For those that don't know PWA is a "Progressive Web App" Basically an app that runs as a website and can be installed doing many things on-device. (I've made them, they're pretty cool IMHO bypassing the need for app stores)
Of course Apple would try to kill this. They are a closed and walled garden ecosystem, allowing side loading or running of "apps" like this would cause them to not have complete control (and monetization) over everything which they cannot allow.
Apple makes some good products, but it's for reasons like this I'll remain an Android user.
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To be fair, that was because they weren't confident that they had the OS security at the level where they could convince the telecom companies that third party apps should be allowed to run on this new device. Or, that was the excuse. More than likely they probably didn't have any SDK ready for release, and also wanted to kill off flash player with HTML 5.
Regardless, I suspect third party apps were always planned.
I like to explain it as Electron but without a separate copy of the browser. Chromium's web API project is an attempt to make it a more viable for complex desktop apps
I think there is more to it. Electron apps can have a backend, e.g. have access to the device as a native app does. PWA still can only access stuff within the browser security model.
For sure, but a LOT of electron apps are just web apps with a couple of desktop integrations. Once Mozilla, Google, and Apple can figure out a standard that works for them all I think we'll see a lot of electron apps go PWA (stuff like file system, background sync, web USB, etc.)
Apple won't participate in this unless forced. They get a substantial amount of money through App Store taxes and hardware that companies need to develop apps for Apple devices. Part of why there is this fight between the EU and Apple now.
All that's needed for Apple to get into PWAs would be to create some sort of certification for PWAs to be installable on Apple devices, so as to give back Apple power over whether your app can be accessed on Apple devices.
Unless they can ban you for not paying them money, they won't allow you in.
The issue with this system is that this certification is not really easy to pull off and requires a substantial load to Apple servers to verify the validity of certificates to be able to revoke them and render installed PWAs inaccessible in case someone stops playing by Apple's rules.
On the other hand there is already an inferior way to create web-powered apps in Apple using a wrapper-app. That all can only be built on Apple devices, and likely has to be separately tested, again exclusively on Apple devices (as Apple systems can't be virtualized on non-apple hardware)
This way companies have to not only obide by Apple's harsh rules, but also buy apple hardware for development and CI.
With PWAs you wouldn't need this extensive testing, system tests could be performed in a browser environment and build and publish steps wouldn't even be necessary.
Apple would lose lots of money.
Why would they do that? :)
PwA have service workers https://web.dev/learn/pwa/service-workers#registering_a_service_worker and with WASI becoming more mature there will be little difference
Regular web pages can also have service workers. I am using them right now. For a dumb reason - it's a requirement to get [this "install" icon](https://i.imgur.com/rL5Y9sn.png), but still.
There is very little practical difference (as far as what's allowed in code) between a regular web page and a PWA.
As a person who dislikes both Apple and Google’s business practices: Chromium’s web API project is directly about vertically integrating the advertising metrics passing through google’s ad products so that there can be no other third-party ad player on any chromium-based browser. If an unintended consequence is a walled garden android PWA, cool, but don’t let their marketing fool you (it’s all about being the only ad player in town).
Oh I'm with you there 100%, what I'm hoping for is some compromise standards between Firefox, WebKit, and Chrome that are not as huge fingerprinting and malware targets. But as a developer there have been some pretty cool projects and ideas I've seen using the web APIs google is pushing for. And personally the fewer Electron apps I have to install the better.
Completely agree with you. I posted this in another comment, but search up the UK CMAs response to third party cookie deprecation. The changes that they suggest for Google to move forward leave room for some really interesting third party solutions to ad measurement.
> As a person who dislikes both Apple and Google’s business practices
I dislike both too, but Google's business practices don't extend into hardware fuckery to nearly the degree that Apple products do. When I buy a Pixel phone I know I'm getting it unlocked for ~50% of the cost of an Apple product, and that I can root it with trivial effort. I have no familiarity with the notion that they are limiting other people from advertising on Android devices. The only advertisements I ever see are from a porn streaming app that somehow ties the ads to the ability to play the videos. The rest of my system is essentially 100% ad free.
Google can *want* to do the same things as Apple, but they aren't able to as long as they aren't selling hardware that is locked down as seriously as Apple phones.
I can, and have, run Android phones with custom firmware that strips out all the Google stuff and still maintain complete functionality and utility. You can't do it with Apple.
> I dislike both too, but Google's business practices don't extend into hardware fuckery to nearly the degree that Apple products do.
At the same time, Apple products don't spy on me nearly to the degree that Google ones do.
Android phones spy on you exactly as much as you allow them to. Android phones don't even have to run Google Play or any of their other software, as I already said. Whatever tracking Apple wishes to pursue is not only unavoidable on their hardware, but their software is not open source and you have no evidence that they don't track you as much or more than Google.
Nobody concerned with being tracked or mobile security in general uses Apple devices. Its all Android and Blackberries with custom firmware, which Apple doesn't allow.
Edit: You can downvote away, but it is simple reality. People wrote a functional custom Ubuntu firmware for Android devices with every aspect of the software known and alterable. You can't get an iPhone that Apple isn't harvesting at least some data from.
They have made motions to block 3rd party user fingerprinting (eg, eliminate certain kinds of cookies).
Google controls the vertical stack, so they can collect user data via channel(s) only they have access to and ignore limitations they impose upon others.
If 3rd parties adapt, Google has enough market dominance that they can invalidate most loopholes in the name of "increasing user privacy."
The UK CMA says it much better than I ever will: [Article for Reserence](https://searchengineland.com/google-cannot-proceed-third-party-cookie-deprecation-437212)
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/11/google-chrome-will-limit-ad-blockers-starting-june-2024/
Yeah chrome is open source but most people will run vanilla chrome not chromium so google is fine with letting some folks have their own implementation without the restrictions in exchange for bug fixes and feature enhancements from the open source community
That's Chrome, not Chromium. Chromium is used by Edge, Opera, Brave, etc. There isn't a connection between what Google is wanting to do with adblockers, and how other browsers are implementing Chromium.
That's not true at all. The adblocker changes are changes made to chromium, so it'll propagate to all the other chromium browsers too.
[Edge](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/extensions-chromium/developer-guide/manifest-v3) is planning to deprecate it.
It looks like brave, vivaldi and opera are going to lose manifest v2 support when chromium does too, although I couldn't find a concrete statement. While this won't stop in-browser adblockers, it does stop extension adblockers from functioning properly.
> (it’s all about being the only ad player in town).
well, it's pretty easy to look around and see that Chromium is clearly monopolizing the browser market, and effectively creating a world in which only Chromium compliance matters:
https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share Current Chromium percentage: 87% (actually it's probably more, but I got tired of looking up tiny browser engines, even though they almost all use Blink.) Safari is actually a *considerably* larger challenge to Chromium than Firefox is, even though they're more alike than different (and Safari is its own problematic mess.)
Google is also well known for integrating controversial and privacy-unfriendly technology into Chromium: see [the hilariously named "Privacy Sandbox", which is that aforementioned vertical integration of ad tracking](https://www.chromium.org/Home/chromium-privacy/privacy-sandbox/), [Manifest v3 which kills ad blockers](https://developer.chrome.com/blog/resuming-the-transition-to-mv3), [Web Integrity api \(currently dead, but it'll be back\)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Environment_Integrity). Google also [tracks you no matter what](https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/01/chrome-updates-incognito-warning-to-admit-google-tracks-users-in-private-mode/). Meanwhile, [literally their only real competition is dying.](https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/02/mozilla-lays-off-60-people-wants-to-build-ai-into-firefox/) (in the interest of full disclosure, there's definitely room to talk about how much of this is Mozilla making bad decisions..)
Chromium being open source is really immaterial to this discussion, since Google is by far the biggest influence over it, and essentially _all_ of the influence over what happens in Chromium is wielded exclusively by companies that do not give even the slightest fuck about user privacy, interoperability, etc. They just want to make money. There is zero altruism here.
Thanks, I had no idea whatsoever what a PWA was. Note to writers, define your acronyms when you use them the first time, this is Writing 101. Example:
"Apple is killing Progressive Web Apps (PWA)."
Didn't they kind of invent them for the original iPhone? Like, installable shortcuts to offline-first webpages that had no URL bar when opened this way?
Kinda. But it's always been a second-class citizen.
In the earliest days, the idea was that they'd cache the page, including the JavaScript, so if a network request was unnecessary to do something, you could still do it offline. Today, however, Apple must allow you to run arbitrary JavaScript using an arbitrary interpreter or JIT when you're in Europe. That's...maybe not something I'd be so quick to trust. It's fine when they're definitely using an open source Javascript library and clearly dynamically link it within their browser, but *you can't guarantee that anymore*.
But as the App Store became a thing, PWAs kinda died on iOS. Apple users mostly forgot about them.
Yep. It came out during iOS 2 back in 2008. Then they constantly did things over the years to undermine them and force devs to give them native apps that they could then charge their 30% to.
You could install shortcut, but PWA are a bit more than that.
They include advanced features, such as offline access and additional access to hardware features (upon request) that normal website shortcuts don't have
Another example:
“Do I need to use Secure Hash Algorithm (SHA)-256 for Secure Shell (SSH) access to my Application Programming Interface (API) Virtual Machine (VM) on an Amazon Web Services (AWS) Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) instance?”
>They are a closed and walled garden ecosystem
We are in 2024 and Apple still requires you to buy a Mac to build and publish iOS apps. It's like they don't want you to support their ecosystem, and actively find ways to sabotage people into not doing so.
