I'd even go one step further: we should have had a standard communications protocol like TCP for all devices. So a display would show up as just another device that we could use to read/write bytes. All devices would have a standard queryable HTTP/HATEOAS self-documenting interface. And HDMI/DisplayPort or USB A/B/C/.../Z would all use the same protocol as gigabit ethernet or Thunderbolt or anything else, so the bandwidth would determine maximum frame rate at an arbitrary resolution. We could query a device's interface metadata and get/send an array of bytes to a display or a printer or a storage device, the only difference would be the header's front matter. And we could download image and video files directly from cameras and scanners as if they were a folder of documents on a web server, no vendor drivers needed.
There was never a technical reason why we couldn't have this. Mostly Microsoft and Apple blocked this sort of generalization at every turn. And web standards fell to design-by-committee so there was never any hope of unifying these things.
Is it a conspiracy theory when we live under these unfortunate eventualities? I don't know, but I see it everywhere. Nearly every device in existence irks the engineer in me. Smartphones and tablets are just the ultimate expression of commodified proprietary consumerist thinking.
In fairness, there are standardised protocols for a lot of these things already, even if they're not all part of one giant meta-protocol. Cameras in particular have mostly appeared as a folder full of files, with no need for special drivers, for something like 20 years.
There's definitely no need to invoke a conspiracy for the lack of 'one protocol to rule them all'. It's often hard agreeing on a standard even for a relatively limited topic - trying to agree on one for all electronic communications for all devices is probably impossible.
The meta protocol exists! Sort of. Check out the USB-C specs, which tried to answer a ton of this. It’s taken years for power delivery to reach the point where I don’t feel compelled to carry a USB-C power meter to check cables and chargers in the wild. My Switch still requires some out of spec signaling to charge/dock properly.
Meanwhile, half of the stuff I get off AliExpress only charges from A to C cables due to a missing resistor.
I don’t think the markets (yet) incentivize implementations. Like how when my mortgage gets resold, autopay will only transfer over if it’s once a month; anything more complex and I have to endure a new account setup and a ton of phone trees. Same with paperless settings. The result? I just live with the MVP.
> There was never a technical reason why we couldn't have this. Mostly Microsoft and Apple blocked this sort of generalization at every turn.
On the contrary, Microsoft tried really hard with UPnP/PnP-X/DPWS/Rally/Miracast*/etc but nobody was interested.
*BTW any Windows 10+ device can act as a Miracast sink (screen) so you can link Windows laptops/tablets as extra screens without any additional software.
Extending your simile, some devices need the equivalent of UDP in order to function within the size/power envelopes that make them useful. Bluetooth vs the nRF24L01+.
There are standards like this in highly interoperable systems, but there’s a cost paid. USB-C power delivery negotiation (beyond the very basic 5V3A resistor that people omit) is roughly as complicated as gigabit ethernet. That compute has to come from somewhere and it turns out customers won’t even pay for that 5V3A resistor - they’ll just use A to C cables and replace it when it “won’t charge” from a compliant charger. :) Average person probably only cares that USB-C can be flipped and that the connector feels less brittle than microUSB.
UPnP exists. Lots of what you describe exists. Between bugs in implementations becoming canon and a lack of consumer interest, no real conspiracy required. At least smartphones and tablets are trending in a good direction - Apple’s latest supports basic off the shelf USB-C Ethernet, displays, hubs, and so on.
Agreed in general. However, I wouldn't stop anyone but having my monitor traffic go over the network would lead to a lot of congestion, especially wireless. Prefer a separate cable as the grandparent alluded.
You can plug a USB HDMI capture dongle into tablets and do this.
Any webcam viewer would probably work to view it, though there's dedicated apps intended for this like https://orion.tube/ on iPad. I know there's options on Android but don't have a modern android tablet to test them.
Do you know how come that app doesn’t work on the IPhone 15 Pro?
I don’t have the iPad, but just recently got the 15 Pro, and it’s able to do a bunch of things via the usbc port (wired Ethernet, SD card reading, driving a Pro Display XDR etc), but I wasn’t able to do something like that Orion app is showing.
Was thinking of pretty much same use case as shown in the app, where I could plug in an external camera and use the phone as a high resolution / high-nit viewer display. Are these apis only for iPadOS because the iPhones are missing some required hardware for it?
I know, I'd love to use my phone as a display via capture card so I don't have to carry a portable monitor to troubleshoot headless boxes.
The developer says the 15 and 15 Pro are only missing software, the hardware is capable:
> I’m sad to say that we’ve confirmed with Apple that it will not be working with the iPhone 15. But this can be fixed in software, so feel free to file a feedback request for UVC support on iOS!
