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A comment on It's OK for Apple to block Firefox, but wrong when Microsoft does it.

Re:It's OK for Apple to block Firefox, but wrong when Micros... by koeselitz on Friday May 11, 2012 @03:28PM (#3960899)
This is a bit silly. So the point of this article is that Mozilla "should be criticizing Apple?" Why waste a whole article saying someone else should criticize Apple? It seems more worthwhile to do it oneself.

The trouble with trying to dismiss an argument with accusations of hypocrisy is that hypocrites can be right. If I make an argument that stealing is wrong and then turn around and steal something, that doesn't mean that stealing is morally permissible. Likewise, the fact that Mozilla neglects to criticize Apple doesn't mean their criticism of Microsoft is incorrect.

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Re:It's OK for Apple to block Firefox, but wrong when Micros... by azakai on Friday May 11, 2012 @04:16PM (#3961165)
> Likewise, the fact that Mozilla neglects to criticize Apple

Good points, and furthermore that bit isn't even accurate. Mozilla has been critical of Apple too. But Windows RT is a new product, so there is new cricitism; the criticism of Apple is old.

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Re:It's OK for Apple to block Firefox, but wrong when Micros... by rbanffy on Friday May 11, 2012 @04:21PM (#3961188)
WinRT is not a new product - it's a new API sitting on top of mostly the same Windows kernel they use for Windows 7.
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Re:It's OK for Apple to block Firefox, but wrong when Micros... by recoiledsnake on Friday May 11, 2012 @05:08PM (#3961408)
Windows RT = New product meant for ARM devices (the current topic of discussion)

WinRT = New runtime API for Metro apps that will run on both Windows 8 and Windows RT.

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Re:It's OK for Apple to block Firefox, but wrong when Micros... by rbanffy on Friday May 11, 2012 @06:54PM (#3961875)
So, it's as much a new product as were Silverlight, WPF and .NET - all layers that allowed apps written for them to run on Windows-based devices.

The kernel underneath is the same.

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Re:It's OK for Apple to block Firefox, but wrong when Micros... by cooldeal on Friday May 11, 2012 @05:32PM (#3961528)
>Mozilla has been critical of Apple too.

Care to link to them? I am not being facetious, I am genuinely interested in seeing their official statements on this and if they've publicly called Apple to open up iOS to Firefox. Bonus points if they've alluded to antitrust law.

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Re:It's OK for Apple to block Firefox, but wrong when Micros... by azakai on Friday May 11, 2012 @06:26PM (#3961762)
> Care to link to them?

For example, here is criticism from a top Mozilla dev on iOS's closedness,

http://groups.google.com/group/mozilla.dev.planning/browse_f...

> Bonus points if they've alluded to antitrust law.

How can criticism of Apple be related to antitrust law? What monopoly do they have?

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Re:It's OK for Apple to block Firefox, but wrong when Micros... by kprobst on Friday May 11, 2012 @06:45PM (#3961842)
> What monopoly do they have?

Do they not have what is essentially a monopoly on the tablet space? I'm not up to date on Android tablet market share, but it seems to me that there isn't so much a market for tablets as there is one for iPads. Everything else is pretty much nonexistent. I might be wrong about that, I guess.

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Re:It's OK for Apple to block Firefox, but wrong when Micros... by azakai on Friday May 11, 2012 @07:45PM (#3962020)
http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2012/05/03/amazons-tablet-market...

Apple has 68% of the market. It's in a very powerful position, but it isn't a monopoly.

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Re:It's OK for Apple to block Firefox, but wrong when Micros... by jroseattle on Saturday May 12, 2012 @11:58AM (#3964221)
Using percentages to decide monopoly status isn't relevant. There are far greater factors involved, as the DOJ/MS trial established precedent in that respect.
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Re:It's OK for Apple to block Firefox, but wrong when Micros... by sses on Saturday May 12, 2012 @03:16AM (#3963106)
That's higher than Google's share of the US search market, according to comScore.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/googles-web-search-market-s...

