Stuart Langridge, Jono Bacon, and Jeremy Garcia present Bad Voltage, in which there are more rants than expected, there are seven seconds of panic, and:
[00:16:40] Microsoft are dropping EdgeHTML, their browser rendering engine, and rebuilding Edge to be based on Chrome, which is a more nuanced thing than it might at first appear
[00:25:51] NASA's InSight landed on Mars. Nice one, NASA. Six and a half months of travel and it will study the interior of the planet, and "Marsquakes". Watch the launch video, and then spend some time contemplating ancient technology and admiring this excellent Twitter bot of old 80s home computer magazines
[00:32:50] Apparently smartphone growth is actually starting to decline, which we think may be at least partially because there's nothing left to make with phones any more. See Jono's views on the "notch" for details
Is it my imagination, or do reactions to the Edge news basically track with whether the person uses Chrome as their main browser? Because it seems like this is one of those weird times when large parts of the open source community in particular is suddenly A-OK with a web monoculture. Or is it an age thing, where itâs getting harder to remember the days when websites were designed work with IE6? Whatever, this wonât end well.
Honestly, I was hoping that the announcement was going to be putting Edge under an open source license. This almost feels like an attempt to ingratiate Microsoft with Google, especially given how many of the early stories referred to âChromiumâ instead of âBlink,â and that canât possibly end well.
Also, interesting that none of the reporting on the phone sales decline thinks to talk about the bad press about unconscionable supply chains, abusive business practices, pervasive tracking, market concentration (speaking of Google), and disinterest in fixing robocalls. Market saturation and sufficient technical capabilities are obviously part of the story, but if they were the whole story, weâd actually be in that âpost-PC eraâ we were all assured was coming a few years ago instead of pretending nobody ever brought it upâŚ
That was a terribly long time ago, in internet yearsâŚ
I think itâs fairly likely that New Edge will be based on Chromium Embedded Framework, not just Blink. Although I imagine Microsoft will customise it more than most.
Hm. I think that if that were a major contributing factor then weâd also see a decline in phone usage as well as phone purchases; after all, robocalls, which are a big problem in the United States although a much smaller problem elsewhere (as we investigated in a previous show) apply to you whether you buy a new phone or not. There may be such a decline in phone usage, but I havenât seen stats for that; if someone has them, chime in.
I am not a web developer so I donât know the nuances â are Safari and Chrome interchangeable in terms of features and supported standards? Blink forked from WebKit several years ago now, and I donât know how much they have diverged. Is it fair to describe the browser space as a monoculture or are there two major players (the same two players as with mobile OSâes)?
Personally, I use Firefox, so Edge going away makes me sad, but even within the Chromium sphere it might not be fair to call it a monoculture.
Unusual one, this episode. I laughed harder than I have done for a while listening to BV, but also was getting bored of the multiple news articles talking for some time on the march towards monopoly (or two-to-three competitive survivors at most) that inevitably happens in big industries. In fact I think a more profound question is⌠why hasnât this happened sooner in the âbrowser warsâ?
Iâm not as sure about that. Granted, Iâm one of the weirdos you occasionally hear whispers about who doesnât use a cell phone, but it seems like âwe would expect less cell usageâ assumes that communications are all discretionary and that thereâs an immediate cause and effect with news and Iâm not sure thatâs how the market works. What I mean is that it seems like itâs a lot harder to change a personâs lifestyle than it is to change their upcoming purchases.
Youâre right, though, itâd be interesting to see something like a chart of the number of calls placed over cellular networks per year, maybe contrasted with the number of minutes spent on those calls or something. Although, with the number of âMillennials Are Killing XYZâ articles out there, surelyâŚwell, itâs the UK and not the US like I was expecting, but this Guardian article seems relevant. Inc also chimes in withâword of warningâan article with a loud auto-play video a couple of screens down.
Of course, bear in mind that reference to a generation as a monolithic entity (like âMillennialâ) is kind of a red flag, since Strauss-Howe isâŚwell, itâs actually a lot like Chinese astrology for people who canât handle the complexity of twelve whole animalsâŚ
I think the decline in phone purchases is simply a result of market saturation. Everybody who wants a mobile phone has one and new phones are not offering new âmust haveâ features.
Personally I canât imagine any feature my phone could have, and doesnât have now, that I would use so I have no intention of upgrading. My phone is Android and I almost never use mobile data. I have Wifi at home, at work and in my local pub so I donât often need it.
Eventually battery life will become an issue, or it will slow to a crawl, or stop working altogether and I will replace it. But, not until one of these happens. My daughter feels she needs the latest iPhone, which she has but will probably be pestering me or a boyfriend to buy her the next version when it comes out.
And to think that many older phones had easily replaceable batteries. Iâm using an old Samsung S3 that popping the back cover off and swapping batteries takes less time than purchasing it.
When I bought my first mobile phone the technology was rapidly changing so I wanted the new features as they were introduced with new . I upgraded to my second phone because it would also work in Asia, the US and Canada as well as Europe, I could only use my first phone in Europe.
As such features drove my purchase. Today I have all the features I want so Manufacturers rely on battery life degrading over time to push people to upgrade.
Smart Reples and automatic emoji: Yes, agree 112%. I learned to Internet on IRC and I typed what I meant to type and not just a cue to a content generator. And I want to write my emails using a text box, not a Magic 8-ball.