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While your concern is genuine, Apple almost has 60% of the active mobile device market share(according to Statcounter). I think my concern is two fold. - Apple

While your concern is genuine, Apple almost has 60% of the active mobile device market share(according to Statcounter). I think my concern is two fold. - Apple holds the gateway to both App Store and Web(through standard support). Having worked on web apps in the past, I truly admire the amazing distribution capability the web provides. I can spin up an obscure Linux distro and my web app works on it as long as a browser with good standard support is available. This gives platforms parity at some level and doesn't concentrate the power in the hands of a single platform. I would want most apps to be just web apps. - If Apple's marketshare keeps on increasing like it has been, we might run into a situation where just one company controls your hardware, OS, services and even web. This is way more scary.

handrous 5y ago
> This gives platforms parity at some level and doesn't concentrate the power in the hands of a single platform. Chrome would be that platform, is what I'm saying. That would be your new OS, on every "platform". Devs & companies already skip testing on FF fairly often. Chrome good? Mobile Safari good? Ship it. You'll notice that IE/Edge used to be on that short list of must-test browsers, but it's just Chrome now. That's not going to get better for FF or WebKit-derived alternative browsers if mobile Safari gets banner-ad'd ("Google Docs is so much better in Chrome! Click here to download it now!" just like they did on desktop) into irrelevance. Google would get to dictate features, and the Web would just have them, and that's it, no step of trying to get anyone else on board (right now, "anyone else" is, for practical purposes, just Apple)
criddell 5y ago
I get what you are saying about web apps, but I hope Apple doesn't open up to more browsers. It seems like every additional sensor or OS feature that is exposed through the browser is used as an additional way to erode privacy and security. Plus I like that there are incentives for developers to make native apps for anything non-trivial. In my experience well written web apps use too much bandwidth, battery, and memory compared to well written native apps.
indymike 5y ago
Android is showing 72.72% of market share on statcounter.

handrous 5y ago

> This gives platforms parity at some level and doesn't concentrate the power in the hands of a single platform. Chrome would be that platform, is what I'm saying. That would be your new OS, on every "platform". Devs & companies already skip testing on FF fairly often. Chrome good? Mobile Safari good? Ship it. You'll notice that IE/Edge used to be on that short list of must-test browsers, but it's just Chrome now. That's not going to get better for FF or WebKit-derived alternative browsers if mobile Safari gets banner-ad'd ("Google Docs is so much better in Chrome! Click here to download it now!" just like they did on desktop) into irrelevance. Google would get to dictate features, and the Web would just have them, and that's it, no step of trying to get anyone else on board (right now, "anyone else" is, for practical purposes, just Apple)

criddell 5y ago

I get what you are saying about web apps, but I hope Apple doesn't open up to more browsers. It seems like every additional sensor or OS feature that is exposed through the browser is used as an additional way to erode privacy and security. Plus I like that there are incentives for developers to make native apps for anything non-trivial. In my experience well written web apps use too much bandwidth, battery, and memory compared to well written native apps.

indymike 5y ago

Android is showing 72.72% of market share on statcounter.