7 ms·

"publication independence"? Really? The man who is famous among other things for supporting the most closed ecosystem there is around: iOS, where a single compa

"publication independence"? Really? The man who is famous among other things for supporting the most closed ecosystem there is around: iOS, where a single company decides what apps are worth publishing and wish ones doesn't. Or does newspaper publication independence is really that more important than software publication independence. The irony is so clear that it's weird that he didn't even mention it. That genie is out of the box, when you decided that you didn't mind a company gatekeeping which software you can install on "your" devices you opened that can of worms, the one where any company can gatekeep anything they want as long as it is "convenient" for most people.

mcphage 9y ago
> Or does newspaper publication independence is really that more important than software publication independence Well, yes. It really is.
- loup-vaillant 9y ago
  Err… No? Software is ubiquitous now, and that tend to make it more important than basically everything else. It is also a means of expression (not the only one of course, but still). Finally, how software is build can alter how you read the news (start with profanity filters, then block Tienanmen or something).
matthewmacleod 9y ago
The key difference is that there are alternatives to iOS, which isn't even a majority share of the market. Google, by contrast, has a far larger share of the search engine market than Apple has of the mobile device market. That means it's more of a concern by default.
- velobro 9y ago
  Then Apple should make their own search engine...
  - tyingq 9y ago
    I suppose Apple could modify Safari to skip through AMP pages and go to the original source.
    - MBCook 9y ago
      That requires releasing new versions of iOS. Google can work around that way faster than Apple can try to play catch-up. It's a losing battle.
      - obstinate 9y ago
        It doesn't require it, except that Apple has failed to decouple Safari from iOS, and so it can't be updated like regular apps.
        MBCook 9y ago
        Apple has certain things that they can push any time, such as the lists that safari looks at to find out if websites are dangerous or some of the security stuff they have. However they ship it, they'd still be in an arms race against google to keep AMP pages hidden from Safari users. That doesn't seem like a productive use of anyone's time.
    - H4CK3RM4N 9y ago
      I think encrypted.google.com doesn't use AMP yet, so they could make that the default search
- zanny 9y ago
  Except iOS is a captive market. Once you have owners of i-devices, switching requries capital investment and time moving to an alternate platform. You can exploit them heavily before they start leaving. If we are talking about search, you can stop using google by typing bing.com or duckduckgo.com in your url bar any time you want, and every major browser supports changing the default search engine, even Chrome.
blinkingled 9y ago
Well, it is Gruber we are talking about. He believes in openness when it suits Apple - AMP outputs standard HTML5 which Safari renders - it does its own scrolling but he doesn't quite like it. Google doesn't 'respect' that closed platform. On that 'crime' Gruber has this to say - "If I had my way, Mobile Safari would refuse to render AMP pages." You might have valid reasons not to use AMP but Gruber's are merely that he ends up sharing google.com URLs on twitter, it's Google, and it does its own scrolling on iOS.
- MBCook 9y ago
  AMP does NOT outperform HTML5 unless the HTML5 page is horribly designed and ridiculously bloated. But that can be fixed without Google's help. I'm not sure why your dismissive of the scrolling thing. Having something breaks the feel of the web browser is a really bad idea. Additionally he's completely right that it breaks other platform conventions that users expect to use. You can't use the share button, you can't tap at the top of the article to jump back to the top. I can tell you as someone who uses mobile Safari, AMP is incredibly infuriating. It's gotten to the point where I actively avoid AMP search results. Google has single-handedly broken the way it's search results feel for a number of top sites on iOS, and doesn't seem to care. Further, there is NO OPTION to turn it off. I would LOVE to have a way to tell mobile Safari not to render the AMP version of the page. Then I could use Google easily again.
  - izacus 9y ago
    > AMP does NOT outperform HTML5 unless the HTML5 page is horribly designed and ridiculously bloated. But that can be fixed without Google's help. And yet, noone cared enough to fix it until now. It's really really hard to sympathize with publishers when they brought this upon themselves by turning their pages into giant autoplaying video infested places.
    - MBCook 9y ago
