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Why wouldn't you use Android then? I would personally like to continue paying higher prices to protect myself from low-quality background-syncing byte-code-obf
by nlitened 6y ago
Why wouldn't you use Android then?
I would personally like to continue paying higher prices to protect myself from low-quality background-syncing byte-code-obfuscated web-pages with push notifications, please.
- ActorNightly 6y agoThis doesnt happen though. Look at the state of web apps accessed through your computers browser - there is no issues with quality if you want a customer base.
- nlitened 6y agoMy computer browser is indeed fine, but my mother's -- is an entirely different story. I am really happy I can still get her an iPad these days.
- romanoderoma 6y agoMy mother buys books when she wants to read My mother uses her phone to actually call people There's no risk she's gonna use apps that she doesn't know My mother is not stupid, for sure she' s not more stupid than me. I'm growing tired of this false and ageist retohric
- srtjstjsj 6y agoDenying the existence of someone's mother is quite rude.
- romanoderoma 6y agoMy mom exists, she's 74, she never had a malware problem in her life. Maybe she's smarter than us all...
- dang 6y ago"Don't feed egregious comments by replying; flag them instead." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- romanoderoma 6y agoCan I ask what's "egregious" about my comment? an I not say that my mom, albeit being older than me, does not need her son's protection from malware and certainly does not need Apple to tell her what's right, just because she's older? Is ageism permitted on HN?
- spiderfarmer 6y agoSomething can be said for both. I have built a couple of 15 year old websites with passionate users who have been begging me for an app. Not to replicate the website, which works perfectly on mobile and is very up to date with best practices. They just want it for push notifications. I can switch to Android, yes. But my users won't switch phones for just my website. And I can recommend something like Pushover, but that's too complicated for most users. Just enable the API Apple, I bet you already have it hidden behind some flags.
- nlitened 6y agoWhy wouldn't you just do exactly what your users passionately want, and make a small app just for notifications? You may even make it paid, so that your efforts are compensated -- I am sure, the users will be happy to support you.
- spiderfarmer 6y agoI am working on it. But as a web developer this "small app" and everything that comes with it is easily hundreds of hours of work, just to clumsily recreate functionality that's already working in other browsers.
- jdhawk 6y agoEmail them? SMS Them? Its not pure notifications, but its far easier to implement.
- danielscrubs 6y agoEmail would get drowned with all the other apps with the same idea, which is exactly why Apple shouldn’t allow it.
- remexre 6y agoWhy Apple shouldn't allow websites to email you instead of causing those websites to create iOS apps?
- stale2002 6y ago> to protect myself from low-quality background-syncing byte-code-obfuscated web-pages I am not sure why other people being allowed to install other browsers on their phone would force you to do anything.
- tonyedgecombe 6y agoBecause app developers will use other browser engines allowing them to ignore any of the privacy constraints in place at the moment.
- manigandham 6y agoThat's already possible, and an app has far more access to your device and data anyway.
- CiaranMcNulty 6y agoApps cannot currently use other browser engines on iOS
- manigandham 6y agoMost of the web privacy settings are specific to Safari, not the Webkit browser engine. Also an app can access and send more data than a browser window. Anything the webview can block can just get transmitted by the app itself separately. So there's no reason to block 3rd-party browser engines as the GP post says.
- romanoderoma 6y agosafari is enough and has enough bugs to be a totally good vector for malware The real security issue is: if a bug in Safari is found (it happens quite often) users cannot use another browser in the meantime.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- snemvalts 6y agoEven if they switched to Android, they'd still have to ensure iOS compatibility since Apple has ~60% of the smartphone market in the US. Any abusive behaviour from Apple at this monopolistic stage is just asking for an antitrust case & resolution.
- eddieroger 6y agoThat's a misuse of "monopolistic" - 60% is not a majority to the point of no competition. Any developer could write an Android-only app if they wanted, they just don't do it.
- valuearb 6y agoApple has never had even 50% of the US smartphone market. https://www.counterpointresearch.com/us-market-smartphone-share/ https://www.counterpointresearch.com/us-market-smartphone-sh...
- srtjstjsj 6y agoiOS is 60% of the mobile (phone+tablet) market https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/mobile/united-states-of-america https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/mobile/united-sta...
- leptons 6y ago>Statcounter is a web analytics service. Our tracking code is installed on more than 2 million sites globally. Sorry but this is not an effective way to gauge market share of a browser or a platform. That 60% figure you're throwing around is not an absolute metric. It's based only on visitors to websites that use the "Statcounter" tracking code. There definitely is a large margin of error using this to gather statistics about market share. In comparison, the other commenter's link is actually more accurate because: >This report is one of the series of reports which tracks mobile handset: Smartphone and Feature Phone shipments every quarter for more than 140 brands covering more than 95% of the total device shipments in the industry. Tracking site visitors based on sporadic implementation of a tracker, vs getting actual numbers of units shipped/sold. I'm going with the actual numbers, not the sort-of-guessing of Statcounter.
- romanoderoma 6y ago> I would personally like to continue paying higher prices to protect myself from low-quality background-syncing byte-code-obfuscated web-pages with push notifications are you really saying you would pay higher prices because you can' t press the "no" button and never visit the same website again?
