4 ms·

Though I'm not normally one to advocate for "web stuff", what would stop someone from simply compiling a suite of shell tools to WASM, then distributing a "term

Though I'm not normally one to advocate for "web stuff", what would stop someone from simply compiling a suite of shell tools to WASM, then distributing a "terminal" as a PWA. Of course there would be some slowdown compared to real native code, but I am told (not a web person) that WASM can be nearly as fast as native code, and is (?) supported by Safari. I have seen successful experiments where people have run AMD64 simulators in WASM that can boot Linux, so you could even go so far as virtualizing the whole system, though I imagine the performance would be even worse than "just" targeting WASM. I guess this is somewhat rhetorical; the people who would be interested in such a tool are I imagine by and large willing and able to either jailbreak or buy an Android. Presumably getting a nice shell-type environment as a PWA would be tricky also considering the limitations of the browser (I know this makes networking hard). I wish there was a product like an iPad that came with a root shell out of the box. I like the polish of iOS, but I'm not willing to trust random people on the internet with root code execution to jailbreak my iThings.

jamil7 6y ago
From reading the blog posts of a few of the developers it’s pretty clear that the review team just doesn’t understand what it is or how it works. When asked why a web browser is allowed to download files and an app using wget is not they can’t give a satisfactory answer.
- charlesdaniels 6y ago
  The most logically consistent argument they could make is that alternative browser engines are disallowed... so logically an implemntation of "wget" which is just a wrapper around the Safari engine should be OK. Of course, all of this is arbitrary. Apple just wants to be able to control their platform, they don't actually care about having rules and enforcing them with any semblance of fairness. It's unfortunate that developers have to put up with this. I say "have to" in that my understanding is that Android users (in general, present company likely excluded) won't pay money for high quality ad-free apps. So if you actually want to make something good and be paid for your trouble, it's iOS or bust.
swiley 6y ago
on iOS web apps don't get: Access to files (or any persistent storage) Any kind of background tasks. of course you need doordash, an order form, to be a native app.
- charlesdaniels 6y ago
  I didn't realize they couldn't use any persistent storage. I would think this would break most web applications.
musicale 6y ago
> what would stop someone from simply compiling a suite of shell tools to WASM, then distributing a "terminal" as a PWA Absolutely nothing. Web apps are the solution to Apple's equivocation regarding scripting and programming environments.

jamil7 6y ago

From reading the blog posts of a few of the developers it’s pretty clear that the review team just doesn’t understand what it is or how it works. When asked why a web browser is allowed to download files and an app using wget is not they can’t give a satisfactory answer.

charlesdaniels 6y ago
The most logically consistent argument they could make is that alternative browser engines are disallowed... so logically an implemntation of "wget" which is just a wrapper around the Safari engine should be OK. Of course, all of this is arbitrary. Apple just wants to be able to control their platform, they don't actually care about having rules and enforcing them with any semblance of fairness. It's unfortunate that developers have to put up with this. I say "have to" in that my understanding is that Android users (in general, present company likely excluded) won't pay money for high quality ad-free apps. So if you actually want to make something good and be paid for your trouble, it's iOS or bust.

swiley 6y ago

on iOS web apps don't get: Access to files (or any persistent storage) Any kind of background tasks. of course you need doordash, an order form, to be a native app.

charlesdaniels 6y ago
I didn't realize they couldn't use any persistent storage. I would think this would break most web applications.

musicale 6y ago

> what would stop someone from simply compiling a suite of shell tools to WASM, then distributing a "terminal" as a PWA Absolutely nothing. Web apps are the solution to Apple's equivocation regarding scripting and programming environments.