      If that's all Google truly cared about they could've simply put a heavy penalty on Pages that rendered slow or presented garbage. Instead they invented their own thing which caused you to stay on Google sites using Google services to read other peoples content… and said they did it to speed things up. It feels like that was either justification after the fact or that was with the original engineer had in mind but was not the point of the project once it got approved. All those horrible infested pages? That's why I run an ad blockers, use RSS, and stopped reading a lot of sites. As every publisher got more and more aggressive other people were going to start doing it too. Eventually, I think it would've had an effect. This feels a lot more like when Birders (or was it B&N?) outsourced their web sales to Amazon. Remember how well that went? Outsourcing a key part of your experience to another company it's a bad idea, especially if they like being in control of everything.
tambourine_man 9y ago
I wish there was a big red “I know what I'm doing” button on iOS that allowed the user to download and install a binary from a simple web page. But technically, you can download the source and/or write your own code, compile and install on your iOS device without jailbreaking or going through the AppStore. It's a hassle, sure, but doable.
- teddyh 9y ago
  As I understand it, you can only do that by registering yourself to Apple, and paying them $100 for the privilege.
  - tambourine_man 9y ago
    Nope, pretty sure you can do it with a free account
    - technimad 9y ago
      Correct, but your self compiled app will only work for 7 days on your own device. And than you have to recompile and reinstall. Unless you pay the $100
      - tambourine_man 9y ago
        Didn't know the 7 days thing, thanks. Even more of a hassle then.
  - ryanschneider 9y ago
    That's actually no longer true, you need to join the free dev program, but can publish to your own device without paying $100/year. The $100 is only needed for the App Store now.
    - gergles 9y ago
      Well, as long as you're willing to reinstall your app every 7 days. Otherwise, you must remit the Software Development Tax.
jwilcoxson 9y ago
While I get your point, your rebuttal is a pretty hardcore ad hominem.
- aoeusnth1 9y ago
  It's not a rebuttal - he's not trying to say Scott is wrong. He's pointing out Scott is a hypocrite. An insult is not an instance of the ad hominem fallacy.
  - coldtea 9y ago
    >He's pointing out Scott is a hypocrite. Gruber, not Scott. He's not talking about the original writer, but for the guy that quoted him.
  - jwilcoxson 9y ago
    He is arguing against Johns stance on AMP by calling him a hypocrite citing his views on iOS, literally a perfect example of an ad hominem.
  - megablast 9y ago
    > "the cat is out of the bag". This is where he says his argument is rubbish because he supports iOS.
dwighttk 9y ago
Dismiss someone's position on one terrible thing because they hold a position you disagree about on a different topic. Seems legit.
zepto 9y ago
Whataboutism is just as distasteful here as it is when Fox News does it.
idlewords 9y ago
This does not address the argument at all. Pretend someone else made it, if Gruber bugs you.
coldtea 9y ago
>"publication independence"? Really? The man who is famous among other things for supporting the most closed ecosystem there is around: iOS, where a single company decides what apps are worth publishing and wish ones doesn't. First of all, that's an ad hominem. If publication independence is important, then it remains important whether Gruber is hypocritical about it or not. Second, one might want apps to be curated (for the better experience), but stand for independence from control and censorship when it comes to journalism and personal commentary. And indeed, one can think that "newspaper publication independence" is really far more important than software publication independence. The main difference being of course that Apple controlling apps is a huge inconvenience to those being rejected, but not so much to the users (especially with 1.5 million other apps to chose from). Whereas someone controlling the news is bad for the readers. >That genie is out of the box, when you decided that you didn't mind a company gatekeeping which software you can install on "your" devices you opened that can of worms, the one where any company can gatekeep anything they want as long as it is "convenient" for most people. Actually there's nothing (no law of physics or history for example) to force someone being ok with the one (company control of its walled app store) to be ok with other (company controlling content publication). You can be angry and/or stop and/or speak against any combination of the two.
- cbsmith 9y ago
  Pointing out a seeming contradiction in an advocate's advocacy is not an ad hominem.
  - raarts 9y ago
    But rebutting an argument by attacking the character of the person making it, is.
    - cmurf 9y ago
      Ad hominem attacks are considered logical fallacies only when they're used instead of a dismantling someone's arguments. If they're not making a sound argument at all, yet they continue to make it, there's no way to argue the argument, the problem is a character defect - so attacking the character of the person is logical in that case and accepted in debate. Not all people are good. And not all smart people argue logically.
skywhopper 9y ago
It's a shame you hijacked this thread with a critique of Gruber. There's no good argument that AMP is anything but a bad thing for publishers, and that has nothing to do with Gruber's support for Apple's approach to iOS.

