The Future of Browser Choice 188
New submitter plawson writes "CNET offers an in-depth discussion of the browser's future, making the case that 'new mobile devices threaten to stifle the competitive vigor of the market for Web browsers on PCs.' Given the vertical integration of many mobile systems, the article predicts that 'the only opportunity you'll get to truly change browsers is when your two-year smartphone contract expires.' The trade-offs are security and performance. Web pages that rely on JavaScript and JIT will be big losers. How important is browser choice on a smartphone or tablet compared with a PC?"
Oh, that's bullshit. There's plenty of choices (Score:5, Funny)
My iPhone lets me choose from Safari and dozens of different skins of Safari
Re:Oh, that's bullshit. There's plenty of choices (Score:5, Funny)
My iPhone lets me choose from Safari and dozens of different skins of Safari
Not just that but I heard Apple is going to open up iOS to Android magazine apps. For the first time, iOS users will be allowed to read about alternative platforms!
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>>>open up iOS to Android magazine apps.
What do you need an app for? You can get these magazines through Safari browser! Almost all of them are free on the web. (The only ones I still pay for are Asimovs and F&SF magazines, since their content is locked up.)
Re:Oh, that's bullshit. There's plenty of choices (Score:4, Insightful)
>>>Safari and dozens of different skins of Safari
There was a time when Apple was a good company. After Commodore Amiga went to pasture I bought a Quadra Mac (68040) and liked it. A nice easy-to-use system (though it lacked preemptive multitasking). But then it all went downhill.
Though I now have a PowerPC mac I would never buy another one, or any other apple product, because of their love to lockdown things. Its non-apple products from now on. I want freedom.
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Same here. Between 2002-2007 I bought a couple of PowerBooks, a hefty PowerMac, and a couple of iPods - but I'm finding Apple's policies these days to be rather objectionable, and have been avoiding them. While I do still occasionally recommend Apples to my non-technical friends and family, I'm less enthusiastic about it than I used to.
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Re:Oh, that's bullshit. There's plenty of choices (Score:5, Informative)
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Where'd you read that? Your comment is the first I've seen about this - and trust me I'm VERY interested in this and would love for it to be true. Considering the amount of time and effort Moz puts into their Android port, and how Dolphin even supports the Playbook, I somewhat doubt what you say but please prove me wrong.
Note I last looked for this info a week ago and couldn't find anything.
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http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4891642/interpreter-for-the-iphone [stackoverflow.com]
Never mind. Now that I read that more carefully, it doesn't apply here.
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Well, now that I read the actual policy instead of just people's opinions on it, I would say that it is open to interpretation. By "Apps that download code in any way or form will be rejected", does that mean executable code (app binaries) or scripts/source code? If it is the former, then JavaScript interpreters would presumably be okay. If it means the latter, then it wouldn't. It might be worth the Firefox folks' time to contact the app store review people and just point-blank ask them whether a run-
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if((c=getc()) == 'x') { doX(); } else if(c=='y'){ doY(); }
an "interpreter" for a "language" where a "program" can contain two commands, 'x' and 'y'. Or is that just a config file parser.
Re:Oh, that's bullshit. There's plenty of choices (Score:4, Informative)
The blanket prohibition went away, but was replaced with a restriction that the interpreter not interpret anything it gets over the network.
Which means that a browser's JS engine is still not ok under the new policy, unless it limits itself to only running JS that came bundled with the browser.
history repeating (Score:5, Insightful)
Will no-one look to history to see what happens if you are tied into a single browser? Would we all be happy to have the equivalent of IE6 on our smartphones?
I know Microsoft is not keen on WebGL or Websockets, so imagine a world where they simply did not exist, or failed to gain traction because there was no incentive for the new monopoly to support it.
The only answer is consumer choice, and we all know 2 years is a lifetime in 'internet time'. Smartphone time is just as fast as that used to be.
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Microsoft is fine with Websockets. It's just that the draft was rapidly changing, and had incompatible versions. It's in a shipped product now IIRC.
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I think the lesson of the "free-market" here is the regular people don't care what browser they use. The consumer choice made is what platform to buy/use, at the smartphone/tablet level, not at the tech details like which rendering engine is under the hood or whether or not they can swap between 5 different browsers on their device. They don't care about that stuff.
