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Reblogged by kornel ("Kornel"):
twostraws ("Paul Hudson") wrote:
Mastodon FeedMastodon FeedReblogged by slightlyoff@toot.cafe ("Alex Russell"):
sandofsky ("Ben Sandofsky") wrote:
Mastodon FeedReblogged by rmrenner ("The Old Gay Gristle Fest"):
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Mastodon FeedReblogged by kornel ("Kornel"):
matt@toot.cafe ("Matt Campbell") wrote:
Mastodon Feedbcrypt@infosec.exchange ("yan") wrote:
who does the graphic design / photo styling for ham radio publications and how do i hire them to do everything
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Mastodon Feedslightlyoff@toot.cafe ("Alex Russell") wrote:
When wealthy users can't experience a capable web, it functionally doesn't exist. Technology decision makers need to *see and feel* the future to believe in it, and until they can, investments (and incentives) will not change.
This has been the calculus behind the last decade of projects I've been lucky enough to help lead (PWAs, Fugu, etc.), but we can't sugarcoat it: the web is losing, badly, and Apple + Google are not upset about that.
Not even a little bit.
/cc @owa @chriscoyier @tomayac
Mastodon Feedslightlyoff@toot.cafe ("Alex Russell") wrote:
But, of course, even if Android were perfect it wouldn't change the world enough to keep the web from losing. Why? Because all wealthy users carry iPhones, and you can just follow the money from there.
As long as Apple is allowed to use it's local monopolies in wealthy geographies (US, UK, Japan, etc.) to distort the decision space and prevent true browser competition, the web will never be credible.
Which is why it's crucual that we all support @owa
/cc @chriscoyier @tomayac
Mastodon Feedslightlyoff@toot.cafe ("Alex Russell") wrote:
MOST of the world's new end-user computers are smartphones, and 80+% of those devices are slow Androids.
And yet:
https://infrequently.org/2022/12/performance-baseline-2023/
/cc @chriscoyier @tomayac
Mastodon Feedslightlyoff@toot.cafe ("Alex Russell") wrote:
The web is losing on mobile, and losing on mobile is the start of becoming a fully-legacy platform.
Chris' piece does a good job talking about the very front end of what irrelevance looks like, but it will get much more...frozen. No generational platform evaporates; they just stop being something anyone invests in.
And this is where web developers are complicit. Instead of fighting back, we have retreated to the privilege bubble.
/cc @chriscoyier @tomayac
Mastodon Feedslightlyoff@toot.cafe ("Alex Russell") wrote:
But we did get PWAs and Push and all the rest built, and opened up the still-going Fugu collaboration. They are the anchor for Chris' hopeful notes, but it's later than it looks.
I gave a talk about it back in '19:
/cc @chriscoyier @tomayac
Mastodon Feedslightlyoff@toot.cafe ("Alex Russell") wrote:
And so hope and avarice combined to make the web mobile roadkill.
Chrome wasn't even available for Android until 2013, and wasn't default until 2014. Meanwhile, Android created a huge capability/feature gap for native that mirrored iOS.
You literally cannot imagine how painful it was to get PWAs and WebAPKs and TWAs and Web Push and the rest done within Google, despite the heavy pro-web bias outside of Android-land.
/cc @chriscoyier @tomayac
Mastodon Feedslightlyoff@toot.cafe ("Alex Russell") wrote:
Over time, of course, the subtler way the Android and Play teams kept the web out of the store (thanks in no small part to Apple's leadership on anti-web store policies) were allowed to play out, allowing the Java/native a wide berth on the basis of previous-year success.
And if it wasn't broken, and you could show handset activation growth and Search share wins, why would any money-oriented manager mess with that?
/cc @chriscoyier @tomayac
Mastodon Feedslightlyoff@toot.cafe ("Alex Russell") wrote:
At a strategic level, the shotgun marriage for Android could be accurately described as "searchbox placement + market share".
The Androids took the market share thing _very_ seriously, while the short-term management culture of Google meant that as long as Search could get it's search bar in front of users, they didn't think much harder about the ecosystem.
Which meant Play sort of flew under the radar, as did the underhanded anti-web things the Androids demanded.
/cc @chriscoyier @tomayac
Mastodon Feedslightlyoff@toot.cafe ("Alex Russell") wrote:
The loathing was bi-directional, of course.
The Androids felt hard done by, with Googlers asserting that the web could be a great solution, while they struggled to keep their Linux+Java system off the fainting couch every time memory use crept up or apps became unresponsive. They had an instinctive feeling that as tough as it was to keep Java developers in line, webdevs would be incorrigible. They were not wrong, per sae, but also hated a platform they didn't own.
/cc @chriscoyier @tomayac
Mastodon Feedslightlyoff@toot.cafe ("Alex Russell") wrote:
For its part, the Android team played this freakout like a fiddle. In a truly ungoogly way, they demanded separate infrastructure, separate cafes, etc. etc. And they got it. There are lots of reasons to loathe Andy Rubin, but what he (and the Plus crew around the same time) helped do to the culture can't be overstated. He wanted a little kingdom to run like a petty tyrant, and he got it. Android was Not Google.
/cc @chriscoyier @tomayac
Mastodon Feedslightlyoff@toot.cafe ("Alex Russell") wrote:
If you were in the US in late '09 and consumed any mass media at all, you might still have dreams where Verizon flogs the Motorola Droid at you with teenage boy imagery. Real Lynx body spray territory.
