5 ms·

> Actually most of them are- they don't want to deal managing a device.. they just want something that works. None of that will change.

pwinnski 4y ago
This doesn't seem possible. Whatever changes Apple will have to make to support drop-in replacements for Siri, a complete elimination of certification requirements for Gatekeeper, and so on, as listed in this very thread, will absolutely disrupt the status quo and make things more complex. I hope that Apple will strive to make it so the defaults match the current reality, but just like soldered-in batteries mean more capacity without the need for connectors, so too do baked-in defaults mean more stability without the need to pluggability. It may not be the end of the world, but it is a pretty drastic change that people are dismissing as "allow alternate browser engines," when it's so much more than that.
- jchw 4y ago
  It's true that there is nonzero engineering effort to make some of these things happen, but in my opinion, a lot of the problem is self-inflicted. I mean... Apple also eventually decided to support third-party keyboards. Was it a bit buggy? Absolutely. Did it obliterate quick type and make all typing buggy for all users? No. As far as I can guess, they actually special-cased third party keyboards. Fine by me. Probably fine by regulators as long as there's nothing malicious about it. Truth be told, I don't care about alternate voice assistants. That said, today, you can get almost all of Google Assistant on an iPhone just fine, the only thing it really can't do is well, respond to your voice passively and do things on the lock screen. Exactly how much power they're willing to expose I'm not sure, but it doesn't really seem like they have to give everyone access to the same internal APIs they use so as long as the APIs they provide give enough feature parity. I think the sky is not falling.
  - pwinnski 4y ago
    Great example: keyboards are definitely more complicated and fiddly since the introduction of multiple keyboards. Absolutely necessary to support multiple countries, but the tradeoff is real. The sky isn't falling by any means, but iOS is absolutely going to get more complicated as a result of these changes, even for people who stick with the defaults, as I likely will in most or all cases. And of course I wonder: will Apple be releasing Siri for Android? Presumably Google would be required to allow for it.
    - ThatPlayer 4y ago
      There hasn't been anything stopping Apple from releasing Siri on Android. Amazon's Alexa already available on Google Play Store, and Samsung Bixby is on Samsung devices. I'm sure there's plenty of alternatives on Chinese phones that do not have Google too.
- JustSomeNobody 4y ago
  > It may not be the end of the world, but it is a pretty drastic change that people are dismissing as "allow alternate browser engines," when it's so much more than that. It doesn't seem possible that Apple would not have coded Safari up in a way that they would be able to replace the engine. I don't see why they would have couple it so tightly. It seems un-Apple like. What if they wanted to replace the engine?
  - pwinnski 4y ago
    Why would Apple ever want to replace the engine they develop? I'm not sure that's been considered a priority, or even an option. However, they do release WebKit for use by others, so in that sense I presume there's a certain looseness in the coupling. Which is not to say there aren't assumptions that will have to be unwound.
    - JustSomeNobody 4y ago
      > Why would Apple ever want to replace the engine they develop? Standards change over time so the existing engine picks up cruft.

pwinnski 4y ago

This doesn't seem possible. Whatever changes Apple will have to make to support drop-in replacements for Siri, a complete elimination of certification requirements for Gatekeeper, and so on, as listed in this very thread, will absolutely disrupt the status quo and make things more complex. I hope that Apple will strive to make it so the defaults match the current reality, but just like soldered-in batteries mean more capacity without the need for connectors, so too do baked-in defaults mean more stability without the need to pluggability. It may not be the end of the world, but it is a pretty drastic change that people are dismissing as "allow alternate browser engines," when it's so much more than that.

jchw 4y ago
It's true that there is nonzero engineering effort to make some of these things happen, but in my opinion, a lot of the problem is self-inflicted. I mean... Apple also eventually decided to support third-party keyboards. Was it a bit buggy? Absolutely. Did it obliterate quick type and make all typing buggy for all users? No. As far as I can guess, they actually special-cased third party keyboards. Fine by me. Probably fine by regulators as long as there's nothing malicious about it. Truth be told, I don't care about alternate voice assistants. That said, today, you can get almost all of Google Assistant on an iPhone just fine, the only thing it really can't do is well, respond to your voice passively and do things on the lock screen. Exactly how much power they're willing to expose I'm not sure, but it doesn't really seem like they have to give everyone access to the same internal APIs they use so as long as the APIs they provide give enough feature parity. I think the sky is not falling.
- pwinnski 4y ago
  Great example: keyboards are definitely more complicated and fiddly since the introduction of multiple keyboards. Absolutely necessary to support multiple countries, but the tradeoff is real. The sky isn't falling by any means, but iOS is absolutely going to get more complicated as a result of these changes, even for people who stick with the defaults, as I likely will in most or all cases. And of course I wonder: will Apple be releasing Siri for Android? Presumably Google would be required to allow for it.
  - ThatPlayer 4y ago
    There hasn't been anything stopping Apple from releasing Siri on Android. Amazon's Alexa already available on Google Play Store, and Samsung Bixby is on Samsung devices. I'm sure there's plenty of alternatives on Chinese phones that do not have Google too.
JustSomeNobody 4y ago
> It may not be the end of the world, but it is a pretty drastic change that people are dismissing as "allow alternate browser engines," when it's so much more than that. It doesn't seem possible that Apple would not have coded Safari up in a way that they would be able to replace the engine. I don't see why they would have couple it so tightly. It seems un-Apple like. What if they wanted to replace the engine?
- pwinnski 4y ago
  Why would Apple ever want to replace the engine they develop? I'm not sure that's been considered a priority, or even an option. However, they do release WebKit for use by others, so in that sense I presume there's a certain looseness in the coupling. Which is not to say there aren't assumptions that will have to be unwound.
  - JustSomeNobody 4y ago
    > Why would Apple ever want to replace the engine they develop? Standards change over time so the existing engine picks up cruft.