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I know Microsoft is not keen on WebGL or Websockets, so imagine a world where they simply did not exist
I am, and it's glorious. What's wrong with OpenGL and TCP sockets?
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simple - you can't be locked into DirectX or WCF-only comms if there's such a standard!
I am told websockets are now supported by MS, but I think they still say WebGL is a security nightmare waiting to happen, but the DirectX equivalent is quite fine...
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has a sandbox so trust-worthy
Sorry, I do not trust the browser as a "sandbox". People get owned all the time by running strange scripts. The fact that package managers require authorization from root to use is a feature, not a bug.
Re:history repeating (Score:5, Insightful)
Non-techies don't care about "browser choice".
Do you have citable evidence for this claim? Last I checked, IE was steadily losing market share despite being the default browser on 90+ percent of computers sold so obviously people do care about alternative as I highly doubt 50 percent of the market (people not using IE) can all be described as techies.
They do care about their phone not getting hacked.
Strawman. Also, many iPhone jailbreaks have been done through browser exploits and since there isn't any real alternative on iOS, the situation of only having Safari and Safari skinned browsers is actually worse for security.
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>Last I checked, IE was steadily losing market share despite being the default browser on 90+ percent of computers sold so obviously people do care about alternative as I highly doubt 50 percent of the market (people not using IE) can all be described as techies.
90+ percent? No way. First, in Europe, there's the browser ballot. Second, Google pays OEMs a pretty penny to ship Chrome on their PCs.
Not to mention that Google pays to get Chrome bundled with a lot of software, like Flash,Acrobat, Skype(till MS
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So now with smart phones and growing storage capacity there is no excuse for limited choice for an appliance with limited power and limited storage. The phone companies are basically shooting themselves in the foot with lock down, as phones become more powerful and storage capacity increases, there is no excuse for lock down even when M$ is no trying to go that path on PCs because of the threat of Android.
Re:history repeating (Score:4, Informative)
Mozilla and Google pay millions of dollars to be the default browser on many computer systems.
I don't know what Google does, but Mozilla does no such thing. Their finances are fully open, you can check.
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Thank you, shill moderator, for that bad moderation. Better you mod my post down than someone with shaky karma.
Jailbreak (Score:4, Insightful)
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Locking down the system removes a lot of incentive for making the alternative app in the first place.
Where can you get Firefox for your jailbroken iPad? (I do know there was a preliminary attempt at a port for Cydia, but it has since been abandoned due to lack of interest).
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There was a very preliminary port, but Mozilla abandoned work when Apple made it clear they wouldn't allow Firefox on iOS. For jailbroken phones, here's a repo maintained by a volunteer.
https://github.com/redpanda321/Icefox [github.com]
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There is still competition (Score:2)
I don't see why there are concerns about browsers lagging and lack of competition - it's just that now instead of browsers competing on the desktop, browsers will be competing across multiple devices.
Yes it means that you personally will have to use the brand of browser that comes with your device, but that does NOT mean you are stuck with the same browser for the life of your contract as long as you chose a device that gets updated through the lifetime of your contract.
It also does not mean Javascript perf
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>..supposedly soon Chrome may be released for iOS.
Reference?
Snark-free response (Score:3)
I could just say, LMGTFY, but how about a direct link [geek.com] instead.
Just a rumor for now but since you can't replace the default system browser I could see Apple allowing it. Over time they are generally more permissive.
I'm slowly but surely leaving web development (Score:5, Interesting)
Just 2 weeks ago I asked with you guys what degree I should get for a late-ish career boost (BTW: Once again thanks for all the feedback, it's been a great help!).
It is because of this entire development that I actually am starting to move away from web stuff. It may seem that the web has won, and with Ajax and regular HTML 5 that may be the case, but it also is true that a few years ago we had a well-ordered world with 3 platforms at most and now with the mobile revolution we pratically are back in the 80ies with a bazillion proprietary platforms none of which are really compatible to one another. ... Even the usage paradigms aren't as clear as they were in 2005 with only Win, Mac and *nix desktops to choose from.
As for the dangers of stagnation and lock-in - even with HTML5/CSS3 and Ajax - due to extreme verticalisation of markets, I'd say the GP and the related article are spot on. That's why I'm moving away from rich-client and web stuff, at least for the programming that's supposed to earn me stable money in the long term. The 2k years were a great time with lots of fun and opportunities in the web, but those are dimishing as we speak. At least for me it's time to move on.
