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Comment by madeofpalk | Hacker News Reader

It's really hard to believe that Apple is holding back the 'mobile web' when it's shown time and time again that they have the best performing web platform in the market. It was true when iPhone was introduced in 2008, it was true in 2015[0] and it is still true now[1].

"In a nutshell, the fastest known Android device available today -- and there are millions of Android devices much slower than that out there -- performs 5× slower than a new iPhone 6s, and a little worse than a 2012 era iPhone 5 in Ember. How depressing."

[0]: https://meta.discourse.org/t/the-state-of-javascript-on-andr... [1]: https://twitter.com/CraftyDeano/status/779461778677895169

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Speed is an important metric, but only up to a point. Once a browser renders a page faster than a user can interact with it any further improvement has very little impact. Any phone released in the past year or two meets that criteria for a well constructed page (obviously a badly written site is always going to perform badly, even on the best hardware.)

So, while it may be true that an Android phone is 5x slower than a new iPhone, that doesn't make a difference to the end user. They see the website working well on both devices. At that point it starts being about features, so iOS's lack of support for WebRTC, Beacons, Gamepads, Fetch, etc means the experience is worse. Not that Android supports everything, but if you compare iOS Safari to Chrome on Android[1] it's very clear that Safari is behind, even if it's faster.

[1] http://caniuse.com/#compare=ios_saf+10,and_chr+51

As pages get more and more complex (say, because they have new fancy HTML5 APIs) that performance actually begins to matter, right?

I'm a web developer and I don't feel like iOS Safari is holding me back in producing the types of web experiences that myself or my clients are looking for. They're not asking for HTML5 Gamepad support. Instead, they just want an image carousel - Chrome doesn't support that but Safari does http://caniuse.com/#search=snap.

How are the two related at all? You point at the performance of Apple's browsers and imply that means they are likely spec-compliant as well.

Perhaps they should do more about HTML 5 features ( which is holding back the mobile web) instead of js execution.

This just means they can do it, but they won't due to own personal gains

Or at least allow other browsers to compete on the platform.

This!!!! I cannot believe that Apple is allowed (even by EU) to only allow their own browser on App Store. Having a choice is always good.

If it was Microsoft, the story would have been completely different today.

Microsoft had 90% percent marketshare in the '90s. Apple is not in that position.

Microsoft's problem was that they had a monopoly of the market and were distorting it. Apple has nowhere near close to a monopoly on the smartphone market, and there still is plenty of innovation in the 'mobile web' happening.

>If it was Microsoft, the story would have been completely different today

Yes, because, for the 10000th time: Microsoft was a monopoly in the desktop market.

Apple has never been a monopoly on the phone market.

It's obvious you are not a web developer using HTML5/CSS3/ES6. iOS has became the new Internet Explorer hands down, and now it's the first platform I test on to check for compatibility issues (as it's the one that normally gives those issues).

Nope. (Front end) web developer by trade. What I say I say from experience - I've never had a client ask for a feature that Safari doesn't support. However, clients do ask for things like a carousel, which Chrome doesn't support natively.

iOS is a significantly easier support target compared to Android due to how much of a stable target it is. Android is a bit of a 'which Android?' when it comes to browser support.

I could be swayed that iOS is easier to target than some other browsers but Chrome? You can definitely build a slider natively...

Maybe the confusion is that Chrome =/= Android Browser

> You can definitely build a slider natively...

Nope http://caniuse.com/#search=snap

"Build natively" means to create it yourself in vanilla JavaScript, like this http://meandmax.github.io/lory/. What's the use of a native element that only one browser has when you need cross browser support anyway?

"Natively" as in 2 lines of CSS rather than yet another JS dependency. The cool thinks about CSS Snap Points is that they fall back rather gracefully on brothers that don't support them to just standard overflow scrolling.

