7 ms·

it took a decade to "be allowed" and is still extremely rudimentary, not to mention its a very fine line to the point that mozilla and google still wont invest

by gcb0 8y ago

it took a decade to "be allowed" and is still extremely rudimentary, not to mention its a very fine line to the point that mozilla and google still wont invest in a browser engine port because apple already told in the past that simply running JS in the browser is enough to breach their policy. so please stop shouting like its common place. pythonista3 is a very controlled experiment as it is now. and it exploits a "tiny blessing" apple gave on the policy of running "user inputed source code" only!

saagarjha 8y ago
> mozilla and google still wont invest in a browser engine port The reason they won't do this is because they would't be able to JIT execute in their App Store app, which would make their browser seem unbearably slow.
- thangngoc89 8y ago
  While you're right that JIT isn't allowed on App Store, the issue with browser is you can only use built-in Safari webview for rendering websites. So all browsers on the App Store is a shell for Safari webview
  - saagarjha 8y ago
    My argument stands even if the "you must use WebKit" guideline is dropped. There's no point in writing a browser without WebKit because you just can't get good performance out of it.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
  - jmarinez 8y ago
    This isn't true either. https://github.com/jcs/endless https://github.com/jcs/endless
    - raydev 8y ago
      The Github page says it's a wrapper around UIWebView, so it's still a form of WebKit provided by iOS.
amelius 8y ago
I personally can't believe why Apple is still so popular in a place called "Hacker News".
- saagarjha 8y ago
  I find this project to be pretty interesting, don't you? I think this makes it meet the bar for the guidelines.
  - amelius 8y ago
    Comment is about Apple, not about the project. I can already run Linux on my desktop computer, and I intend to buy a Librem phone when it comes out, so I can run Linux without performance penalties on my phone ... and without possible retraction by Apple looming over my head.
- morganvachon 8y ago
  Hardware hacker here, I can give you a few reasons. iPhones are designed to "just work" which is what I want in my main communications device. Sure, I could take one of the half-dozen SBCs on my work bench and turn it into a working cellphone with some parts and some sketchy code and a prayer or two, but I wouldn't want to rely on it daily. As for my computer, I use a Mac mini that dual boots macOS and Linux. I have an older Mac mini that runs OpenBSD exclusively. I also have a media server I cobbled together from scavenged x86 parts. I'm not a programmer, but it's my understanding from this community and others I frequent that Macs make for a comfortable and useful platform for their work and leisure computing life. So, despite your attempt at gatekeeping, Apple products do have a place in a random hacker's workflow if that hacker decides he wants it; it's not up to you to decide what someone else uses and enjoys.
  - amelius 8y ago
    Certainly, anyone may choose the hardware they like. But there is a danger in this type of "democracy", namely that we're heading for a future where true general purpose computing starts to disappear, and universities and computing enthousiasts have to pay thousands of dollars for a universally programmable computer. With Apple aggressively vertically integrating their supply-chain, and others copying Apple's business tactics, the writing is on the wall ...
simonh 8y ago
Please don't spread misinformation, there have been very usable and capable dev environments available on the iPad since soon after it came out and their capabilities and access to features has been expanding steadily. Codea (a Lua programming environemnt) has been on the App Store since 2011 and has had games written in it on the App Store since soon after as well*. Pythonista has been around for 6 years, has a built-in GUI designer, you can get Dropbox and Github syncing scripts for it and now it has a built-in feature so you can even sync your scripts between devices using iCloud. It also has apps written with it on the App Store.
- raxxorrax 8y ago
  > there have been very usable and capable dev environments available on the iPad Usable and capable compared to what? There is some stuff but it is always way inferior to anything on comparable platforms. That isn't obvious for MacOS, but certainly for iOS. Not that I am a huge fan of Android. It has a lot of similar problems. But I cannot understand enthusiasm for Apple while it restricts access to almost any part of their software environment.
  - simonh 8y ago
    >Usable and capable compared to what? Compared to pretty much anything - honestly. Pythonista is the gold standard. It has a fully feature integrated syntax highlighting editor, a built-in GUI form designer, graphics and media libraries for games, an integrated debugger, custom keyboard, a selection of Python third party modules such as scipy and Matplotlib, all the standard Python docs and tutorials and included module docs, full integration with share sheets, notifications, widgets, it's a universal app for iPhone and iPad, it integrates with the Github client apps such as Working Copy and it has built-in iCloud syncing for script folders. You can get Dropbox and Github Gist sync scripts pretty easily, I used to use an FTP server script a lot before iCloud integration came along. It's hard to imagine what else it could really need. But let's compare it to the other major phone and tablet OS for a start. You even say so yourself. The dev apps for iOS are streets ahead of anything on Android. You seem to be arguing that in theory Apple's policies _should_ be holding iOS dev apps back compared to Android, but in reality that just isn't happening, even slightly. I can certainly sympathise. About 6 or 7 years ago I was seriously considering getting an Android tablet because I expected the on-device dev story there to pull well ahead of iOS in the near future and wanted to be able to take advantage of that. What actually happened was I started using Codea, and when Pythonista came along I switched to that, and nothing comparable on Android ever materialised. War story - I had to do a programming exercise for a job interview. I did most of it on my iPad on the train, including a custom compression exercise that involved writing my own bit-twiddling routines and a server remote control script using Paramiko, which of course Pythonista includes. I was remote controlling some Linux VMs running on my Mac in Virtualbox, using ssh from Python scripts directly from my iPhone! It's a terrible shame and I don't understand why Android is so far behind on this. I suspect it's because the Open Source and Free Software communities have never really embraced Android and spent the time and effort to tool it up. Meanwhile Apple has been paying very close attention to this area and judiciously relaxing their rules in consultation with dev app authors. Whatever the reasons though, if you want to write scripts locally on a phone or tablet, iOS is clearly the way to go right now and that doesn't look like it's going to change any time soon.
pcwalton 8y ago
> mozilla and google still wont invest in a browser engine port Gecko runs just fine on iOS.
- tombert 8y ago
  Wait, this is news to me. I was under the (probably erroneous) assumption that Firefox on iOS was running under webkit. Am I wrong?
  - pcwalton 8y ago
    Firefox for iOS is built on WebKit. Gecko runs just fine on iOS; it just isn't deployed.
    - raydev 8y ago
      Took a few Google search iterations but I found this: https://hg.mozilla.org/users/tmielczarek_mozilla.com/gecko-ios/ https://hg.mozilla.org/users/tmielczarek_mozilla.com/gecko-i... That's neat. Looks like the last commit was in 2015. Is there any backstory to this project? Was it just research? Is it abandoned?
      - saagarjha 8y ago
        Looks like it was abandoned. One of the last commits was “Disable the JIT on iOS because it’s busted”.