My 2 cents.
Re:I'm slowly but surely leaving web development (Score:5, Insightful)
It may seem that the web has won, and with Ajax and regular HTML 5 that may be the case, but it also is true that a few years ago we had a well-ordered world with 3 platforms at most and now with the mobile revolution we pratically are back in the 80ies with a bazillion proprietary platforms none of which are really compatible to one another.
You could develop a standard such that it's compatible over all browsers and the server only sends the data and the browser decides how to display it.
Oh, hang on. We had one of those, it was called HTML. Then web developers started demanding more and more bells and whistles so they could display the page exactly how they wanted it to, and then they had to determine exactly what browser it was being displayed on so they could work out how it wanted to display the page and use different hacks to make it display differently.
Re:I'm slowly but surely leaving web development (Score:5, Informative)
none of which are really compatible
Sure they are compatible. Just don't take advantage of "dumb browser trick of the week" and don't use your markup language as a pixel perfect graphics art language.
All browsers display "normal" HTML ... normally. At least since 1994 or so. Lets see... since I first saw a working browser on a Slowlaris box in the spring of '93 the only useful additions have been... what... SSL, CSS, more recently AJAX, and the removal of the blink tag... other than that?
You get into epic fail when only chrome version 352.1 supports embedded inline COBOL and you're just dying to use it so you use it and complain about your site only working on chrome 352.1 because all modern browsers need embedded inline COBOL and the end users demand it for their internet experience and what is wrong with the other browser devs and ...
You also get into epic fail when yoy try to control every little pixel on the screen, as if HTML is the web page analog of the old autocad command line. Most of those kind of people would be better off just hosting freaking huge gif files with imagemaps to click on. Or putting it in flash. Either is an extremely strong indication they are putting all their effort into appearance instead of content and can thus be ignored.
About 30 years ago the same people were using early desktop publishing to put 50 different fonts in 10 different sizes and 3 colors on each printed page, and any complaints about real world usability were ignored because they were left-brained artiste's, creatives, and lowly technical people couldn't possibly understand their elite level works of art. The old wheel of IT turns around endlessly for junk, not just the good stuff. 30 years from now we're going to be hearing the same stuff about cruddy over/hyper optimized 3-d sites and neural interfaces that "need" useless non-standard stuff.
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Re:I'm slowly but surely leaving web development (Score:4, Interesting)
The bottom line is that smartphones are taking the computer software industry backwards. About 20 years backwards in fact.
We have legions of shiny but shallow "apps" instead of useful, usable, and comprehensive applications. We have appallingly restrictive vendor control of OSes instead of free private development AND distribution. We have users stuck with small screens, no peripherals, and slow and expensive connections instead of quad core power machines with broadband connections and 20'' widescreens.
It's 1993 again. Shovelware crap is ubiquitous, there are no set standards, no-one knows how to use their devices, and worse the devices aren't yet actually useful for anything more serious than playing low resolution games and "surfing the web" for recreational purposes.
People need to wake up and realise that smartphones are little more than expensive toys with a phone tacked on. People need--at the very least--a laptop to get actual work(and play) done. And developers make money supplying the tools to get it done.
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We have appallingly restrictive vendor control of OSes instead of free private development AND distribution
Install CyanogenMod on your Android device and enable markets other than Google's. I did. Root access available, too.
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"Asked" is transitive and should not precede a prepositional phrase. "Asked you guys" and "talked with you guys" are both correct because "talk" is intransitive. Eighties, 80s and 80's are acceptable but not 80ies. I'm not sure what you meant by 2k. I'd read that as 2,000, which can't be what you meant.
I must say your use of idioms and tech argot is surprisingly good for a non-native speaker, but I know y'all like to be perfect.
There Is no choice, only WebKit (Score:2)
All mobile browsers, save for WP7, are WebKit.
Posted from my N9, using webkit.
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Right, which is why there is no such thing as mobile version of Firefox or Opera?
(no, not posted from my N900, but it has Opera, which beats the built-in browser)
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All mobile browsers, save for WP7, are WebKit.
Posted from my N9, using webkit.
There's Fennec from Mozilla, but yes, point taken.
