OT: Why is that Alphabet, Mozilla, Apple, etc can get together to create web standards that allow anyone to create software that works cross-platform - only a browser is needed, but Microsoft, Alphabet, Apple, Canonical, etc can't get together to create standards that allow anyone to create software that works cross-platform?

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auggierose 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

You answered the question yourself: There is already a standard that allows anyone to create software that works cross-platform: the browser.

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jacquesm 4 hours ago | parent [-]

The browser is an extremely poor medium to deliver applications. It works, but barely, is a huge resource hog, fragile and it breaks way too often due to a lack of backwards compatibility between browser versions of the same manufacturer. I have a small app that I support and it's been fun to get it to work in the browser (instant cross platform support was indeed the driver) but the experience is still sub-par compared to what I could do on a local application.

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s0a 4 hours ago | parent [-]

this does not track with my experience, so possibly it's the nature of your app or the way it's coded. frameworks like react are notoriously crap. stick to pure html5/css/js and it can be extremely fast and light.

	▲	jacquesm 28 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		You could have clicked on my profile to find the app that you're criticizing unfairly. It does not use react, but it uses pure html5,css,js, it is extremely fast and light. And yet, there are things that it can not do simply because it runs in the browser, which is a poor operating system for a hard real time program to run under.

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skybrian 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

There are many projects that try to make cross-platform mobile apps easier, including Google's own Flutter. I haven't heard of them getting much cooperation from the teams working on Android or iOS, though.

At least for stuff that doesn't use device API's much, it seems like websites are the way to go. They're a whole lot easier to build than mobile apps.

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chungy 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Given you have two of the same names on both sides of the list, it looks like your question is self-contradictory. Could you clarify?

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techbro92 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Don’t we have the jvm?

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cyrusradfar 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Ah, I'm always up for a tangent.

The boring answer from Capt. Obvious. Incentive alignment.

That said, WebAssembly might be the trojan horse. While it started as a browser compile target, WebAssembly System Interface (WASI) is extending it beyond browsers into filesystem, networking, etc. etc. etc.

Fingers crossed, we may get cross-platform standards by accident.

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hahahahhaah 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Simple. It is not in their interest to do this. It is a lot of work, for no revenue.

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qmr 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Apple ain't getting their 30% when you're running shit in your browser.

	▲	s0a 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		this. webkit is intentionally hobbled and years behind the standards. browsers on iOS are forced to use webkit for ginned up security excuses/reasons so that no real browsers that implement full standards can complete with heavily taxed app store spyware.