Well that's not what native means. Beyond that, the issue isn't that Safari is not implementing HTML5 features fast enough, it's that they are choosing to not implement specific ones in order to protect their platform. You just don't see that from other browser vendors (today)

Isn't that the point of this article? I don't think it's fair to criticize Apple for lagging HTML5 support in iOS, then say "what's the use of this element?" when it cuts the other way.

The criticism isn't that they are lagging HTML5 support in iOS(although it would be valid- that's no reason to sue), it's that they are specifically avoiding parts of the implementation to protect their platform. Things like full screen support, notifications, etc

You don't need snap to build a slider natively. Also interestingly snap is NOT supported when Safari is rendering stuff in a different app, only when you're actually in the Safari App.

As the note says, WKWebView is an embeddable web view for apps. This is what iOS Chrome uses FWIW.

Doh, that is precisely the whole problem being discussed here.

WKWebView is a mess just like UIWebView.

Are you kidding me? "Which Android" doesn't even make sense in terms of the browser, it's not tied to OS releases and is therefore the same on every phone (except freaking Samsung... Their browser is even worse than Safari). Maybe WordPress sites that need a "carousel" work better on iOS, but I can't tell you how many times I've had to go back and fix something because it won't work on iOS right. I can tell you, however, that that number is now higher than it is for ie10. So yes, it IS the new internet explorer.

thanks for writing that, now it's obvious you've never touched any frontend code

Amen.

Isn't it obvious?

If they supported things like PWAs and other mobile web initiatives, people could build applications that run seamlessly on their phone, look like native apps etc, and they wouldn't go through their highly lucrative app store.

As phones get more and more powerful and things come along and mature like webgl etc, the reliance on native apps drops more and more. As does Apple's control.

Maybe I should get back under my tinfoil hat, idk, but that is my guess as to where their reluctance comes from.

For Apple, the App Store is not 'highly lucrative'.

Really? Don't they make 30% on every sale, including any subscriptions, iaps, and basically any money that changes hands? Don't they make it impossible for you to sell software that runs on iOS devices without them taking a cut? Wouldn't PWAs + some kind of external payment engine (paypal or whatever) completely bypass this?

I realise they also make a lot on hardware, but it seems like that's a revenue stream they wouldn't want to lose.

Their financial statements are pretty clear. Hardware is highly lucrative. Services, like the app store, are only recently consistently profitable. They definitely wouldn't intentionally make their devices less desirable to customers to increase service revenue.

Do you have any thoughts as to why they don't allow people to install things from outside of the app store? Or why they require all purchases through apps to go through their payment methods where they take a 30% cut?

Because it is definitely making devices less desirable. I presume you still can't buy books from the Kindle iOS app, for example. I know you can't sub on twitch on iOS.

To continue with the kindle example, Amazon could build a kindle PWA that works offline, allows you to buy books, and in every way works identically to their thick client app (it's just displaying text after all, it's not technically demanding). And Apple wouldn't be able to block them from allowing you to buy things, because you're effectively just using a web browser.

Because they want control over their platform and one (but not the only) reason for that control is to deliver a consistent and safer experience to their users. The app store is a part of that control but it's not some moneymaker.

The fact that you can't install random apps from anywhere on an iPhone doesn't make the device less desirable to anyone, statistically. Incidentally, if you have source, you can install an app on your phone without paying a dime to anyone.

It is, because having a superior app ecosystem is one of the strongest selling points of Apple devices vs the competition.

Mobile safari was literally one of the reasons we decided to build an app instead of just having a mobile optimized website. So if that's they're strategy, it's working. Though it is a free app so it's not working _that_ well.

The problem is not hardware speed, as you point out, but software.

It would be lovely to see a real Chrome benchmark on iOS, but alas, Apple doesn't want that to happen.

If speed is truly the deciding factor, the Links text-only web browser is pretty fast.

Both can be true.

I can single handedly can make the faster browser the world has ever seen, by only displaying a white page.

Don't use speed as an argument.

Why not? Speed is a perfectly valid criterion for a browser's usability.

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