[fsflover]

The browser itself did not become slower. JS-heavy websites did. But a lot of other websites still work fine, including HN. This confirms that there is no need to make newer software slower. It's the bloat that makes software and websites slow, not new features.

[handedness]

They already addressed that:

> ...webpages have gotten 2-5x heavier over the past decade...

I don't think anyone is arguing that modern browsers can't load old web pages quickly. And HN still loads plenty fast on an old iOS device.

One minute it's "they still work fine on older devices", the next minute it's 'I have to disable JS for the modern web to be usable'.

[fsflover]

Apple fans are arguing that simple, local apps require more resources, and it's normal:

> Userspace apps spend more time paging and are slower.

This is right in the current thread.

In reality, both local apps and websites do not have to get heavier in order to provide more features. Apple is effectively slowing down everything (as do typical web developers). And yet KDE, Firefox, HN, Mastodon prove that this is not exactly unavoidable.

[tristanj]

Firefox is a terrible example for you to pick as their app size on iOS ballooned from 35MB in 2015 to 373MB in 2026. That's over a 10x increase in bloat.

The developers of Firefox for iOS made the willful choice to bloat their app, not Apple.