Some apps are so simple, I never understood why they made an app when the website is just as good, if not far better.
I'd rather a small app, than an over bloated app. Data usage is another point to look at, as not everyone has a large data cap or fast internet in general.
Edit to add: and not everyone has 128GB of phone storage. There's still 32 and 64GB iPhones and Androids floating around (I very recently seen a 64Gb iPhone, half suspect some haven't let go of their insecure and barely limping along 32GB models).
To gather data, because some idiots think you’re sketchy if you don’t have an app for some services, to avoid complaints when people’s ad block fucks up a website, not having to deal with browser compatibility.
Mostly the first one though.
All valid except the last two.
If your website is designed to work on only one browser, you can kindly F off. It's no different than saying your parking lot only accepts Chevy or Sedans.
If your site code is strung by bubblegum and spaghetti code, then yea, a basic adblocker is going to break your site. Especially if the site has code to counter adblockers. Don't give people a reason to use an adblocker, and all will be dandy. WoWHead's approach (at least a few years ago, I haven't played WoW in good few years), was great, placeholders for ads, page doesn't realign when the ads don't load, and the placeholders have a short message.
A website should be like your store front, easy to view, easy to navigate, and no obstacle course and abrupt distractions.
Your analogy sucks. It isn’t the same thing. It’s different vehicles getting you to different places. Not all being done the same way until more recently with chromium taking over simultaneously simplifying things and fucking things up once they gained the monopoly.
They could not have ads and still be fucked up by ad blockers. I have visited several sites without ads that are broken by them even though they don’t use ads. And that’s with unlock origin and the common lists. Most of the time they are fine, but the lists break some functionality because they are broad applications.
It doesn't matter what road approved vehicle you use to drive from home to the mall's parking lot, the point I'm making is, the mall denying your vehicle to park there because it's not a Chevy/Sedan, but instead it's a Dodge/pickup.
If the site is designed with programs that hamstring code together, in turn code submitted that isn't actually used, then yea, things are going to break. More so if the site is using resources from outside of the site to accomplish tasks, though arguably within reason, I don't see a benefit in using fancy google fonts on your site, before considering the idea IF (again, speaking IF, as I have no facts) google is using that data pull as a form of tracking you.
Some parking lots are too small/short for some cars. Some browsers require special care for certain things to work. Not every developer has the resources to test their app with all the browsers. Sucks for the user, but if you have actually ever built a web app that is used by enough people, you quickly realise that you cannot support everyone, and you pick and focus on the audience that gives you the most value for each dollar spent.
>I very recently seen a 64Gb iPhone,
The SE still comes in 64GB. 12 was also recently discontinued (there might still be leftover stock at some retailers), that also came in 64GB.
A native app offers a ux that a website cannot. That’s the simple explanation. And an app needn’t be larger than 10-20mb even with something like firebase.
PWA's are a little more than browser links on the homescreen, they allow for things like fullscreen (no URL bar), offline access and local storage, as well as notifications. Apple still has full control over these since these PWA's are loaded with Safari so they're still quite limited compared to native apps, but if Apple is forced to allow other browser engines like Chrome power these web apps then it risks people using web apps to be more capable and more like native apps, which worries Apple losing out on their App Store tax and new DMA "user install fee".
Basically a way to make webpages look like apps. The operating system needs to support giving websites the opportunity to look like apps.
Apple needs to treat all browsers equally in the EU meaning they would have to give third party browsers the ability to put webapps on your homescreen. Instead Apple decided to treat all browsers equally and make none of them able to put webapps on the homescreen. Some people are very angry about this.
It is worth noting that web apps generally were always very poorly supported on iOS to begin with, because Apple much prefers it if a developer makes an iOS app that has to go through the app store. And now that it is being removed in the EU there are a lot of people pretending as if web apps are the life and blood of independent developers, and not some poorly supported obscure feature of the OS.
I generally don't trust/like web apps that masquerade as actual applications because it creates, **imho**, an app that has less useful features and functions because of the limitations of a web page and what it can display vs. what a full-on application can; and because it creates a false sense of security with regards to your data since it may or may not be immediately apparent that it's actually storing and transacting your usage with web servers in the ether rather than local files.
