5 ms·

I saw this yesterday on twitter and my thought was "they don't support webrtc yet?!? seriously?" It sometimes baffles me how apple is holding up progress on th

by hannob 9y ago

I saw this yesterday on twitter and my thought was "they don't support webrtc yet?!? seriously?" It sometimes baffles me how apple is holding up progress on the web - and that they aren't criticized more for it.

013a 9y ago
As long as we get there eventually, I will always side with taking the time to do it right. There is room in the world for both a highly advanced browser, with the sacrifices that come with that, and a workhorse. Nothing is stopping you from having them both installed (except, well, on iOS).
- prophesi 9y ago
  > Nothing is stopping you from having them both installed Sure, but it stops your site from working cross-browser.
  - edoceo 9y ago
    Even with both installed on iOS WebRTC doesn't work
abalone 9y ago
They're not holding up progress. They have different objectives, and chief among them is power efficiency. Chrome eats up a lot more battery life than Safari.[1] So did Flash (among other conflicts), and I think we all accept now that "holding that up" was good for the web in the long run. Apple tends to take a little longer and suffer a little short-term pain to get it right in the long run. [1] https://daringfireball.net/2017/05/safari_vs_chrome_on_the_mac https://daringfireball.net/2017/05/safari_vs_chrome_on_the_m...
- o_____________o 9y ago
  Apple has absolutely kneecapped web technologies. Mobile Safari has simple, egregious bugs that have been open for years. We're talking about things like being able to crash the browser with CSS or file selection, etc. It's impossible to make the case that Apple is just rejecting features for the sake of the user. The next question is why, and you'll need some creativity to come up with any other answer than pointing to the monolithic, money printing app store.
  - callalex 9y ago
    Any input that can crash the browser is a potential security vulnerability. Can you point me to an example of an inpatched crash in Safari that has been "open for years"?
    - om2 9y ago
      We'd super appreciate bug reports of reproducible crashes and we definitely try to look at them. Bugs welcome at http://bugs.webkit.org/ http://bugs.webkit.org/
  - matthewmacleod 9y ago
    This is just mince. There are no long-standing crashes in Safari that "crash the browser with CSS or file selection". And from a purely anecdotal point of view, I've found it the least annoying browser to use by far.
    - o_____________o 9y ago
      I think you missed the Mobile part. Do a search for "Mobile Safari file selection crash" – that one minor but severe example was still happening as of earlier this year and for at least four years prior. Mmm, mince!
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - Wago 9y ago
    My company scrapped a hybrid project entirely because of UIWV/WKWV/Mobile Safari bugs. I can't believe anyone would have a different opinion after using it for any large project.
  - threeseed 9y ago
    Posts like this genuinely confuse me. If all Apple cared about was the App Store then why do they continue to hire WebKit engineers and build new features ? It would be easier just to fork WebKit, never add anything new and deliberately make it so unusable that everyone rushes to apps.
- trakout 9y ago
  For all the leaps and bounds we saw being made by ARkit, Safari desktop still does not support typical 360 video due to a CORS non-compliance issue. Said issue has been submitted and known for two years.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
whatever_dude 9y ago
I agree in essence, and I personally hate how they tend to handicap mobile Safari, but the recent announcement of WebRTC and WebAssembly support (including mobile!) means they're catching up fast, and maybe changing their approach to web technology.
- alwillis 9y ago
  I believe that’s a short-sighted view. The past year or so, the Safari/WebKit teams have been killin’ it. I use Mobile Safari a lot each day and I can tell you it’s not handicapped.
  - whatever_dude 9y ago
    I'm curious if you do Mobile Safari development, however. I don't believe it's a short-sighted view. I think it's quite the opposite; my opinion comes from from spending years doing (web) development for it. Their focus has always been on things that matter little (they were by far the first to implement `backdrop-filter`) while still keeping important things severely broken (as `position: fixed`) and messing with things that should work in a pretty obvious manner anywhere else (like overflow scrolling). WebAssembly and WebRTC are the opposite of it. "Last year or so", maybe, but it'll take more than one year of good work for me to look at the team at a good light.
- alwillis 9y ago
  I believe that’s a short-sighted view. The past year or so, the Safari/WebKit teams have been killin’ it. I use Mobile Safari a lot each day and I can tell you it’s not handicapped.
xenadu02 9y ago
Maybe you were still in middle school but there was a time when the web was dead and IE killed it. Mozilla and Apple resurrected the web. Apple famously refused to allow Flash on iOS and in doing so single-handedly did more to push HTML5 standards than anyone else. I'll also point out that WebRTC has gone through numerous iterations to such a degree that a lot of WebRTC sites don't work with Safari 11 because they're using old non-standards-compliant variants of the API. The typical HN web dev seems to load their site in Chrome, click around a bit, and call it a day. That's not healthy for standards or the web, but it sure is lazy and expedient for a very narrow group of people. Chrome is not the web.

