Apple NOT Allowing Alternative Browsers In App Store
In every operating system known to man, an alternative browser is a separate application with it’s own rendering engine. You know, Firefox or IE or Safari etc… Apparently this isn’t true on the iPhone OS. Either that or some otherwise tech savvy people had their reality distorted by some kind of field, and we at rgbFilter aren’t immune.
We recently ran an article covering the ‘news’ originating from Macrumors that suddenly, Apple was allowing 4 new alternative WebKit based browsers into the App Store. The story was picked up by all the major tech blogs and went completely unchallenged, as the various pundits speculated on Google Chrome eventually getting approved, that this was a response to the Palm Pre etc etc.
Sadly, and I do mean that, the rumor was, frankly, a load of crap that spread even to our own site.
All it took was a minute or two to actually read the product descriptions of 2 of the 4 “apps” to realize that they were actually plug-ins (or enhancements if you prefer) using the Mobile Safari engine to provide additional functionality.
But what could Macrumors, Engadget, Gizmodo et al have done?
If only there was some sort of hypertextual…. erm…
BTW, a special “Boo!” to Gizmodo for changing their article to reflect the truth without pointing out their error, and not crediting the people in the comment section who told them about it. Even though I’ve largely weened myself off their site, every time I DO go there the article I read is in some way wrong – for saying Opera Mobile uses remote rendering, and that Core Player was discontinued, even though it’s not, and their link to the software is actually a link to the precursor to Core Player, TCPMP.
But I digress….
Click the links in the Macrumors article…
Edge Browser (a ‘full screen browser’) and Shaking Web (for enhancing web display in motion) are explicit in their descriptions that they use the Mobile Safari engine, and just enhance it.
Incognito (privacy enhancing cache cleaner) and WebMate (saves tabs) are less explicit in their descriptions.
Incognito however is a 500k file, which makes it obvious that it is a Safari enhancement not a Safari replacement. The only one I can’t confirm or deny is WebMate, but given Macrumors batting average, what kind of odds do you want to give me on a bet?
It should also be pointed out that a couple of comments spread through the interwebs observed that one of the applications was using the Safari engine (without being specific) which lead me to actually NOT take this stuff at face value.
So be careful of what you read out there. Don’t be filling your head with garbage.
Engadget and Gizmodo are not even on my RSS subscription list. Those sites are just bad. They are all about what is new new new TODAY TODAY TODAY and *never* do any checking. No really, they just don’t. Big waste of eyeball to frequent them I have found. They’re parrots. As for MacRumors… *checks* …nope, must have deleted them at some point too. I did see this story linked somewhere before it was posted here. I didn’t dismiss it because of the reasons above (didn’t dig far enough to discover them) — I just didn’t look into it because in general I dismiss anecdotal stories about Apple shaping up its policies. It’s too much what the Mac web wants to believe. I often read hyped up stories about Apple changing certain things for the better and have become inured to them. I tend to assume they are nonsense and just wait to see if they take root more widely and/or somebody at Apple actually makes a statement.
I recommend this approach — in other words, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. The more surprising a change it appears to be, the more scrutiny it deserves.
Oh I agree. If we hadn’t have published an article about it, then I probably never even would have read past the headline. 🙂
Of course, this is far from the first or last time something like this is gonna happen online, but I was just astounded by how little effort it took to find out the validity of the story.
The descriptions of the plug-ins were linked right off of MacRumors.
Engadget is the only one of those sites I follow with any regularity, mainly for the gadget pr0n, and not their editorial stance.
I will say this for them: I’ve seen them balls up their facts and provide an update that admits to it. Gizmodo is so weak that they just re-write the article completely and don’t even cop to their errors.
I read that, and just so happened to click on another article (the other one linked in the post), and it was just flat out wrong too.
That’s just downright shoddy.
Well at least we didn’t rewrite history. I also applaud making a whole new post for the correction rather than a little blurb at the bottom of the previous post that RSS subscribers will never be alerted to.
can we get on topic? khaan died…
So did Number 6. 🙁
danger man 🙁
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