iOS users invest hundreds of dollars in apps and games and enjoy exclusive products. This creates a very significant barrier to switch to another mobile platform.
Quite obviously increased switching costs for users are important for iOS to maintain leadership in platform wars.
Therefore, rapid advancement of web apps user experience to the level of native apps in some categories would be detrimental to Apple's competitive positions.
Making web lose -> stronger competitive advantage.
It's totally awesome how Google created its Play store so that it seamlessly works on competing platforms -- after all it's a largely open-source stack that would easily run on (say) iPhones. No wait, they use it as a bludgeon to keep third parties in line (and create vendor lock-in).
Sure, it decreases user satisfaction for a SUBSET of users, who care about web apps. This subset seems to be strategically negligible for Apple. This is a trade-off which is absolutely rational from the shareholders/management perspective.
>It's totally awesome how Google created its Play store so that it seamlessly works on competing platforms
Your fanboyism shows. This thread is not about Google, also a corporation which actions are driven by interests of management and shareholders.
It's like Betteridge's Law for discussions involving Apple.
This thread explores the possibility that, for strategic reasons, new web stuff is not implemented on Safari. That proposition is scarcely undermined by hypothesizing a typical user who doesn't care about new web stuff as much as she cares about battery life. She's hypothetical, why should she care about anything as much as she cares about battery life?
There are diminishing returns.
It's not like Apple has provided a web browser that basically doesn't work but has great battery life. Most people consider Safari to be the best mobile browsing experience there is. (I just googled to make sure I wasn't quoting outdated opinions and it's still true.)
Safari in 10.11 has added a feature which tells you which browser tab is making noise so you can close it. Just now I was so wishing for it (in Chrome -- which is my primary browser, since I'm a web developer). Shame on Apple for doing that and not fixing bugs in their IndexedDB implementation! (BTW those bugs are horrible -- how on earth could they pass the simplest unit tests? -- and really should be fixed.)
> To you, the hypothetical malware vuln should be fixed before e.g. improving battery life by 5%.
Apple doesn't let users decide what's best for them... that's one of the things that's different about the company. Want to customize your UI? Nope, that's silly, you can't have it. Apple would decide what's good for the user and it would probably consider browser vulnerabilities more important than some obscure new feature.
> But to a greedy fruit executive who wants the web to be insecure? There's no question!
Good grief.
http://chrome.blogspot.com/2014/01/everyone-can-now-track-do...
Good grief.
The smiley b^) means it's a joke. At this point I have to wonder who is trolling whom...
(Especially with the trend to wide-screens, the placement of tabs on the top vs. the left side seems to me to be a gigantic misstep on everyone's part)
Not trolling -- just ignorant. (And the implementation is kind of flawed. Sufficiently flawed that I've never seen one of the icons. I wonder if Safari's is any better -- can't be bothered installing the beta.)
Not a big fan of your "b^)" emoticon -- doesn't look like anything to me, and doesn't show up in lists of common emoticons. But OK your most outrageous comment was in jest; fair enough.
Apple wants to make the best experience for users because then they'll keep buying Apple products. If users want the web, then they make the browser better. If Apps are more appropriate, then they make apps better.
Apple prioritizes stuff users care about -- battery life > IndexedDB, accessibility > WebGL.
Until you understand this and stop thinking like a conspiracy theorist, you won't understand Apple and will keep confusing your priorities with user priorities.
Again: pleasing users -> profit. Making web lose -> ???
This isn't "embrace and extend" -- Microsoft added huge swathes of proprietary functionality to IE and tended (and tends) to prioritize developer and corporate IT desires over users. Insofar as Apple extends the browser, they do it through standards and proposed standards and (mostly) open source the implementations.