There's a bunch of hyperactive people in those Apple "support" forums who don't actually help anyone. They respond to almost every discussion thread aggressively deflecting any criticism directed at Apple.
They pretend to offer "solutions" so their posts don't come across as unconstructive, but their solutions are always essentially the same, often culminating in a factory reset. There is never any attempt to get to the bottom of anything or diagnose what the actual issue is.
They are volunteering their time to make people shut up, bow their head in shame and go away. I don't think this is what you want in an open source project.
Indeed. Apple should close those forums. It damages their brand to have such antagonistic people pretending to be support agents. A company of Apple's wealth could afford to have a small army of people in the Philippines do the same job with much less aggression.
>”… Now, the few Apple engineers that get back to me for some of these issues and the Apple support as well often tell me that Apple really cares about customer feedback. I really want to believe this ... but it's so hard to believe it, if less than 1% of my submitted reports (yes, less than 1%, and it's probably much less) ever gets a response. A response, if it ever comes, can come after 3 months, or after 1 year, or after 3 years; only rarely does it come within 1 month. To some of the feedbacks, after getting a response from the Apple engineers, I responded, among other things, by asking if I'm doing something wrong with the way I submit the feedback reports. Because if I do something wrong, then that could be the reason why only so few of them are considered by the Apple engineers. But I never got any answer to that. I told them that it's frustrating sending so much feedback without ever knowing if it's helpful or not, and never got an answer. …”
In my exp. their _support_ is fantastic which is another reason it’s odd they will simply leave countless _feedback_ submissions open nearly indefinitely. They ignore their free laborers!
Wholeheartedly agree. The few times in my life that I’ve bothered to post there with a problem, it’s been all the more upsetting that the patronizing generic advice and scolding of the frustrated users, is coming from random volunteer fanbois on the Internet, not even paid Apple staff who contractually have to be positive about Apple. A company with such rabidly loyal supporters shouldn’t deploy them like this. And if it was wise back in 2010 when Apple software was for the most part quite good… it sure isn’t wise now when they’re reaching what I hope is a temporary nadir in quality.
Tim Cook runs a well oiled machine. At some point, leadership will change. And I don’t think it is as simple as, “Just keep going what Tim was doing.” There are so many moving parts that it is nigh certain Apple will go through a period of brand damage when things begin to fall through the cracks. Will that fall be dramatic? Probably not. But I think you underestimate just how much a shift in leadership can tip the scales.
At least you know it’s not working as place to submit issue reports. It is better than other way, like Figma, 1Password and many others: a Support Forum with an army of yes-men “support specialists”. They would answer your query with basic troubleshooting and then will say that it will be passed to development team or will be considered, etc.
perfectly designed system to pacify user and dismiss their report.
Are those the people who recommend "fixes" like resetting the PRAM / NVRAM to solve application level issues, or who recommend removing all files from the Desktop to somehow speed up general responsiveness? The Apple pages are awash with them.
Yes, fanbois, lecturing people that they're using it wrong.
It's not just on Apple's forums, Microsoft has the same kind of guys. They tend to look really popular too because all the other fanbois upvote their comments.
And not only there, many open-source software forums have the same problem.
I wonder if other cult brands attract the same kind of personalities, or if Apple has somehow done something special to encourage it. When a Harley Davidson owner says he has a problem with his bike, do Harley zealots jump out of the woodwork to attack the dissenter and defend the brand from which they derive their personality?
This shows up in a lot of other areas, like small game companies that have a devoted following. It can get pretty nasty because these types of people are able to be condescending just short of ToS, while baiting other people into crossing the line. A common thread is weak moderation or biased moderation.
As a developer, it's easy to be blind to this because they're on "your side", but it's bad for the health of your support forums.
“ When a Harley Davidson owner says he has a problem with his bike, do Harley zealots jump out of the woodwork to attack the dissenter and defend the brand from which they derive their personality?”
I’m no Harley owner but you and I both know the answer to that.
Honestly I'm not sure. Motorcycle interest might select against relevant personality traits/disorders. Maybe they bond over commiseration over Harley's decline (a narrative I've heard of)
For Windows support I assume it accrues some benefit to the unpaid support, like it contributes to them getting their Microsoft Certified Windows End User Support Helpful Guy badge.
Then we would have zero support, or they would shut down the forums entirely. Or are you implying that the companies would be forced to finally offer official support?
There is official support. Apple Support should be more deluged with callers, but they rely on these forum mod suckers to carry water for them and tell people it’s their fault to lessen that load.
> Webkit on Linux has essentially been relegated to embedded devices or the GNOME epiphany browser
Don't forget about https://falkon.org. It's a browser I enjoy using. WebExtension support will be big if it lands in Orion though.
EDIT: apparently Orion is not open source. Not particularly interested in a closed source browser, TBH. In 2022 they said they plan to open source "when there is merit"[1], whatever that means. No merit yet, it seems.
Falkon uses QtWebEngine, essentially a Chromium (Blink&V8) wrapper. QupZilla, its predecessor, was using QtWebKit. Otter & kbd-driven qutebrowser (two other Qt browsers) for time, and maybe still do, simultaneously supported both.
Same for me. Using a proprietary browser is not quite as bad as using a proprietary OS, but it is a distant second. Hopefully they figure out whatever merit they are waiting for...
I find it strange because it seems to me that outside of their bread and butter products (Kagi Search, Assistant), there really isn't a business secret or proprietary technology to keep secret no? Perhaps integrated browser LLM tooling they don't want to give out for free.
Not too much speculation needed as to why: data collection which is then used to enhance both their Search and Assistant products + they can easily start pushing their search and assistant through the platform once adoption is high enough and people who are used to Orion will more easily be convinced to just fork up a little money for continued or slightly improved features/access
It's more likely it has to do with all the work they're doing to getting the WebExtension API to work with WebKit which is a main selling feature for the MacOS version - using firefox and chrome extensions in a webkit-powered browser.
And esp for the iOS version, where there are not many options for using extensions in other browsers. The only browser there that can use UBO, afaik. In MacOS it is a bit too buggy for me for daily use, ymmv.
People usually don't compile their browsers from source anyway. And of course, technically, a program can check whether monitoring tools are running and adapt its behaviour accordingly, but this is malware territory and it makes no sense for any reputable browser. Also, technically, one can do that on router level anyway and not have this issue. So yes, I would say that analyzing the network is enough.
"People usually don't compile their browsers from source anyway."
But this is a forum that includes people who do compile their browser from source
As such, if promoting a new browser here, it should be expected people may ask about the availability of source code
I use an HTML browser that is a 2M static binary
It compiles quickly and easily on all the computers I own, and these computers are underpowered
This allows me to customise the software
For example, any "features" I do not wish to have, such as telemetry or other "automatic" remote connections, can be removed
NB. I am not expressing an opinion on the "Orion" software, I am commenting exclusively on the statement, "People usually don't compile their browsers from source anyway" appearing in a forum read by people who _do_ compile their browsers from source
The easiest way to verify "whether there is telemetry" is to look at the source code
To avoid telemetry, interested users can remove it from the source code
Whereas, if telemetry must be found by inspecting network traffic,^1 then users' only choice to avoid telemetry is not to use the software. There is no self-help. Users can plead with the author to remove telemetry to no effect
1. This may be complicated by encryption
Moreover, if the software is subject to change, e.g., "automatic software updates", then telemetry could be added at a later time, e.g., as part of an opaque "update". This requires the user to continually monitor network traffic in order to try to discover "whether there is telemetry"
If users have a copy of the source code, and use a binary compiled from that source code, then this burden does not exist
I was answering to a specific comment asking about whether one absolutely needs the source code to know that there is no telemetry. Not about whether it is reasonable or useful to want to have the source code in general.
I usually like to accuse people of the wildest privacy conspiracies, but here in the case of Orion, one day the founder approached me together to work with him, and I tried to see how far is he willing to do in practice (“ok maybe we could do X and Y or Z”).
He stopped me and explained to me that is his business model, and… it was to sell apps / subscriptions. He has no interest into anything else and strongly explained that the user pays and that’s it.
Eventually I didn’t work with him but I have a very positive opinion of him, so at least, based on my experience as a potential employee strongly trusts
The last Falkon update was 8 months ago (falkon.org/posts), seems like a very long time for a browser without any updates. Is it not a security problem to run a browser like this?
I wish these people would wake up and spend their time helping peers on a forum for some open source project instead.
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