[onion2k]

I find it weirdly interesting when people argue that a browser shouldn't have a feature, rather than the feature should be behind a defaults-to-off permission. You're not just saying that you don't want it, you're arguing that no one should want it. You're saying that you don't believe there is any possible reason for the feature to exist, that you will never want it, and that anyone who says they'd like it is wrong.

I suppose that's fine. It's your perogative. I just hope you respect the opinion of other people when they say things you want shouldn't exist.

[dredmorbius]

Javascript was behind a "defaults to off" switch, until enough of the Web said "fuck it, we'd rather break than provide a person with what they've specifically requested and set a limit on". And now those of us who point out that mandatory JS is broken and a vector for all manner of ills are thought to be deranged.

I'm not often an Apple fan, but I have intense admiration for this line they've drawn in the sand.

[gbear605]

In my experience, when a platform adds support for something like that, apps quickly start requiring that you have the feature on, even unrelated apps. For example, a ton of apps, especially sketchier ones or ones aimed at children, ask to see your location even though they have no legitimate use for it. If you don’t allow it, you can’t use the app. Obviously what they’re using it for is datamining, so I’m worse off than in the world where the app isn’t able to ask for location access.

Obviously it’s good that some apps do have access to location! I play Pokemon Go and use third party map apps! But I think the world would be better off if the requirements to be allowed to ask were more stringent.

For something like web bluetooth, while there are some rare use cases, I’m sure that pretty soon it’ll start being another tool for removing privacy and I’d rather err on the side of caution.

From an entirely separate side, I think that we’d all be better off if the entire web was much simpler to implement. We’re almost in a browser monoculture now and we wouldn’t be here if it weren’t so difficult to implement a browser that supports modern websites.

[D13Fd]

I don’t think it’s unreasonable to not want a browser to support hard-to-maintain features that you will likely never want or use. There is a limited pool of dev resources, and supporting that defaults-to-off setting is going to suck up a disproportionate amount of dev resources, on an ongoing basis, to support a small minority of users.

I’d rather the dev resources go to new features that many people will use.

[Timpy]

This seems to be Apple's design philosophy. I can't change the direction of my touch pad scrolling without affecting my mouse scrolling, I had to download a third party app for that. Their defaults are so stubborn, if you don't like it the way they believe it should be it's either annoying or impossible to change it.