by gcb0 8y ago

saagarjha 8y ago

> mozilla and google still wont invest in a browser engine port The reason they won't do this is because they would't be able to JIT execute in their App Store app, which would make their browser seem unbearably slow.

thangngoc89 8y ago
While you're right that JIT isn't allowed on App Store, the issue with browser is you can only use built-in Safari webview for rendering websites. So all browsers on the App Store is a shell for Safari webview
- saagarjha 8y ago
  My argument stands even if the "you must use WebKit" guideline is dropped. There's no point in writing a browser without WebKit because you just can't get good performance out of it.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- jmarinez 8y ago
  This isn't true either. https://github.com/jcs/endless https://github.com/jcs/endless
  - raydev 8y ago
    The Github page says it's a wrapper around UIWebView, so it's still a form of WebKit provided by iOS.

amelius 8y ago

I personally can't believe why Apple is still so popular in a place called "Hacker News".

saagarjha 8y ago
I find this project to be pretty interesting, don't you? I think this makes it meet the bar for the guidelines.
- amelius 8y ago
  Comment is about Apple, not about the project. I can already run Linux on my desktop computer, and I intend to buy a Librem phone when it comes out, so I can run Linux without performance penalties on my phone ... and without possible retraction by Apple looming over my head.
morganvachon 8y ago
Hardware hacker here, I can give you a few reasons. iPhones are designed to "just work" which is what I want in my main communications device. Sure, I could take one of the half-dozen SBCs on my work bench and turn it into a working cellphone with some parts and some sketchy code and a prayer or two, but I wouldn't want to rely on it daily. As for my computer, I use a Mac mini that dual boots macOS and Linux. I have an older Mac mini that runs OpenBSD exclusively. I also have a media server I cobbled together from scavenged x86 parts. I'm not a programmer, but it's my understanding from this community and others I frequent that Macs make for a comfortable and useful platform for their work and leisure computing life. So, despite your attempt at gatekeeping, Apple products do have a place in a random hacker's workflow if that hacker decides he wants it; it's not up to you to decide what someone else uses and enjoys.
- amelius 8y ago
  Certainly, anyone may choose the hardware they like. But there is a danger in this type of "democracy", namely that we're heading for a future where true general purpose computing starts to disappear, and universities and computing enthousiasts have to pay thousands of dollars for a universally programmable computer. With Apple aggressively vertically integrating their supply-chain, and others copying Apple's business tactics, the writing is on the wall ...

