4 ms·

Apple also doesn't allow competing browsers, at least none with their own renderer or JS engine. What innovations in that space are we missing out on?

barelysapient 5y ago
But hasn't this been the case sine iPhone 1? Apple rejected flash because of the poor impact it would have battery life among other things. As consumers we're better off because of that choice. Apple wants users of their iPhone device, the thing that they actually sell, to have a phenomenal experience. And they're going enforce rules across the ecosystem to make sure that experience remains solid.
- kadoban 5y ago
  Flash isn't a thing anymore, and every browser engine is better than Apple's. So what's the current reasoning?
- 015a 5y ago
  You know, the funny thing is; phones got better. Apple's most of all. Batteries got bigger, processors got more powerful. Flash would have sucked on the iPhone 3G; I'd bet it'd be a perfectly pleasant experience on the iPhone 13. Flash was a fantastic technology. It gave birth to an entire generation of game developers, software engineers, and content creators, and certainly gave many young people plenty of hours of entertainment. Are we actually better off because Apple killed Flash? Or, is it just that Apple is better off, having killed literally the only web-based gaming technology to ever see mainstream success and secured the gate for the App Store to remain the single source for gaming content on iOS?
  - Jtsummers 5y ago
    iOS isn't even the most popular OS in the world. Flash died because other people chose to let it, not Apple. Desktop OSes supported Flash through 2020 when it was end of lifed. Android is the most popular worldwide mobile OS, and Apple has no direct influence on what it runs. And if Adobe had cared enough, they had enough clout to push Apple sometime in the past 5-10 years when the battery and CPU and GPU on iPhones/iPads hit the threshold that it made sense to return Flash to it. But browser plugins like Flash and ActiveX were doomed once people started caring about the security of browsers, and once Google (via Chrome) and others started investing heavily in JS performance bring it closer to parity with Flash and removing features (like video playback) from Flash's domain and making it native to the browser. It's also worth noting, that while Flash was barred from the browser, it wasn't barred from iOS once Apple opened up 3rd party development tools including Flash, which happened in 2010.
    - jonny_eh 5y ago
      > Flash died because other people chose to let it, not Apple. And because a better, cheaper, alternative came out: HTML5 + modern JS (powered by V8).
- AnthonyMouse 5y ago
  > As consumers we're better off because of that choice. Consumers are not an undifferentiated mass. There are people who would have been better off with Flash support. Certainly at the time there were -- it was a hardship back when there were still many Flash sites. And customers don't need Apple for this. If you dislike Flash enough to endure the hardship of not having access to Flash sites when they're still popular, don't install it. If many other people feel the same, Flash will go away. If hardly anyone feels the same then it's Apple doing it for their own benefit and against the will of most of their customers. The way to settle this is to allow multiple app stores. If customers really want only the Apple one, that's what they'll choose. If that's not what they want and they're only after the operating system or the hardware, how can you claim that Apple is doing what the customers want?
  - barelysapient 5y ago