- scarface74 6y agoAlong with every time I have to press OK to the “we used cookies” dialog, using the web is already like a “punch the monkey” game.
- spideymans 6y agoThese modern web APIs have a massive user experience problem, and if we want the web to be truly competitive with native, we'd be foolish to ignore that. Beyond the "punch the monkey" game you mention, another massive problem is that web push notifications have just become another vector to deliver spam to users. If you look at devices belonging to "normal" users, you'll often see dozens of spammy web notifications (pornographic content, "30% off, BUY NOW", etc...). And because these are average users, they don't necessarily understand how to configure their devices to reduce or eliminate the spam. Web push notifications needs a way to proactively filter out those that abuse the API, otherwise its doomed to become just another vector for spam that pisses off end users.
- romanoderoma 6y agoI'm angry at Firefox because it was the only browser that I trust that allowed me to have extensions to solve my problems with bad websites on mobile and they removed them. But bad websites are not something we are going to get rid of using only iPhones...
- scarface74 6y agoThe difference is that notification spam on the web is allowed to escape the sandbox. Because of the punch the monkey nature of the web, I inadvertently clicked “allow notifications” on both PCWorld and Tom’s Hardware on different occasions - they both spammed me at least once a day. But not enough to figure out how to disable it. To get rid of the cookie notifications, I can at least set web pages I go to default to reader view.
- t-writescode 6y agoPrivacy concerns about Google and security updates at the mercy of terrible carriers. But those reasons are weakening.
- Maximus9000 6y agoI totally agree. Apple is great for privacy - and that's important to me - but I'm slowly starting to think I might move to something else. Sadly, it seems my only real option is Android. I miss windows phone and blackberry.
- jasonv 6y agoI agree with those reasons, not sure my will is weakening, so I'll add: vendor versions of Android, the dreaded "Android" slowdown, and slower/choppier performance - generally - when comparing latest releases of hardware & software.
- the8472 6y ago> and security updates at the mercy of terrible carriers. Buy the hardware, install lineageos, insert SIM?
- matheusmoreira 6y agoIs LineageOS the most trustworthy aftermarket smartphone OS out there? What makes it so?
- t-writescode 6y agoAren't I still bound by a GMail account for login and contact information, so if Google randomly decides to ban my account (see what happened to the viewers of a Markiplier stream), I'm in trouble?
- yjftsjthsd-h 6y agoHow so? Lineage works without gapps, although obviously you then lose access to those services, including the Play Store.
- Wowfunhappy 6y ago> Why wouldn't you use Android then? Frankly, because everyone I know uses iMessage.
- chipotle_coyote 6y agoSafari on macOS supports push notifications and it hasn't intrinsically been a bad thing -- at worst, I have to tell a web site "no, I don't want your notifications." They're opt-in rather than opt-out like native app notifications are. The higher prices you and I are paying aren't protecting us from "low-quality" notifications as it is, anyway. At any rate, maybe you're so worried about single-page web apps being bad actors that you're happy Apple so severely hamstrings them, but I... just can't see a lot to worry about there. And if Apple let PWAs be even a little better on iOS than they are now, it would go at least some distance toward ameliorating complaints about the App Store.
- spideymans 6y ago>They're opt-in rather than opt-out like native app notifications are Native iOS notifications are opt-in
- tynorf 6y agoJust a point of clarification: native app notifications on iOS are absolutely opt-in. If the app wants to send notifications it requires a dialogue and user confirmation. Disappointingly, Apple makes an exception for their first party apps.
- chipotle_coyote 6y agoThanks. It may be that the exception was stuck in my head. :)
- arendtio 6y agoThis answer is wrong on so many levels... I don't know why Apple is allowed to keep other browser engines out of their system, but probably just because the relevant people just don't understand that the Chrome/FF/etc. on iOS are just a Safari with a different UI and that it gives Apple about half (depending on country; in the US probably more) of the mobile browser share and users just the chance to either use Android or be stuck with Safari. In addition, the author obviously doesn't know that the before mentioned push notification API is not just used for regular push notifications, but is also required for other use-cases like messengers for example.
- the_lucifer 6y agoPlaying the devils advocate here. This browser restriction is what I'd wager is keeping the non-chromium browser market at a substantial proportion.
- arendtio 6y agoI am wondering what you are referring to with 'non-chromium' browser market. Typically people don't complain about chromium-based browsers, but about the dominance of Webkit-based browsers (Safari, Chrome, Opera, Edge, etc.) and from that perspective there is more or less just Firefox left. Nevertheless, that is besides the point as the rendering engine is not the sole source of browser differences. I am not saying the Googles high market share isn't a problem itself, but that Apple is abusing their market position to hold back the development of the web (by not implementing relevant APIs and not allowing competing browser engines on their platform).
- pseudalopex 6y agoGoogle forked WebKit 7 years ago.
- tekknik 6y ago> Typically people don't complain about chromium-based browsers... In my neck of the woods people most definitely do complain about Chrome, specifically the lack of privacy from being a Google product.