by hannob 9y ago

013a 9y ago

As long as we get there eventually, I will always side with taking the time to do it right. There is room in the world for both a highly advanced browser, with the sacrifices that come with that, and a workhorse. Nothing is stopping you from having them both installed (except, well, on iOS).

prophesi 9y ago
> Nothing is stopping you from having them both installed Sure, but it stops your site from working cross-browser.
- edoceo 9y ago
  Even with both installed on iOS WebRTC doesn't work

abalone 9y ago

They're not holding up progress. They have different objectives, and chief among them is power efficiency. Chrome eats up a lot more battery life than Safari.[1] So did Flash (among other conflicts), and I think we all accept now that "holding that up" was good for the web in the long run. Apple tends to take a little longer and suffer a little short-term pain to get it right in the long run. [1] https://daringfireball.net/2017/05/safari_vs_chrome_on_the_mac https://daringfireball.net/2017/05/safari_vs_chrome_on_the_m...

o_____________o 9y ago
Apple has absolutely kneecapped web technologies. Mobile Safari has simple, egregious bugs that have been open for years. We're talking about things like being able to crash the browser with CSS or file selection, etc. It's impossible to make the case that Apple is just rejecting features for the sake of the user. The next question is why, and you'll need some creativity to come up with any other answer than pointing to the monolithic, money printing app store.
- callalex 9y ago
  Any input that can crash the browser is a potential security vulnerability. Can you point me to an example of an inpatched crash in Safari that has been "open for years"?
  - om2 9y ago
    We'd super appreciate bug reports of reproducible crashes and we definitely try to look at them. Bugs welcome at http://bugs.webkit.org/ http://bugs.webkit.org/
- matthewmacleod 9y ago
  This is just mince. There are no long-standing crashes in Safari that "crash the browser with CSS or file selection". And from a purely anecdotal point of view, I've found it the least annoying browser to use by far.
  - o_____________o 9y ago
    I think you missed the Mobile part. Do a search for "Mobile Safari file selection crash" – that one minor but severe example was still happening as of earlier this year and for at least four years prior. Mmm, mince!
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- Wago 9y ago
  My company scrapped a hybrid project entirely because of UIWV/WKWV/Mobile Safari bugs. I can't believe anyone would have a different opinion after using it for any large project.
- threeseed 9y ago
  Posts like this genuinely confuse me. If all Apple cared about was the App Store then why do they continue to hire WebKit engineers and build new features ? It would be easier just to fork WebKit, never add anything new and deliberately make it so unusable that everyone rushes to apps.
trakout 9y ago
For all the leaps and bounds we saw being made by ARkit, Safari desktop still does not support typical 360 video due to a CORS non-compliance issue. Said issue has been submitted and known for two years.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

whatever_dude 9y ago

I agree in essence, and I personally hate how they tend to handicap mobile Safari, but the recent announcement of WebRTC and WebAssembly support (including mobile!) means they're catching up fast, and maybe changing their approach to web technology.

alwillis 9y ago
I believe that’s a short-sighted view. The past year or so, the Safari/WebKit teams have been killin’ it. I use Mobile Safari a lot each day and I can tell you it’s not handicapped.
- whatever_dude 9y ago
  I'm curious if you do Mobile Safari development, however. I don't believe it's a short-sighted view. I think it's quite the opposite; my opinion comes from from spending years doing (web) development for it. Their focus has always been on things that matter little (they were by far the first to implement `backdrop-filter`) while still keeping important things severely broken (as `position: fixed`) and messing with things that should work in a pretty obvious manner anywhere else (like overflow scrolling). WebAssembly and WebRTC are the opposite of it. "Last year or so", maybe, but it'll take more than one year of good work for me to look at the team at a good light.
alwillis 9y ago
I believe that’s a short-sighted view. The past year or so, the Safari/WebKit teams have been killin’ it. I use Mobile Safari a lot each day and I can tell you it’s not handicapped.

xenadu02 9y ago

Maybe you were still in middle school but there was a time when the web was dead and IE killed it. Mozilla and Apple resurrected the web. Apple famously refused to allow Flash on iOS and in doing so single-handedly did more to push HTML5 standards than anyone else. I'll also point out that WebRTC has gone through numerous iterations to such a degree that a lot of WebRTC sites don't work with Safari 11 because they're using old non-standards-compliant variants of the API. The typical HN web dev seems to load their site in Chrome, click around a bit, and call it a day. That's not healthy for standards or the web, but it sure is lazy and expedient for a very narrow group of people. Chrome is not the web.