4 ms·

Sure, I can accept that generally speaking there is a difference between phone/tablet and desktop. But how about Android vs iOS. I can install Firefox on Androi

Sure, I can accept that generally speaking there is a difference between phone/tablet and desktop. But how about Android vs iOS. I can install Firefox on Android, but not on iOS. (It "looks" like FF, but it's Safari with a skin, same with Chrome.) Can you offer a valid explanation on why it's technically not possible for a real Firefox browser to work in iOS, but works fine on Android?

alwillis 9y ago
Short answer: Google and Apple have different priorities when it comes to security, privacy, performance and power consumption. Same thing with Mozilla but to a lesser degree. It’s also not accurate to say Firefox and Chrome are just “skins” over Safari. Sure, they have to use WebKit via various system APIs but they also add their own features, some of which Safari doesn’t have like support for Google Assistant and a built-in QR code scanner for starters. Heck, Google Chrome on iOS supports the Payment Request API while Safari doesn’t, which means there are web platform features Google implemented that WebKit doesn’t have. Why are you complaining again? ;-) Same for Brave, which does lots of things Safari doesn’t. Remember, Chrome and WebKit share a common ancestral codebase; the vast majority of a site’s HTML and CSS renders exactly the same anyway, so it’s not like Google or users like you are actually missing out on anything of substance other than some misplaced sense of being restricted from shooting yourselves in the foot because you can’t use a browser engine that’s slower and consumes more power than what Apple ships—ditto for Mozilla. For the overwhelming majority of the browsing anyone does, it makes no difference. It’s just a manufactured grevence of a vocal minority of Apple critics.
- RobertRoberts 9y ago
  I think you are dodging the central claim against Apple, they prohibit competition on their platform. If Microsoft or Google did this, they'd be accused of anticompetitive behavoir, or being a monopoloy. In fact, MS actually did this with IE vs Netscape. Maybe you are too young to know or remember this. It's just astonishing that anyone could ignore the parralels. Also, I asked if there was any "technical reasons" Apple couldn't allow real Firefox in iOS, and you ignored that. I suspect because you know the answer is "no". So, then it's purely for marketing reasons. Please explain how it's better for end users to have only one choice of browser? If you want to say they already do, then you do not understand how browsers work. And if you want, I can do some googling for you to show you why FF and Chrome on iOS are _not_ any different at the core level than mobile Safari.
  - alwillis 9y ago
    In fact, MS actually did this with IE vs Netscape. Maybe you are too young to know or remember this. It's just astonishing that anyone could ignore the parralels. I was doing IT at MIT when the Microsoft/Netscape thing went down—I’m not new to any of this.
  - alwillis 9y ago
    This is going to be my last response on this topic, since this has devolved into a political and ideological thing——I can’t help you with that. This post sums it up for me [1]: I think this thread is full of people who want Apple be considered a monopoly more than care about whether they actually are. I think you are dodging the central claim against Apple, they prohibit competition on their platform. If Microsoft or Google did this, they'd be accused of anticompetitive behavoir, or being a monopoloy. Nope. Again, this is an ideological argument, not a technical or legal argument. They aren’t prohibiting competition——there are over two million apps on the App Store[2], including ones by every company that is considered a competitor like