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> The browser is essentially the operating system for most computing today You're right, and it's such a bummer. I often think about how interesting it would b

> The browser is essentially the operating system for most computing today You're right, and it's such a bummer. I often think about how interesting it would be if we didn't end up with the Chrome/Safari browser duopoly and Windows/macOS duopoly on the desktop and Android/iOS duopoly for mobile. How cool would it be to see what the Amiga, Atari ST, Spectrum, OS/2, BeOS, etc... could have become with another couple of decades development. Even Windows and macOS would probably be different if they had to compete in a healthy, diverse ecosystem. Instead, further concentration is probably going to happen once Apple allows alternate browsers. At that point, there isn't much to stop Google's Chrome from becoming the only application platform that really matters.

echelon 3y ago
> Instead, further concentration is probably going to happen once Apple allows alternate browsers. At Not if the DoJ forces Google to abandon Chrome. Which they should. Apple and Google should lose their app store monopolies (including first party default preference), Google should lose the Chrome monopoly. These are incredibly harmful to technology and competition. Each company has plenty of money, attached user base, and engineering headcount to continue to be wildly successful and profitable without operating in a way that damages the rest of the tech sector.
j45 3y ago
I’d probably add WebOS to that list too even though it’s currently living on in LG tvs. The idea of WebOS is strong enough it seems to have lived on through Palm, HP, LG and now also a forked version. It really was late to the mobile os race, but ahead of its time. https://www.webosose.org/docs/tutorials/web-apps/developing-built-in-web-apps/ https://www.webosose.org/docs/tutorials/web-apps/developing-... And more generally: https://www.webosose.org/ https://www.webosose.org/
- criddell 3y ago
  WebOS absolutely belongs in that list.
- ghusto 3y ago
  It was so ahead of it's time, that I've _recently_ seen Apple and Google "invent" paradigms it was using all those years ago.
  - j45 3y ago
    Very true. The designer of WebOS now works on asteroid too, though.
Spivak 3y ago
Huh? But there's so much diversity in the desktop space. You have Windows/Mac, but then Debian/Rhel, Free/Net/OpenBSD, SteamOS, ChromeOS, Tails, NixOS, Qubes, Solaris Family, ReactOS and that's just the ones I've actually seen people use at conferences. The browser space has never been more diverse as well, most of them use Chromium under the hood but who cares, Chrome was Webkit was KHTML when it started too. A browser's success is only somewhat related to its engine. Having a base you can build on that guarantees all current and future website will work and be performant on has allowed for crazy levels of experimentation.
- dorfsmay 3y ago
  > most of them use Chromium under the hood but who cares We should all care, because people start writing apps that work on Safari and Chrome only rather than to a standard. The web wasn't meant to be controlled by two companies, the idea was using standards anybody can implement. Use Firefox and see what sites you are using regularly that doen't work because they are chrome sepcific.
  - Spivak 3y ago
    I've been Firefox only for more than a decade now (although tbf not on iOS) and I've still yet to find a site that straight up doesn't work. I've had some sites where I've had to tell it I'm using Chrome because of poor user agent sniffing but it's been a long time since that was necessary. Ahh Netflix when it still used Silverlight.
    - dalke 3y ago
      The site which lists available COVID vaccination times for this region of Sweden does not work in Firefox but does work in Safari: https://www.vgregion.se/ov/hitta-vaccinationstider-vgr/vaccinationstider-covid-19/ https://www.vgregion.se/ov/hitta-vaccinationstider-vgr/vacci... I don't know the reason for the Firefox failure. The Adobe site https://new.express.adobe.com/tools/generate-qr-code# https://new.express.adobe.com/tools/generate-qr-code# says it does not work with Firefox, but if I change the User-Agent it does work. I ran into both in the last month. Your experience for most of that decade was when Firefox was much more widely used than it is now, so had a higher support priority.
dylan604 3y ago
>How cool would it be to see what the Amiga, Atari ST, Spectrum, OS/2, BeOS, etc.. But all of these systems did exist. And for whatever reasons, they did not survive in the market. So the market decided they were not what was wanted.
- yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago
  Or the market remained irrational longer than they could remain solvent. It's an economic system, it's not omniscient.
- sirsinsalot 3y ago
