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Comment by purephase | Hacker News Reader

While I'm not an Apple zealot by any stretch of the imagination, the biggest complaint is the lack of additional browsers.

You can get Chrome on iOS now (thankfully).

I just wish that Samsung or someone else would up their game hardware wise. I love Android, but I do not like any of the hardware choices.

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He mentions that you can get additional browsers but that you can't set them as the default when you click on a link.

I really wish iOS would get Android Intents.

I wouldn't be very surprised to see something like that in next version of iOS. Scrap that. I would be surprised not to see that in next version in iOS.

I would be very surprised. Apple has tried hard to have standard apps that are always standard apps. Intents give you choices for your standard apps which give you (even if minor) fragmentation. That is something people see differently and for me personally that sounds like hell. But to each his own and I'd even guess people with no technical knowledge might prefer not to be bothered by such choices.

I love Android intents and can't wait for webintents to take off but I can't see Apple embracing intents or something similar on iOS.

I'd say if Apple opens up that sort of customizability, it'll have strict requirements around the interface/behavior and, if those requirements change, 3rd party apps will have to change rapidly with them or be rejected from the Store. In other words, their control over the Store could allow them some flexibility to allow some customization in ways that avoid fragmentation.

I felt that way three years ago. At this point, I'm starting to think the omission is intentional.

Similarly with home-screen widgets. Though I think lock screen/notification center widgets might be incoming.

Every time I see this, I try to imagine what would happen if Microsoft forced IE to be the default browser in Windows. I'm guessing there would be quite an uproar.

You can get a Chrome like experience, as it uses a UIWebView under the hood, with limited features compared to the default Safari browser.

It is better than nothing, but still far from what we can call a browser choice.

But the browsers can't use their own rendering or Javascript engines. So all the browser vendors can work on is the user interface, not the core of the OS. It's a real shame Apple forbids it.

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