It would be nice, but it's not realistic. If Google's revenue disappears, then unless Mozilla finds some other form of revenue (which they've been trying to do for years now), Firefox is done for.
I would love it if they lost Google's money and trimmed the bile and focused on making great tech. But something tells me the first to be let go will be the techies, making Firefox effectively a maintenance-only browser. And the army of useless "evangelists" will be there until Mozilla collapses under its own weight.
Maybe we should have a reality check on the true cost of tech. Anything that can break the behavior of the tech industry due to cheap money is a good thing for the long term health of the industry.
Is there a chance that Microsoft can make an offer to Mozilla about making bing the default search in this case. I don't know if this would make sense from Microsoft business point of view and probably an evil from internet freedom ans diversity point. But maybe it is better than the current status.
Another take might be that Google's financial clout killed the browser market. That whole $xx.xx CPM thing that only they attain, and others basically pick up the crumbs. Search terms as input to ads are very powerful.
Mozilla hasn't produced a decent browser for, what, 12 years? They instead take their hundreds of millions of dollars annually to instead spend time building junk like half-baked password managers.
I'd argue that Mozilla's mishandling of Firefox has been killing innovation in this space for years -- it is a giant red flag for anyone wanting to enter the space considering Mozilla's budget and still not being able to produce something of value. The reality is moreso that Mozilla itself doesn't care about building a better browser. It's only when people started to realise this in the last couple of years that we've started to see some new contenders.
Maybe when Mozilla dies, we might start to see open source efforts going to better browsers.
I actually think Firefox is better than chrome and use it as my main browser. Not sure why you say it’s not decent.
I also think they do a lot of great stuff around Firefox, the email spoofing is good, the sync function is good, their podcasts and studies are good. Not sure what people mean here.
This is a strong but valid take, Mozilla has a huge focus on getting revenue streams from somewhere, but flubbing it right and left along the way. The consumer might benefit from a better browser but Mozilla has basically decided that that’s not what will drive growth or revenues… not that I think they’re particularly correct about that
Idk, I think people underestimate what it takes to support a browser. It's a lot of money and Mozilla doesn't have an ad empire to leverage, operating system sales to subsidize from, or phone/computer sales.
All they have is the revenue they make from Google, a little bit from their attempts at revenue diversification, and a little bit from their partnerships (like Pocket). If the Google revenue disappears, they won't even be able to maintain the current level of quality.
This to me is entirely fantasy. We are instead overestimating what it takes to support a browser because of how much money Mozilla gets and still can't produce anything. We're talking amounts in the billions of dollars here, and more than a billion in current cash reserves.
This Google-controlled narrative is pushed out onto a lot of things (i.e search) which people are slowly starting to realise isn't that complex or expensive to build after all (see Brave Search for example). It's not surprising that Mozilla would echo similar sentiments considering the entire company is controlled opposition.
What other similarly sized or smaller company has successfully built a browser which is not Chromium-based fit for the average consumer? If you're just piggybacking on Google's work, then sure, it's probably not bad, but Mozilla has their own browser engine and is trying to keep feature parity with browsers which have effectively unlimited funding.
Well yes it’s clearly expensive to support a browser and that’s why they’re trying to make money, but they’re failing miserably to deliver on those other revenue streams and they aren’t keeping up in the browser space. That’s all, if they were developing some business model that worked that would be different. That’s why breaking off googles monopoly would kill them, they are dependent on it
If Firefox loses a lot of funding but Google loses the ability to pay companies to make Chrome the default on nearly all devices sold globally today, Firefox will be in much better shape than it is now. Google is killing it, and also giving it a few dollars.
how would the loss of funding put Firefox in better shape? Are you saying that exposure would mean dollars would flow in from donations from new users?
I think they are saying that Firefox would be in a better position to increase market share.
I am not sure that I agree. Specifically, I doubt that mozilla would be able to realize any revenue even if every OEM made Firefox the default browser.
I'm saying if Google can't throw billions at other companies to push Chrome over Firefox, Firefox can get those users for pennies on the dollar, or even be considered the free better choice for product vendors to include.
If Android OEM's aren't locked into Chrome, they'll probably request payment from Edge, Brave and other startup browsers to be the default. Whoever pays most will get the spot. And that browser will end up being ad-ridden to help pay for that.
I could totally imagine browsers having ad-blockers that don't block ads, but merely replace "bad" website-provided ads with browser-provided "good" ads.
I could see how to do this for some projects, like Django: get the list of their security updates. For each release, it lists the CVEs it fixes and the patch. The patch gives you the fix diff.