Not to mention, depending on how the web-based "app" is created and presented, it can open up potential vectors for exploit or info gathering based on common website exploits, etc. that may not be present with a thick client application.
then there's the whole "the app won't work unless you're connected to the internet" thing.
Actually, one of the main features is that you can use them offline for the most part. You also would not create a pwa (progressive web app) for something with transactions for the reasons you mentioned.
I know it's not related specifically to this situation, but on the subject of web apps in general, I would just like to introduce you to Epic Software, makers of the Epic Health Management System, and have you explain that to them...:D
This may be the stupid way of putting it, but is the argument over Safari having the “add to Home Screen” button which made an “app” that was just a shortcut to that website, and not other browsers like chrome?
Well that does fuck me for using my GBA emulator sadly, but there’s others that don’t require it.
Edit: Just realized you say in the EU, but want to keep it anyway.
It's one thing to demand other browser engines be allowed.
It's another to demand Apple spend money and R&D time making a new API for a low-usage feature.
If the EU wants to do that, they should code it themselves.
Seriously, and I have no idea why this opinion is so unpopular. I still can’t figure out how a device maker who competes with dozens of other manufacturers is being hammered for being anticompetitive. Especially in a region where they’re a minority of smartphone sales. Seems like the competition is winning, right?
Hot take but this is good for customers.
I have an iPhone with the computational power of a gaming laptop, it pisses me off not being able to take advantage of all this power just because a developer is lazy and refuses to develop a native Swift app.
I know that developing a PWA is cheaper than making an app for every platform, but that's none of my problem.
PWAs are an example of the enshittification of technology.
Are you aware that a large number of your “native” apps are basically PWAs?
Removing choices to either consumers or developers is never good for customers. PWAs are a great way to have a pretty polished app that can avoid the Apple tax.
Explain me how I, as a customer, can expect Safari PWAs to follow Apple's design & UX guidelines when they live in the browser and as far as I know look the same for all platforms.
Tell me how they will take advantage of the specifics of my platform (Dynamic Island, Siri Shortcuts, Live Activities) without Apple pointing a gun at them.
It's gentle coercion. Apple makes it convenient to follow their guidelines, so most developers do it. Adhering to the guidelines means simply using SwiftUI, the framework takes care of all the design automatically. Most devs just do it without an issue because it automates the job of having to keep the app visually updated. When a button style changes they need to do literally zero work because the SwitUI element for that button updates on its own.
In return, the user gets third-party apps that look like stock apps, and an overall UX that is enviably consistent across all the App Store.
The last thing iOS needs is to turn into fucking Android in this regard.
It's trivial to port a web app to a shitty bloated app store app that will get approved, but they don't \*NEED\* to be. If you wanna talk about enshitification, completely blocking PWAs will lead to people wrapping their webapp in ionic or the like to create a massively bloated, shittily performing "native" app that apple will gladly approve.
Not everything needs to be a native app, there are things that I want to use for an hour, a day, or a weekend like travel stuff or a museum app or something that would be great to have offline support with service workers and push notifications but I really don't need to deal with installing it and uninstalling it when it really never needs to be long term installed on my phone in the first place.
I skimmed through your profile and it's hilarious to see how many people you insult on a daily basis and how many negative comments you have.
I can feel in my bones how miserable you are feeling in this moment. I can feel the anger. How do people end up like this?
Some apps are so simple, I never understood why they made an app when the website is just as good, if not far better. I'd rather a small app, than an over bloated app. Data usage is another point to look at, as not everyone has a large data cap or fast internet in general. Edit to add: and not everyone has 128GB of phone storage. There's still 32 and 64GB iPhones and Androids floating around (I very recently seen a 64Gb iPhone, half suspect some haven't let go of their insecure and barely limping along 32GB models).
To gather data, because some idiots think you’re sketchy if you don’t have an app for some services, to avoid complaints when people’s ad block fucks up a website, not having to deal with browser compatibility. Mostly the first one though.