  People using invisible hand / the market decided arguments gloss over the fact modern capitalism is yet to produce truly fair markers without corruption. If only it was as simple as letting buying power decide.
- smegger001 3y ago
  How much of that was the market decision and how much was illegal anticompetitive practices that got Microsoft in trouble a few decades ago? Paying manufacturers that used them while penalizing this that made other OS's available, amongst other practices. Hell the only reason Apple is around today is Microsoft bailed them out so the could point at apple and claim in court there was a compatator and therfore were not a monopoly back in the 2000s
- ghusto 3y ago
  > So the market decided they were not what was wanted. No, the competition decided what they wanted, by using shady-as-shit (as well as out right illegal) tactics to squash everyone else. People _loved_ their Amigas, STs, Be boxes, etc. They loved them so much that there are still some nutjobs out there trying to keep Amiga alive! Do you think there'd be that kind of devotion for Windows 40 years later, if it died around 3.1? No, the users didn't choose. A loose hand on monopoly law did.
ravenstine 3y ago
Is it really? Many people today seem to be living in a world almost purely of apps. Besides using The Google to find a piece of trivia, I hardly see anyone living in the browser to the extent that they are treating it like an OS in and of itself. If anything, the browser is seen as antiquated. The decision of browser makers to expose so many non-document APIs seems to not be closely connected to direct consumer demand for them.
- jowea 3y ago
  How many of those apps are wrappers around a browser through?
  - ravenstine 3y ago
    Kind of doesn't matter since such wrappers routinely use native code or "plugins" to allow for behavior nonstandard to browsers, although your point is totally fair.
miki123211 3y ago
If we didn't have an OS duopoly, we'd have a programming language duopoly, GUI library duopoly or something of that sort. It's just not reasonable to expect every company to maintain more than two or three completely different versions of their apps, and most would vastly prefer to maintain just one, hence Electron and React Native. It would be a constant incompatibility hell, and most code would be littered with #ifdefs and polyfills. You can argue that companies producing software tools would specialize, so you would use Microsoft image editing tools on Windows, Foo's image editing tools on Amiga, Adobe's image editing tools on Mac etc, but that argument breaks down when it comes to banks, movie and music streaming companies, games etc.
- Gud 3y ago
  I think as software matures, we will settle on free software. We more or less already did server side. Then it will be up to the OS maintainers to make sure the software is compatible with their operating system, like how it works with FOSS systems already. A man can dream anyway...
Dwedit 3y ago
Chrome/Safari isn't a duopoly, it's the same browser (Webkit).
- lxgr 3y ago
  Not at all. While they have shared origins, Chrome (Blink) and Safari (WebKit) have been going separate ways for quite a few years now.
com2kid 3y ago
Working in the streaming media space, I can tell you what happens when there isn't a duopoly. It sucks. Making an app means: Android (and Android TV being more work), iOS, web, Roku, Fire TV, Tizen, Vizio, WebOS (LG), and multiple set top box vendors who all have horrible underpowered CPUs. Some companies try do to cross platform, and that sort of works, but it is janky and customer complain of the sorts of UX issues that always pop up with cross platform apps, and for any decent functionality you end up writing per-platform shims. Also some platforms (Roku) you have to write an app for anyway because the platform requires using a custom language. Other platforms (Set top boxes) are so underpowered that you can't really run anything resembling modern code on them. It sucks. It is a huge waste of engineering effort for no real gain. Most customers don't choose a smart TV based on its OS, a large % of people choose based on what is on sale at Costco, and another demographic chooses whatever they are told is "the best" by reviewers. Mobile app developers dealing with a duopoly have it easy, but even that dramatically increases barrier to entry compared to the 90s where you just had to write one app for Windows and so long as you only used documented APIs, Microsoft would move heaven and earth to make sure your app kept working between major OS updates.
octacat 3y ago
The only viable alternative to iOS/Android apps are web apps. Apple fights it by limiting number of features you can use in the browser on mobile phones and no alternative browsers. Google - by saying, ok, go with it, you will use tech, that we control anyway. The current amount of hacks needed to make the native desktop apps compatible across even the same operation system, but different versions, is kinda scary. Pretty sure the similar situation for mobile apps too.