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Dolphin and all those other random Android browsers WebKit?
Quite a few of them are yes, just wrappers around the built-in Webkit. Only Mozilla and Opera have their own rendering engines on Android. (Firefox for Android/Fennec and Opera Mobile)
Re:There Is no choice, only WebKit (Score:4, Interesting)
You're an idiot.
Posted from my Galaxy S2 using Firefox.
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My n900 does not use Webkit. It uses Gecko.
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dpkg -l | grep webkit
(It's used by maps, IIRC)
Don't get a contract. (Score:3)
Sure are a lot of options out there if you don't want to be tied to a contract. I got a new LG Alley phone for about $100 bucks on ebay, and signed up with page plus celluar. Cheap pay as you service, uses all the Verizon toweras, and I can do anything and load any browser I want.
Be flexible, but stand up to the man.
Kurt
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I don't quite see what having a contract or not changes (maybe it's a non-GSM thing?) I have a contract with Three, a UK 3G operator which uses GSM, and I put CyanogenMod on my Android device and I can still use the phone just fine with my contract. Maybe it's still locked into the operator, but it isn't locked into the firmware that was included with the device.
and the good news is... (Score:2)
the article predicts that 'the only opportunity you'll get to truly change browsers is when your two-year smartphone contract expires.'
That's the good news. There will still be change, and there will still be competition, but the pace will be slower / the stakes will be higher. Much better for everyone except paid browser devs.
(What I do / what I need my browser to do) hasn't changed much in years, yet there's an endless spewing stream of "just like before, except now does something you don't want and/or don't care about". Combined with a handy bit of gratuitous UI screwing up, and occasionally adding (or removing) features that addons
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Yeah, but to keep the "spirit" of high speed browser development you'd have to alternate the direction with each weekly major version release. That would be kind of funny.
dumb question, no? (Score:5, Insightful)
or at least one that's been asked a million times before.
the question is whether you want to use an appliance or a general-purpose device. an appliance is relatively fixed-format, and congruent with the concept of a walled garden, as well as revenue plans that make your vendors mbaciles happy. an appliance normally does not have user-serviceable parts, so the vendor is in control of the UX. appliances are fundamentally fixed-function devices, even if the vendor is able to update and even extend it, since they define what the fixed functions are.
being general-purpose is the opposite: it means that the owner really does own (control) the device, and can change its function, install software without regard to what the device vendor provides, approves or even knows about. PCs are fully general-purpose, since everything, from the roms to the OS to add-in cards can be replaced by the device owner.
so the question is really: to what extent is the vendor trying to draw a line across which the device owner cannot cross? no device is truely fixed-function, and even control-freak vendors like Apple provide _some_ affordances through which the device may be extended (hardware connectors, software app-stores). this has always been controversial, since any vendor restriction is at odds with our natural understanding of what "ownership" means (and even companies like Apple tend to show some variance in how locked-down and fixed-function their devices are - I can install Linux on an Apple laptop/desktop without much trouble, but they put a lot of effort into making it hard to root any of the smaller devices.)
I think it's time we get back to basics: when I buy a device, I should completely control it. any anti-rooting mechanisms should be illegal - the same way it would be illegal for a car vendor to specifically detect and sabotage my car if I put on third-party wheels. sure, make me click through a license-revoking agreement. but if you sell me something, and then take control of it out of my hands, you've committed fraud.
we should not allow this issue to become an opportunity for vendors to segment their market by selling a version for tinkerers and another for grandma. mostly, vendors have this impulse because their mbaciles want to lock in customers. instead of just selling devices, the popularity of which is subject to whim, the mbacilic approach is to sell service contracts as well, preferably multi-year, to ensure that customers can't get away without paying, even if the vendor's quality degrades. fixed-function devices are inherently like long-term contracts, since customers want upgrades and new apps, and since they're locked in, you can shove profitable advertising down their digital throats, or at least mine their usage/search behaviors.