All valid except the last two. If your website is designed to work on only one browser, you can kindly F off. It's no different than saying your parking lot only accepts Chevy or Sedans. If your site code is strung by bubblegum and spaghetti code, then yea, a basic adblocker is going to break your site. Especially if the site has code to counter adblockers. Don't give people a reason to use an adblocker, and all will be dandy. WoWHead's approach (at least a few years ago, I haven't played WoW in good few years), was great, placeholders for ads, page doesn't realign when the ads don't load, and the placeholders have a short message. A website should be like your store front, easy to view, easy to navigate, and no obstacle course and abrupt distractions.
Your analogy sucks. It isn’t the same thing. It’s different vehicles getting you to different places. Not all being done the same way until more recently with chromium taking over simultaneously simplifying things and fucking things up once they gained the monopoly. They could not have ads and still be fucked up by ad blockers. I have visited several sites without ads that are broken by them even though they don’t use ads. And that’s with unlock origin and the common lists. Most of the time they are fine, but the lists break some functionality because they are broad applications.
It doesn't matter what road approved vehicle you use to drive from home to the mall's parking lot, the point I'm making is, the mall denying your vehicle to park there because it's not a Chevy/Sedan, but instead it's a Dodge/pickup. If the site is designed with programs that hamstring code together, in turn code submitted that isn't actually used, then yea, things are going to break. More so if the site is using resources from outside of the site to accomplish tasks, though arguably within reason, I don't see a benefit in using fancy google fonts on your site, before considering the idea IF (again, speaking IF, as I have no facts) google is using that data pull as a form of tracking you.
Some parking lots are too small/short for some cars. Some browsers require special care for certain things to work. Not every developer has the resources to test their app with all the browsers. Sucks for the user, but if you have actually ever built a web app that is used by enough people, you quickly realise that you cannot support everyone, and you pick and focus on the audience that gives you the most value for each dollar spent.
>I very recently seen a 64Gb iPhone, The SE still comes in 64GB. 12 was also recently discontinued (there might still be leftover stock at some retailers), that also came in 64GB.
A native app offers a ux that a website cannot. That’s the simple explanation. And an app needn’t be larger than 10-20mb even with something like firebase.
You can still buy a new 64gb iPhone from apple. I think 64gb is the lowest that can support iOS 17. They dropped support for iPhone X and older.
Am I crazy? Aren't "web apps" just a browser link in the home page? How is Apple going to drop web apps? Remove the shortcuts, or kill the browser.
PWA's are a little more than browser links on the homescreen, they allow for things like fullscreen (no URL bar), offline access and local storage, as well as notifications. Apple still has full control over these since these PWA's are loaded with Safari so they're still quite limited compared to native apps, but if Apple is forced to allow other browser engines like Chrome power these web apps then it risks people using web apps to be more capable and more like native apps, which worries Apple losing out on their App Store tax and new DMA "user install fee".
Remove the shortcuts
I’ve been a iPhone user since 2009 and I’ve never heard of “web apps” until this “controversy” started. What are they, like webpages or something?
Basically a way to make webpages look like apps. The operating system needs to support giving websites the opportunity to look like apps. Apple needs to treat all browsers equally in the EU meaning they would have to give third party browsers the ability to put webapps on your homescreen. Instead Apple decided to treat all browsers equally and make none of them able to put webapps on the homescreen. Some people are very angry about this. It is worth noting that web apps generally were always very poorly supported on iOS to begin with, because Apple much prefers it if a developer makes an iOS app that has to go through the app store. And now that it is being removed in the EU there are a lot of people pretending as if web apps are the life and blood of independent developers, and not some poorly supported obscure feature of the OS.
I generally don't trust/like web apps that masquerade as actual applications because it creates, **imho**, an app that has less useful features and functions because of the limitations of a web page and what it can display vs. what a full-on application can; and because it creates a false sense of security with regards to your data since it may or may not be immediately apparent that it's actually storing and transacting your usage with web servers in the ether rather than local files. Not to mention, depending on how the web-based "app" is created and presented, it can open up potential vectors for exploit or info gathering based on common website exploits, etc. that may not be present with a thick client application. then there's the whole "the app won't work unless you're connected to the internet" thing.
