Did Apple Sabotage iCab & Atomic Web & other alt browsers...??

Atomic is gone from the app store, only the free one is avaliable. Terra is gone and developer said Apple asked him to pull it.

I have both Atomic and iCab, and they both now crash and/or scrolling is now choppy and poor.

iCab developer said this:




'Yes, I know. Unfortunately I was forced to make this change because Apple
has requested this. There's a big issue with the "Web View" object of the
iOS we need to use to display web pages (Apple doesn't allow other web
engines than their own), and this is issue is that the scrolling is very
jerky, especially on more complex web pages. This is a well know issue
from the beginning. Writing bugreports to Apple didn't help, the scrolling
issue did never get fixed. But because Safari doesn't have an issue with
the scrolling though it uses the same web engine, it seems that there's a
hidden (private) call in the iOS which enabled the smooth scrolling.
So because Apple has obviously no intention in fixing this issue,
developers started to "fix" this by themselves by using this private
(but forbidden) call. All other web browser in the App store are doing
this, and iCab did this as well. But now Apple has detected this in iCab
and demanded that I remove this private call. It is possible that Apple
will be more strict in general now, so maybe in the future you'll see
more and more Apps getting jerky scrolling, when Apple is asking the
developers to remove this special call from their Apps as well.

I'll try to do my best to convice Apple to finally fix this scrolling
issue in the iOS.'






So it appears that Apple, being unable or unwilling to create a mobile browser (for tablets) that actually has a few standard features, chose to sabotage independent developers (usually just one person in the case of iCab & Atomic).

All I can say is WOW (almost evil).









EDIT: As of Saturday, May 14th, the full version of Atomic Web is back in the App Store. Scrolling seems fixed (!!).

Now, I am confused as to what exactly the dev. For iCab was speaking of because this does not seemto be an issue with the latest upadate to Atomic Web







EDIT #2: Upon further analysis, the scrolling in the new version of Atomic Web is far inferior to the scrolling of the now-pulled Terra Web Browser. This is most likely because the pulled Terra is using the illegal API, and the newly updated Atomic Web has removed the better scrolling that can currently only be enabled by the illegal use of an Apple API...

It seems that while the new version of Atomic Web is not using the illegal API to its advantage, the scrolling is still pretty darn good, a testament to the prowess of the developer!

This story should be news on some of the mainstream tech news sites & blogs.

Funny, the story is a big deal and the news only exists on this thread!

We scooped Gruber, et al. Good job people.

BTW, two of my oher alt browsers have updates today. I bet their scrolling is slow and choppy if it was not before.

(Note to self: Do not update Terra or Mercury web browsers-too late for Atomic and the jury is still out on whether iCab—at lest on iPad2—has update with the new and unimproved scrolling.)

so, how are all you alt browser users liking your new-and-unimproved choppy scrolling?

EDIT: Today came iCab's predictable update. Of course, many new features and bug fixes will hide the fact that this update will gimp scrolling, because it will now not be using Apple's "illegal" API, you know, the one that makes scrolling large, image-heavy pages acceptable.

In the last few days Atomic Web, iCab, Mercury have all been "updated" so only Terra has the fast scrolling. My magic ball says Terra will also update in the next few days....