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More like Safari sucks because Apple wants people to buy native apps from its store. A lot like Microsoft wanting the web to suck so people would buy Windows a

More like Safari sucks because Apple wants people to buy native apps from its store. A lot like Microsoft wanting the web to suck so people would buy Windows apps instead. It's not a super secret conspiracy that requires inside knowledge and a network of spies to figure out.

giantrobot 5y ago
This is such a lame argument. You want it to be true but have no evidence that it actually is true. A lot of the Chrome team's "standards" have problems with accessibility, workability on mobile, security[0], privacy[1], or just battery life. Some are neat experiments that are or only will be used in the wild by advertisers to track and identify users. Because the Safari/WebKit team doesn't have to chase users for revenue like Mozilla does they can afford to be more conservative with what Google "standards" they support. Being able to offer a tighter privacy posture or efficiency is part of the iOS/macOS sales pitch. [0] https://github.com/WICG/webusb/issues/50 https://github.com/WICG/webusb/issues/50 [1] https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/16/22387492/google-floc-ad-tech-privacy-browsers-brave-vivaldi-edge-mozilla-chrome-safari https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/16/22387492/google-floc-ad-t...
- Joeri 5y ago
  Safari implements different behavior on desktop vs mobile. They support push notifications on desktop but not mobile, they support large offline storage on desktop but not mobile. What convincing argument exists for this dichotomy except that they want to force people to ship on mobile through the app store?
  - giantrobot 5y ago
    Desktop Safari has a much different power domain than mobile Safari as mobile has alway-on cellular radios (in the nominal iPhone case). iOS has a very power optimized push notification system run through Apple's infrastructure. Notifications for a device are coalesced and sent as a batch to keep the background power of the cellular radio as quiescent as possible as often as possible. It's the same reason there's a background processing API. The notification and background processing APIs also work on iOS where an app can be jetsamed at any time. There's no swap on iOS. Web notifications aren't compatible with iOS' background processing policy and there's not a good way to make them so. Desktop Safari doesn't have a cellular baseband to worry about. Even the wake-briefly-from-sleep-to-check-email feature in macOS is only activated when the Mac is on a wired or previously joined WiFi network. It doesn't randomly blast signals in your backpack on the subway trying to check e-mail and notifications draining the battery. There's also not the same jetsam policy on macOS since it does support swap. Batteries have finite power density and an iPhone has a finite volume for a battery. So there's only so many watt/hours that can fit into an iPhone. Unrestricted background network/processing means much reduced battery life. That's a bad thing for a phone. It's doubly bad for a device that's a device that's also an electronic wallet and navigation aid. Smartphones aren't laptops and neither phones or laptops are desktop systems constantly plugged into mains power. A system that makes sense for a desktop on mains power plugged into Ethernet with 32GB of RAM and essentially unlimited swap does not necessarily make sense on a battery powered device with only radios for connectivity and a fraction of the RAM and no swap. But I get it, Apple Bad and everything they do is a vast conspiracy.

giantrobot 5y ago

This is such a lame argument. You want it to be true but have no evidence that it actually is true. A lot of the Chrome team's "standards" have problems with accessibility, workability on mobile, security[0], privacy[1], or just battery life. Some are neat experiments that are or only will be used in the wild by advertisers to track and identify users. Because the Safari/WebKit team doesn't have to chase users for revenue like Mozilla does they can afford to be more conservative with what Google "standards" they support. Being able to offer a tighter privacy posture or efficiency is part of the iOS/macOS sales pitch. [0] https://github.com/WICG/webusb/issues/50 https://github.com/WICG/webusb/issues/50 [1] https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/16/22387492/google-floc-ad-tech-privacy-browsers-brave-vivaldi-edge-mozilla-chrome-safari https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/16/22387492/google-floc-ad-t...

Joeri 5y ago
Safari implements different behavior on desktop vs mobile. They support push notifications on desktop but not mobile, they support large offline storage on desktop but not mobile. What convincing argument exists for this dichotomy except that they want to force people to ship on mobile through the app store?
- giantrobot 5y ago
  Desktop Safari has a much different power domain than mobile Safari as mobile has alway-on cellular radios (in the nominal iPhone case). iOS has a very power optimized push notification system run through Apple's infrastructure. Notifications for a device are coalesced and sent as a batch to keep the background power of the cellular radio as quiescent as possible as often as possible. It's the same reason there's a background processing API. The notification and background processing APIs also work on iOS where an app can be jetsamed at any time. There's no swap on iOS. Web notifications aren't compatible with iOS' background processing policy and there's not a good way to make them so. Desktop Safari doesn't have a cellular baseband to worry about. Even the wake-briefly-from-sleep-to-check-email feature in macOS is only activated when the Mac is on a wired or previously joined WiFi network. It doesn't randomly blast signals in your backpack on the subway trying to check e-mail and notifications draining the battery. There's also not the same jetsam policy on macOS since it does support swap. Batteries have finite power density and an iPhone has a finite volume for a battery. So there's only so many watt/hours that can fit into an iPhone. Unrestricted background network/processing means much reduced battery life. That's a bad thing for a phone. It's doubly bad for a device that's a device that's also an electronic wallet and navigation aid. Smartphones aren't laptops and neither phones or laptops are desktop systems constantly plugged into mains power. A system that makes sense for a desktop on mains power plugged into Ethernet with 32GB of RAM and essentially unlimited swap does not necessarily make sense on a battery powered device with only radios for connectivity and a fraction of the RAM and no swap. But I get it, Apple Bad and everything they do is a vast conspiracy.