    Apple's trade-offs, their sensibilities, took us from phones that looked and worked like BlackBerry, and Moto Q, to phones that look and work like the iPhone. They set a new high bar. The iPhone had better capabilities and superior user experience. So yes, Apple has improved the general smart phone experience for all consumers. Apple achieves this sensibility by making choices on behalf of their customers that they feel leads to a superior user experience. They don't present the user with pedantic choices. Instead they allow users to select only choices that they feel will lead to a great experience. This is similar to other purveyors of premium and luxury goods. For example, a 5-star restaurant won't present you with (in their opinion) a shitty choice of meal. Tesla won't sell you a car with steering wheel--only a yolk. LV won't sell you a basic plastic purse. And BestBuy won't sell you just any old shit off of Alibaba. Discerning consumers look to these companies to make these choices for them. To make the experience of owning those the products wonderful. And Apple's customers look to Apple to do the same thing with their phone. Now, not all customers want or can afford these choices. So, there are competitors that see it differently. If you really want flash, buy Android. Flash available from several publishers in the the Android app store.
015a 5y ago
Its hard to know for sure; as they say, if you had asked Ford's customers what they wanted, they'd have asked for a faster horse. Its also a question that's complicated by another duopoly; the real question is, what kind of innovation are we missing out on due to both Google Chrome and Safari stifling creation by exerting corporate interests over a billion+ users of the open web? I have two ideas: For starters; Their, and Mozilla's, tracker obfuscation technology is something I'd label as an innovation for the web, and I'm happy that they've taken a stance toward privacy and not against it. Its easy to imagine a parallel reality where they didn't adopt such a strong stance, and iOS users have less of a recourse for a privacy-respecting web browsers. Additionally; I'd say, micropayments. Now, you can interpret that as crypto-based, or traditional card based, and both have issues beyond just innovation in web standards and browser implementation. But: I strongly believe that some kind of web-native micropayment framework would fundamentally reshape the landscape of the web for the better. There are so many news articles behind paywalls I would have gladly given $0.50 to read; but with the requirement to create an account, dig out my credit card, and agree to pay $10/month (which they make hell to cancel); I click away. Or, supporting a creator; even a commentator here on Hacker News for an especially insightful comment. Not everything is worth $5.
kevingadd 5y ago
iOS Safari has been years behind Chrome and/or Firefox on graphics, compute (WASM, threading), user input, etc for a long time. If you're trying to ship a PWA there is also a lot of stuff for that use case which is either missing or intentionally busted. A really obvious example: Fullscreen for webpages and PWAs on iOS is broken on purpose - the browser can do it, but won't allow you to stay in full-screen for anything except a <video> tag. Apparently they changed this on iPad? In any case, fullscreen is an absolutely ancient, uncontroversial web API they've chosen not to support that is essential for things like games and multimedia. There are other browser APIs that require fullscreen too, like pointer lock (if for some reason you've plugged a mouse into your iDevice... maybe that's why fullscreen is enabled on iPad.) So in practice, if you want to watch videos or play a game fullscreen on your iPhone, you have to go to the app store. Which is an intentional choice, because Apple gets to siphon 30% of all game transactions over there.
Mikeb85 5y ago
Apple intentionally drags their feet on implementing browser standards. Stuff like WebGL (it's 'implemented' but doesn't really work), PWAs, fullscreen, etc... Conveniently all the bits that would allow browser apps to behave more like native apps.

