nick

nick, 21 days ago

@ernie @lauren I appreciate and support what subscription-based search engines like Kagi are doing, but the truth is that targeted digital advertising has become, when done perfectly, the most profitable business model the world has ever seen. Google (& the other digital ad titan, Meta) makes unfathomable amounts of profit, quarter after quarter; it’s hard to imagine anyone in Google’s leadership wishing they could trade it all for the Kagi model.

nick, 24 days ago

@ernie what a time to be alive: a highly color accurate, searingly bright mini LED 27” monitor for less than $250

nick, 2 months ago

@daringfireball I think Safari can get their point across by making such APIs “opt-in” (ie the user had to go out of their way to enable them) instead of opt-out.

Picking and choosing what parts of a standard they bother to even implement is, at best, petty, and at worst? gestures towards the broad landscape Apple finds itself in among developers and regulators

nick, 2 months ago

@dmitriid the best software, in my experience, has sensible and easy defaults but also lets power users “pop the hood” to configure it the way they want it.

If a W3C-defined web API is ripe for abuse, then W3C needs to fix it.

I’m sure we’ve all worked with people who thought they knew best, didn’t listen to what their colleagues thought, and went off working on their own priorities instead of the team’s priorities. And I’m also sure we’ve all arrived at the same judgement of those people.

nick, 2 months ago

@dmitriid to be clear: web standards is an area of collaboration and Apple is nominally a collaborative member. Their attitude might serve their interests well in zero-sum competitive situations, but that’s not what web APIs are anymore. Microsoft had to be taught that the hard way.

nick, 2 months ago

@dmitriid WebMIDI is the kind of niche standard that it's easy to make fun of, and I don't fault Apple or Mozilla for having it low on their priority list. I do think it should be on the list eventually though.

But much more pressing than that is all of the APIs that could allow web apps to flourish that Safari drags their feet on. This has been a long-running stance of theirs. Here's a great post from almost a decade ago about it: https://nolanlawson.com/2015/06/30/safari-is-the-new-ie/

nick, 2 months ago

@dmitriid I did read, but it's clear we're talking past each other. We agree that WebMIDI is a flawed standard and should have continued to be iterated on by the W3C before it was implemented by Mozilla or Safari. I said I'm okay with Safari, Mozilla, and all the rest not implementing standards (“lowering their priority”) while they are being iterated on, or when there's more impactful standards that need attention.

[1/2]

nick, 2 months ago

@dmitriid
You're bringing up one time a flawed standard got implemented by Firefox, I'm bringing up a decade-long history of Safari refusing to implement useful web standards because they have business interest (the iOS App Store) in websites remaining shittier than native apps.

Safari's history with native-app-like APIs such as push notifications (standardized 2016, Safari adopted 6+ years later) make it hard for me to believe Apple when they say "it's for the users”.

[2/2]

nick, 1 month ago

@dmitriid career-wise I went all-in on native app development back in 2015 because it was clear that Apple was going to let PWAs die on the vine, so I don't have a list of grievances I can produce on the spot. Push notifications, manifest, holistic service workers, etc.

Fast forward to today though, Safari's half-assed implementation of WebXR for their new XR headset has all the same hallmarks. They even decided all the existing input APIs aren't good enough and decided to make up a new one.

nick, 1 month ago

@dmitriid Here's a chart showing how many smaller XR companies with many fewer browser resources still managed to ship a bunch of APIs that would promote good XR experiences on the web. Safari didn't even both to publicly ship the core featureset. But don't worry! You can still build with AR, a gamepad, hit testing, anchors, depth sensing, and light estimation: Apple will be happy to sign you up for the visionOS App Store and take 30% of your revenue.

https://immersiveweb.dev/#supporttable

nick, 1 month ago

@dmitriid my stance is that Safari does The Right Thing enough times to give them cover and belie the harm they do to a collaborative, flourishing web development ecosystem. I think PWAs are shitty, but I also think it's because they died on the vine when Apple gave them the cold shoulder. iPhone/Android apps started out in 2008 shitty too, but a virtuous cycle of users using them and developers developing them led to them being pretty good.

1/

nick, 1 month ago

@dmitriid I don't think it's controversial to say that the USA steers consumer tech, and it's also known that US smartphone users are around 50/50 Android/iOS, so if half of the first-best customers aren't engaging with PWAs because they're hamstrung by their platform, the flywheel never gets spinning then we end up here. I think if Steve Jobs had stuck to his guns and insisted that the iPhone would only have web apps, the world would look very different.

2/

nick, 1 month ago

@dmitriid I don't know if that would be a better world for apps. It would probably be worse. But the point I'm trying to make is that history proves time and time again that developers go where the users are, and steering users towards the App Store instead of the mobile web had very predictable effects.

And I see the same thing happening with WebXR. It's actually not terribly common for XR developers to write to the platform. It's much more common to write to a game engine like Unity.

3/

nick, 1 month ago

@dmitriid Unity is able to be exported to WebXR: https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/tools/integration/webxr-exporter-109152 (s/o Mozilla!)

If Apple came out of the gate with first-class WebXR support for the Vision Pro, all the pieces are there for developers to create first-class XR experiences in the browser.

4/

nick, 1 month ago

@dmitriid Yet Apple is very much pushing "Write it in Xcode exclusively for our platform" merely paying lip service to WebXR, which publicly is still flagged off in visionOS Safari. Of course they don't allow real Chrome/Firefox/Wolvic on the AVP because they could offer full WebXR support.

IMO it's all pieces of the same puzzle: Apple wants your device to only run s/w it has personally reviewed, & only begrudgingly allows webapps. Apple clips webapps' wings to protect their App Store business.

nick, 1 month ago

@dmitriid I agree there are no PWAs because the ecosystem sucks and no one uses it. But my contention is that was a deliberate choice by Apple. They knew they could put web apps into same death spiral that is fated to any platform that doesn’t catch on. They have the power to make or break web technologies. Look what they did for Apple Pay and look what they did to Adobe Flash.

1/

nick, 1 month ago

@dmitriid let me repeat myself: yes, Safari has a smaller market share than chrome on both mobile and desktop. I think chrome is around 70% on both.

But 30% is still large enough that it arrests momentum. The ONLY advantage of the web is “write once, run anywhere.” Everything else about developing for the web sucks. 70% is not enough for that. The threshold is probably closer to 95% or 99%.

Quoting the fact that Apple is holding 30% of the mobile web hostage only strengthens that idea.

nick, 1 month ago

@dmitriid I guess we’ve reached the foundation of our disagreement: I believe that the web is perhaps one of the most cumbersome ways to write software, but it's also the greatest ways for distributing software in a way that is available regardless of operating system, device. And in contrast to app stores, the web is not (nearly as) restricted by the whims of spiteful megacorps or autocratic governments.

Developing an application bespoke to a platform will always allow a better application. 1/

nick, 1 month ago

@dmitriid but my principles are: the craft of a beautiful UX is important, but not nearly as important as people having access to the software that they need or want.

The web is the best path we have to universal access.

Google has at least TRIED to make web apps better for everyone. Despite being ostensibly part of the collaborative environment, Apple has been obstructionist.

2/

nick, 1 month ago

@dmitriid
I'm sorry that the web sucks, but I'm more sorry that Tim Cook gets to decide what 30% of the world is allowed to do with their pocket computers, and (if the AVP is successful) eventually with their face computers.

And I'm also sorry that people are cheering the advent of Tim consolidating his power, and extracting his 30% of all revenue, and leap to deride anyone who dares suggest that alternative channels are worth investing in.

3/

nick, 1 month ago

@dmitriid as I mentioned, careerwise I chose to do native app development. I have had a front row seat to the amount of technical innovation & business model innovation that Apple has simply snuffed out by App Store rejections. To be clear: I've seen ideas that were built & ready to go on Android canceled because Apple rejected them. Their policies harm everyone not just the 30%.

Call me an ideologue but I just want us to be free from under their thumb & I believe the web was our best shot. 4/4

nick, 2 months ago

@Techaltar I’ve also been enjoying the QooCam EGO https://youtu.be/L1f6YpKHzeg?si=-USni9ua-ecY2OjF but personally I’m eagerly awaiting for Sony to respond to the Canon 5.2mm dual fisheye.

nick, 3 months ago

@christianselig @lwdupont https://youtube.com/shorts/H7bco21_Q5I?si=PP64MP4PCFtihmTF

nick, 3 months ago

@lwdupont @christianselig 👀 https://www.rivianownersforum.com/threads/rivian-%E2%80%98r1x%E2%80%99-trademark-reveals-new-flagship-performance-model.7280/

nick, 3 months ago

@ernie it's wild to me that “We were proud enough of this car to take $70,000 in payment for it, but prospective customers should NOT base their purchasing decisions on the product we've been selling! Marques was unfair by showing the car we sold!” was Fisker's stance