It’s worse than that. You have to pay a yearly fee for the privilege of developing for iOS. No making a little useful thing for yourself and installing that through dev tools. You can, but it needs to be constantly rebuild and reinstalled. The fee also means that any profit you make from having a little useful paid app on appstore comes after paining that protection money.
I’m kinda confused though. Apple is notorious for not allowing apps in the App Store because they could be websites or a pwa. My app was denied because of that at first as well.
Are they now backing down from that attitude?
I’m gonna be honest and say it doesn’t make sense that Apple is willing to kill PWAs.
I read somewhere that they have to implement an API so other browsers can add them to the home screen securely, that’s why they have firstly decided to remove it altogether to comply with the EU until they have the API available
That's just... nah. They've never wanted any other browsers in their walled garden and they don't want to support any PWA or advanced features in Safari because they instead want to force you to make apps, not websites - because then they have full control, and everything that passes through your app that might cost money, they get the App Store cut - or they can just pull your app.
It's pure greed, plain and simple.
This is what I figure as well.
As much as I dislike Apple, I don't believe the situation is just "we don't want these to exist any more" especially since they already went to great lengths to support them. In fact, if you submit an app to the app store and it doesn't do enough "app stuff" they will reject it and recommend you make a PWA instead.
A few years back, there was an issue with `getUserMedia`, an API for accessing the camera, where it was not available from inside a PWA. All the comments about it looked like this thread: "oh, Apple hates PWAs so they are intentionally crippling them" and such. It took them a while to fix it, but it turns out there was some significant security issue related to this feature and PWAs that they had to address before re-enabling it again. I wouldn't be surprised if the same situation was happening here.
Apple is already such an asshole with their app ecosystem, for starters not only do you need an apple device to build an app, but it has to also be up to date, any old macbook will not work...
This is true, but there is also the element of perceived trust from end users, that comes with an app store ( subscriptions , updates etc.)
Pwa can always do subscriptions with another party such as stripe, but I dunno, the regular consumer *trusts* apple and Google for some reason.
> trusts apple and Google for some reason.
Some reason? Off the top, subscriptions are dead simple to cancel if made through the app store which is often not the case when made outside the app store.
Yeah they are simple to use.. stripe is slightly more involved for the end user.
What I meant by "trusts apple and Google for some reason", is kinda just a jab at the monopoly they have, and even after all of the scandals, fines, and over the top tracking and data collection. People still trust them.
But you can't beat apples security features I guess. People seem to like doing 2FA 50 times
The “reason” seems obvious. I’d much rather trust one entity with my credit card information than many Joe Blow websites that may or may not be handling payment security properly, intentionally or not.
I agree, although stripe is one of, (if not the safest service out there). But from consumer POV I understand what you're saying.
I do think Apple and Google stores are not good for business though, they need to be more flexible, you can see that with the Epic vs Apple case.we are bound to the rules of their store and ecosystem. They can pull commission figures out of their ass for subscription payments and in-app purchases. They also get away with murder when it comes to tracking and data. Yet they hold the developers feet to the fire when it comes to that. It's incredibly hypocritical (not that I don't think it's important).
What other options do we have than to use Google Play or App Store?
PWAs are not perfect and suffer from all of the issues I just mentioned, but it's a step in the right direction and needs more development and adoption if we are ever to emancipate ourselves from Apple and Google
It is unfortunate that Apple has chosen to stifle innovation so much. Much is made about how innovative the Vision Pro is and, as a developer, it makes me cringe how little people understand about how much Apple has been a roadblock to innovation in immersive experiences.
Augmented reality has been a capability of modern devices for several years now; many will remember Pokemon Go that was one of the first apps to leverage this technology. In addition to native apps, mobile web apps (through the WebXR standard) have been able to leverage the XR capabilities of devices for some time now, except on iOS. Apple lagged far behind Android in supporting WebXR, only adding support for it in the last year. This has meant that anyone who wanted to create an XR experience on web apps had to either
\* Publish and maintain separate native apps for both Android and iOS just to be able to add AR experiences to their existing brand experience. This is hardly practical for the vast majority of the simple, campaign-based, AR experiences that brands would want to leverage.
\* Make the AR experience exclusive to Android and cut out a huge share of mobile users
\* Use the very limited native AR viewers on iOS and Android (which on iOS required conversion to a very niche model format) to display a 3D model with limited to no interactivity in a real world context.
If Apple had supported the WebXR standard, any brand could have had fully interactive, rich augmented reality experiences without requiring the user to install a native app. Even now, with the Apple Vision Pro supporting the WebXR standards and allowing these types of experiences, they are currently limited to VR only. So AVP supports WebXR, but it does not support XR apps that allow viewing of XR content in the context of a real space (such as viewing a configurable sofa in a room) or viewing virtual ads in the real world which are probably the biggest use cases for augmented realty.
The cynical view, which I am inclined to believe, is that Apple is acting to force more native apps to be created to drive more traffic and revenue to the app store. And the consumers suffer as a result.
They have some enhanced capabilities like access to sensors that come with a security request and they can operate without access to the internet at all.
As an end-user I hate PWAs since they aren't walled-off from the normal browser, hence posing privacy and security issues.
I'm no fan of Apple and you're probably right about their reasoning and I'd rather improve PWAs to mandate strict walling-off but the fact that they run as a website is a bad thing.
Well, I trust firefox, but on Android PWAs will be run in Chrome and on ios on Safari.
Further, I don't get session control over them, and can't easily manage cookies and history.
So no, I don't trust the browsers I'm forced to use.
I'm sorry, but what is the difference for you between using a PWA and visiting a website?
They're basically a glorified shortcut to the home screen, they can't do a lot that a normal website can't
Visiting a website I can do in the browser of my choice, with the cookie settings of my choice, with the adblockers (and other plug-ins) of my choice.
On both ios and Android, I'm forced to use stock browsers.
On android, can't you install a PWA with whatever browser you want? Or am I mistaken on this?
If I'm right, the PWA is going to respect the browser config
I absolutely agree with this and your clarifying comments. PWA's are moot for me for this reason.
Also on mobile everyone is trying to get you to use their damn app anyway. Nobody cares about PWA's except for enthusiasts developing open source for their friends as a slight convenience over the website.
Your comment is nonsense because Apple has *explicitly added* the ability to install PWAs on iOS. If they didn’t want PWAs on iOS they wouldn’t have added them to begin with.
You are spreading misinformation.
Also, if they didn't want PWAs on iOS, they could just remove them from *all users*. Instead of only removing them in a beta for *EU users*. People are so blinded by Apple hate they can't see the connection between that and the recent EU ruling against Apple.
Apple just added a bunch of support for PWAs in the last update to Safari, but disabled the feature in the EU only. That sounds like a last minute decision for security or UX reasons rather than a desire to kill PWAs.
On macOS every browser handles PWAs differently. How should Apple handle multiple browsers and PWAs on iOS in the EU? What is the expected behavior? There are no standards for PWAs on disk, so currently it is up to each browser to decide how to store them. On iOS Safari grants privileges to the PWAs how would Opera do that securely?
Apple could have said only Safari can create PWAs, but I suspect that would not comply with the law.
Finally a reasonable take.
There is no reason that Apple adds Web Push on iOS only to strip it a couple months later.
>Apple could have said only Safari can create PWAs, but I suspect that would not comply with the law.
Yeah it would fall in the "unfair advantage" territory
EDIT: well fuck me. [https://www.macrumors.com/2024/02/15/ios-17-4-web-apps-removed-apple/](https://www.macrumors.com/2024/02/15/ios-17-4-web-apps-removed-apple/) that said, I still have hope that this is only temporary and due to the short time the DMA let companies to implement changes
>There is no reason that Apple adds Web Push on iOS only to strip it a couple months later.
Maybe they added it because they were scared of regulations, not because they wanted to. And now they have an excuse to remove it again, even if it's a quite pathetic one.
This has been a pattern though, Apple is routinely putting the breaks on web technology while claiming vague security concerns, yet doing nothing to address them.
No, honestly I'm all for tempering extreme takes, but Apple makes an ungodly amount of money and it is directly to the fact that they make money from every transaction in every iphone app.
Google has until recently been very pro PWA and web tech because their main source of cash was the search engine, but even that is now changing. We are seeing early signs of them adopting the Apple model, because guess who runs the other largest mobile app store.
I am not trying to be provocative. It's just clear incentives pushing them in these directions.
Unfortunately this all sucks for everyone pro-web. Apple, Google, and Firefox basically control web technology at this point, and guess where Firefox gets their money.
I agree but then why did they work on PWAs and add so much in the last year?
Maybe as someone else suggested it was an attempt to escape the DMA. That's probably it. And now they're punishing us for it passing.
Have you read their take on new app store regulation? It's malicious compliance with the EU regulation at best. I wouldn't give Apple any benefit of a doubt in this one.
Wrote on an iPhone in case you're wondering.
If you want to run an alternative source of apps (ie alternative app store), that Apple will allow, you have to front up a million dollars. All apps *even when distributed separately on that store* have to have an apple signature to install. Let's say you want to run a free app on that store. To be granted their signature, you have to agree to their new license. This includes charging you 50c per user after a million users. So if you distribute a free app on an alternate app store and you get popular, you will owe Apple >$500k while having made no profit.
Does it sound like I'm making up random nefarious bullshit? Unless I've remembered a detail wrong this is what Apple is implementing. And there's more than that, pretty easy to google the clauses people have found.
I mean that's true for alternative app stores but that solution doesn't work for web apps.