Microsoft, Google, Mozilla and others. But here is a legal position: there’s nothing illegal about determining what they will and will not allow in their App Store and what they will and will not allow on their platform, especially when the companies agree to it when they sign the contract with Apple. It’s only tech ideologues and free software zealots that think that their rights are being violated because Apple doesn’t permit other web rendering engines other than WebKit. There’s no legitimate technical or legal argument that can be made that users are somehow suffering due to this. If that’s your deal, that’s fine; but don’t act like it’s the same thing as Microsoft/Netscape because it’s not. Please read the history of that case on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Corp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor.... I wrote about why this isn’t like Microsoft, IE and Netscape in the thread [3]. Here’s the simplest way to make this plain: * Microsoft had 95% of the desktop operating system market back in the day. Apple has around 20% of the global cell phone market[4] * Microsoft was accused (after signing a decent decree with the US government saying it wouldn’t do this) of using its natural monopoly in operating systems to affect emerging markets, such as the browser market * Apple doesn’t have a monopoly——natural or otherwise; it hasn’t been under investigation by the Federal Trade Commission or the Department of Justice——Microsoft was * Apple has direct competitors on the App Store in every category it has apps and services for: maps, music players and services, camera, file sharing * Google makes more money from iOS than it does from Android [5],[6] Last thing: like it or not, Safari is the fastest and most energy efficient browser engine that could exist on iOS because unless you’re Apple, there’s no way for a 3rd party to have the information of the firmware, custom processors, GPUs, etc. that would be required to do what Apple is already doing with WebKit. It’s not like the HTML, CSS and Javascript rendering is significantly different than what the other engines do, so there’s no compelling technical reason that there should be 3rd party engines, other than to satisfy their critics and zealots. There might be some there there if Google and Mozilla boycotted iOS because they weren’t allowed to use their rendering engines and otherwise made a big deal about this. Because they must be on the most profitable mobile platform in the world, they’re admitting that they’re okay with the situation as it is, even if you guys are not. So in reality, your issue is with Mozilla and Google, who’ve left you guys hanging and don’t have your back on this. Time to let it go. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15983379 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15983379 [2]: https://www.statista.com/statistics/276623/number-of-apps-available-in-leading-app-stores/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/276623/number-of-apps-av... [3]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15985922 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15985922 [4]: https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=3&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwj4vpGkr6vYAhWkSd8KHT0oDQgQFggxMAI&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.statista.com%2Fstatistics%2F216459%2Fglobal-market-share-of-apple-iphone%2F&usg=AOvVaw3unxf1uGeV0IlsaXQXSelw https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&c... [5]: http://bgr.com/2015/05/27/iphone-vs-android-advertising-google-profits-money/ http://bgr.com/2015/05/27/iphone-vs-android-advertising-goog... [6]: https://gizmodo.com/5897457/google-makes-four-times-more-money-from-ios-than-android https://gizmodo.com/5897457/google-makes-four-times-more-mon...

