controls in other engines?
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Google is already being targeted here by EU regulation on several fronts. If Google abuses their dominant position of Google Chrome, then by all means let's get regulation applied to them. I am perfectly fine with regulation applied to Google Chrome! Let Google Android be forced to come with other preinstalled browsers. But at the moment, Apple is the company that is abusing control of their platform and most web-dev…
> most web-devs and many educated users look forward to having real choices. How is giving the web completely over to Google a real choice?
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I love Safari. I tried to use it. Garbage. As far as I’ve ever been able to tell it only existed to help people test the fake “apps” and their sites without buying an iPhone. As real apps were allowed and the iPhone became more popular (so devs had them for testing sites) that need went away. And so did Safari.
It’s wild to have such huge differences in experience, I bought my iPhone because I borrowed my friends and was shocked at how fast Safari was compared to mobile Chrome.
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> letting you do this same thing on a much less consequential device than your home computer, your cellphone or your tablet Last I heard then officially defend this apparent contradiction, the Apple rep asserted that people's phones are in fact the more important/personal devices, as well as being more common, and as such security on iOS is more important than on macOS.
But why, because the phone connects to your instagram account? Meanwhile, most people's computers have passwords to literally all their accounts saved in the various system or web browser autofillers. They might also have personal documents such as tax information saved locally. Maybe even their social security number and other very important information written down in a word document on their desktop. Especially if…
That said, I consider that all the more reason that people should be able to run whatever software they wish on their phone. The present paradigm of such a personal device's operation being totally out of the hands of its owner is troubling.
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It's not the same, because Safari is already a minority in the market compared to the Chrome behemoth.
Seriously, I kind of wonder whether or not grass roots anti-Safari sentiment is dominated by web developers who resent having to test their sites in more than one web browser.
I’m going to ignore the security angle and post my big fear. Chrome has dominance similar to IE at the height of its popularity. Whatever you think of their decisions, Apple is the only thing stopping a 90%+ Chrome web. (Note: not why they’re doing it, just a side effect) People keep arguing Apple is being anti-competitive. But no one seems to recon with the possible consequences of what they’re asking for. And I fea…
I don't think the IE comparison is apt. IE shipped on (almost) every machine, had a ton of lock in features like ActiveX, etc. MS actively abused their monopoly position to make it so preventing default installation of Netscape by OEMs, incentivising ISVs to ensure web based enterprise products shipped with "Works best in Internet Explorer" etc. Netscape lost market share to IE not because it lost users but because w…
Chrome is getting bundled with a buttload of software. So many software that comes with an ‘installer’ has a hidden checkbox somewhere that if you don’t uncheck it, it will install Chrome on your windows machine.
Also Edge is now the default on Windows which is also Chromium. So a Chromium-only future doesn’t sound so distant anymore.
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I don't think the IE comparison is apt. IE shipped on (almost) every machine, had a ton of lock in features like ActiveX, etc. MS actively abused their monopoly position to make it so preventing default installation of Netscape by OEMs, incentivising ISVs to ensure web based enterprise products shipped with "Works best in Internet Explorer" etc. Netscape lost market share to IE not because it lost users but because w…
> Chrome is something users install because it's their preferred choice. We can argue as to why it's their preferred choice but the point remains that users actively download and install Chrome - usually as one of the first things they do when they purchase a new computer. Chrome is getting bundled with a buttload of software. So many software that comes with an ‘installer’ has a hidden checkbox somewhere that if you…
Namely an engine isn't a product and most value-add is in the porcelain of the browser, implementation of web standards -shouldn't- be a competitive advantage because doing leads the the sort of fragmentation that we don't want.
If all the major browsers shared and worked on a single engine collaboratively (similar to PostgreSQL and Linux) I think the web would be a -much- better place as a result for a number of reasons.
1. Aforementioned standards could be relied on by developers.
2. Browser vendors could spend less time duplicating efforts on low level standards implementation that aren't product differentiation.
3. Platform specific performance optimisation could be shared across browsers instead, i.e Safari like energy performance for everyone.
4. Plugin architecture could potentially be shared across all available browsers which would help plugin authors out significantly.
5. The engine could be linked as a dynamic library so that multiple browsers could be installed without duplicating the engine binaries if they are using the same version (probably only viable on Linux distributions but would be nice)
6. Fuzzing and security efforts wouldn't need to be duplicated across engines. This is important because of just how gnarly the sorts of code you see in browsers. Namely XML/SGML parsers, JS runtimes/isolation, etc. Also with every vendor chipping in this infrastructure could likely be greatly expanded.
This is a utopian view and most of this probably wouldn't come to pass because the world sucks at doing the "right" thing but the potential is there.
On the other hand the downsides mostly amount to Chromium governance could be bad and Google could abuse their position to make it hard to create new browsers based on Chromium/Blink. However they would be incentivised not to in order to prevent a return to the current fragmented situation.
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So, you are happy to have Apple provide no user choice, because you fear a future where there is no user choice?
Actually, yes. With Apple not having user choice, those of use who want a choice can choose Android. Lack of diversity in one ecosystem supports diversity in a broader context. It's like prohibitions against importing some aggressive plant or animal species. It's a way of protecting local diversity.
Android is only the bare OS, and actual devices come either with Google bindings everywhere (mostly from direct contract with each phone maker in exchange to let them have the Play Store), or no Play Store at all (which usually means no commercial license for stuff like Felica as well, same situation as when wiping clean a phone basically).
To me it feels a lot like in the 90s when 'viable' alternatives to Windows were either overpriced and obsoleting Macs, or "every year is year of linux on the desktop" linux boxes. And getting shouted from every camp when complaining the situation really sucks.
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As a user the harms are invisible to you. If you'd like to find out how it harms consumers, businesses, developers and the web, please read our regulatory submission "Bringing Competition to Walled Gardens": https://open-web-advocacy.org/files/OWA%20-%20Bringing%20Com...
See, your link identifies you very uncharitably as a Google shill. Both Firefox and Safari are against most hardware APIs for many reasons including technical ones. Only Chrome is reckless enough to enable them even though no consensus has been reached on them. Those specs are nowhere near to being standard. They are "Draft community reports". And yet you list them there as if they were standards and as if Apple abso…
OWA was formed to ensure that mobile Web Apps become viable, if you disagree with that as the premise, all the best.