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who uses a phone browser that often? (Score:3)
It wouldn't matter that much to me because unless the content served up on my iPhone is designed for a mobile platform, it is almost impossible tor read, so I prefer the APP to the browser. as long as it is free, that is.
occasionally i do need to go to a website, and it is kind of a hellish experience because the sites I need to go to (local store's hours, phone #) are written for a desktop browser.
so unless the browser can magically convert a poorly designed website into something readable in a mobile format, it won't make a difference. (i'm also assuming mom&pop shops on the interwebz won't shell out cash for two platform designs, since they are still using flashing fonts and high-contrast tiled gif backgrounds.. ugh)
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Sites like the BBC are perfectly readable in landscape. The majority of vBulletin forums detect my mobile, and display the threads in an easy-to-read format. Ladbrokes, although they cut some of the content the site is very usable, even more usable than their identical App. Google obviously works fine with all their pages.
For sites that insist on showing me a mobile format, I can use Dolphin on Android and pretend to be a desktop.
For crap sites, pinch and expand to zoom works fine. Double click
Bogus conclusion (Score:2)
(From the article and summary) Web pages that rely on JavaScript and JIT will be big losers.
The author claims this, but his "proof" is based on the upcoming Windows 8. Since we're talking about mobile browsers here... what Safari and Chrome do are relevant - what Windows Mobile is going to do is basically irrelevant until Microsoft figures out how to steal marketshare back from the two runaway leaders. Mobile Safari and Chrome handle javascript very well - so this conclusion is based on basically nothing.
Users who rely on JIT will be losers (Score:3)
From the summary:
Two things wrong with this statement:
1. A browser lacking JIT will still process JavaScript, just more slowly.
2. While a web page might lose a few impatient users, and thus become a secondary loser, the primary loser is the one who is the subject of the summary: the smartphone user who is locked in to a particular browser.
Taking these together, the statement "Users who rely on JIT will be losers" would be more accurate.
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1. A browser lacking JIT will still process JavaScript, just more slowly.
Umm, yeah. JavaScript JIT's are fast. Like, several orders of magnitude faster than interpreters. Using any popular webpage without them is going to be a total pain in the ass. Nobody's going to want to publish a browser without a JIT because it'll just suck so bad noone will want to use it.
Uh... Java Icon on article? (Score:2)
choice depends on your platform (Score:2)
It's worse! (and why it doesn't matter) (Score:3)
Okay -- I RTFM'd, and it seems like the author can't really see the forest for the trees.
Sure, UI is important, but if you're worried about us developing a browser monoculture, you need to look at the rendering engine, and not the UI and trademark that is slapped onto the result.
And as things currently stand, a monoculture is already forming around Webkit. On the PC side, KHTML, Konqueror, Safari, and Chrome all use Webkit (as well as numerous more minor browsers). On the mobile side, iOS, Chromebooks, Android, Symbian S60 browser, Blackberry browser (6.0+), HP's webOS, and Amazon's Silk all run on Webkit.
Looking at WikiMedia's stats for April 2012 (link [wikimedia.org]), it appears from my rough calculations that nearly 36% of HTML page hits were from Webkit based browsers -- more than for any other browser engine. When looking at just mobile browsers, Webkit accounts for more than 80% of page hits from mobile devices.
Personally, I don't see this as a bad thing. While it was bad when Microsoft's Triton engine held near total dominance in browser engine use on the Internet (bad because it was tied to a single platform and vendor, and didn't conform to W3C standards well (and in some cases, not at all)), having an Open Source Webkit, which is collaborated on by a wide variety of browser vendors and which does an excellent (and I'd say the best) job of conforming to web standards hold dominance is a good thing. It means we have a single standard that web developers can focus their efforts against (W3C standards that is), while allowing anyone to improve upon it and implement it as they see fit, on a plethora of devices.
Looking at the graph in the article, if you instead break it down by rendering engine, you'll see that at least 80% of their mobile visitors in March were running Webkit based browsers.
So if he's worried about "one browser dominating them all", he's looking at the wrong equation. The concern now isn't that one browser will become dominant; however it appears that one rendering engine will become dominant. IMO it's a good thing in the case of Webkit, due to its standards compliance and open source nature. Sure, you may not have a lot of choice of browsers on your mobile device, but competition between device manufacturers and the fact that virtually all of them ship with browsers based on the same browser engine will ensure a base level of rendering support, good standards compliance, and in the case of features all of them want/need that such changes can be made (where logical) to Webkit itself, and then trickle down to all of the mobile browsers. Looks like a whole lot of win to me.