simonh 8y ago

Please don't spread misinformation, there have been very usable and capable dev environments available on the iPad since soon after it came out and their capabilities and access to features has been expanding steadily. Codea (a Lua programming environemnt) has been on the App Store since 2011 and has had games written in it on the App Store since soon after as well*. Pythonista has been around for 6 years, has a built-in GUI designer, you can get Dropbox and Github syncing scripts for it and now it has a built-in feature so you can even sync your scripts between devices using iCloud. It also has apps written with it on the App Store.

raxxorrax 8y ago
> there have been very usable and capable dev environments available on the iPad Usable and capable compared to what? There is some stuff but it is always way inferior to anything on comparable platforms. That isn't obvious for MacOS, but certainly for iOS. Not that I am a huge fan of Android. It has a lot of similar problems. But I cannot understand enthusiasm for Apple while it restricts access to almost any part of their software environment.
- simonh 8y ago
  >Usable and capable compared to what? Compared to pretty much anything - honestly. Pythonista is the gold standard. It has a fully feature integrated syntax highlighting editor, a built-in GUI form designer, graphics and media libraries for games, an integrated debugger, custom keyboard, a selection of Python third party modules such as scipy and Matplotlib, all the standard Python docs and tutorials and included module docs, full integration with share sheets, notifications, widgets, it's a universal app for iPhone and iPad, it integrates with the Github client apps such as Working Copy and it has built-in iCloud syncing for script folders. You can get Dropbox and Github Gist sync scripts pretty easily, I used to use an FTP server script a lot before iCloud integration came along. It's hard to imagine what else it could really need. But let's compare it to the other major phone and tablet OS for a start. You even say so yourself. The dev apps for iOS are streets ahead of anything on Android. You seem to be arguing that in theory Apple's policies _should_ be holding iOS dev apps back compared to Android, but in reality that just isn't happening, even slightly. I can certainly sympathise. About 6 or 7 years ago I was seriously considering getting an Android tablet because I expected the on-device dev story there to pull well ahead of iOS in the near future and wanted to be able to take advantage of that. What actually happened was I started using Codea, and when Pythonista came along I switched to that, and nothing comparable on Android ever materialised. War story - I had to do a programming exercise for a job interview. I did most of it on my iPad on the train, including a custom compression exercise that involved writing my own bit-twiddling routines and a server remote control script using Paramiko, which of course Pythonista includes. I was remote controlling some Linux VMs running on my Mac in Virtualbox, using ssh from Python scripts directly from my iPhone! It's a terrible shame and I don't understand why Android is so far behind on this. I suspect it's because the Open Source and Free Software communities have never really embraced Android and spent the time and effort to tool it up. Meanwhile Apple has been paying very close attention to this area and judiciously relaxing their rules in consultation with dev app authors. Whatever the reasons though, if you want to write scripts locally on a phone or tablet, iOS is clearly the way to go right now and that doesn't look like it's going to change any time soon.

pcwalton 8y ago

> mozilla and google still wont invest in a browser engine port Gecko runs just fine on iOS.

tombert 8y ago
Wait, this is news to me. I was under the (probably erroneous) assumption that Firefox on iOS was running under webkit. Am I wrong?
- pcwalton 8y ago
  Firefox for iOS is built on WebKit. Gecko runs just fine on iOS; it just isn't deployed.
  - raydev 8y ago
    Took a few Google search iterations but I found this: https://hg.mozilla.org/users/tmielczarek_mozilla.com/gecko-ios/ https://hg.mozilla.org/users/tmielczarek_mozilla.com/gecko-i... That's neat. Looks like the last commit was in 2015. Is there any backstory to this project? Was it just research? Is it abandoned?
    - saagarjha 8y ago
      Looks like it was abandoned. One of the last commits was “Disable the JIT on iOS because it’s busted”.