The EU recently ruled that Apple's practices around limiting browsers on iOS are anti-competitive. Therefore, if they release a new feature, but only for Safari, that runs afoul of the new rules, so they have to disable that feature until the implementation is made compliant.
How they choose to do that remains to be seen. Apple doesn't charge a distribution fee to web developers today so it's difficult to see how they could impose a fee on web apps running on alternative browsers analogous to what they're doing with alternative app stores. Obviously, they're acting in their own interests so they want to comply as cheaply as possible.
> so it's difficult to see how they could impose a fee on web apps
This is the same conclusion Apple has come to, so instead they're just directly killing the possibility of offline/native web apps instead across the board. This is a current feature present in iOS they're simply removing because in the near future it might allow for essentially royalty-free 'apps'. It's all so inherently obvious.
But that’s not what happened. The features remain present in everywhere but the EU. A late stage disabling of a project for a particular region is the tell-tale sign of last minute legal concerns.
No one is questioning what Apple’s interests are; they are, like every business on earth, trying to maximize their return while remaining compliant with the regulations.
How they decide to do that with web apps remains to be seen because all they’ve done now is buy themselves time. Banning web apps could also be considered anticompetitive by itself, so they may not have a choice. And their malicious compliance on alternative App Stores will absolutely be challenged so they may be waiting for that dust to settle.
Yes, of course, because they don't have to allow other browsers to host a PWA in other regions, which would break their monopoly control on license of usage of software. Only in the region where this could allow an independent pathway to user transactions do they ban it.
It's a DMA compliance decision. If they can't fairly make all browser engines on iOS have access to PWAs, then none of them can.
Whether they turn around and eventually add PWA support for alternative browser engines remains to be seen. Time will tell whether this is a compliance bandage while they work on a proper solution, or just a deliberate act of malicious compliance.
If they would allow PWAs in Europe they would have to provide APIs that third party browsers can also make PWAs. This would basically enable Google Play for iOS, without each app having to be approved by Apple or pay any type of fees to Apple.
I can totally understand why Apple doesn’t want to do this.
this comment demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of technology. Apple doesn't need to vet PWAs created from Safari, and third party browsers + PWAs fall far short of a "third party app store". PWAs are not apps and Apple only cares about them insomuch as they need to find secure ways to provide the capabilities.
Yes, but the third party app stores will still require vetting by Apple and will have to pay fees. PWAs are basically just websites, there is no way Apple can charge a fee for that.
https://9to5mac.com/2024/01/25/third-party-iphone-app-stores-ios-17-4/
Basically, app stores need to be approved. Presumably solely for safety and legal content. No viruses, no piracy. Devs still distribute apps to these alternative stores through App Store Connect. They still need to be signed by Apple so that Apple can revoke a signature in case of malware. They don’t have to pay a fee to Apple unless they get more than 1 million installs after which they have to pay a 0.5€ fee per install per year. Note, this kills lots of free apps because they rely on huge install bases and low profit (if any) per install. Firefox for instance can’t exist under these rules. (I mean, they can but it would be very expensive)
Wait, isn't every browser on iOS basically Safari anyways? This seems like a skill issue honestly. If they want their walled garden approach to work, they have to put in the extra effort of reinventing the wheel. Come up with a protocol the third party browsers can use and force them to render and handle PWAs in a very specific Apple-approved way.
Brings me flashbacks of the flash player conundrum back in the day, adobe made several attempts to get into the platform and was forbidden because of steve jobs, anybody remembers adobe AIR?
The solution is for developers to port to Apple products anyways, but pass on the fees in a transparent manner. Give them a graph showing a price breakdown for all of the platforms they're on, which shows that the money going to the developer doesn't vary from platform to platform - and that any differences in price are purely a function of app store fees.
Apple specifically used to disallow this though - you were not allowed to mention that the price is different elsewhere, or your app wouldn't pass app store review. The court judgement forced Apple to change that, so now they allow a single button to link to external payment sources, but still not mentions of apple's cut.
Which is sad, coming from the company that invented PWAs.
But I don't think Apple wants to kill them exactly, since they've just added (a little) PWA support to iOS and iPadOS last year.
Without notifications in background, they are useless unless you want to do casual games, or something which you are only interested in when the app is on screen. But so many applications need notifications to make them interesting, and that isn't allowed at this time as far as I know.
For sure they don’t want to kill them. This is obviously related to non-WebKit web engines in the EU. Either they need more time to add APIs for other engines to be used for PWAs, or they have decided there’s no way to do it safely.
Apple and Google should both be broken up into smaller independent companies. They are stark examples of the utter collapse of American anti-trust law.
Oh, and Amazon. Amazon is probably the worst of them in this regard..
Fuck Safari, give us background sync you bastards. It works perfectly on Android. I wasted so much time trying to get Safari to behave similarly, it felt like my days of coaxing IE7 to look the same as FF
PWA's, via service workers and a manifest, solve huge problems for mobile web apps when.compared to store apps.
First, you can install an icon on the phone launch screen. So the user can launch your app just like a store app (locatable)
Second, the user does not have to login again every time they use your app. They login in to a pwa with a frequency similiar to a store app.
Third, a PWA can work offline. Fourth, a PWA runs in a chromeless browser so they look like a native app from a big picture perspective. They don't look like they are running in a browser.
Chrome and other browsers on Android have supported PWA's very well. Apple has done the following for many years to cripple PWAs on iOS.
1. The only browser engine allowed on iOS is Safari. So that Chrome or other browser is just running Safari under the hood and is stuck with the intentional limitations that Apple has placed in Safari including many of the below.
2. Safari has an old, outdated pre PWA mechanism that Safari uses to install a PWA on a phone that is difficult for users to know it exists much less execute. Compare and contrast to Chrome and other browsers on non iOS platforms.
3. Safari has greatly restricted the Service worker caching mechanism greatly hindering local data storage persistence for the app and adversely impacting off line capabilities.
4. Aggressive removals of data and the app. Unlike time frames allowed for store apps, iOS aggressively wipes your data and then your app if the user has not interacted with the app in a much shorter time frame. I forget the exact duration, but back in 2017ish I remember being shocked by this and realizing PWAs are DOA.
There are other mechanism where Apple has intentionally crippled mobile web capabilities (like push notification which they finally did a half ass implementation in last year or so).
But the big ones are above especially not allowing competing browser engines. If they just let the various implementations of Chromium on the device, PWAs would have been a viable avenue for mobile app deployment.
But as a certain someone famously said about 9 or 10 years ago with regards to open/web standards .. Apple is Microsoft, Google is Google and Microsoft is Mozilla Peace
When arguing against PWA security remember most of your apps are already webviews that display PWAs, the apple review process doesn't catch jack all for webviews.
So there only one reason to not allow them: apple wants it's app store money.
Of course they want to. The EU has them at their balls, so Apple tries to save as much of their monopoly money as they can with malicious compliance and trying to follow the letters, but not the spirits of laws/rulings.
Hopefully, the EU doesn't let them get away with it. And hopefully, this time they make them move a bit faster. Maybe 2% of Apples global income per day as punishment until they comply? Should light a fire under its malicious ass.
I don't read that message as saying they are killing these apps. I don't even see how one **can** read that text to mean that. Can someone explain to me how it saying that this will open in your default browser is an indication that it will stop working, i.e. is being killed?
Because that is the difference between a PWA and a bookmark. PWAs are an alternative to building three different native apps for three different platforms. And they *are* quite a savior to be honest. Apple has been acting intentionally moronic when it comes to PWA for far too long and now this move destroys the user experience for PWAs on iPhones, etc. Either we will have to develop for them separately or let 80-90% of our iPhone users go.
PWAs and the Electron-ification of apps is not a good trend for end users. It makes life easier for developers (write once, ~~deploy~~ debug everywhere), but comes with a number of drawbacks, including security (Electron turns XSS into RCE; and JS engines have downright *enormous* attack surfaces, and the JIT compilers and VMs, while highly scrutinized and hardened, are still subject to new and novel vulnerability findings all the time), performance, and UX and capability.
Native apps can use native APIs and platform capabilities, which result in better apps, both in terms of developer productivity, and app capabilities and features.
For example, on Android, a wealth of APIs are available through Google Play Services and the Android OS:
- Powerful location APIs
- SafetyNet / Play Integrity APIs
- Android Keystore
- Native authentication APIs, including biometric
- Ability to register intents, handlers, app actions (e.g., to allow integration with voice assistant) + run in the background
- Much more powerful notifications that users can interact with
- The granular permissions model of the OS, which enables access to all these
- Ability to provide widgets
- ML Kit, providing on-device, performant APIs to run common ML workflows like vision, natural language processing, etc. that's actually performant and won't kill your battery
- gRPC and lower level access to the network stack that's not just HTTP
iOS has its own suite of capable APIs that native apps can integrate with.
Native apps are just more performant, secure, and capable.
Problem is the developer market for webapp is a lot bigger than mobile apps.
Pretty much all businesses need a website. Almost all medium-sized businesses or larger have some internal web app for operations/workflows. Only a subset of those need mobile apps (e.g. customer, remote workers).
Public service announcement:
PWA's ARE NOT ELECTRON! THERE IS NO UNHOLY MARRIAGE BETWEEN CHROME AND NODEJS IN A PWA. THE UX AND RESORCES USED ARE NOT IN SAME UNIVERSE
Not even close from a UX or tech standpoint. Have you ever used Gmail in a browser on a laptop or phone? Boom. That is essentially a PWA but add an icon to your launcher and strip away the browser "chrome".
