Mozilla can't bring its full browser technology to iOS, Windows Phone, and Windows RT
Does this give other people the willies, or only me? Its scary that 2 of the 3 big players in mobile effectively lock out so much. In so many ways, the mobile wars are much more significant than the browser wars. Having a machine that is completely locked down and only runs 'authorized' software is chilling indeed.
I've been saying it ever since the iTunes App Store launched and have been saying it again when Windows Phone launched - I'm not interested in platforms that won't allow me to run Firefox.
Of course, you'll see yet again opinions trying to rationalize it as being "in the name of user experience" and "safety".
But then, a couple of years from now, when those people finally realize what a big mistake this was, they won't blame it on themselves.
When you run around shouting the sky is falling, you can't expect most people to take you seriously. Apple is winning (profit wise) because they just have a simpler experience.
IMO, they are doing everything right except adding an "advanced" mode that people who really know what they're doing can use. But I know why they don't do that: because a lot more people will think they know what they're doing than actually do.
If they start turning into the locked down 1984 world you're worried about, someone else will come out with an alternative, show why it's better and most people will move over there.
No one cares about moral ranting. Show people a tangible, relevant benefit to them (that is, tangible like "cheaper" not abstract like "you're more free!") and they'll buy in. Brow beating has never been an effective way to affect change.
There are lots of tangible benefits of openness, problem is most concrete examples do not resonate with most people, because people in general have different needs, even though those same people will run into the same problems at some point, so it's inevitable that discussions end up filled with anecdotes and philosophy, not to mention that coming up with comprehensive case-studies from our history is time consuming and soul sucking, so people that understand the issue just go on with their lives.
But here, I'll give you an example - 1 and a half year ago I was literally stocked by 2 people that thought I owed them money. And so I was receiving lots of SMS messages and phone calls with threats, because that's all they could do - but it was annoying to me to have my phone ring several times per day. Then my phone number ended up on some kind of marketing list and I started receiving daily messages with special offers.
So I had a problem and an iPhone 3GS (received as a gift) and being a smartphone I expected from it to solve it, because otherwise my phone number was becoming unusable and I didn't want to change it (hey, I've got a nice, memorable number). I wanted to completely block SMS messages and phone calls for certain numbers. And I'm not referring just to make my phone silent when receiving stuff from certain phone numbers - but also a cleanup of the logs. And after all, my smartphone is primarily a phone, where a phone is a device used for communications - I don't care how smart it is, if it's not smart about the most basic functionality it should provide.
Imagine my surprise when I found out that Apple was actively blocking such apps from its App Store. So I jail-broke it and installed something from the Cydia store, which was a painful process. Then Apple released a major update to iOS that I wanted, so I updated the device, but my previous method for jail-breaking it wasn't working anymore.
THE ONLY REASON people put up with this is because they don't know a smartphone could solve this for them, otherwise spamming through phone calls and SMS messages is a really common problem.
Out of frustration I went out of my way and got a Galaxy S device. There were several apps on Android Marketplace (now Google Play) that dealt with blocking SMS and phone calls. Several were not working on my device, because the APIs for doing that are not public and so dealing with it is hard. But I found one that worked extremely well. Even in the case of Android's Marketplace also blocking such apps, it's extremely easy on Android to install apps from third-party sources, not mentioning the ease with which you can develop for it, without setup fees or bogus certificates.
And I've been blocking unwanted SMS messages and phone calls ever since.
Now, some day Apple will finally wake up and provide this functionality. I'm sure that it will be polished and better than all the alternatives. However, it will be several years too late for me. And if a smartphone can't provide such basic functionality that should be a no-brainer in this age of spam, then for me it's just a shiny and expensive piece of crap. And remember when they blocked Google Voice from their store because "it duplicated existing functionality?".