alwillis 9y ago

Short answer: Google and Apple have different priorities when it comes to security, privacy, performance and power consumption. Same thing with Mozilla but to a lesser degree. It’s also not accurate to say Firefox and Chrome are just “skins” over Safari. Sure, they have to use WebKit via various system APIs but they also add their own features, some of which Safari doesn’t have like support for Google Assistant and a built-in QR code scanner for starters. Heck, Google Chrome on iOS supports the Payment Request API while Safari doesn’t, which means there are web platform features Google implemented that WebKit doesn’t have. Why are you complaining again? ;-) Same for Brave, which does lots of things Safari doesn’t. Remember, Chrome and WebKit share a common ancestral codebase; the vast majority of a site’s HTML and CSS renders exactly the same anyway, so it’s not like Google or users like you are actually missing out on anything of substance other than some misplaced sense of being restricted from shooting yourselves in the foot because you can’t use a browser engine that’s slower and consumes more power than what Apple ships—ditto for Mozilla. For the overwhelming majority of the browsing anyone does, it makes no difference. It’s just a manufactured grevence of a vocal minority of Apple critics.

RobertRoberts 9y ago
I think you are dodging the central claim against Apple, they prohibit competition on their platform. If Microsoft or Google did this, they'd be accused of anticompetitive behavoir, or being a monopoloy. In fact, MS actually did this with IE vs Netscape. Maybe you are too young to know or remember this. It's just astonishing that anyone could ignore the parralels. Also, I asked if there was any "technical reasons" Apple couldn't allow real Firefox in iOS, and you ignored that. I suspect because you know the answer is "no". So, then it's purely for marketing reasons. Please explain how it's better for end users to have only one choice of browser? If you want to say they already do, then you do not understand how browsers work. And if you want, I can do some googling for you to show you why FF and Chrome on iOS are _not_ any different at the core level than mobile Safari.
- alwillis 9y ago
  In fact, MS actually did this with IE vs Netscape. Maybe you are too young to know or remember this. It's just astonishing that anyone could ignore the parralels. I was doing IT at MIT when the Microsoft/Netscape thing went down—I’m not new to any of this.
- alwillis 9y ago
  This is going to be my last response on this topic, since this has devolved into a political and ideological thing——I can’t help you with that. This post sums it up for me [1]: I think this thread is full of people who want Apple be considered a monopoly more than care about whether they actually are. I think you are dodging the central claim against Apple, they prohibit competition on their platform. If Microsoft or Google did this, they'd be accused of anticompetitive behavoir, or being a monopoloy. Nope. Again, this is an ideological argument, not a technical or legal argument. They aren’t prohibiting competition——there are over two million apps on the App Store[2], including ones by every company that is considered a competitor like Microsoft, Google, Mozilla and others. But here is a legal position: there’s nothing illegal about determining what they will and will not allow in their App Store and what they will and will not allow on their platform, especially when the companies agree to it when they sign the contract with Apple. It’s only tech ideologues and free software zealots that think that their rights are being violated because Apple doesn’t permit other web rendering engines other than WebKit. There’s no legitimate technical or legal argument that can be made that users are somehow suffering due to this. If that’s your deal, that’s fine; but don’t act like it’s the same thing as Microsoft/Netscape because it’s not. Please read the history of that case on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Corp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor.... I wrote about why this isn’t like Microsoft, IE and Netscape in the thread [3]. Here’s the simplest way to make this plain: * Microsoft had 95% of the desktop operating system market back in the day. Apple has around 20% of the global cell phone market[4] * Microsoft was accused (after signing a decent decree with the US government saying it wouldn’t do this) of using its natural monopoly in operating systems to affect emerging markets, such as the browser market * Apple doesn’t have a monopoly——natural or otherwise; it hasn’t been under investigation by the Federal Trade Commission or the Department of Justice——Microsoft was * Apple has direct competitors on the App Store in every category it has apps and services for: maps, music players and services, camera, file sharing * Google makes more money from iOS than it does from Android [5],[6] Last thing: like it or not, Safari is the fastest and most energy efficient browser engine that could exist on iOS because unless you’re Apple, there’s no way for a 3rd party to have the information of the firmware, custom processors, GPUs, etc. that would be required to do what Apple is already doing with WebKit. It’s not like the HTML, CSS and Javascript rendering is significantly different than what the other engines do, so there’s no compelling technical reason that there should be 3rd party engines, other than to satisfy their critics and zealots. There might be some there there if Google and Mozilla boycotted iOS because they weren’t allowed to use their rendering engines and otherwise made a big deal about this. Because they must be on the most profitable mobile platform in the world, they’re admitting that they’re okay with the situation as it is, even if you guys are not. So in reality, your issue is with Mozilla and Google, who’ve left you guys hanging and don’t have your back on this. Time to let it go. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15983379 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15983379 [2]: https://www.statista.com/statistics/276623/number-of-apps-available-in-leading-app-stores/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/276623/number-of-apps-av... [3]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15985922 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15985922 [4]: https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=3&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwj4vpGkr6vYAhWkSd8KHT0oDQgQFggxMAI&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.statista.com%2Fstatistics%2F216459%2Fglobal-market-share-of-apple-iphone%2F&usg=AOvVaw3unxf1uGeV0IlsaXQXSelw https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&c... [5]: http://bgr.com/2015/05/27/iphone-vs-android-advertising-google-profits-money/ http://bgr.com/2015/05/27/iphone-vs-android-advertising-goog... [6]: https://gizmodo.com/5897457/google-makes-four-times-more-money-from-ios-than-android https://gizmodo.com/5897457/google-makes-four-times-more-mon...