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Apple declined to implement 16 Web APIs in Safari due to privacy concerns

(www.zdnet.com)
428 points coronadisaster | 6 comments | 29 Jun 20 10:16 UTC | HN request time: 0.679s | source | bottom
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philistine ◴[29 Jun 20 13:03 UTC] No.23677180[source]▶
I’ve heard so many people complain on HN about Safari’s lack of support for APIs. Before now, we didn’t have a public justification why Apple refused to implement them. Now we know.

The price of a Safari user in the ad market is going down, and it’s exactly what should be happening. I’m very happy with Apple.

https://9to5mac.com/2019/12/09/apple-safari-privacy-feature-...

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fastball ◴[29 Jun 20 13:21 UTC] No.23677307[source]▶
Except "privacy" as a justification is BS.

You can implement these APIs while at the same time requiring explicit permission from the user before a web application can use them. This preserves privacy while also giving users the option to have much more powerful web applications.

Apple doesn't want to implement these APIs because currently if you want access to these things on iOS, you need to go through their walled garden App Store, where they get a big chunk of any revenue you might make on such a service and can nerf competitors and all the other anti-competitive stuff they're doing.

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1. jodrellblank ◴[29 Jun 20 13:43 UTC] No.23677496[source]▶
Recently I’ve seen a jump in the number of random sites popping up a “this site wants to access VR hardware” dialogs in FireFox; news articles nothing to do with VR or visualisation. I don’t have any VR devices.

How do you do this bit “requiring explicit permission from the user before a web application can use them” without the fallout of “its just a hundred thousand popups and you’re done!” on every page?

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2. Sayrus ◴[29 Jun 20 14:05 UTC] No.23677710[source]▶
I'd argue that what Firefox do with the tilting icon for Push Notification is not that bad. I'm surprised they do not do the same for other type of permission as they are these request popups are equally annoying.

However, I have to admit that displaying one icon per permission would not scale great when having a dozen of them.

3. badwolf ◴[29 Jun 20 14:27 UTC] No.23677892[source]▶
Just the constant "this website would like to send you push notifications" on every last damn site.
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4. fastball ◴[29 Jun 20 15:14 UTC] No.23678336[source]▶
Easy. You don't have them in popups, you have them in a dropdown that the user selects themselves. Websites then need to learn to fail gracefully if not given certain permissions, otherwise consumers need to stop using those websites.

The solution to privacy concerns is not "nuke functionality", it's "don't let websites abuse functionality for tracking purposes".

Just like how with native apps on iOS, the solution is not "don't let apps ever access GPS data", it's provide a UX that makes it fairly easy to choose and don't provide permissions to apps that don't need them.

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5. spideymans ◴[29 Jun 20 18:53 UTC] No.23681035[source]▶
Part of me wishes that browsers dropped support for web push notifications entirely. Or at least bury it in the browser settings somewhere. At best, they provide marginal value to me, and at worse, they're just spammy.

My parents aren't techsavy at all, so when they get those push notification requests, they just hit "accept". They now get dozens of spammy ads sent to them via push notifications (eg, "30% off sale, buy now!")

I've disabled web push notifications entirely, but I still get JavaScript-based prompts asking me for permission to turn on notifications. I already explicitly said no, yet web developers still feel compelled to find workarounds to interrupt my work and ask me for permissions (why?).

I get that in theory, web notifications are supposed to be valuable, but in practice its been nothing more than a constant annoyance for me.

6. jodrellblank ◴[29 Jun 20 23:13 UTC] No.23684545[source]▶
"Just like iOS"? The iOS solution to GPS data permissions is a modal popup: https://support.apple.com/library/content/dam/edam/applecare...

from the page https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT203033