The NY Post, the iPad and the web | Hacker News Reader

The NY Post, the iPad and the web

scripting.com

35 pointsdavewiner8 comments

If you absolutely must redirect me to your "mobile" site, for the love of god remember the link I'm going to! Don't just send me to the damn home page. When this happens to me, there is absolutely zero chance of me doing anything besides instantly clicking the back button. No kidding, at least half the mobile sites out there manage to fuck this up, including many who should know better (e.g. Google Groups).

Obligatory XKCD link: http://xkcd.com/869/

Heh. Exactly.

It's not Apple's responsibility to "fix" a misbehaving company. To stop sending information identifying you as an iPad user breaks the web just the same by not honoring the user agent spec in RFC 1945.

Mobile implementations abuse agent sniffing, no doubt. This is a clear example of organizations who don't get it, or are willing to exchange readership attrition for a perceived benefit with an app. Or in this case, an attempt to create revenue.

I'm ok letting these organizations die on the vine. It means those who plan better are greeted with opportunity.

> It's not Apple's responsibility to "fix" a misbehaving company.

No. But it is important for them to make sure browsing on the iPad is good. When something doesn't work while browsing, it hurts the user. Why do you think they put so much effort on combating Flash? Why push HTML5? They couldn't drop Flash and not support a replacement. They had to make that push, and it worked well for them.

I'd love the option to expose my iPad Safari as a normal desktop safari. Many sites don't give me the option of going to a non-mobile version, and it sucks. It breaks being able to browse on my iPad.

How could they do that smoothly in an Apple like way? I don't know. I'm not Apple.

Responsibility has nothing to do with it.

Atomic Web Browser (http://atomicwebbrowser.com/) can identify itself as IE, Firefox or Desktop Browser and is available on both the iPhone and iPad.

Really, New York Post... Really? This seems like an incredibly slippery slope. What happens when the Detroit Free Press signs an exclusivity deal with Samsung in an effort to try and reclaim some of their lost revenue from floundering subscriptions and a bad, ad-based business model? You can only read the mobile Free Press on your Galaxy Tab or Galaxy phone.

Makes me think of the Berners-Lee filter bubble talk I just read about: http://www.thefilterbubble.com/web-inventor-tim-berners-lee-....

Obviously, Murdoch is just throwing sh*t at the wall but what happens if they have a metric that says it works?

I agree. I have no idea what wordpress is thinking with their "iPad-optimized" version. It is much slower, uglier, and harder to navigate than their default themes.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com