Which isn't to say that I think lack of choice is a good thing in and of itself -- merely that when your choice is between three different browsers running on the same rendering engine (and many of them the same Javascript engine), will most people even care?
Yaz
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The problem of WebKit is that it has BSD parts that may be susceptible to patents, and the core development is entirely in control of two huge for-profit corporations. Firefox/Gecko has the same problem (too many core devs from one company), and obviously so does Opera (not even open source).
But at least you have competition between those 3 teams now. If WebKit achieves total dominance, Google and Apple control the web, open source or not.
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Well at least Mozilla is proposing standards to advance web apps through its b2g project and coffeescript-inspired extensions to ecmascript do trickle into javascript.
Apple, nokia(wp7 division not Qt) and Google might not care (native app stores generate the $$$).
But hopefully smaller players like HP (open webOS), KDE (plasma active), Intel (tizen) and RIM (BB10) will add the necessary support to webkit.
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But at least you have competition between those 3 teams now. If WebKit achieves total dominance, Google and Apple control the web, open source or not.
No, as the code is OSS, anyone can create a fork if they feel the direction Apple and Google are taking isn't the one they want to take.
And Apple and Google may be the two biggest kids in the WebKit sandbox, but don't discount RIM, Nokia(/Accenture), and Sansung, (and I imagine others -- this was just a quick list I was able to gather from looking at their svn commit logs for the past couple of weeks) who are also big companies that use and contribute to WebKit.
And being LGPL/BSD licensed, there isn't a who
huh? (Score:2)
Yahoo (yes, Yahoo) has a new iOS browser (Score:2)
And it actually appears to have some innovation behind it, display results and the provoking queries on the same screen in a way that makes it easier to navigate between them:
http://venturebeat.com/2012/05/23/killer-mobile-browser/#s:2012-05-23-at-15-34-51 [venturebeat.com]
http://axis.yahoo.com/ [yahoo.com]
Horseless Carriage Stifles Devel of Buggy Whips! (Score:2)
Well, I guess PC web browsers wil lack the kind of focus that
major market share provides....another page of history turns.
Film at eleven!
Re:Chrome OS is also a huge problem (Score:5, Insightful)
>Google is a far more serious threat to open computer systems than any other company, including Apple, Microsoft and IBM.
Not to say that they wouldn't do it if they could, I doubt that, just because Chromebooks suck. They sold very few and they were a huge flop.
"In June 2011, Acer and Samsung launched their Chromebooks ahead of other PC brand vendors, but by the end of July, Acer had reportedly only sold 5,000 units and Samsung was said to have had even lower sales than Acer, according to sources from the PC industry
No wonder Firefox is more worried about Windows RT. They think that the Microsoft tablets are going to sell in good numbers.
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Funny how the business world disagrees with you.
I see a LOT of companies drooling all over the chromebook for use in business. Copuled with Google Business services you can eliminate thousands of dollars of IT costs per year per user.
A couple of our clients here are completely ditching the MSFT train and ringing deep in the Google Cool-aid. For their sales people, Google's flavor is working perfectly for them and Microsoft cant even hope to compete right now.
Granted, you cant do this for the Engineers an
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Going by what people are saying on how bad chrome books are selling, I think the market disagrees with you.
Like any of the "this is the greatest thing ever" devices. Some people claim that it will replace everything else. For example, the ipad and other tablets. Some people claim that they can do all of their computing needs. For some people this is true. For others it is an accessory to their computer. They still need the laptop/desktop to do most things. For others the tablet is just not going to cut it.
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Well I think the parent is right concerning mobile devices. It seems like newer Android phones with ICS are less open than old 2.2.2 that's why I don't care if ever get an OS upgrade on my LG Thrill from AT&T. It would just get locked down even more.
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The use case for power users on Chromebooks is pretty bad. "Here's a laptop, only with much less functionality!" Casual users might like it, but tend to be driven in the long run by the recommendations of power users.
Re:Chrome OS is also a huge problem (Score:5, Insightful)
So you would expect a chrome book to run... IE? Firefox? Would it still be called a chrome book in that case?
The consumer _DOES_ have a choice here. By buying a chrome book they are choosing... duh... chrome. Not only that but Chrome books actually has a trivial way for you to "hack" the device itself (you open the battery and flip a switch) which would allow you to install whatever you want on it. Can you even imagine Apple or Microsoft providing consumers with that same option for any device they sell? No.