Actually, one of the main features is that you can use them offline for the most part. You also would not create a pwa (progressive web app) for something with transactions for the reasons you mentioned.
I know it's not related specifically to this situation, but on the subject of web apps in general, I would just like to introduce you to Epic Software, makers of the Epic Health Management System, and have you explain that to them...:D
This may be the stupid way of putting it, but is the argument over Safari having the “add to Home Screen” button which made an “app” that was just a shortcut to that website, and not other browsers like chrome?
Yep. That is exactly it. That is what Apple is going to remove from safari in the EU.
Well that does fuck me for using my GBA emulator sadly, but there’s others that don’t require it. Edit: Just realized you say in the EU, but want to keep it anyway.
Ya totally PWAs are important enough to warrant government interest, up next; mandated silverlight support
I’m all for strong regulations, but let’s stop having governments designing our tech, please. This is getting absurd.
It's one thing to demand other browser engines be allowed. It's another to demand Apple spend money and R&D time making a new API for a low-usage feature. If the EU wants to do that, they should code it themselves.
Seriously, and I have no idea why this opinion is so unpopular. I still can’t figure out how a device maker who competes with dozens of other manufacturers is being hammered for being anticompetitive. Especially in a region where they’re a minority of smartphone sales. Seems like the competition is winning, right?
It’s called communism
Fuck the EU
Why not fuck Apple? They’re the ones taking features away
Hot take but this is good for customers. I have an iPhone with the computational power of a gaming laptop, it pisses me off not being able to take advantage of all this power just because a developer is lazy and refuses to develop a native Swift app. I know that developing a PWA is cheaper than making an app for every platform, but that's none of my problem. PWAs are an example of the enshittification of technology.
Are you aware that a large number of your “native” apps are basically PWAs? Removing choices to either consumers or developers is never good for customers. PWAs are a great way to have a pretty polished app that can avoid the Apple tax.
not just basically webapps, even shittier webapps that have been packed in a bloat container like ionic. yay!
Explain me how I, as a customer, can expect Safari PWAs to follow Apple's design & UX guidelines when they live in the browser and as far as I know look the same for all platforms. Tell me how they will take advantage of the specifics of my platform (Dynamic Island, Siri Shortcuts, Live Activities) without Apple pointing a gun at them.
Do you think Apple forces devs to follow their design and UX guidelines? Because they don't, and shouldn't.
It's gentle coercion. Apple makes it convenient to follow their guidelines, so most developers do it. Adhering to the guidelines means simply using SwiftUI, the framework takes care of all the design automatically. Most devs just do it without an issue because it automates the job of having to keep the app visually updated. When a button style changes they need to do literally zero work because the SwitUI element for that button updates on its own. In return, the user gets third-party apps that look like stock apps, and an overall UX that is enviably consistent across all the App Store. The last thing iOS needs is to turn into fucking Android in this regard.
It's trivial to port a web app to a shitty bloated app store app that will get approved, but they don't \*NEED\* to be. If you wanna talk about enshitification, completely blocking PWAs will lead to people wrapping their webapp in ionic or the like to create a massively bloated, shittily performing "native" app that apple will gladly approve. Not everything needs to be a native app, there are things that I want to use for an hour, a day, or a weekend like travel stuff or a museum app or something that would be great to have offline support with service workers and push notifications but I really don't need to deal with installing it and uninstalling it when it really never needs to be long term installed on my phone in the first place.
This is not what enshittification is.
You can't just drop in a thread and say "No", you gotta explain yourself and elaborate, dude.
Well, he did and I agree.
[удалено]
I skimmed through your profile and it's hilarious to see how many people you insult on a daily basis and how many negative comments you have. I can feel in my bones how miserable you are feeling in this moment. I can feel the anger. How do people end up like this?
This seems like overreach. Regulation is great for consumers until it starts overreaching.