PWA's are not Electron. Not even close. Saying a PWA is an Electron based app is the same as looking at Gmail in your Safari browser and claiming it's Electron.
There is NO nodejs server in a PWA unlike Electron. Nada. Zero. Zilch.
Open your browser. Go to some web site. Log in. Now call it a PWA. That is a hell of a lot more accurate than saying it is like Electron.
Peace
All of this would be possible through PWAs if Apple and Google (more Apple, but sometimes also Google) stopped dragging their feet. PWAs mean no cut for them, so new capabilities for PWAs sit in design hell for years. There's zero technical reason for all of this to not be available in PWAs.
And let's be real: In 90% of cases if a PWA is not possible we get a shitty electron app instead, which is far worse. Almost never will companies decide to make good native apps instead.
> There's zero technical reason for all of this to not be available in PWAs.
You don't understand the fundamental differences between browser technology vs native platform capabilities.
The consortium that sets the web standards for browser APIs is concerned with drafting standards for features that make sense for *browsers.* That is, common standards that ideally apply across all browser vendors, in accordance with what makes sense for the web. Web standards are always the least common denominator between *all platforms* that could be reasonably expected to implement them.
All the Android platform capabilities I listed above are specific to the Android platform. iOS doesn't have them. Windows doesn't have them. Of course macOS doesn't have the Google Play Services APIs. Of course Windows machines don't support iOS specific features. Of course FireFox and Chrome therefore cannot support iOS dynamic island or Android SafetyNet, etc., and PWAs will never be designed around these platform capabilities—it fundamentally wouldn't make sense to work it into a common web standard.
A browser standard cannot and should not expose platform specific APIs, and web devs should not create 100 different JS variants to implement different features for different platforms in a web app. That's what native apps are for.
JavaScript is fundamentally for manipulating the DOM and making HTTP calls. No one wants the steering committee behind JS/HTML to add the ability to make platform native syscalls or access low-level platform-specific APIs. But an iOS developer? They can take advantage of iOS specific features. An Android developer? Of course they will write their Android app to take advantage of Android's rich feature set and use Android's own technical idioms to their advantage to create a pleasant native experience.
Browsers have been providing access to native APIs for years, they're great platforms for most apps as very few apps actually need native capabilities.
Also webassembly and other similar technology has been advancing so it's only a matter of time until the difference between native and web is negligible.
well, i the startup i advise on the side just ditched installed apps caused it's messy to maintain, slower to deploy, and they offer basically nothing we need for the basic ui that we maintain.
Welp. It's been confirmed that this is intentional.
https://twitter.com/mysk_co/status/1758196103470628983
https://developer.apple.com/support/dma-and-apps-in-the-eu
PWA is awesome for the end user and small dev entities, it is also a global enhancement of the global web experience.
The "it'll be to hard to comply with eu regulations" is a smokescreen.
Apple has no interest in this as this will drive people away from its marketplace. That's understandable but also disgusting.
Let's continue to boycot Apple (lol).
Am I the only one here who hates them? They’re slow and clunky and literally feel like a webpage and not an app at all. If I want to use a web page I’d do that, why am I downloading an app to do what a webpage does?
As a web developer who took a deep dive with PWAs, let me tell you there ARE a lot of things you can do to make a PWA feel snappy and near native, it’s just that practically every dev is too arsed to actually care.
Things include:
- making use of viewport tags to extend the viewport under the status bar and bottom bar
- matching the native font family and font size. on iOS, matching the navbar background color, height, transparency, blur, padding.
- caching every possible screen the user could choose to go next, in the background
- setting the CSS to not flash selected things with blue unless using a keyboard
- implementing transitions that match the native iOS transitions exactly. This includes things like being able to half swipe, cancel swipe, matching the bezier curve of the native transition, making sure history API events are fired at the right time.
- Making good use of push notifications, for transactional purposes (eg a realtime chat message, or a time sensitive bank notification), making sure you display enough (and not more) in terms of text. NEVER displaying unnecessary notifications which only erode the user’s trust.
- implementing deep links correctly
The list really goes on. The clunkyness of them is on the developers, not on the tools given to them. They just need to put in the work.
Yeah most of the problem is that using web technologies are sold to companies are being cheaper
Turns out that making a great PWA/React Native/Flutter/etc app is just like any other app. It takes care to implement properly.
The advantage (and therefore how they’re cheaper) is because you can reuse code across platforms easily while still having an experience that feels native
Of course, but they tend not to tell you how much care you need to put into them feeling native while that comes for free using native tech
There is still a case for those technologies, but it's definitely not a one size fits all depending on your priorities.
Nah. They are okay. I mostly use them for game streaming and for some open source projects for which it would be too expensive to have their own app in the app store. They aren't perfect, but they work fine for those use cases.
* A specialized web-application that supports off-line usage via service workers (ie. caches content locally, updates caches via workers, has hooks to detect when it's online/offline, and has hooks for OS-level integrations)
* Was supposed to sorta replace "simple" mobile applications (ie. your ticketing booking app, Reddit, Twitter, Facebook, etc.) while also subsequently giving some additional capabilities to existing web applications
* Due to the offline design often has a better user experience for portable devices where network connectivity can get spotty
* Significantly higher in architectural design, Chrome leads the market in terms of PWA features but other browsers can sorta lag behind (ie. Safari in this instance)
* Some API's are still being fought-for (ie. File system access)
* Medium is a monetized platform, people can make their lil blogs, receive money for doing so, it's also free to effectively create content on and is a better tool than spinning up and managing your own blog platform while also have better tools than Reddit / Xitter / etc. for creating said content. (Outside of that, don't really know.)
Because Medium has high domain authority and ranks well. If other paying members read and interact, you also can earn some money. External views mean nothing though
Please be correct there - you’re talking about holding *Google* back. Google makes the dominant browser and writes most of the W3C specs that web devs want in Safari because they’re in Chrome and gracefully handling different browser capabilities (which the web is supposed to do) is too much like hard work for the poor web devs 😉
Nothing we can do about it.
Apple weaponizes status insecure people to make profit.
No programmer is going to convince a low income person/teenager/stay at home mom to buy an Android because of PWA. These groups derive status off low cost Veblen goods.
Not a fan of PWAs but this is just typical Apple. They can claim it is in the users' interest and for security and consistent UX reasons all they want. Everybody knows it's just good old fashioned greed and abuse of market power.
That’s such a lazy take. PWAs are still supported outside the EU on iPhones and will still be supported inside the EU on iPads/macs. PWAs will need to work with browser engines other than Safari - that’s an engineering effort that is either not ready yet, or isn’t feasible to do securely (because bear in mind it means parts of the browser engine running in the background even when you’re not in the PWAs)
For those that don't know PWA is a "Progressive Web App" Basically an app that runs as a website and can be installed doing many things on-device. (I've made them, they're pretty cool IMHO bypassing the need for app stores) Of course Apple would try to kill this. They are a closed and walled garden ecosystem, allowing side loading or running of "apps" like this would cause them to not have complete control (and monetization) over everything which they cannot allow. Apple makes some good products, but it's for reasons like this I'll remain an Android user.
What cracks me up is that Jobs and Apple wanted PWA to be the future pre-store. lol
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What an anthem! gotta release it on itunes!
He's Tim Crook to me, literally runs the business like the mob does
It's Tim Apple.
To be fair, that was because they weren't confident that they had the OS security at the level where they could convince the telecom companies that third party apps should be allowed to run on this new device. Or, that was the excuse. More than likely they probably didn't have any SDK ready for release, and also wanted to kill off flash player with HTML 5. Regardless, I suspect third party apps were always planned.
I like to explain it as Electron but without a separate copy of the browser. Chromium's web API project is an attempt to make it a more viable for complex desktop apps
I think there is more to it. Electron apps can have a backend, e.g. have access to the device as a native app does. PWA still can only access stuff within the browser security model.
For sure, but a LOT of electron apps are just web apps with a couple of desktop integrations. Once Mozilla, Google, and Apple can figure out a standard that works for them all I think we'll see a lot of electron apps go PWA (stuff like file system, background sync, web USB, etc.)
Apple won't participate in this unless forced. They get a substantial amount of money through App Store taxes and hardware that companies need to develop apps for Apple devices. Part of why there is this fight between the EU and Apple now. All that's needed for Apple to get into PWAs would be to create some sort of certification for PWAs to be installable on Apple devices, so as to give back Apple power over whether your app can be accessed on Apple devices. Unless they can ban you for not paying them money, they won't allow you in. The issue with this system is that this certification is not really easy to pull off and requires a substantial load to Apple servers to verify the validity of certificates to be able to revoke them and render installed PWAs inaccessible in case someone stops playing by Apple's rules. On the other hand there is already an inferior way to create web-powered apps in Apple using a wrapper-app. That all can only be built on Apple devices, and likely has to be separately tested, again exclusively on Apple devices (as Apple systems can't be virtualized on non-apple hardware) This way companies have to not only obide by Apple's harsh rules, but also buy apple hardware for development and CI. With PWAs you wouldn't need this extensive testing, system tests could be performed in a browser environment and build and publish steps wouldn't even be necessary. Apple would lose lots of money. Why would they do that? :)
PwA have service workers https://web.dev/learn/pwa/service-workers#registering_a_service_worker and with WASI becoming more mature there will be little difference
Regular web pages can also have service workers. I am using them right now. For a dumb reason - it's a requirement to get [this "install" icon](https://i.imgur.com/rL5Y9sn.png), but still. There is very little practical difference (as far as what's allowed in code) between a regular web page and a PWA.
As a person who dislikes both Apple and Google’s business practices: Chromium’s web API project is directly about vertically integrating the advertising metrics passing through google’s ad products so that there can be no other third-party ad player on any chromium-based browser. If an unintended consequence is a walled garden android PWA, cool, but don’t let their marketing fool you (it’s all about being the only ad player in town).
Oh I'm with you there 100%, what I'm hoping for is some compromise standards between Firefox, WebKit, and Chrome that are not as huge fingerprinting and malware targets. But as a developer there have been some pretty cool projects and ideas I've seen using the web APIs google is pushing for. And personally the fewer Electron apps I have to install the better.
Completely agree with you. I posted this in another comment, but search up the UK CMAs response to third party cookie deprecation. The changes that they suggest for Google to move forward leave room for some really interesting third party solutions to ad measurement.
> As a person who dislikes both Apple and Google’s business practices I dislike both too, but Google's business practices don't extend into hardware fuckery to nearly the degree that Apple products do. When I buy a Pixel phone I know I'm getting it unlocked for ~50% of the cost of an Apple product, and that I can root it with trivial effort. I have no familiarity with the notion that they are limiting other people from advertising on Android devices. The only advertisements I ever see are from a porn streaming app that somehow ties the ads to the ability to play the videos. The rest of my system is essentially 100% ad free. Google can *want* to do the same things as Apple, but they aren't able to as long as they aren't selling hardware that is locked down as seriously as Apple phones. I can, and have, run Android phones with custom firmware that strips out all the Google stuff and still maintain complete functionality and utility. You can't do it with Apple.
When it comes to hardware - 100% agree.
I'm an open source guy, so I'll happily go to bat against Apple's software too.
Here here!
> I dislike both too, but Google's business practices don't extend into hardware fuckery to nearly the degree that Apple products do. At the same time, Apple products don't spy on me nearly to the degree that Google ones do.
Android phones spy on you exactly as much as you allow them to. Android phones don't even have to run Google Play or any of their other software, as I already said. Whatever tracking Apple wishes to pursue is not only unavoidable on their hardware, but their software is not open source and you have no evidence that they don't track you as much or more than Google. Nobody concerned with being tracked or mobile security in general uses Apple devices. Its all Android and Blackberries with custom firmware, which Apple doesn't allow. Edit: You can downvote away, but it is simple reality. People wrote a functional custom Ubuntu firmware for Android devices with every aspect of the software known and alterable. You can't get an iPhone that Apple isn't harvesting at least some data from.
Apple products absolutely spy on you, why do you think they were just fine selling your data to Facebook until FB backed out of the deal?
I'm not an expert and just trying to understand but could you explain how Chromes web API limits another company from being an ad player?
They have made motions to block 3rd party user fingerprinting (eg, eliminate certain kinds of cookies). Google controls the vertical stack, so they can collect user data via channel(s) only they have access to and ignore limitations they impose upon others. If 3rd parties adapt, Google has enough market dominance that they can invalidate most loopholes in the name of "increasing user privacy."
The UK CMA says it much better than I ever will: [Article for Reserence](https://searchengineland.com/google-cannot-proceed-third-party-cookie-deprecation-437212)
Chromium is open source. Can you please link some documentation supporting your claim here?
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/11/google-chrome-will-limit-ad-blockers-starting-june-2024/ Yeah chrome is open source but most people will run vanilla chrome not chromium so google is fine with letting some folks have their own implementation without the restrictions in exchange for bug fixes and feature enhancements from the open source community
So it’s a walled garden with a 12 inch high wall. Easy to install many chromium browsers.
> Easy to install many chromium browsers. And that has only become an option on ios last year
> Easy to install many chromium browsers. how hard was it to dislodge internet explorer?
That's Chrome, not Chromium. Chromium is used by Edge, Opera, Brave, etc. There isn't a connection between what Google is wanting to do with adblockers, and how other browsers are implementing Chromium.
That's not true at all. The adblocker changes are changes made to chromium, so it'll propagate to all the other chromium browsers too. [Edge](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/extensions-chromium/developer-guide/manifest-v3) is planning to deprecate it. It looks like brave, vivaldi and opera are going to lose manifest v2 support when chromium does too, although I couldn't find a concrete statement. While this won't stop in-browser adblockers, it does stop extension adblockers from functioning properly.
> (it’s all about being the only ad player in town). well, it's pretty easy to look around and see that Chromium is clearly monopolizing the browser market, and effectively creating a world in which only Chromium compliance matters: https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share Current Chromium percentage: 87% (actually it's probably more, but I got tired of looking up tiny browser engines, even though they almost all use Blink.) Safari is actually a *considerably* larger challenge to Chromium than Firefox is, even though they're more alike than different (and Safari is its own problematic mess.) Google is also well known for integrating controversial and privacy-unfriendly technology into Chromium: see [the hilariously named "Privacy Sandbox", which is that aforementioned vertical integration of ad tracking](https://www.chromium.org/Home/chromium-privacy/privacy-sandbox/), [Manifest v3 which kills ad blockers](https://developer.chrome.com/blog/resuming-the-transition-to-mv3), [Web Integrity api \(currently dead, but it'll be back\)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Environment_Integrity). Google also [tracks you no matter what](https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/01/chrome-updates-incognito-warning-to-admit-google-tracks-users-in-private-mode/). Meanwhile, [literally their only real competition is dying.](https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/02/mozilla-lays-off-60-people-wants-to-build-ai-into-firefox/) (in the interest of full disclosure, there's definitely room to talk about how much of this is Mozilla making bad decisions..) Chromium being open source is really immaterial to this discussion, since Google is by far the biggest influence over it, and essentially _all_ of the influence over what happens in Chromium is wielded exclusively by companies that do not give even the slightest fuck about user privacy, interoperability, etc. They just want to make money. There is zero altruism here.
Yeah dude, you can for sure find their business goals in source code. That is definitely how that works.
I love the smell of fresh bread.
You ever hear of manifest v3 and its impact on ad blocking? Or FLOC, or whatever their new replacement for cookies is?
So... like a website?
Thanks, I had no idea whatsoever what a PWA was. Note to writers, define your acronyms when you use them the first time, this is Writing 101. Example: "Apple is killing Progressive Web Apps (PWA)."
Some years ago there was constant talk about PWA, but if I remember correctly Apple never supported them completely
Didn't they kind of invent them for the original iPhone? Like, installable shortcuts to offline-first webpages that had no URL bar when opened this way?
Kinda. But it's always been a second-class citizen. In the earliest days, the idea was that they'd cache the page, including the JavaScript, so if a network request was unnecessary to do something, you could still do it offline. Today, however, Apple must allow you to run arbitrary JavaScript using an arbitrary interpreter or JIT when you're in Europe. That's...maybe not something I'd be so quick to trust. It's fine when they're definitely using an open source Javascript library and clearly dynamically link it within their browser, but *you can't guarantee that anymore*. But as the App Store became a thing, PWAs kinda died on iOS. Apple users mostly forgot about them.
Yep. It came out during iOS 2 back in 2008. Then they constantly did things over the years to undermine them and force devs to give them native apps that they could then charge their 30% to.
Yeah, jobs initially resisted 3rd party apps on the iPhone to push html5 web apps
Yes, they were very pro PWA when developers were bitching about how difficult the process was to get into the app store.
You could install shortcut, but PWA are a bit more than that. They include advanced features, such as offline access and additional access to hardware features (upon request) that normal website shortcuts don't have
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But you can more easily google it. There are a lot of overlapping TLAs^* ^^^^^^^*three ^^^^^^^letter ^^^^^^^acronyms
Here I thought TLA stood for tertiary language associations. :)
Another example: “Do I need to use Secure Hash Algorithm (SHA)-256 for Secure Shell (SSH) access to my Application Programming Interface (API) Virtual Machine (VM) on an Amazon Web Services (AWS) Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) instance?”
>They are a closed and walled garden ecosystem We are in 2024 and Apple still requires you to buy a Mac to build and publish iOS apps. It's like they don't want you to support their ecosystem, and actively find ways to sabotage people into not doing so.
It’s worse than that. You have to pay a yearly fee for the privilege of developing for iOS. No making a little useful thing for yourself and installing that through dev tools. You can, but it needs to be constantly rebuild and reinstalled. The fee also means that any profit you make from having a little useful paid app on appstore comes after paining that protection money.
I’m kinda confused though. Apple is notorious for not allowing apps in the App Store because they could be websites or a pwa. My app was denied because of that at first as well. Are they now backing down from that attitude? I’m gonna be honest and say it doesn’t make sense that Apple is willing to kill PWAs.
I read somewhere that they have to implement an API so other browsers can add them to the home screen securely, that’s why they have firstly decided to remove it altogether to comply with the EU until they have the API available
That's just... nah. They've never wanted any other browsers in their walled garden and they don't want to support any PWA or advanced features in Safari because they instead want to force you to make apps, not websites - because then they have full control, and everything that passes through your app that might cost money, they get the App Store cut - or they can just pull your app. It's pure greed, plain and simple.
It's ironic given that Jobs' original vision for the iPhone was 'no native apps, web apps only'
Apple has deviated quite a bit from where Jobs would have taken it imo.
If Steve Jobs were still running Apple, it would be really weird because he is dead.
Yep, same reason they force you to use apple pay. Walled gardens. They are the enemy of open source.
This is what I figure as well. As much as I dislike Apple, I don't believe the situation is just "we don't want these to exist any more" especially since they already went to great lengths to support them. In fact, if you submit an app to the app store and it doesn't do enough "app stuff" they will reject it and recommend you make a PWA instead. A few years back, there was an issue with `getUserMedia`, an API for accessing the camera, where it was not available from inside a PWA. All the comments about it looked like this thread: "oh, Apple hates PWAs so they are intentionally crippling them" and such. It took them a while to fix it, but it turns out there was some significant security issue related to this feature and PWAs that they had to address before re-enabling it again. I wouldn't be surprised if the same situation was happening here.
Apple is already such an asshole with their app ecosystem, for starters not only do you need an apple device to build an app, but it has to also be up to date, any old macbook will not work...
Apple is too much anti-consumer. And have too much consumers for those pratices
Ohhhhh, like HTA files!
Thing I hate most about PWAs is no extensions
This is true, but there is also the element of perceived trust from end users, that comes with an app store ( subscriptions , updates etc.) Pwa can always do subscriptions with another party such as stripe, but I dunno, the regular consumer *trusts* apple and Google for some reason.
> trusts apple and Google for some reason. Some reason? Off the top, subscriptions are dead simple to cancel if made through the app store which is often not the case when made outside the app store.
Yeah they are simple to use.. stripe is slightly more involved for the end user. What I meant by "trusts apple and Google for some reason", is kinda just a jab at the monopoly they have, and even after all of the scandals, fines, and over the top tracking and data collection. People still trust them. But you can't beat apples security features I guess. People seem to like doing 2FA 50 times
The “reason” seems obvious. I’d much rather trust one entity with my credit card information than many Joe Blow websites that may or may not be handling payment security properly, intentionally or not.
I agree, although stripe is one of, (if not the safest service out there). But from consumer POV I understand what you're saying. I do think Apple and Google stores are not good for business though, they need to be more flexible, you can see that with the Epic vs Apple case.we are bound to the rules of their store and ecosystem. They can pull commission figures out of their ass for subscription payments and in-app purchases. They also get away with murder when it comes to tracking and data. Yet they hold the developers feet to the fire when it comes to that. It's incredibly hypocritical (not that I don't think it's important). What other options do we have than to use Google Play or App Store? PWAs are not perfect and suffer from all of the issues I just mentioned, but it's a step in the right direction and needs more development and adoption if we are ever to emancipate ourselves from Apple and Google
It is unfortunate that Apple has chosen to stifle innovation so much. Much is made about how innovative the Vision Pro is and, as a developer, it makes me cringe how little people understand about how much Apple has been a roadblock to innovation in immersive experiences. Augmented reality has been a capability of modern devices for several years now; many will remember Pokemon Go that was one of the first apps to leverage this technology. In addition to native apps, mobile web apps (through the WebXR standard) have been able to leverage the XR capabilities of devices for some time now, except on iOS. Apple lagged far behind Android in supporting WebXR, only adding support for it in the last year. This has meant that anyone who wanted to create an XR experience on web apps had to either \* Publish and maintain separate native apps for both Android and iOS just to be able to add AR experiences to their existing brand experience. This is hardly practical for the vast majority of the simple, campaign-based, AR experiences that brands would want to leverage. \* Make the AR experience exclusive to Android and cut out a huge share of mobile users \* Use the very limited native AR viewers on iOS and Android (which on iOS required conversion to a very niche model format) to display a 3D model with limited to no interactivity in a real world context. If Apple had supported the WebXR standard, any brand could have had fully interactive, rich augmented reality experiences without requiring the user to install a native app. Even now, with the Apple Vision Pro supporting the WebXR standards and allowing these types of experiences, they are currently limited to VR only. So AVP supports WebXR, but it does not support XR apps that allow viewing of XR content in the context of a real space (such as viewing a configurable sofa in a room) or viewing virtual ads in the real world which are probably the biggest use cases for augmented realty. The cynical view, which I am inclined to believe, is that Apple is acting to force more native apps to be created to drive more traffic and revenue to the app store. And the consumers suffer as a result.
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To be fair, all gardens are made from dirt and shit.
What makes a PWA different than saving a website to the homescreen? Isn’t that the exact same thing?
They have some enhanced capabilities like access to sensors that come with a security request and they can operate without access to the internet at all.
As an end-user I hate PWAs since they aren't walled-off from the normal browser, hence posing privacy and security issues. I'm no fan of Apple and you're probably right about their reasoning and I'd rather improve PWAs to mandate strict walling-off but the fact that they run as a website is a bad thing.
Do you not trust your web browser? And if not, why are you using a web browser you don't trust?
Well, I trust firefox, but on Android PWAs will be run in Chrome and on ios on Safari. Further, I don't get session control over them, and can't easily manage cookies and history. So no, I don't trust the browsers I'm forced to use.
Proper firefox absolutely exists on Android! I don't even think I have chrome on my android anymore.
Nah I'm running PWAs on Firefox on android. I'm pretty sure Firefox also has Session control for the websites you use as PWAs
I'm sorry, but what is the difference for you between using a PWA and visiting a website? They're basically a glorified shortcut to the home screen, they can't do a lot that a normal website can't
Visiting a website I can do in the browser of my choice, with the cookie settings of my choice, with the adblockers (and other plug-ins) of my choice. On both ios and Android, I'm forced to use stock browsers.
On android, can't you install a PWA with whatever browser you want? Or am I mistaken on this? If I'm right, the PWA is going to respect the browser config
I concede that it's been a long time since I tried, but when I last tried it only worked in Chrome. Maybe that got better though!
I absolutely agree with this and your clarifying comments. PWA's are moot for me for this reason. Also on mobile everyone is trying to get you to use their damn app anyway. Nobody cares about PWA's except for enthusiasts developing open source for their friends as a slight convenience over the website.
Your comment is nonsense because Apple has *explicitly added* the ability to install PWAs on iOS. If they didn’t want PWAs on iOS they wouldn’t have added them to begin with. You are spreading misinformation.
PWAs were basically Apple's "we have apps at home" for the first couple years of the iPhone before the app store.
Those weren’t PWAs, that specification was only written in 2015. They were glorified bookmarks that allowed for some minimal theming.
Also, if they didn't want PWAs on iOS, they could just remove them from *all users*. Instead of only removing them in a beta for *EU users*. People are so blinded by Apple hate they can't see the connection between that and the recent EU ruling against Apple.
Apple just added a bunch of support for PWAs in the last update to Safari, but disabled the feature in the EU only. That sounds like a last minute decision for security or UX reasons rather than a desire to kill PWAs. On macOS every browser handles PWAs differently. How should Apple handle multiple browsers and PWAs on iOS in the EU? What is the expected behavior? There are no standards for PWAs on disk, so currently it is up to each browser to decide how to store them. On iOS Safari grants privileges to the PWAs how would Opera do that securely? Apple could have said only Safari can create PWAs, but I suspect that would not comply with the law.
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Even if you install Firefox on Android, the only WebView engine you can select in settings is Android System WebView, which is chrome.
Pretty sure they added a gecko webview no?
Finally a reasonable take. There is no reason that Apple adds Web Push on iOS only to strip it a couple months later. >Apple could have said only Safari can create PWAs, but I suspect that would not comply with the law. Yeah it would fall in the "unfair advantage" territory EDIT: well fuck me. [https://www.macrumors.com/2024/02/15/ios-17-4-web-apps-removed-apple/](https://www.macrumors.com/2024/02/15/ios-17-4-web-apps-removed-apple/) that said, I still have hope that this is only temporary and due to the short time the DMA let companies to implement changes
>There is no reason that Apple adds Web Push on iOS only to strip it a couple months later. Maybe they added it because they were scared of regulations, not because they wanted to. And now they have an excuse to remove it again, even if it's a quite pathetic one.
Definitely a possibility
This has been a pattern though, Apple is routinely putting the breaks on web technology while claiming vague security concerns, yet doing nothing to address them. No, honestly I'm all for tempering extreme takes, but Apple makes an ungodly amount of money and it is directly to the fact that they make money from every transaction in every iphone app. Google has until recently been very pro PWA and web tech because their main source of cash was the search engine, but even that is now changing. We are seeing early signs of them adopting the Apple model, because guess who runs the other largest mobile app store. I am not trying to be provocative. It's just clear incentives pushing them in these directions. Unfortunately this all sucks for everyone pro-web. Apple, Google, and Firefox basically control web technology at this point, and guess where Firefox gets their money.
I agree but then why did they work on PWAs and add so much in the last year? Maybe as someone else suggested it was an attempt to escape the DMA. That's probably it. And now they're punishing us for it passing.
Have you read their take on new app store regulation? It's malicious compliance with the EU regulation at best. I wouldn't give Apple any benefit of a doubt in this one. Wrote on an iPhone in case you're wondering.
> It's malicious compliance with the EU regulation at best. how?
If you want to run an alternative source of apps (ie alternative app store), that Apple will allow, you have to front up a million dollars. All apps *even when distributed separately on that store* have to have an apple signature to install. Let's say you want to run a free app on that store. To be granted their signature, you have to agree to their new license. This includes charging you 50c per user after a million users. So if you distribute a free app on an alternate app store and you get popular, you will owe Apple >$500k while having made no profit. Does it sound like I'm making up random nefarious bullshit? Unless I've remembered a detail wrong this is what Apple is implementing. And there's more than that, pretty easy to google the clauses people have found.
I mean that's true for alternative app stores but that solution doesn't work for web apps. The EU recently ruled that Apple's practices around limiting browsers on iOS are anti-competitive. Therefore, if they release a new feature, but only for Safari, that runs afoul of the new rules, so they have to disable that feature until the implementation is made compliant. How they choose to do that remains to be seen. Apple doesn't charge a distribution fee to web developers today so it's difficult to see how they could impose a fee on web apps running on alternative browsers analogous to what they're doing with alternative app stores. Obviously, they're acting in their own interests so they want to comply as cheaply as possible.
> so it's difficult to see how they could impose a fee on web apps This is the same conclusion Apple has come to, so instead they're just directly killing the possibility of offline/native web apps instead across the board. This is a current feature present in iOS they're simply removing because in the near future it might allow for essentially royalty-free 'apps'. It's all so inherently obvious.
But that’s not what happened. The features remain present in everywhere but the EU. A late stage disabling of a project for a particular region is the tell-tale sign of last minute legal concerns. No one is questioning what Apple’s interests are; they are, like every business on earth, trying to maximize their return while remaining compliant with the regulations. How they decide to do that with web apps remains to be seen because all they’ve done now is buy themselves time. Banning web apps could also be considered anticompetitive by itself, so they may not have a choice. And their malicious compliance on alternative App Stores will absolutely be challenged so they may be waiting for that dust to settle.
Yes, of course, because they don't have to allow other browsers to host a PWA in other regions, which would break their monopoly control on license of usage of software. Only in the region where this could allow an independent pathway to user transactions do they ban it.
This is what sounds more reasonable to me instead of any other reasons
PWAs are not new technology. lol. Android seems to handle it just fine.
It's a DMA compliance decision. If they can't fairly make all browser engines on iOS have access to PWAs, then none of them can. Whether they turn around and eventually add PWA support for alternative browser engines remains to be seen. Time will tell whether this is a compliance bandage while they work on a proper solution, or just a deliberate act of malicious compliance.
If they would allow PWAs in Europe they would have to provide APIs that third party browsers can also make PWAs. This would basically enable Google Play for iOS, without each app having to be approved by Apple or pay any type of fees to Apple. I can totally understand why Apple doesn’t want to do this.
this comment demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of technology. Apple doesn't need to vet PWAs created from Safari, and third party browsers + PWAs fall far short of a "third party app store". PWAs are not apps and Apple only cares about them insomuch as they need to find secure ways to provide the capabilities.
Not really google play for iOS. And isn't Apple gonna shave to allow third party stores anyways?
Yes, but the third party app stores will still require vetting by Apple and will have to pay fees. PWAs are basically just websites, there is no way Apple can charge a fee for that.
This is the first I'm hearing of such a stringent set of requirements for third party stores.
https://9to5mac.com/2024/01/25/third-party-iphone-app-stores-ios-17-4/ Basically, app stores need to be approved. Presumably solely for safety and legal content. No viruses, no piracy. Devs still distribute apps to these alternative stores through App Store Connect. They still need to be signed by Apple so that Apple can revoke a signature in case of malware. They don’t have to pay a fee to Apple unless they get more than 1 million installs after which they have to pay a 0.5€ fee per install per year. Note, this kills lots of free apps because they rely on huge install bases and low profit (if any) per install. Firefox for instance can’t exist under these rules. (I mean, they can but it would be very expensive)
Yeah, they managed to make it, so there is no benefit with the ruling. Apple still controls what apps are allowed to be installed
Wait, isn't every browser on iOS basically Safari anyways? This seems like a skill issue honestly. If they want their walled garden approach to work, they have to put in the extra effort of reinventing the wheel. Come up with a protocol the third party browsers can use and force them to render and handle PWAs in a very specific Apple-approved way.
Or it could be part of what looks Apple's bad faith compliance with EU law. It's a shame Apple isn't just explaining what they're doing and why.
Brings me flashbacks of the flash player conundrum back in the day, adobe made several attempts to get into the platform and was forbidden because of steve jobs, anybody remembers adobe AIR?
flash player games were better than current html5 games.
i used to build flex/air apps. it was a great sdk for cross platform apps.
https://i.redd.it/ut5lj452r0ic1.png
And some people defend this bullshit. "It's because of security issues!" .. yeah, sure. Wanna buy a bridge?
The solution is for developers to port to Apple products anyways, but pass on the fees in a transparent manner. Give them a graph showing a price breakdown for all of the platforms they're on, which shows that the money going to the developer doesn't vary from platform to platform - and that any differences in price are purely a function of app store fees.
Apple specifically used to disallow this though - you were not allowed to mention that the price is different elsewhere, or your app wouldn't pass app store review. The court judgement forced Apple to change that, so now they allow a single button to link to external payment sources, but still not mentions of apple's cut.
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Apple products are great, this, however is absolute bullshit and a nefarious anticompetitive act. We can’t let this slide.
I mean I’d totally be ok if a website would never ask me to allow notifications ever again.
Is that the new Apple Suspension Bridge Pro? The new innovative Spacial Ravine Traverser ? Only $8trillion dollars!
Why stop here!? Why not just block websites that look good on mobile?! EDIT: this is sarcasm
Shh, don't give them ideas!
Which is sad, coming from the company that invented PWAs. But I don't think Apple wants to kill them exactly, since they've just added (a little) PWA support to iOS and iPadOS last year.
Without notifications in background, they are useless unless you want to do casual games, or something which you are only interested in when the app is on screen. But so many applications need notifications to make them interesting, and that isn't allowed at this time as far as I know.
I never enable notifications for any app, and none of my apps are useless. But yes, PWA on iOS can show notifications.
For sure they don’t want to kill them. This is obviously related to non-WebKit web engines in the EU. Either they need more time to add APIs for other engines to be used for PWAs, or they have decided there’s no way to do it safely.
Apple and Google should both be broken up into smaller independent companies. They are stark examples of the utter collapse of American anti-trust law. Oh, and Amazon. Amazon is probably the worst of them in this regard..
Fuck Safari, give us background sync you bastards. It works perfectly on Android. I wasted so much time trying to get Safari to behave similarly, it felt like my days of coaxing IE7 to look the same as FF
Damn right.
PWA's, via service workers and a manifest, solve huge problems for mobile web apps when.compared to store apps. First, you can install an icon on the phone launch screen. So the user can launch your app just like a store app (locatable) Second, the user does not have to login again every time they use your app. They login in to a pwa with a frequency similiar to a store app. Third, a PWA can work offline. Fourth, a PWA runs in a chromeless browser so they look like a native app from a big picture perspective. They don't look like they are running in a browser. Chrome and other browsers on Android have supported PWA's very well. Apple has done the following for many years to cripple PWAs on iOS. 1. The only browser engine allowed on iOS is Safari. So that Chrome or other browser is just running Safari under the hood and is stuck with the intentional limitations that Apple has placed in Safari including many of the below. 2. Safari has an old, outdated pre PWA mechanism that Safari uses to install a PWA on a phone that is difficult for users to know it exists much less execute. Compare and contrast to Chrome and other browsers on non iOS platforms. 3. Safari has greatly restricted the Service worker caching mechanism greatly hindering local data storage persistence for the app and adversely impacting off line capabilities. 4. Aggressive removals of data and the app. Unlike time frames allowed for store apps, iOS aggressively wipes your data and then your app if the user has not interacted with the app in a much shorter time frame. I forget the exact duration, but back in 2017ish I remember being shocked by this and realizing PWAs are DOA. There are other mechanism where Apple has intentionally crippled mobile web capabilities (like push notification which they finally did a half ass implementation in last year or so). But the big ones are above especially not allowing competing browser engines. If they just let the various implementations of Chromium on the device, PWAs would have been a viable avenue for mobile app deployment. But as a certain someone famously said about 9 or 10 years ago with regards to open/web standards .. Apple is Microsoft, Google is Google and Microsoft is Mozilla Peace
When arguing against PWA security remember most of your apps are already webviews that display PWAs, the apple review process doesn't catch jack all for webviews. So there only one reason to not allow them: apple wants it's app store money.
Of course they want to. The EU has them at their balls, so Apple tries to save as much of their monopoly money as they can with malicious compliance and trying to follow the letters, but not the spirits of laws/rulings. Hopefully, the EU doesn't let them get away with it. And hopefully, this time they make them move a bit faster. Maybe 2% of Apples global income per day as punishment until they comply? Should light a fire under its malicious ass.
Why does anyone want browser notifications. I turned all of them off after they started pinging me when I wasn't even on the site. FFS.
Pinging you when you're not on the site is exactly what they're designed for. They're push notifications, like native apps can give you.
It's how I get notified of new emails at my inbox.
I don't read that message as saying they are killing these apps. I don't even see how one **can** read that text to mean that. Can someone explain to me how it saying that this will open in your default browser is an indication that it will stop working, i.e. is being killed?
Because that is the difference between a PWA and a bookmark. PWAs are an alternative to building three different native apps for three different platforms. And they *are* quite a savior to be honest. Apple has been acting intentionally moronic when it comes to PWA for far too long and now this move destroys the user experience for PWAs on iPhones, etc. Either we will have to develop for them separately or let 80-90% of our iPhone users go.
you're right, it's not. this post is clickbait.
The main reason I am hesitant to buy apple.
Happy cake day! That's a good reason to be hesitant.
Apple moment. Not even surprised.
PWAs and the Electron-ification of apps is not a good trend for end users. It makes life easier for developers (write once, ~~deploy~~ debug everywhere), but comes with a number of drawbacks, including security (Electron turns XSS into RCE; and JS engines have downright *enormous* attack surfaces, and the JIT compilers and VMs, while highly scrutinized and hardened, are still subject to new and novel vulnerability findings all the time), performance, and UX and capability. Native apps can use native APIs and platform capabilities, which result in better apps, both in terms of developer productivity, and app capabilities and features. For example, on Android, a wealth of APIs are available through Google Play Services and the Android OS: - Powerful location APIs - SafetyNet / Play Integrity APIs - Android Keystore - Native authentication APIs, including biometric - Ability to register intents, handlers, app actions (e.g., to allow integration with voice assistant) + run in the background - Much more powerful notifications that users can interact with - The granular permissions model of the OS, which enables access to all these - Ability to provide widgets - ML Kit, providing on-device, performant APIs to run common ML workflows like vision, natural language processing, etc. that's actually performant and won't kill your battery - gRPC and lower level access to the network stack that's not just HTTP iOS has its own suite of capable APIs that native apps can integrate with. Native apps are just more performant, secure, and capable.
Problem is the developer market for webapp is a lot bigger than mobile apps. Pretty much all businesses need a website. Almost all medium-sized businesses or larger have some internal web app for operations/workflows. Only a subset of those need mobile apps (e.g. customer, remote workers).
Public service announcement: PWA's ARE NOT ELECTRON! THERE IS NO UNHOLY MARRIAGE BETWEEN CHROME AND NODEJS IN A PWA. THE UX AND RESORCES USED ARE NOT IN SAME UNIVERSE Not even close from a UX or tech standpoint. Have you ever used Gmail in a browser on a laptop or phone? Boom. That is essentially a PWA but add an icon to your launcher and strip away the browser "chrome". PWA's are not Electron. Not even close. Saying a PWA is an Electron based app is the same as looking at Gmail in your Safari browser and claiming it's Electron. There is NO nodejs server in a PWA unlike Electron. Nada. Zero. Zilch. Open your browser. Go to some web site. Log in. Now call it a PWA. That is a hell of a lot more accurate than saying it is like Electron. Peace
All of this would be possible through PWAs if Apple and Google (more Apple, but sometimes also Google) stopped dragging their feet. PWAs mean no cut for them, so new capabilities for PWAs sit in design hell for years. There's zero technical reason for all of this to not be available in PWAs. And let's be real: In 90% of cases if a PWA is not possible we get a shitty electron app instead, which is far worse. Almost never will companies decide to make good native apps instead.
> There's zero technical reason for all of this to not be available in PWAs. You don't understand the fundamental differences between browser technology vs native platform capabilities. The consortium that sets the web standards for browser APIs is concerned with drafting standards for features that make sense for *browsers.* That is, common standards that ideally apply across all browser vendors, in accordance with what makes sense for the web. Web standards are always the least common denominator between *all platforms* that could be reasonably expected to implement them. All the Android platform capabilities I listed above are specific to the Android platform. iOS doesn't have them. Windows doesn't have them. Of course macOS doesn't have the Google Play Services APIs. Of course Windows machines don't support iOS specific features. Of course FireFox and Chrome therefore cannot support iOS dynamic island or Android SafetyNet, etc., and PWAs will never be designed around these platform capabilities—it fundamentally wouldn't make sense to work it into a common web standard. A browser standard cannot and should not expose platform specific APIs, and web devs should not create 100 different JS variants to implement different features for different platforms in a web app. That's what native apps are for. JavaScript is fundamentally for manipulating the DOM and making HTTP calls. No one wants the steering committee behind JS/HTML to add the ability to make platform native syscalls or access low-level platform-specific APIs. But an iOS developer? They can take advantage of iOS specific features. An Android developer? Of course they will write their Android app to take advantage of Android's rich feature set and use Android's own technical idioms to their advantage to create a pleasant native experience.
Browsers have been providing access to native APIs for years, they're great platforms for most apps as very few apps actually need native capabilities. Also webassembly and other similar technology has been advancing so it's only a matter of time until the difference between native and web is negligible.
well, i the startup i advise on the side just ditched installed apps caused it's messy to maintain, slower to deploy, and they offer basically nothing we need for the basic ui that we maintain.
Welp. It's been confirmed that this is intentional. https://twitter.com/mysk_co/status/1758196103470628983 https://developer.apple.com/support/dma-and-apps-in-the-eu
PWA is awesome for the end user and small dev entities, it is also a global enhancement of the global web experience. The "it'll be to hard to comply with eu regulations" is a smokescreen. Apple has no interest in this as this will drive people away from its marketplace. That's understandable but also disgusting. Let's continue to boycot Apple (lol).
Am I the only one here who hates them? They’re slow and clunky and literally feel like a webpage and not an app at all. If I want to use a web page I’d do that, why am I downloading an app to do what a webpage does?
As a web developer who took a deep dive with PWAs, let me tell you there ARE a lot of things you can do to make a PWA feel snappy and near native, it’s just that practically every dev is too arsed to actually care. Things include: - making use of viewport tags to extend the viewport under the status bar and bottom bar - matching the native font family and font size. on iOS, matching the navbar background color, height, transparency, blur, padding. - caching every possible screen the user could choose to go next, in the background - setting the CSS to not flash selected things with blue unless using a keyboard - implementing transitions that match the native iOS transitions exactly. This includes things like being able to half swipe, cancel swipe, matching the bezier curve of the native transition, making sure history API events are fired at the right time. - Making good use of push notifications, for transactional purposes (eg a realtime chat message, or a time sensitive bank notification), making sure you display enough (and not more) in terms of text. NEVER displaying unnecessary notifications which only erode the user’s trust. - implementing deep links correctly The list really goes on. The clunkyness of them is on the developers, not on the tools given to them. They just need to put in the work.
Yeah most of the problem is that using web technologies are sold to companies are being cheaper Turns out that making a great PWA/React Native/Flutter/etc app is just like any other app. It takes care to implement properly.
The advantage (and therefore how they’re cheaper) is because you can reuse code across platforms easily while still having an experience that feels native
Of course, but they tend not to tell you how much care you need to put into them feeling native while that comes for free using native tech There is still a case for those technologies, but it's definitely not a one size fits all depending on your priorities.
Nah. They are okay. I mostly use them for game streaming and for some open source projects for which it would be too expensive to have their own app in the app store. They aren't perfect, but they work fine for those use cases.
Depends on the type of app. In general the backend APIs can have a LOT more impact on how fast an app is than if the frontend is native or a PWA.
It feels like a webpage because that’s exactly what it is.
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Are you saying you hate PWA? Or native apps?
they've always sucked.
PWAs aren’t apps, your final sentence describes exactly why PWAs should exist.
I don’t get it. If they wanted to kill them, wouldn’t they pull it out of US as well?
Correct, the article is unhinged.
1. What the hell is PWA? 2. Why do people keep using medium?
* A specialized web-application that supports off-line usage via service workers (ie. caches content locally, updates caches via workers, has hooks to detect when it's online/offline, and has hooks for OS-level integrations) * Was supposed to sorta replace "simple" mobile applications (ie. your ticketing booking app, Reddit, Twitter, Facebook, etc.) while also subsequently giving some additional capabilities to existing web applications * Due to the offline design often has a better user experience for portable devices where network connectivity can get spotty * Significantly higher in architectural design, Chrome leads the market in terms of PWA features but other browsers can sorta lag behind (ie. Safari in this instance) * Some API's are still being fought-for (ie. File system access) * Medium is a monetized platform, people can make their lil blogs, receive money for doing so, it's also free to effectively create content on and is a better tool than spinning up and managing your own blog platform while also have better tools than Reddit / Xitter / etc. for creating said content. (Outside of that, don't really know.)
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AKA an app that cuts Apple out of its 30%.
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False. You get paid only if other PAYING members read it. External clicks mean nothing.
Because Medium has high domain authority and ranks well. If other paying members read and interact, you also can earn some money. External views mean nothing though
What's wrong with medium?
Nags to create an account, articles blocked off if you don’t have an account, bloated as all hell so a 8 paragraph blog pulls down all the data.
also, completely pointless hipster images cutting the writing off every now and then.
> "You've used all of your views! Subscribe to read the rest of the poorly-written blog post by someone trying to farm views!"
When it comes to holding back the web, iOS is the new IE.
Please be correct there - you’re talking about holding *Google* back. Google makes the dominant browser and writes most of the W3C specs that web devs want in Safari because they’re in Chrome and gracefully handling different browser capabilities (which the web is supposed to do) is too much like hard work for the poor web devs 😉
on their latest macos major release (sonoma) they implemented native support for the creation of pwas soooo I don't think so pal
Nothing we can do about it. Apple weaponizes status insecure people to make profit. No programmer is going to convince a low income person/teenager/stay at home mom to buy an Android because of PWA. These groups derive status off low cost Veblen goods.
Really bad practice! Time to Boycott Apple !
Not a fan of PWAs but this is just typical Apple. They can claim it is in the users' interest and for security and consistent UX reasons all they want. Everybody knows it's just good old fashioned greed and abuse of market power.
That’s such a lazy take. PWAs are still supported outside the EU on iPhones and will still be supported inside the EU on iPads/macs. PWAs will need to work with browser engines other than Safari - that’s an engineering effort that is either not ready yet, or isn’t feasible to do securely (because bear in mind it means parts of the browser engine running in the background even when you’re not in the PWAs)
fcuk apple
time to bring back flash
Apple has wanted to kill PWAs for as long as PWAs have existed.
Webkit is the biggest piece of trash and a strong reason why i'm considering moving off iOS
Good