I also own an iPad. It was a gift (for some reason people like giving me Apple products, thinking that I love them). I also have a 3G plan for it, that I got separately, so this device is not subsidized or bought from my mobile carrier. Imagine my surprise when I found out that I couldn't do tethering with my otherwise expensive 3G plan and expensive device, yet my 1 year and a half Android could - and an iPad could do better tethering because of its bigger battery. And get this ... the functionality is available, but it depends on the settings the mobile carrier are wiring to your device. So they are basically controlling your device, deciding for you what you can and cannot do.
So now I'm dreaming of a Nexus tablet as my next device, because while the iPad is useful for browsing and stuff, I don't really "own" it and there's so much more it could do.
And I have no doubt about it, the sky is going to fall, because the writing is on the wall. Considering our increased dependency on smart technology, if you don't "own" your devices (or your data, or the software you depend on), the service providers are owning you.
You may not notice it right now, but remember that old anecdote about how you should boil a frog alive - slowly, otherwise it jumps out.
And the blame will fall partly on us, the developers that supported these closed platforms. Because we helped them grow.
People also like to point out how Android is more popular because it gets promoted more by carriers - isn't it funny how openness is good for everybody, including carriers and phone makers?
I agree that Apple should provide a "hacker" setting that lets you step outside the bounds. They don't want to do this because so many non-techies imagine themselves as highly technical so they would press this button, mess something up and then shit all over the forums about how awful apple products are. Granted, Windows got to 95%+ market saturation with the latter approach, but Apple cares about imagine even to the point of shooting themselves in the foot over it. It's their right.
What irritates me are all the "they're just trying lock you in because they're evil!". There's no reason to believe they're evil. It's more likely they care about imagine to a point many might consider a fault.
> Imagine my surprise when I found out that I couldn't do tethering with my otherwise expensive 3G plan
iOS, and other OSes for that matter, send data back to the carrier when you use the built in tethering capabilities. Since Apple is perceived to have tight control of their market, carriers expect them to keep apps out that bipass this. Android is perceived to have a less tight market so even though the built in offering would have had the exact same restriction, you could easily pick up an app that didn't.
Currently, I sold my 3G iPad and use my iPhone 4 to do tethering. It's not blocked for me and I don't pay anything for it. This changed when they changed to "wireless hotspot" instead of "tethering" in the options menu.
>So they are basically controlling your device, deciding for you what you can and cannot do.
This is a carrier issue. I'd love to see someone make an open carrier (dumb pipe, that's what we all want!).
>because while the iPad is useful for browsing and stuff, I don't really "own" it and there's so much more it could do.
The iPad concept is that it's an appliance, not a general purpose computer. If you feel that means you don't "own" it, do you also not "own" your microwave since you can't do general computing on it's embedded OS either?
>And I have no doubt about it, the sky is going to fall, because the writing is on the wall.
And here's where you go David Icke. What writing is on what wall? Companies are trying to exploit us and maximize profits at our expense. Just as they always have. They've had us in much worse positions in the past and we've escaped. I'm confident that if phones become to restrictive we'll break out of it again. After all, I don't have to have a smart phone. It's convenient and really helpful, but I'm not going to be the monkey trapped by a banana in a bottle.
>You may not notice it right now, but remember that old anecdote about how you should boil a frog alive - slowly, otherwise it jumps out.
I think if you actually try this, you'll find that the frog will jump out when it reaches the right temperature regardless of how slowly you turn up the head.
>And the blame will fall partly on us, the developers that supported these closed platforms.
We support them because it's most profitable for us. When it's not, we won't support them. Simple.
>People also like to point out how Android is more popular because it gets promoted more by carriers - isn't it funny how openness is good for everybody, including carriers and phone makers?
Haha! Carriers don't give a shit about "openness ". They'd happily used a closed OS as they have in the past, so long as they get it cheaper than any alternative and have a mechanism to put their shovelware shit on it.
Sorry for my grammar, wrote it in anger and English is not my main language.