That happened on the back of this same of desperation. Giving up the fundamental software stack, and doing heavy co-marketing for a single vendor's hardware launch, was not where telcos wanted to be (spoiler: still isn't, which is why we can't have nice things).
/cc @chriscoyier @tomayac
Mastodon Feedxor@tech.intersects.art ("Parker Higgins") wrote:
this isn't a new year's resolution but some time in the next few months I want to ship a major update to cursewords
Mastodon Feedslightlyoff@toot.cafe ("Alex Russell") wrote:
Think back with me to 2008 when Apple had launched the iPhone and Google had the struggling Android system.
This was a multiple-miracle moment: because AT&T had an exclusive w/ Apple for US iPhone distribution, every telco and handset vendor was FREAKING OUT.
/cc @chriscoyier @tomayac
Mastodon Feedxor@tech.intersects.art ("Parker Higgins") wrote:
Does anybody feel like sharing any reliable sources of curated NYC cultural listings (events and openings and exhibitions type things)? I used to take pride in sifting through everything all the time but I've fallen out of practice
Mastodon Feedslightlyoff@toot.cafe ("Alex Russell") wrote:
This brings us to Google.
Why in the world has Google been more than complicit in nerfing the web's chances on mobile?
To answer this you need to grok that Google, like Apple and every other big company, is an agglomeration of small companies that happen to send their revenues to the same place, but probably don't have any love for each other.
And Android comes from an acquisition: Danger.
/cc @chriscoyier @tomayac
Mastodon FeedNfNitLoop ("Cody Casterline 🏳️🌈") wrote:
Me: I dislike that the usual software engineer career path is to move into management. I just want to write cooode!
Also me: (leading standup today, being taskmaster, making sure we capture details into tickets, unblock people, shuffle priorities from Product Mgmt, volunteering to help other devs w/ something they're stuck on) I am actually quite good at this.
😑
Mastodon Feedslightlyoff@toot.cafe ("Alex Russell") wrote:
This was *also* a bridge strategy play, FWIW. Smartphones seem ubiquitious now, and they felt like a potential future at the time, but were anything but a high-volume proposition at the iOS launch. So having first-rate access to that bridge corpus of content and apps was a massive advantage in de-risking the early iPhone which, again, was a luxury novelty.
/cc @chriscoyier @tomayac
Mastodon Feedslightlyoff@toot.cafe ("Alex Russell") wrote:
What Jobs et. al. *didn't* ever say (but was later confirmed in court documents) is that the reason the iOS 1.0 homescreen and first party apps weren't web based is that inside Apple, the web had already lost by the late '07 release of the iPhone.
There had been parallel tracks, and prototypes of a truly web-based OS, but they didn't launch. Cocoa was already Plan A when Jobs described the web as a "great application platform" at Moscone.
/cc @chriscoyier @tomayac
Mastodon Feedslightlyoff@toot.cafe ("Alex Russell") wrote:
The Mac is *still* a niche computing product to this day, and it's fascinating to me that the web continues to play this role for Apple in it's smaller business.
Then iOS happened.
Many older web developers pass down a story of how iOS isn't actually anti-web because Jobs initially pitched it as a web-first OS. As someone who was in the room for the unveil, I can tell you that was also my first impression, but it wore off a year later when iOS 2.0 launched.
/cc @chriscoyier @tomayac
Mastodon Feedslightlyoff@toot.cafe ("Alex Russell") wrote:
In this era (~'98-'12), the web provided a bridge over a moat formed by a competitor's proprietary stack winning through momentum and network effects. The web went "over the top" of both Macs and PCs, and while Apple desperately coveted native app builders for the Mac, was at least savvy enough to know that if it could add the universe of great web apps to the Mac experience, it would be a market-reality help at point of sale.
/cc @chriscoyier @tomayac
Mastodon Feedslightlyoff@toot.cafe ("Alex Russell") wrote:
Apple's motives are easy to understand over the macOS -> iOS arc, as Apple is now a mobile company that happens to make computers. The A-series -> M-series chips are stunning proof of that.
But I digress.
When Apple was a niche PC maker, it needed the web as a way to help potential customers de-risk the purchase of luxury computers. While it enjoyed outsized influence, the Mac never had enough share to create a sufficiently large software ecosystem w/o the web.
/cc @chriscoyier @tomayac
Mastodon Feedslightlyoff@toot.cafe ("Alex Russell") wrote:
This post from @chriscoyier (via @tomayac) frames an urgent problem I've spent many years working to solve, often with push-back from the frontend community who would variously claim that "Apple isn't anti-web" and "Google should want the web to win":
https://chriscoyier.net/2023/01/04/what-does-it-look-like-for-the-web-to-lose/
While Chris is crisp about the problem and the consequences of not solving it, he doesn't have answers for why Google and Apple act the way they do, working to snuff out the mobile web.
Allow me...
Mastodon FeedReblogged by slightlyoff@toot.cafe ("Alex Russell"):
tomayac@toot.cafe ("Thomas Steiner :chrome:") wrote:
Mastodon FeedReblogged by slightlyoff@toot.cafe ("Alex Russell"):
davidgerard@circumstances.run ("David Gerard") wrote:
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- three price graph, s 1. What Bitcoiners think will happen price goes up fast, "regulation", price rises much more slowly 2. What Bitcoin critics think will happen price goes up fast, "regulation", price drops low and goes flat 3. What will actually happen price goes up, price crashes low and goes flat, then "regulation" (remote)
Mastodon FeedReblogged by slightlyoff@toot.cafe ("Alex Russell"):
mekkaokereke@hachyderm.io ("mekka okereke :verified:") wrote: