←back to thread

428 points coronadisaster | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.225s | source
Show context
philistine ◴[] 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-...

replies(8): >>23677237 #>>23677240 #>>23677307 #>>23677333 #>>23677632 #>>23678116 #>>23681749 #>>23682896 #
fastball ◴[] 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.

replies(7): >>23677413 #>>23677496 #>>23677509 #>>23677610 #>>23679646 #>>23679893 #>>23680797 #
buran77 ◴[] No.23677509[source]
> requiring explicit permission

Except on the long term that would have no effect in empowering users. We all know that when faced with a deluge of permission requests, or pressured by the fact that enough people have already accepted and it's the entry price to collaborate, people will just hit accept and be done with it.

They only need to get the foot in the door and then you'll find that plenty of stuff ends up conditioned on you giving them access. Every one of these APIs is a Trojan horse. Past experience just proves that they will be hijacked for purposes that don't do the user any favors.

Look no further than JS which is there to enrich the web to benefit users but 99% of it is garbage slid under the door to benefit site owners. That's because plenty of things that should work just fine without it are now tied into it, disable JS and the site experience breaks.

replies(4): >>23677676 #>>23679349 #>>23682394 #>>23689536 #
1. dmix ◴[] No.23682394[source]
Those EU "accepts cookies" boxes have done an amazing job at making people ignore every popup on the internet.