I'm not paranoid and I don't categorize companies in "good" and "evil". If I did, I would label them all as being evil. Some of their actions are good, but some are evil and will have consequences, even if their goals are not evil. In fact I'm pretty sure that many people working at companies such as Microsoft, Google or Apple genuinely believe that their actions are for the common good.
But technology is scaring me a little, because of our symbiosis with it. You're saying that your phone is just a phone and you can't get rid of it. I'll have to disagree. If you can indeed get rid of your phone, then you're a rare individual.
Also - yes I own my microwave. It's a pretty dumb and cheap appliance that doesn't even have a clock. However, my examples were for issues that I expect these mobile devices to do and yet they don't, not because they cannot, but because Apple doesn't allow it. That's like wanting to cook pork in your microwave, with the manufacturer not allowing it because it considers it an unhealthy practice. Now wouldn't that be something?
Yes, it's worse than Microsoft's dominance of PCs in the 1990s. Back then, at least you could install whatever software you wanted in your machine. Now it's completely locked down in the iPhone and Windows Phone. What happened to the hacker culture that defended users' and programmers' rights? We should be making more noise about this problem.
It's the main reason that I have switched to Android. I like the idea of "App Stores", but I hate the idea of "App Store Only". The mobile App Store success has lead to the invasion of the desktop, and I worry about openness in the future.
My refrigerator, toaster, TV appliances, and washing machine are all relatively locked down as well.
Android is a MAJOR player still (at least in install base, they're proving less popular as far as dollars spent in the first world). The fact Mozilla is writing their own OS instead of supporting Android is silly. Their OS will not end up running on apple phones, and if it could, the'd get more bang for their buck porting android to apple/winRT hardware.
> My refrigerator, toaster, TV appliances, and washing machine are all relatively locked down as well
Yes, but you don't generally install new software on those. They might as well have everything implemented in hardware.
The concern is that Apple and Microsoft are retaining a monopoly on the ability to install new software on your machine. They can install new software (or give you permission to), but no one else can. It's not that much of a problem if something isn't extensible at all; it's the drastic imbalance of power, in which they hold all of the cards, that is the problem
Android is much better, but it's still not perfect. It's based on Java and Google's own APIs, which they fully control. Google controls the play store, and many carriers sell locked phones that prevent you from installing your own software outside of the play store, as well as limiting what software you can install from there.
So, Mozilla does support Android, by releasing their browser on it. But they also believe that they can do better; create something that's more open, more hackable, more accessible than Android. Can they? I'm not sure. There are lots of frustrating things about the Web platform as well, I don't know if it's going to be better than Android's Java based platform. And Mozilla doesn't have the same resources as Google, so may not be able to deliver Nexus-style phones and tablets. But I do appreciate that they're putting in the effort, to try and innovate and provide an alternative experience.
>Google controls the play store, and many carriers sell locked phones that prevent you from installing your own software outside of the play store
Which is exactly what's going to happen if Moz makes an OS. Additionally, I'm pretty sure you can always sideload an APK even on the locked phones (may be wrong there).
Don't buy those phones. Buy a nexus if software freedom is what you want.
Me personally? I think the iOS strictures make a store I like more than a control I despise (and jailbreaking is both legal and pervasive for those who want a bit more there).
I kinda like (as a consumer) there aren't monthly subscription apps, even if it makes certain concepts not viable.
As a developer, I feel pain every time X can't release Y and they really really really want to. I'll take that for not having to worry about malware(yet: http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Android-Malware-Antivirus-P...) and a couple other pieces of chrome consistency.
Firefox for me should be dumping buckets of cash into performance instead of this sort of project. It feels like the dumpy stepsister to chrome these days (and yes, I do download new versions from time to time).
Luckily, because it's open, Android has no such problems.
Only 2.7% of all Android devices run the current version, but I'm sure that every Android user has an up to date third party browser they use exclusively.
Most Android phones have an outdated OS and will never receive updates to the current version of Android. It is also known that most users never switch from the default browser on their phone or computer. And sadly, before Android 4.0, the default browser was pretty crummy.
