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Comment by sph | Hacker News Reader

Happy that I might be able to install something else than Safari. I want the Gecko engine on iOS. Sad that being in UK probably means we'll ignore it because "Brexit." I got a text the other day telling me that, since we've left the EU, roaming charges are back. Hurray!

Without making this about politics, this is a great step forward. Still unsure how Apple & co. will make their proprietary video and messaging platforms "interoperable". I doubt they'll be writing an RFC any time soon.

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>Happy that I might be able to install something else than Safari. I want the Gecko engine on iOS. Sad that being in UK probably means we'll ignore it because "Brexit."

Specifically on this point, the UK's Competition and Markets Authority are taking action.

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/cma-plans-market-investig...

> Happy that I might be able to install something else than Safari.

I hope you like Chrome then.

> I want the Gecko engine on iOS.

It will probably exist in some official capacity (not just the open source wrappers like IceWeasel or whatever they call it) but it will probably get about as much love as it does on Android which is to say not much at all. Also the market share will be <1% if I had to guess which means no developers are going to test on it and might even just user-agent sniff and block you. Chrome/Google will use all their properties and power to push users to install Chrome and it will become the defato browser for all of desktop and mobile. I'm not looking forward to that.

As a happy exclusive user of Firefox on Android (and PC), I have yet to meet any sites except legacy corporate apps that had any sort of problem with FF in the last 1-2 years at least.

Same here, except the only times I noticed something doesn't work in Firefox but does in Chrome, it was because of my aggressive use of ad blocking and privacy plugins in Firefox.

Same here, only positive feedback. ublock origin keeps all ads at bay so internet looks like a very usable place (aka same as on my desktop). I mean just for removing all youtube ads I would install it on my socks if possible

It is simply because Mozilla blindly follows Google in how thing should work in the engine.

OpenAI’s Playground page mis-rendered for me on FireFox earlier today. I switched to Firefox a week ago.

Zoom didn’t work in Firefox for many months.

>Still unsure how Apple & co. will make their proprietary video and messaging platforms "interoperable". I doubt they'll be writing an RFC any time soon.

I'd be pretty happy if I could integrate iMessage and Signal together, since I hate the fact that iMessage is the only messaging platform with a native macOS app.

What's Signal on Mac, Electron?

Yes.

Signal.app/Contents/Frameworks/Electron Framework.framework

What's stopping Signal from creating their own native MacOS app?

paying developers to do it. Electron vastly cuts down on the amount of time to product with apps like signal. To replicate the results native would require a engineering team.

Why? Signal is a very simple application.

It used to be very common for individual developers, or small teams, to publish native programs. WinZip, Winamp, 7Zip, TreeSize, Tag & Rename, Beyond Compare, Nero, PuTTY, all just off the top of my head.

It is very, very possible to create performant, maintainable native software with no larger a developer team than it takes to build web software. We're just collectively too lazy to try.

Telegram is also native on macOS

Which might sound well on paper but would be hell to actually do. iMessage and Signal are not 1-to-1 in their feature set nor is iMessage a superset of Signal. Also I find it odd that you are pushing for shoving a square peg in a round hole vs signal actually writing a native mac app. I'm not sure why it's iMessage's "fault" they have the "only" native messaging platform app for macOS.

> "will make their proprietary video and messaging platforms "interoperable"

Because it's Europe, and also FaceTime and such aren't anywhere near as popular over there, it is possible that Apple will just pull them from the market there. You can't be forced to provide interoperability with a service you aren't operating.

Whatever the result, this does mean iOS 16 is going to have many "features" that Apple didn't announce...

> it is possible that Apple will just pull them from the market there.

It's also possible that pigs will sprout wings and fly away from manure piles everywhere. Apple is the same company that backdoored iCloud for China so they could operate domestically and make money from the CCP, though. The idea that they'd stop serving the entirety of Europe because of some evil legislation is a complete joke.

> The idea that they'd stop serving the entirety of Europe because of some evil legislation is a complete joke.

I think the idea comes from a US understanding of what exists beyond the border.

You're not wrong. HN's audience is comically unaware of any population that doesn't perennially travel to Disneyland or have a history of >3 failed startups.

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