OSNews is Exploring the Future of Computing

Linked by Thom Holwerda on Wed 3rd Apr 2013 22:27 UTC

It's apparently browser engine day today. After Mozilla and Samsung announcing Servo, Google has just announced it's forking WebKit into Blink. Like WebKit, Blink will be open source, and it will also be used by other browser makers - most prominently, Opera has already announced it's not using WebKit, but Blink. Update: Courtesy of MacRumors, this graph illustrates how just how much Google contributed to WebKit. Much more than I thought. Also, Chrome developer Alex Russell: "To make a better platform faster, you must be able to iterate faster. Steps away from that are steps away from a better platform. Today's WebKit defeats that imperative in ways large and small. It's not anybody's fault, but it does need to change. And changing it will allow us to iterate faster, working through the annealing process that takes a good idea from drawing board to API to refined feature."

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RE[8]: Is Blink Open Source?

by Tony Swash on Thu 4th Apr 2013 23:01 UTC in reply to "RE[7]: Is Blink Open Source?"

Member since:
2009-08-22

Yes, and you're still wrong. Windows got where it is because it's a powerful platform to Get Things Done (especially for developers), not because it's got an app store. With iOS, there's plenty of commercial activity because the platform is so poor. For just about everything, You Need an App for That. But wait, for so many things, there's no app at all, because Apple won't allow it. You can't even get a half-decent keyboard, for instance. So it's more expensive, and a less efficient platform (to get things done). It's certainly not where you find innovation today.

For how much longer do you think Apple can keep up momentum based on being more expensive alone? It's not how things work. It may be easier to sell things on iOS, but it's certainly getting more and more difficult to find an excuse to buy. iOS isn't a platform, it's just a cheap warehouse with an expensive entrance fee. Oh, and you have to buy stuff, just to get by.

I'm pretty sure that's not a viable way to run a warehouse, never mind a computing platform.

So much ignorance about tech history and about how platforms function in the real world and the real economy.

I guess I just don't think that having greater commercial activity associated with a platform is a sign of weakness and that having less value in an ecosystem is a sign of strength.

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