echelon 3y ago

> Instead, further concentration is probably going to happen once Apple allows alternate browsers. At Not if the DoJ forces Google to abandon Chrome. Which they should. Apple and Google should lose their app store monopolies (including first party default preference), Google should lose the Chrome monopoly. These are incredibly harmful to technology and competition. Each company has plenty of money, attached user base, and engineering headcount to continue to be wildly successful and profitable without operating in a way that damages the rest of the tech sector.

j45 3y ago

I’d probably add WebOS to that list too even though it’s currently living on in LG tvs. The idea of WebOS is strong enough it seems to have lived on through Palm, HP, LG and now also a forked version. It really was late to the mobile os race, but ahead of its time. https://www.webosose.org/docs/tutorials/web-apps/developing-built-in-web-apps/ https://www.webosose.org/docs/tutorials/web-apps/developing-... And more generally: https://www.webosose.org/ https://www.webosose.org/

criddell 3y ago
WebOS absolutely belongs in that list.
ghusto 3y ago
It was so ahead of it's time, that I've _recently_ seen Apple and Google "invent" paradigms it was using all those years ago.
- j45 3y ago
  Very true. The designer of WebOS now works on asteroid too, though.

Spivak 3y ago

Huh? But there's so much diversity in the desktop space. You have Windows/Mac, but then Debian/Rhel, Free/Net/OpenBSD, SteamOS, ChromeOS, Tails, NixOS, Qubes, Solaris Family, ReactOS and that's just the ones I've actually seen people use at conferences. The browser space has never been more diverse as well, most of them use Chromium under the hood but who cares, Chrome was Webkit was KHTML when it started too. A browser's success is only somewhat related to its engine. Having a base you can build on that guarantees all current and future website will work and be performant on has allowed for crazy levels of experimentation.

dorfsmay 3y ago
> most of them use Chromium under the hood but who cares We should all care, because people start writing apps that work on Safari and Chrome only rather than to a standard. The web wasn't meant to be controlled by two companies, the idea was using standards anybody can implement. Use Firefox and see what sites you are using regularly that doen't work because they are chrome sepcific.
- Spivak 3y ago
  I've been Firefox only for more than a decade now (although tbf not on iOS) and I've still yet to find a site that straight up doesn't work. I've had some sites where I've had to tell it I'm using Chrome because of poor user agent sniffing but it's been a long time since that was necessary. Ahh Netflix when it still used Silverlight.
  - dalke 3y ago
    The site which lists available COVID vaccination times for this region of Sweden does not work in Firefox but does work in Safari: https://www.vgregion.se/ov/hitta-vaccinationstider-vgr/vaccinationstider-covid-19/ https://www.vgregion.se/ov/hitta-vaccinationstider-vgr/vacci... I don't know the reason for the Firefox failure. The Adobe site https://new.express.adobe.com/tools/generate-qr-code# https://new.express.adobe.com/tools/generate-qr-code# says it does not work with Firefox, but if I change the User-Agent it does work. I ran into both in the last month. Your experience for most of that decade was when Firefox was much more widely used than it is now, so had a higher support priority.

dylan604 3y ago

>How cool would it be to see what the Amiga, Atari ST, Spectrum, OS/2, BeOS, etc.. But all of these systems did exist. And for whatever reasons, they did not survive in the market. So the market decided they were not what was wanted.

yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago
Or the market remained irrational longer than they could remain solvent. It's an economic system, it's not omniscient.
sirsinsalot 3y ago
People using invisible hand / the market decided arguments gloss over the fact modern capitalism is yet to produce truly fair markers without corruption. If only it was as simple as letting buying power decide.
smegger001 3y ago
How much of that was the market decision and how much was illegal anticompetitive practices that got Microsoft in trouble a few decades ago? Paying manufacturers that used them while penalizing this that made other OS's available, amongst other practices. Hell the only reason Apple is around today is Microsoft bailed them out so the could point at apple and claim in court there was a compatator and therfore were not a monopoly back in the 2000s
ghusto 3y ago
> So the market decided they were not what was wanted. No, the competition decided what they wanted, by using shady-as-shit (as well as out right illegal) tactics to squash everyone else. People _loved_ their Amigas, STs, Be boxes, etc. They loved them so much that there are still some nutjobs out there trying to keep Amiga alive! Do you think there'd be that kind of devotion for Windows 40 years later, if it died around 3.1? No, the users didn't choose. A loose hand on monopoly law did.

ravenstine 3y ago

Is it really? Many people today seem to be living in a world almost purely of apps. Besides using The Google to find a piece of trivia, I hardly see anyone living in the browser to the extent that they are treating it like an OS in and of itself. If anything, the browser is seen as antiquated. The decision of browser makers to expose so many non-document APIs seems to not be closely connected to direct consumer demand for them.

jowea 3y ago
How many of those apps are wrappers around a browser through?
- ravenstine 3y ago
  Kind of doesn't matter since such wrappers routinely use native code or "plugins" to allow for behavior nonstandard to browsers, although your point is totally fair.

miki123211 3y ago

If we didn't have an OS duopoly, we'd have a programming language duopoly, GUI library duopoly or something of that sort. It's just not reasonable to expect every company to maintain more than two or three completely different versions of their apps, and most would vastly prefer to maintain just one, hence Electron and React Native. It would be a constant incompatibility hell, and most code would be littered with #ifdefs and polyfills. You can argue that companies producing software tools would specialize, so you would use Microsoft image editing tools on Windows, Foo's image editing tools on Amiga, Adobe's image editing tools on Mac etc, but that argument breaks down when it comes to banks, movie and music streaming companies, games etc.

Gud 3y ago
I think as software matures, we will settle on free software. We more or less already did server side. Then it will be up to the OS maintainers to make sure the software is compatible with their operating system, like how it works with FOSS systems already. A man can dream anyway...

Dwedit 3y ago

Chrome/Safari isn't a duopoly, it's the same browser (Webkit).

lxgr 3y ago
Not at all. While they have shared origins, Chrome (Blink) and Safari (WebKit) have been going separate ways for quite a few years now.

com2kid 3y ago

Working in the streaming media space, I can tell you what happens when there isn't a duopoly. It sucks. Making an app means: Android (and Android TV being more work), iOS, web, Roku, Fire TV, Tizen, Vizio, WebOS (LG), and multiple set top box vendors who all have horrible underpowered CPUs. Some companies try do to cross platform, and that sort of works, but it is janky and customer complain of the sorts of UX issues that always pop up with cross platform apps, and for any decent functionality you end up writing per-platform shims. Also some platforms (Roku) you have to write an app for anyway because the platform requires using a custom language. Other platforms (Set top boxes) are so underpowered that you can't really run anything resembling modern code on them. It sucks. It is a huge waste of engineering effort for no real gain. Most customers don't choose a smart TV based on its OS, a large % of people choose based on what is on sale at Costco, and another demographic chooses whatever they are told is "the best" by reviewers. Mobile app developers dealing with a duopoly have it easy, but even that dramatically increases barrier to entry compared to the 90s where you just had to write one app for Windows and so long as you only used documented APIs, Microsoft would move heaven and earth to make sure your app kept working between major OS updates.

octacat 3y ago

The only viable alternative to iOS/Android apps are web apps. Apple fights it by limiting number of features you can use in the browser on mobile phones and no alternative browsers. Google - by saying, ok, go with it, you will use tech, that we control anyway. The current amount of hacks needed to make the native desktop apps compatible across even the same operation system, but different versions, is kinda scary. Pretty sure the similar situation for mobile apps too.