barelysapient 5y ago

But hasn't this been the case sine iPhone 1? Apple rejected flash because of the poor impact it would have battery life among other things. As consumers we're better off because of that choice. Apple wants users of their iPhone device, the thing that they actually sell, to have a phenomenal experience. And they're going enforce rules across the ecosystem to make sure that experience remains solid.

kadoban 5y ago
Flash isn't a thing anymore, and every browser engine is better than Apple's. So what's the current reasoning?
015a 5y ago
You know, the funny thing is; phones got better. Apple's most of all. Batteries got bigger, processors got more powerful. Flash would have sucked on the iPhone 3G; I'd bet it'd be a perfectly pleasant experience on the iPhone 13. Flash was a fantastic technology. It gave birth to an entire generation of game developers, software engineers, and content creators, and certainly gave many young people plenty of hours of entertainment. Are we actually better off because Apple killed Flash? Or, is it just that Apple is better off, having killed literally the only web-based gaming technology to ever see mainstream success and secured the gate for the App Store to remain the single source for gaming content on iOS?
- Jtsummers 5y ago
  iOS isn't even the most popular OS in the world. Flash died because other people chose to let it, not Apple. Desktop OSes supported Flash through 2020 when it was end of lifed. Android is the most popular worldwide mobile OS, and Apple has no direct influence on what it runs. And if Adobe had cared enough, they had enough clout to push Apple sometime in the past 5-10 years when the battery and CPU and GPU on iPhones/iPads hit the threshold that it made sense to return Flash to it. But browser plugins like Flash and ActiveX were doomed once people started caring about the security of browsers, and once Google (via Chrome) and others started investing heavily in JS performance bring it closer to parity with Flash and removing features (like video playback) from Flash's domain and making it native to the browser. It's also worth noting, that while Flash was barred from the browser, it wasn't barred from iOS once Apple opened up 3rd party development tools including Flash, which happened in 2010.
  - jonny_eh 5y ago
    > Flash died because other people chose to let it, not Apple. And because a better, cheaper, alternative came out: HTML5 + modern JS (powered by V8).
AnthonyMouse 5y ago
> As consumers we're better off because of that choice. Consumers are not an undifferentiated mass. There are people who would have been better off with Flash support. Certainly at the time there were -- it was a hardship back when there were still many Flash sites. And customers don't need Apple for this. If you dislike Flash enough to endure the hardship of not having access to Flash sites when they're still popular, don't install it. If many other people feel the same, Flash will go away. If hardly anyone feels the same then it's Apple doing it for their own benefit and against the will of most of their customers. The way to settle this is to allow multiple app stores. If customers really want only the Apple one, that's what they'll choose. If that's not what they want and they're only after the operating system or the hardware, how can you claim that Apple is doing what the customers want?
- barelysapient 5y ago
  Apple's trade-offs, their sensibilities, took us from phones that looked and worked like BlackBerry, and Moto Q, to phones that look and work like the iPhone. They set a new high bar. The iPhone had better capabilities and superior user experience. So yes, Apple has improved the general smart phone experience for all consumers. Apple achieves this sensibility by making choices on behalf of their customers that they feel leads to a superior user experience. They don't present the user with pedantic choices. Instead they allow users to select only choices that they feel will lead to a great experience. This is similar to other purveyors of premium and luxury goods. For example, a 5-star restaurant won't present you with (in their opinion) a shitty choice of meal. Tesla won't sell you a car with steering wheel--only a yolk. LV won't sell you a basic plastic purse. And BestBuy won't sell you just any old shit off of Alibaba. Discerning consumers look to these companies to make these choices for them. To make the experience of owning those the products wonderful. And Apple's customers look to Apple to do the same thing with their phone. Now, not all customers want or can afford these choices. So, there are competitors that see it differently. If you really want flash, buy Android. Flash available from several publishers in the the Android app store.

015a 5y ago

Its hard to know for sure; as they say, if you had asked Ford's customers what they wanted, they'd have asked for a faster horse. Its also a question that's complicated by another duopoly; the real question is, what kind of innovation are we missing out on due to both Google Chrome and Safari stifling creation by exerting corporate interests over a billion+ users of the open web? I have two ideas: For starters; Their, and Mozilla's, tracker obfuscation technology is something I'd label as an innovation for the web, and I'm happy that they've taken a stance toward privacy and not against it. Its easy to imagine a parallel reality where they didn't adopt such a strong stance, and iOS users have less of a recourse for a privacy-respecting web browsers. Additionally; I'd say, micropayments. Now, you can interpret that as crypto-based, or traditional card based, and both have issues beyond just innovation in web standards and browser implementation. But: I strongly believe that some kind of web-native micropayment framework would fundamentally reshape the landscape of the web for the better. There are so many news articles behind paywalls I would have gladly given $0.50 to read; but with the requirement to create an account, dig out my credit card, and agree to pay $10/month (which they make hell to cancel); I click away. Or, supporting a creator; even a commentator here on Hacker News for an especially insightful comment. Not everything is worth $5.

kevingadd 5y ago

iOS Safari has been years behind Chrome and/or Firefox on graphics, compute (WASM, threading), user input, etc for a long time. If you're trying to ship a PWA there is also a lot of stuff for that use case which is either missing or intentionally busted. A really obvious example: Fullscreen for webpages and PWAs on iOS is broken on purpose - the browser can do it, but won't allow you to stay in full-screen for anything except a <video> tag. Apparently they changed this on iPad? In any case, fullscreen is an absolutely ancient, uncontroversial web API they've chosen not to support that is essential for things like games and multimedia. There are other browser APIs that require fullscreen too, like pointer lock (if for some reason you've plugged a mouse into your iDevice... maybe that's why fullscreen is enabled on iPad.) So in practice, if you want to watch videos or play a game fullscreen on your iPhone, you have to go to the app store. Which is an intentional choice, because Apple gets to siphon 30% of all game transactions over there.

Mikeb85 5y ago

Apple intentionally drags their feet on implementing browser standards. Stuff like WebGL (it's 'implemented' but doesn't really work), PWAs, fullscreen, etc... Conveniently all the bits that would allow browser apps to behave more like native apps.