The problem that existed in windows was that there was no real alternative to Windows in consumer market at the time of Microsoft anti-trust hearings.
Re:Chrome OS is also a huge problem (Score:5, Insightful)
>Not only that but Chrome books actually has a trivial way for you to "hack" the device itself (you open the battery and flip a switch) which would allow you to install whatever you want on it.
Flipping that switch does not allow you to install native programs on you Chrome OS, it just allows you to load a different OS.
From their docs:
Show a scary warning that its software cannot be trusted, since a command line shell is enabled (press Ctrl-D or wait 30 seconds to dismiss).
Erase all personal data on the "stateful partition" (i.e., user accounts and settings - no worries, though, since all data is in the cloud!).
Make you wait between 5 and 10 minutes while it erases the data.
>Can you even imagine Apple or Microsoft providing consumers with that same option for any device they sell? No.
Last I heard you could dual boot any PCs or Macbooks to Linux or Windows without having to erase your OS X/Windows data.
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I love this comment and wish I had the mod points to spend. Maybe ACs start at 0, but I don't know. I don't have a hard time choosing. I don't really mind closed source (but I slowly loosing trust in closed source software, so maybe I'll agree with it one day). I make comments like this and get downmodded. It's insane to me. These people on slashdot think I'm crazy because I don't want google to harvest my information. I use startpage, NoScript and randomize my user agent on start of Firefox. And, I
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The consumer _DOES_ have a choice here. By buying a chrome book they are choosing... duh... chrome.
Would you say that same thing about Windows and IE? It would be right for Microsoft to disable any other browser than IE because after all, the consumer has a choice, and can get a Mac OS X (Safari), Linux (Firefox) or Chromebook (Chrome) based on their favorite browser. Heh.
The problem that existed in windows was that there was no real alternative to Windows in consumer market at the time of Microsoft anti-trust hearings.
Really? This was the time there was several Linux distros sold off the shelfs in stores! And yes, you could get computers without Windows.
I think it's hard to make the argument that it's the same thing when you can buy an entire Google Chromebook [newegg.com] for about the same price as Windows 7 [newegg.com].
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Chrome OS is also a huge problem (Score:5, Informative)
You most certainly do have a choice... simply don't use the OS. Buy a PC with another OS.
I don't think you understand what Chrome OS is supposed to be... a MINIMAL OS where the browser is the ONLY application, and system updates consist of downloading a full image that is mounted read-only and checksummed to ensure it is not tampered with by malware. Traditional OSs are made to run third party applications. Even "walled garden" smartphone OSs are designed to run at least a subset of third party apps. Chrome OS is not.
It's not designed for people who aren't willing to use the web for everything.
And for the record, there is a documented method to disable the safety checks on the partition checksums and install other OSs, as well as gain root terminal access under Chrome OS to mess around with whatever you want there, too. Google has made it clear they support user choice. I installed Ubuntu on my Cr-48 Chromebook and I have Chrome and Firefox on it, and I can dual boot between that and Chrome OS, if it makes you feel better.
Re: (Score:2)
Same should go for WebOS or Tizen, there the browser is the interface. Or Android for languages, where it is meant to run java apps. But in both cases you can still run core OS apps, and/or apps not from the included market. So don't rule that out from Chrome OS itself.
Anyway, ruling out the browser choice in that context have no meaning. It is a browser based OS, not an OS where the browser is just another app. The choice would be given if you could install in those devices a full OS, or i.e. Mozilla's B [mozilla.org]
Re: (Score:2)
I'd been off of Slashdot for a while, first thing I see when I come back is bonch taking a big shit on the first post again -_-
Re:Chrome OS is also a huge problem (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
We all know that the first third of comments are trolls, shills, first posters and general twats.
The second third of posts are almost predictable.
The final thrid of posts are from people late to the game, probably posting from home, have maybe read the flipping article and tend to post interesting and insightful stuff.
Make is so.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Or a secure platform with lots of choice that requires a bit of savvy to use. It's amazing what people will put up with to avoid using their brains.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
And I'm sure there are car geeks simply appalled with the car you own, food geeks who would vomit in horror at what you eat, beer/wine geeks who would rather die of thirst than drink whatever it is you like, music geeks who would pierce their eardrums rather than listen to your music collection, etc.