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Re:It's OK for Apple to block Firefox, but wrong when Micros... by azakai on Saturday May 12, 2012 @12:32PM (#3964364)
What does tablet market share have to do with search market share?
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Re:It's OK for Apple to block Firefox, but wrong when Micros... by kprobst on Friday May 11, 2012 @08:20PM (#3962135)
I stand corrected, thank you. I thought it was far higher.
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Re:It's OK for Apple to block Firefox, but wrong when Micros... by cooldeal on Friday May 11, 2012 @08:55PM (#3962219)
I fail to see how a random post by a dev on Usenet is remotely close to an official statement by the General Counsel of Mozilla on the company blog.
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Re:It's OK for Apple to block Firefox, but wrong when Micros... by azakai on Saturday May 12, 2012 @10:33AM (#3963965)
The general counsel explains the difference here

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/print/9227080/Mozilla...

and meanwhile Google has joined Mozilla in its criticism,

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1001_3-57431475-92/google-agrees-w...

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Re:It's OK for Apple to block Firefox, but wrong when Micros... by rbanffy on Friday May 11, 2012 @04:06PM (#3961104)
> The trouble with trying to dismiss an argument with accusations of hypocrisy is that hypocrites can be right

Touché!

Also, iOS was closed from the start and Microsoft is closing Windows down now because it feels that if it doesn't, it will lose the Win8 ARM market too.

And, obviously, Firefox is not the only target - they must be much more worried about Google owning the WOA web space.

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Re:It's OK for Apple to block Firefox, but wrong when Micros... by cooldeal on Friday May 11, 2012 @05:19PM (#3961459)
>Also, iOS was closed from the start and Microsoft is closing Windows down now...

Err what? You do realize that every single program that will run on Windows 7 will run on Windows 8 right? What do you mean by MS is closing Windows now?

Also, Windows RT hasn't even started shipping yet, so you can say "Windows RT will be closed from the start". Which will make it equivalent to iOS in that regard.

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Re:It's OK for Apple to block Firefox, but wrong when Micros... by throwaway64 on Friday May 11, 2012 @07:49PM (#3962040)
exactly zero windows applications that exist currently will run under metro/winRT, so by extension, windows ARM.
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Re:It's OK for Apple to block Firefox, but wrong when Micros... by rbanffy on Friday May 11, 2012 @09:42PM (#3962333)
Oddly enough it seems Firefox is able to JIT on Metro/x86
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Re:It's OK for Apple to block Firefox, but wrong when Micros... by makomk on Sunday May 13, 2012 @08:18AM (#3966802)
That's because they're not running under WinRT on x86. Apparently there's a special exemption in the x86 version of Windows 8 which allows the default web browser to provide a Metro interface even though it's still a Win32 application.
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Re:It's OK for Apple to block Firefox, but wrong when Micros... by rbanffy on Friday May 11, 2012 @09:31PM (#3962295)
Win8 is Windows kernel + Windows API + Windows RT. Win8 on ARM is Win8 minus Windows API. It's not a new product - it's a castrated version of the latest version of an old product.
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Re:It's OK for Apple to block Firefox, but wrong when Micros... by cooldeal on Friday May 11, 2012 @10:34PM (#3962481)
By that metric, neither iOS nor Android are new, they're just castrated versions of OS X and Linux.

An OS is much more than it's kernel.

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Re:It's OK for Apple to block Firefox, but wrong when Micros... by recoiledsnake on Friday May 11, 2012 @06:10PM (#3961703)
>The trouble with trying to dismiss an argument with accusations of hypocrisy is that hypocrites can be right. If I make an argument that stealing is wrong and then turn around and steal something, that doesn't mean that stealing is morally permissible.

Bad analogy. A better analogy would be to believe that stealing is wrong, but only loudly blame A for stealing, but be quiet when B does the exact same thing. Maybe the article should've said bias instead of hypocrisy.

>Likewise, the fact that Mozilla neglects to criticize Apple doesn't mean their criticism of Microsoft is incorrect.

Did the article imply or say that?

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Re:It's OK for Apple to block Firefox, but wrong when Micros... by koeselitz on Saturday May 12, 2012 @12:43AM (#3962789)
The article didn't say that, no; the fact that the whole article is a criticism of Mozilla would seem to be an implication that that criticism would extend to Mozilla's argument, but that's an indirect implication, to be sure. But the trouble is that, if that wasn't the point of the article, then once again it seems like a rather silly topic for an article. If the author is really purely interested in people who criticize one company but not another for arbitrary reasons, well, I'm not sure I can see much that's very compelling in that.

To put it bluntly, if he's not actually talking about the software or freedom or the market or anything of substance - if he really is just saying Mozilla should either shut up or criticize Apple, without any regard to whether the criticism is right or the companies being criticized are wrong - then he is being petty, plain and simple.

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