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> they don’t give away stuff for free Apple used to have a separate, free Safari extension developer program where you can get free signing certificates. Then

by oefrha 7y ago

> they don’t give away stuff for free Apple used to have a separate, free Safari extension developer program where you can get free signing certificates. Then one day they retired that program and to sign Safari extensions you have to enroll in the $99/yr program. I highly doubt they made that decision based on the few extra $99 they would make each year. (I certainly didn’t sign up, I just stopped porting my extensions to Safari...) They probably just wanted to unify the developer program, as the separate free program was too insignificant for them to bother maintaining. Same here I suppose. In a way this is similar to getting rid of ports that an insignificant (and sometimes seemingly significant) segment of their user base depends on. (Not defending Apple’s action, just putting forth my take on their motivation.)

kitsunesoba 7y ago
In addition to unifying the developer program, it allowed Safari extensions to take advantage of the same system level sandboxing used by full blown apps, which is a big win in several ways — most notably, it lifts a ton of duplicated work off the shoulders of the Safari team. Aside from that, these newer gen Safari extensions are technically a good deal more capable their traditional JS counterparts, because they have access to just about anything that LLVM/clang will compile into a Mac binary — Swift and Objective-C of course, but also the vast majority of AppKit, Grand Central Dispatch, C++, and plain C among other things. Extensions that do more than basic DOM manipulation could see massive performance boosts written this way, but unfortunately I have yet to see a Safari extension that makes novel use of these capabilities.
- oefrha 7y ago
  I think the end of the Safari developer program predates Safari App Extensions, but I could be wrong. By the way, in addition to making porting miserable, they also introduced annoyances like not being able to use the 1Password extension on Safari Tech Preview[1]. [1] https://discussions.agilebits.com/discussion/96182/1password-7-no-longer-distinguishes-between-safari-and-safari-technology-preview-other-confusion https://discussions.agilebits.com/discussion/96182/1password...
  - kitsunesoba 7y ago
    IIRC they ended the Safari dev program shortly before removing support for old style extensions. Safari App Extensions and old extensions were supported for something like 3 or 4 major Safari releases.
    - oefrha 7y ago
      Hmm, then my memory of Safari App Extensions must have only started from when they became mandatory ;)
toyg 7y ago
As somebody who used to develop a small Safari extension and dropped it when the fee was introduced, I was really disappointed at the time. All the critiques of the time are still valid today and I believe have been vindicated: developer adoption has plummeted, there is no real growth in the number or quality of Safari extensions, the browser itself is lagging by any popularity metric one might care about... The same fate will likely befall Sign-in, although I guess leverage from iOS is stronger than Safari’s. This said, Apple’s approach is consistent: “this is a walled garden, you play by our rules, but we will make it worth your while”. The fee helps existing ecosystem developers defend from newcomers and challengers. It’s one of the ways the feudal ruler discharges its duties in the vassalage agreement, and then ensures loyalty by exploiting the sunken-costs fallacy. If you invest even a small amount of money in the agreement, you are much more motivated to actually produce something with it; and you’ll have less competition because a lot of people won’t even bother starting. The ecosystem will be markedly different from others, so that people that live entirely within its borders will struggle to ever leave, and developers won’t have to worry about expanding to other platforms.
- oefrha 7y ago
  > The same fate will likely befall Sign-in I highly doubt it, at least not for the “fee” reason. The number of Safari extension developers without a paid membership when they introduced the fee (or the number of browser extension developers of any kind, really) is hardly even a rounding error compared to the number of iOS developers who already have a subscription.
  - toyg 7y ago
    ...although I guess leverage from iOS is stronger than Safari’s.
- mcphage 7y ago
  > The same fate will likely befall Sign-in, although I guess leverage from iOS is stronger than Safari’s. I believe that, if you're releasing an iOS app that uses 3rd party sign-ins, you will be required to also include "Sign In with Apple". (The fee is irrelevant at that point since you'll already need to have a paid developer account to release your app.)

by oefrha 7y ago

kitsunesoba 7y ago

In addition to unifying the developer program, it allowed Safari extensions to take advantage of the same system level sandboxing used by full blown apps, which is a big win in several ways — most notably, it lifts a ton of duplicated work off the shoulders of the Safari team. Aside from that, these newer gen Safari extensions are technically a good deal more capable their traditional JS counterparts, because they have access to just about anything that LLVM/clang will compile into a Mac binary — Swift and Objective-C of course, but also the vast majority of AppKit, Grand Central Dispatch, C++, and plain C among other things. Extensions that do more than basic DOM manipulation could see massive performance boosts written this way, but unfortunately I have yet to see a Safari extension that makes novel use of these capabilities.

oefrha 7y ago
I think the end of the Safari developer program predates Safari App Extensions, but I could be wrong. By the way, in addition to making porting miserable, they also introduced annoyances like not being able to use the 1Password extension on Safari Tech Preview[1]. [1] https://discussions.agilebits.com/discussion/96182/1password-7-no-longer-distinguishes-between-safari-and-safari-technology-preview-other-confusion https://discussions.agilebits.com/discussion/96182/1password...
- kitsunesoba 7y ago
  IIRC they ended the Safari dev program shortly before removing support for old style extensions. Safari App Extensions and old extensions were supported for something like 3 or 4 major Safari releases.
  - oefrha 7y ago
    Hmm, then my memory of Safari App Extensions must have only started from when they became mandatory ;)

toyg 7y ago

As somebody who used to develop a small Safari extension and dropped it when the fee was introduced, I was really disappointed at the time. All the critiques of the time are still valid today and I believe have been vindicated: developer adoption has plummeted, there is no real growth in the number or quality of Safari extensions, the browser itself is lagging by any popularity metric one might care about... The same fate will likely befall Sign-in, although I guess leverage from iOS is stronger than Safari’s. This said, Apple’s approach is consistent: “this is a walled garden, you play by our rules, but we will make it worth your while”. The fee helps existing ecosystem developers defend from newcomers and challengers. It’s one of the ways the feudal ruler discharges its duties in the vassalage agreement, and then ensures loyalty by exploiting the sunken-costs fallacy. If you invest even a small amount of money in the agreement, you are much more motivated to actually produce something with it; and you’ll have less competition because a lot of people won’t even bother starting. The ecosystem will be markedly different from others, so that people that live entirely within its borders will struggle to ever leave, and developers won’t have to worry about expanding to other platforms.

oefrha 7y ago
> The same fate will likely befall Sign-in I highly doubt it, at least not for the “fee” reason. The number of Safari extension developers without a paid membership when they introduced the fee (or the number of browser extension developers of any kind, really) is hardly even a rounding error compared to the number of iOS developers who already have a subscription.
- toyg 7y ago
  ...although I guess leverage from iOS is stronger than Safari’s.
mcphage 7y ago
> The same fate will likely befall Sign-in, although I guess leverage from iOS is stronger than Safari’s. I believe that, if you're releasing an iOS app that uses 3rd party sign-ins, you will be required to also include "Sign In with Apple". (The fee is irrelevant at that point since you'll already need to have a paid developer account to release your app.)