MCBastos wrote:
Interviewed by CNN on 17/06/2011 10:37, Rufus told the world:
Seriously - I don't care what goes on under the hood. If I can browse
with it on an iPad, it is a "full browser" to/for me. If Apple wants
you to use their rendering engine, then that's just less code you have
to write. The fact that it works differently on a different OS is of no
consequence to me - that's the nature of any platform.
You are entirely missing the point of the Mozilla ecosystem and the
rebirth of browser development. Ten years ago, there were so-called
alternative browsers for Windows that used the preloaded Trident engine
(the one in IE). The thing is, they were as slow as IE, had the same
rendering bugs as IE, the same security vulnerabilities as IE. If
Microsoft had been able back then to forbid Opera and Netscape/Mozilla
from installing alternative browser engines, we would be still stagnated
with prettier versions of IE 6 (they had in fact disbanded the Trident
development team). Meaning: slow Javascript, buggy implementation, poor
extension ecosystem...
Apple is already growing too comfortable with their effective monopoly
of browser engines in iOS: Safari development has been lagging behind
other browsers, despite sharing a lot of code with Chrome.
...so, Microsoft redux...big deal - Apple's turn. They make a product
which suits my desires. So I'll buy it and use it...I don't really care
about much more than that, from a user standpoint.
SM is given away for free...build it for iOS, charge 99 cents, and I
think folks would pay that. But if you're not even up to taking a
chance in the first place, then that your issue - not Apple's.
The point is: you *can't.* Seamonkey is Gecko-based. EVERYTHING in it is
based on Gecko -- the extensions environment, the whole thing. Apple
won't allow Gecko in the App Store.
Again - unwillingness to do the work to bring a product to market. It's
not "impossible", it's not "prohibited"...the SM folks just don't want
to do an iOS implementation of SM functionality. Fine, but a pity.
Atomic gets me half of what I want anyway...I'm pretty sure NewsTap will
get me the rest.
So?..big deal. All depends on what you're after. Personally, I'd go
through the App Store on an iOS browser like other are doing.
If it's based on Safari, it won't be Seamonkey. To develop a Gecko
browser, it would be restricted to jailbroken devices. There's simply
not enough users, not enough developer interest to do it. If there was
interest, somebody would be doing it -- Mozilla is fully free software,
after all.
That's where you're seriously missing the mark. SM has things in common
with Firefox - probably even shares code and gets lead around by the
nose in that regard...but nobody has an issue with that?
Same principle - iOS has it's own set of core code - big deal. Somebody
has to play by the rules to develop to that...big deal. The folks that
wrote Atomic did it, are selling it, and I don't care what it's "based
on" from a user standpoint - it has a *far* richer feature set than iOS
Safari, and operates in a manner more like what I do on my desktop. So
that's what I choose to use on *my* iPad.
And if anyone wanted to give it away for free, they certainly have that
option in the Apple App Store - I've downloaded a whole host of full
featured free apps, and I've only just scratched the surface.
--
- Rufus
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