mcphage 9y ago

> Or does newspaper publication independence is really that more important than software publication independence Well, yes. It really is.

loup-vaillant 9y ago
Err… No? Software is ubiquitous now, and that tend to make it more important than basically everything else. It is also a means of expression (not the only one of course, but still). Finally, how software is build can alter how you read the news (start with profanity filters, then block Tienanmen or something).

matthewmacleod 9y ago

The key difference is that there are alternatives to iOS, which isn't even a majority share of the market. Google, by contrast, has a far larger share of the search engine market than Apple has of the mobile device market. That means it's more of a concern by default.

velobro 9y ago
Then Apple should make their own search engine...
- tyingq 9y ago
  I suppose Apple could modify Safari to skip through AMP pages and go to the original source.
  - MBCook 9y ago
    That requires releasing new versions of iOS. Google can work around that way faster than Apple can try to play catch-up. It's a losing battle.
    - obstinate 9y ago
      It doesn't require it, except that Apple has failed to decouple Safari from iOS, and so it can't be updated like regular apps.
      - MBCook 9y ago
        Apple has certain things that they can push any time, such as the lists that safari looks at to find out if websites are dangerous or some of the security stuff they have. However they ship it, they'd still be in an arms race against google to keep AMP pages hidden from Safari users. That doesn't seem like a productive use of anyone's time.
  - H4CK3RM4N 9y ago
    I think encrypted.google.com doesn't use AMP yet, so they could make that the default search
zanny 9y ago
Except iOS is a captive market. Once you have owners of i-devices, switching requries capital investment and time moving to an alternate platform. You can exploit them heavily before they start leaving. If we are talking about search, you can stop using google by typing bing.com or duckduckgo.com in your url bar any time you want, and every major browser supports changing the default search engine, even Chrome.

blinkingled 9y ago

Well, it is Gruber we are talking about. He believes in openness when it suits Apple - AMP outputs standard HTML5 which Safari renders - it does its own scrolling but he doesn't quite like it. Google doesn't 'respect' that closed platform. On that 'crime' Gruber has this to say - "If I had my way, Mobile Safari would refuse to render AMP pages." You might have valid reasons not to use AMP but Gruber's are merely that he ends up sharing google.com URLs on twitter, it's Google, and it does its own scrolling on iOS.

MBCook 9y ago
AMP does NOT outperform HTML5 unless the HTML5 page is horribly designed and ridiculously bloated. But that can be fixed without Google's help. I'm not sure why your dismissive of the scrolling thing. Having something breaks the feel of the web browser is a really bad idea. Additionally he's completely right that it breaks other platform conventions that users expect to use. You can't use the share button, you can't tap at the top of the article to jump back to the top. I can tell you as someone who uses mobile Safari, AMP is incredibly infuriating. It's gotten to the point where I actively avoid AMP search results. Google has single-handedly broken the way it's search results feel for a number of top sites on iOS, and doesn't seem to care. Further, there is NO OPTION to turn it off. I would LOVE to have a way to tell mobile Safari not to render the AMP version of the page. Then I could use Google easily again.
- izacus 9y ago
  > AMP does NOT outperform HTML5 unless the HTML5 page is horribly designed and ridiculously bloated. But that can be fixed without Google's help. And yet, noone cared enough to fix it until now. It's really really hard to sympathize with publishers when they brought this upon themselves by turning their pages into giant autoplaying video infested places.
  - MBCook 9y ago
    If that's all Google truly cared about they could've simply put a heavy penalty on Pages that rendered slow or presented garbage. Instead they invented their own thing which caused you to stay on Google sites using Google services to read other peoples content… and said they did it to speed things up. It feels like that was either justification after the fact or that was with the original engineer had in mind but was not the point of the project once it got approved. All those horrible infested pages? That's why I run an ad blockers, use RSS, and stopped reading a lot of sites. As every publisher got more and more aggressive other people were going to start doing it too. Eventually, I think it would've had an effect. This feels a lot more like when Birders (or was it B&N?) outsourced their web sales to Amazon. Remember how well that went? Outsourcing a key part of your experience to another company it's a bad idea, especially if they like being in control of everything.

tambourine_man 9y ago

I wish there was a big red “I know what I'm doing” button on iOS that allowed the user to download and install a binary from a simple web page. But technically, you can download the source and/or write your own code, compile and install on your iOS device without jailbreaking or going through the AppStore. It's a hassle, sure, but doable.

teddyh 9y ago
As I understand it, you can only do that by registering yourself to Apple, and paying them $100 for the privilege.
- tambourine_man 9y ago
  Nope, pretty sure you can do it with a free account
  - technimad 9y ago
    Correct, but your self compiled app will only work for 7 days on your own device. And than you have to recompile and reinstall. Unless you pay the $100
    - tambourine_man 9y ago
      Didn't know the 7 days thing, thanks. Even more of a hassle then.
- ryanschneider 9y ago
  That's actually no longer true, you need to join the free dev program, but can publish to your own device without paying $100/year. The $100 is only needed for the App Store now.
  - gergles 9y ago
    Well, as long as you're willing to reinstall your app every 7 days. Otherwise, you must remit the Software Development Tax.

jwilcoxson 9y ago

While I get your point, your rebuttal is a pretty hardcore ad hominem.

aoeusnth1 9y ago
It's not a rebuttal - he's not trying to say Scott is wrong. He's pointing out Scott is a hypocrite. An insult is not an instance of the ad hominem fallacy.
- coldtea 9y ago
  >He's pointing out Scott is a hypocrite. Gruber, not Scott. He's not talking about the original writer, but for the guy that quoted him.
- jwilcoxson 9y ago
  He is arguing against Johns stance on AMP by calling him a hypocrite citing his views on iOS, literally a perfect example of an ad hominem.
- megablast 9y ago
  > "the cat is out of the bag". This is where he says his argument is rubbish because he supports iOS.

dwighttk 9y ago

Dismiss someone's position on one terrible thing because they hold a position you disagree about on a different topic. Seems legit.

zepto 9y ago

Whataboutism is just as distasteful here as it is when Fox News does it.

idlewords 9y ago

This does not address the argument at all. Pretend someone else made it, if Gruber bugs you.

coldtea 9y ago

>"publication independence"? Really? The man who is famous among other things for supporting the most closed ecosystem there is around: iOS, where a single company decides what apps are worth publishing and wish ones doesn't. First of all, that's an ad hominem. If publication independence is important, then it remains important whether Gruber is hypocritical about it or not. Second, one might want apps to be curated (for the better experience), but stand for independence from control and censorship when it comes to journalism and personal commentary. And indeed, one can think that "newspaper publication independence" is really far more important than software publication independence. The main difference being of course that Apple controlling apps is a huge inconvenience to those being rejected, but not so much to the users (especially with 1.5 million other apps to chose from). Whereas someone controlling the news is bad for the readers. >That genie is out of the box, when you decided that you didn't mind a company gatekeeping which software you can install on "your" devices you opened that can of worms, the one where any company can gatekeep anything they want as long as it is "convenient" for most people. Actually there's nothing (no law of physics or history for example) to force someone being ok with the one (company control of its walled app store) to be ok with other (company controlling content publication). You can be angry and/or stop and/or speak against any combination of the two.

cbsmith 9y ago
Pointing out a seeming contradiction in an advocate's advocacy is not an ad hominem.
- raarts 9y ago
  But rebutting an argument by attacking the character of the person making it, is.
  - cmurf 9y ago
    Ad hominem attacks are considered logical fallacies only when they're used instead of a dismantling someone's arguments. If they're not making a sound argument at all, yet they continue to make it, there's no way to argue the argument, the problem is a character defect - so attacking the character of the person is logical in that case and accepted in debate. Not all people are good. And not all smart people argue logically.

skywhopper 9y ago

It's a shame you hijacked this thread with a critique of Gruber. There's no good argument that AMP is anything but a bad thing for publishers, and that has nothing to do with Gruber's support for Apple's approach to iOS.