Basically, not everybody in this world actually cares about the same stuff you do, at the same level of intensity.
Re: (Score:3)
If spending extra time learning how to drive enabled me to drive a special vehicle that worked a lot better than regular vehicles, you might have a point. But it doesn't.
For instance, if driving a manual transmission meant that I'd get twice the gas milage and break down only 1/10th as often, then you'd have to be stupid not to drive a manual transmission. As it actually happens, manual tramsissions only provide a marginal benefit, so whatever you prefer works.
Basically, not everybody in this world actua
Re: (Score:2)
Actually, it requires far less savvy than it used to.
For instance, this was the install process I went through earlier this week to install Linux Mint:
1. Download CD image from the Mint website.
2. Burn the CD image.
3. Reboot the machine to boot from the CD. This was the hardest step for the non-techie, because in my case I had to teach the BIOS to try booting from the CD.
4. Wait for the liveCD to start up.
5. Click the big icon on the desktop that said "Install to hard disk".
6. Answer some questions:
Re:Choose one (Score:4, Insightful)
Until it does something unexpected and there are a million different non-working answers on Google. That's why I'm typing this on a Mac.
Re: (Score:2)
That's an excellent solution, for as long as Apple doesn't try to push iOS style centralized control onto OS X.
Re: (Score:3)
That would require me to install the centralized control update which I have the choice not to install. Plus there's nothing stopping me putting Linux on here, I just have better things to do with my time than fight with incomplete software.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
"You don't have some unique brain power that others lack."
Yes we do, I have worked in the Corporate world long enough to see it clearly.
We have that unique desire to learn and embrace change. The rest of the corporate world, Change is usually met with angry mobs holding pitchforks and torches.
Re: (Score:2)
Joey: So, what happens when you're wrong?
Nick: Well, Joey, I'm never wrong.
Joey: But you can't always be right.
Nick: Well, if it's your job to be right, then you're never wrong.
Joey: But what if you are wrong?
Nick: Okay, let's say that you're defending chocolate and I'm defending vanilla. Now, if I were to say to you, "Vanilla's the best flavor ice cream", you'
Re: (Score:2)
A little time? For someone to whom tech comes easily maybe. Would you be happy being condescended to by someone who finds something easy that you don't?
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
As long as the person who is being condescending is also giving me information I need to know regarding a subject then I would be happy to be condescended to.
If you refuse to learn something because you don't like someones attitude then you are an idiot.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiot [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:2)
And you are a liar and a wanker
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liar [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wanker [wikipedia.org]
No-one is happy being condescended to and it never helps people to learn. That's one of the reasons why people struggle to learn IT skills, because of dicks like you treating them like shit. Now fuck off.
http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/HowTo:Fuck_Off [wikia.com]
Re: (Score:3)
Or a platform with only one browser engine with a security vulnerability (like the one that allowed to rootkit your phone after opening a web page) and you need to wait weeks for a fix, and not being able to use other browser engine in that time. Or other platform thatallows you to install another "real" browser meanwhile the embeeded one is fixed. Choice is always good, nobody is forcing the user to use another one, but the option must exist
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ummm that wud be news...
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- - - -
All that is necessary for Apple to triumph is for Google men to do nothing.
Re: (Score:2)
I took a look at the difference between Pale Moon and Firefox a while ago (they're both open source). The only meaningful difference is that Pale Moon 12 is compiled with MSVC2010 and Firefox 12 is compiled with MSVC2008.
Firefox 13 is also MSVC2010 compiled, so I really see little use in Pale Moon at this point. (Particularly if you notice that Mozilla didn't switch earlier because MSVC2010 miscompiled some parts of Firefox before version 13, so those are automatically bugs in Pale Moon)
Oh, and they tweak t
Re: (Score:2)
I don't really get why, the built-in browser and Dolphin are exactly the same thing. Dolphin is essentially a skin around it. Same for Miren.
Re: (Score:2)
The issue is that (due to artificial restrictions put in place by Microsoft), only Microsoft is allowed to have software on Windows RT that can execute dynamically generated code. This means that IE can have a JavaScript JIT compiler but Mozilla cant.
Having not seen the developer agreement for Windows RT, I dont know if it goes further and has a ban on interpreted languages as well (ala apple).