Not an Apple fan. I enjoy the general hassle-free and polished experience that is their products, but Apple themselves can go die in a fire. I don't "like" any companies.
That's fair, and you should absolutely not feel bad for asking.
Like you say, they can't really block Manifest V3, which in this case sure, their built-in adblocker will still work, but what about the next unblockable change? I've no idea what that might be, but Google isn't our friend, they're a massive, hungering corporation.
I'd honestly be all for these alternative browsers if they decided to adopt Gecko instead, honestly. Until then they're just "Google Chrome But..."
There's no Gesture section at all on iOS, checked both in the in-app settings as well as the app settings in the Settings app. Honestly the settings page is a bit of a travesty in terms of UX design. There's a "Theme" section that when clicked, takes you to an on/off switch for "Use system theme" and nothing else. Why not just have the switch directly on the main settings page? Maybe under its own subsection, but not a completely different page?
I installed Firefox on my Pixel 6 (work phone, pretty much only use it for Teams and two authenticator apps), and it's a completely different experience.
The iOS version wastes a lot of space, and there's a lot less room for customisation.
On Android the setting was under Settings > Customise which by itself has a decent amount of settings.
I was foolishly hoping that there'd be some sort of regulation where Chromium ended up being democratised. Fools hope, pipe dream, whatever. It obviously won't happen because I don't think the powers that be quite realise how dangerous it is; it's too technical for them to grasp.
Yeah, it's just because it's Chromium. I don't know anything about the company so I don't have any opinion there.
I used to be of the opinion that it'd be nice if the web unified under one platform. Honestly, I still hold that opinion, but the caveat there would obviously be that no single company should control that platform. Google does control Chromium. All Chromium based browsers will see Manifest V3, and that's just one thing. Google can do more or less what they wish, and the rest of the web will just kind of have to take it.
They're in a similar position that Microsoft was in back when Internet Explorer was an actually good browser, but unlike Microsoft I don't think Google will rest on their laurels. It's really worrying to me that Google essentially owns the internet.
Yeah, I'm in the EU so it's been decently big news here. That said I'm having a hard time believing that they'd make separate versions of their browsers for the EU and then the rest of the world. That's a lot of work for a potentially very small market.
Yeah this is the one thing I've considered myself. I just can't get over how much better Safari's UI is on iPhones. It's a bit whatever on iPad, but on the iPhone it's just so intuitive. I think the two things I like the most are
The bottom of the screen UI Chrome, because that just makes so much sense. Sure iOS has that accessibility feature (which I really hope Android adopts soon) where you swipe down on the bar at the bottom to bring the top of the screen down, but that's one extra gesture I have to use to access the URL bar. Other than preference there's no real reason to keep it on the top - which there's a setting for in Safari, so you could have either way.
As I wrote this I was like "but what if there's a setting for it in Firefox as well?" and there is, so consider that point moot!
It also lets you navigate tabs without having to open the tab switcher. Swiping left takes you to the previous tab, and right to the next, if there is no next tab it opens a new tab. It's also really snappy so it's easy to navigate between like 2-8 tabs or so.
So as a bonus thing; I really like the transparency effect. It's super superficial, I know, but it makes the view feel bigger somehow, and it fits with the overall native UX which is something I as a developer generally consider a good thing. Though honestly it's not a dealbreaker for me.
If the tab switching was implemented, and they swapped over to Gecko I'd probably consider switching to Firefox altogether on my mobile devices.
Have they actually made non-Webkit versions though, or is it still just WKWebView? A part of me thinks Apple has already kind of won this. They started allowing plugins and such a while ago, and at this point it covers my needs. Safari is really well-designed for phones as well, and the times I've tried using Firefox it just feels awkward and clunky - not because of the engine, but because of the general UX.
I'm sure opinions differ, and I really do hope more people will swap over to Firefox (Brave and Vivaldi can fuck themselves), but it doesn't really feel like a big win unless you get more tangible benefits; different engines, plugin support, etc.
It’s no different from GPT knowing the plot of Aliens or who played the main role in Matilda.
It's seen enough code to recognise the pattern, it knows an author name goes in there, and Phil Nash is likely a prolific enough author that it just plopped his name in there. It's not intelligence, just patterns.
That’s not what I meant. Microsoft has been working on Windows ARM, sure, but has anyone else been working on Windows ARM? As far as I know you can’t even get Firefox on ARM.
I suppose that they have a compatibility layer, but it’s nowhere near the performance of Rosetta 2.
They should 100% be opt in. If I want to use GPS I’ll use my phone. I don’t know a single person that uses the one built into the car.
But obviously they want all that juicy data. It’s not enough that they charge insane rates on the vehicles themselves, they must also add microtransactions and track when we have sex, and with who too.
Yes! Fucking finally. Better late than never.