> Mozilla can't bring its full browser technology to iOS, Windows Phone, and Windows RT Does this give other people the willies, or only me? Its scary that 2 of the 3 big players in mobile effectively lock out so much.
Windows is not a big player in mobile, despite the media attention it receives in the US. The only major players are Android and iOS. So it's 1 out of 2, not 2 out of 3.
I think this misses the point. I'm not sure about Windows phone, but iOS has Chrome and Opera already. While they are not default browsers, they still have an offering available for download.
I think when he says they can't, I think it is more about their code base/engine requirements than anything else.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but iOS does not have Chrome or Opera because the only browser allowed is Safari/UIWebView. It has an app called "Chrome" that runs UIWebView and has features like tab/bookmark sharing.
Perhaps the idea was to get something out there for presence and then create a full rendering engine later? But then again, both Chrome and Safari are WebKit and Firefox is Gecko so I'm not sure how that changes things.
The core issue is actually JavaScript as I mentioned in another post. I doubt Google thinks this will ever change and they assume they'll never be able to deliver full Chrome on iOS. They provide the Chrome they do provide because one of the nice features of Chrome is universal syncing (of bookmarks, etc) between all your Chrome-running devices that you are signed into.
While Chrome on iOS isn't really Chrome, it does sync in to this so that your bookmarks, etc, work there just like on any real Chrome browser.
Firefox had a similar offering called Firefox Home on iOS which would sync bookmarks, history and even open tabs. It worked/works really well and I still use it. Mozilla, however, recently retired the app and made the source available on github[1]. The fact that Firefox currently has virtually no support on iOS is really frustrating for Firefox users in the Apple ecosystem.
I can't reply to the other reply, so I'll write it here: providing your own rendering engine is against Apple's ToS. That's why Chrome is just a UIWebView wrapper.
The practical impact is the same, but the way I understand it is providing your own rendering engine isn't a problem, the problem is providing your own JavaScript engine.
iOS technically prohibits JITs, which would kneecap v8, but on top of that they also, as policy, disallow running arbitrary code downloaded to the device from the Internet unless Safari's JavaScript engine is the thing running that code.
I read in a recent HN post that they changed that. Was it wrong?
"In fact, an earlier version of this article was tabled when Apple made changes to the developer license (circa April 2010) which forbade developing iOS applications in any language other than Objective-C and Javascript (the Javascript could be used either to build web apps or native apps via the UIWebView). Recently (September 2010), Apple again changed the developer license to allow the use of scripting languages.."
http://www.luanova.org/ioswithlua
It wasn't wrong but the changes are somewhat subtle.
Previously Apple disallowed using languages other than Objective-C and JavaScript.
Now they allow you to use any language you can get to compile on the device (some languages have issues because you technically can't do JITing on the iOS device, the OS stops you from self-modifying code) but you aren't allowed to run code that was downloaded at runtime.
Example: You can embed a Lua interpreter into your app to run Lua scripts, but the scripts you execute have to all ship with your app, you can't download them at runtime and then execute them.
I think Mozilla have made a big mistake by not complaining about bundling Safari in iOS devices. It looked jokingly funny when they attacked Microsoft for IE bundling Windows8 RT when they had 0% market share. Now look at the market, Android have almost 70% of market share and iOS took other. So where does Firefox stands now? This situation forced Mozila to write a new mobile OS which I think does not stand a chance against other big contenders. In 3/4 years I think Firefox will be like what Opera is currently right now, small niche market share. I am sadly saying this as die-hard Firefox user. This is what you get when you compromise openness.
For monopoly type things it's not your power in the new market that counts, it's your power in the old market. People are often confused about this because the last time Microsoft was so succesful in extending its monopoly from desktop to browser that it nearly wiped out every alternative browser and peaked at something ridiculous like 90% market share, so there's longstanding confusion about which monopoly they were punished for abusing.
(Just checked Wikipedia, apparently several sources pegged them at about 95% share around 2002-2004).
Isn't the same thing happening right now even if there is no visual monopoly situation? Do you really think people will switch to Firefox and Opera when default offering is good enough? Also, though I haven't used IE6 at that time but several commenter here and reddit says that IE6 was ahead of completion at that time, netscape was also partly to blame for their demise. So what was the point of blaming Microsoft for bundling a Better browser at that time, while same thing is perfectly acceptable now?
Yes, that may be the case. I am not taking side of Microsoft. I agree that if Microsoft have won antitrust lawsuit we would not be in current highly competitive situation. I am pointing the fact that people should have complained same way as they have complained for Microsoft's case.
To nitpick: yes. It was and is the default on Ubuntu desktop and other Linux distributions. Admittedly by market share desktop Linux might as well be a rounding error.
Well, it's the default in a number of desktop GNU/Linux distributions, but that's not really the point he was making.
I assume most people install Firefox because it's better then the default browser experience. The argument in the parent comment is that this isn't the case so those that would normally go out of their way to install it have no reason to do so.
e: Or maybe I read it incorrectly? Firefox is a better mobile experience? If that's the case, I'm not really sure what the parent comment's argument is.
Well I was actually arguing that default browser performance have almost gotten to the point where there is no reason to switch browser for normal user even it performs worse than non-default browser. For Chrome in Nexus 10's case, no reviews have said that Chrome performs badly than other browser.
Well, should a normal user have an urge to do so in that situation ? I mean, I understand why it is detrimental on the long term, but should people have had to use something else than ie6 back when it was superior to the competition ? I don't really think so.
I have asked myself the same question, why doesn't Mozilla file an antitrust complain or something like that against Apple? They're not only bundling their own browser, but also actively preventing competitors from using the platform.
If Apple actually had a monopoly share in the smartphone market, such a complaint would likely proceed quite quickly. They don't have a monopoly market share so they face many fewer constraints under anti-trust law.
What does a company need to have in order to be considered a monopoly? Is there a legal definition of monopoly in the U.S.A.?
For the E.U. I quote Wikipedia:
"By European Union law, very large market shares raise a presumption that a company is dominant, which may be rebuttable. If a company has a dominant position, then there is "a special responsibility not to allow its conduct to impair competition on the common market". The lowest yet market share of a company considered "dominant" in the EU was 39.7%." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly#Law
The thing is Mozilla exists to promote the open web and open source and yet you have Android which is open source and WebKit which is open source both basically supplanting Mozilla on mobile and people act surprised somehow. FirefoxOS is interesting, but gosh, why would a company push a Firefox phone when there's already Android?
FirefoxOS might make the mobile web better. It will give web developers more access to the device's hardware, unlike a website running stock Android browser. Everybody has been saying it for years, native apps can do more than web apps in iOS and Android. I wish that FirefoxOS changed that, similarly to how Chrome pushed HTML5 on the desktop.
Shame they didn't link to their annual reports or something../s.
Turns out aggressively developing one of the world's most popular browsers, a mobile browser and a mobile OS costs a lot of money. $100m for software development, $20m for admin and $17m for branding/marketing.
They are non profit so there is no point in keeping money in a box. You might perhaps hope they got a little more done for that kind of money (conservatively 800 full time devs.. main gripe would be a faster JS engine), but i guess large organisations aren't too efficient.
800 full time devs? No, maybe 800 full time employees (I would say less when you account for much higher salaries at the top as well as costs like benefits, pension contributions, etc.). In a software development organization of that size how many do you think are actually writing code? Maybe half?
Engineering management, sysadmins, quality assurance, release management, support staff at each location, etc. all go into that $100m figure.
I couldn't find global stats, but at 2.72 billion[1] and 3 billion[2] USD respectively, the apple and orange industries have revenues far in excess of Mozilla's.
