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Is Apple stifling progress in Web standards?

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Re: Is Apple stifling progress in Web standards?

#91

Post by shmerl »

UnoriginalGuy wrote: post #12

Honestly, not yet. Apple might one day be fairly accused of holding up web standards, but so far they're still at least 80/20 implementing new proposals. It might be unpopular but it is actually the responsibility of browsers to somewhat govern what standards do or do not move forward. For example when IE decided not to do WebGL due to security concerns and then successfully got the standard altered as a direct resul…

Not applicable here. Apple just want to retain the usage of their patented API in this case[1]. I.e. they are simply being greedy jerks who don't care about the Web.

1. http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2011/12/is-apple-is-using...

Re: Is Apple stifling progress in Web standards?

#92

Post by malchow »

UnoriginalGuy wrote: post #12

Honestly, not yet. Apple might one day be fairly accused of holding up web standards, but so far they're still at least 80/20 implementing new proposals. It might be unpopular but it is actually the responsibility of browsers to somewhat govern what standards do or do not move forward. For example when IE decided not to do WebGL due to security concerns and then successfully got the standard altered as a direct resul…

"it is actually the responsibility of browsers to somewhat govern what standards do or do not move forward"

An underappreciated point. Browser developers incl. Apple also have a responsibility to recognize that it's a mobile world. A compute cycle might look like it's getting cheaper, but a mobile CC is vastly more expensive than a desktop CC because of the cost of energy.

We might have three monitors plugged into 100A mains, but the typical end user has a 1900mAh battery and 7.5 seconds between Starbucks and the car door to send log in to the school's website to approve a field trip permission. It will be a while before mobile web standards can progress in the blue sky fashion we'd prefer.

Re: Is Apple stifling progress in Web standards?

#93

Post by romaniv »

kolbe wrote: post #64

This article's title got me thinking that Apple, as a company, could actually be interested in suppressing the advancement of the web. Their apps are a shockingly effective alternative to the internet, and the store becomes more comprehensive by the year. Even at this point, Apple's apps can replace all but some long-tail usages. So, despite the fact that suppressing the progress of the web will hurt the user experie…

> Their apps are a shockingly effective alternative to the internet

To some, very limited, parts of the Web.

I think this statement is very telling in terms of illustrating how people's perception of "The Internet" has shifted over the years, along with the notions about is its overall purpose. Ad frankly, I liked the old notion (the one that centered around communication, rather than "apps and services") much better.

Re: Is Apple stifling progress in Web standards?

#94

Post by millstone »

richtr wrote: post #55

What is difficult to argue against, and I'm surprised isn't mentioned in this article, is that Apple have completely eliminated market competition from happening around web standards on the iOS platform. It is impossible to ship e.g. Chromium on iOS right now. We just collectively buy the arguments put forward by Apple to support that position without appreciating the ramifications of not allowing market forces to dr…

To be fair, it's also impossible to ship Firefox on ChromeOS.

Re: Is Apple stifling progress in Web standards?

#95

Post by smackfu »

mkozlows wrote: post #27

People are getting really bogged down in specific standards, but you don't need to talk about pointer events or flexbox or indexeddb or whatever, you can look at this at a macro level. Here's the ES6 support table: http://kangax.github.io/compat-table/es6/ Safari and IE were laggards, but future IE is going to be very solid while future Safari is still going to be terrible. Here's the HTML5 support table: https://htm…

Does Apple release HTML features updates to Safari in between OS releases? It feels like they freeze the features in July at WWDC, so they would be pretty out of date by February.

Re: Is Apple stifling progress in Web standards?

#96

Post by frou_dh »

ytpete wrote: post #89
frou_dh wrote: post #31

As far as I'm concerned, Apple still have a bit of time left to bask in the afterglow granted for mortally wounding Flash by keeping it off of iOS.

Do you think perhaps the same motivation could have been at play there - stifling web competition to their native app store?

Hard to say to what extent. Remember, at least in the early days before there even was a native SDK, they were very pro-webapp for iOS.

Re: Is Apple stifling progress in Web standards?

#98

Post by frik »

mkozlows wrote: post #27

People are getting really bogged down in specific standards, but you don't need to talk about pointer events or flexbox or indexeddb or whatever, you can look at this at a macro level. Here's the ES6 support table: http://kangax.github.io/compat-table/es6/ Safari and IE were laggards, but future IE is going to be very solid while future Safari is still going to be terrible. Here's the HTML5 support table: https://htm…

> you don't need to talk about pointer events or flexbox or indexeddb or whatever

But missing functionality is a deal breaker.

* WebRTC - web peer to peer connection: Chrome & Firefox yes, IE 11 incompatible by design (bought Skype for 11b, based on it), Safari no (would be Facetime competitor)

* WebSQL - web relational database: Chrome & Safari (also 95% of all smartphones) yes, Firefox & IE no (declared dead by Oracle and MS devs (biggest SQL vendors), in favour of complicated NoSQL API IndexedDB on W3C mailing list)

* IndexedDB - complicated NoSQL API: Chrome & IE 11 yes, Firefox yes but slow (implemented on top of SQLite, refused to implement WebSQL API, FirefoxOS is the only smartphone OS with no SQL API), Safari yes but buggy

* WebGL - OpenGL 3D accelerated graphics: Chrome & Firefox & Safari(since iOS8) yes, IE 11 barely (old 0.9 instead of 2.0 API, few extensions)

* CSSRegions - desktop publishing stylesheet features like Adobe InDesign/MS Word: Safari & Firefox yes, Chrome yes but removed again, IE 11 yes but older draft

* ContentEditable/HTML editor - a bug free implementation would make MS Word WebApp & Google Docs obsolete: IE 11 yes (invented, based on Frontpage, old HTML4), Firefox & Chrome yes but bugs, Safari barely useable (especially on iOS)

So basically every browser vendor is guilty to some extend. Apple protects its AppStore walled garden, FaceTime and "Pages" word processor, Microsoft its Skype/Lync, Office and DirectX/XBox eco-system, Google its GoogleDocs and Hangout, Mozilla community has some sponsored devs from companies with their own agenda (e.g. against WebSQL API, while using SQLite in Firefox to implement NoSQL API IndexedDB).

Re: Is Apple stifling progress in Web standards?

#99

Post by hober »

barneybooroo wrote: post #57

The whole "developer relations as Bigfoot" trope doesn't ring true when it comes to WebKit, in my experience. I've had Apple developers reach out to me when I've mentioned WebKit bugs on Twitter. They're very happy to talk about efforts towards standards, and I actually find it to be one of the least cynical parts of Apple's business.

Thanks :)

Re: Is Apple stifling progress in Web standards?

#100

Post by air »

millstone wrote: post #94
richtr wrote: post #55

What is difficult to argue against, and I'm surprised isn't mentioned in this article, is that Apple have completely eliminated market competition from happening around web standards on the iOS platform. It is impossible to ship e.g. Chromium on iOS right now. We just collectively buy the arguments put forward by Apple to support that position without appreciating the ramifications of not allowing market forces to dr…

To be fair, it's also impossible to ship Firefox on ChromeOS.

To be really fair, out of the four biggest browser vendors (MS, Apple, Mozilla, Google) only Google makes it possible to use the other browser engines on their mobile platform.
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