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Imagine if you install Pandora as a PWA. It's now on your homescreen. You launch it. You start playing some music. Now you switch over to Twitter. Woops! The au

by judah 9y ago

Imagine if you install Pandora as a PWA. It's now on your homescreen. You launch it. You start playing some music. Now you switch over to Twitter. Woops! The audio stopped playing. You bring Pandora back to the fore. It reloads and starts playing a different song. Worse, there's no way to fix that. That's how it's supposed to work. This is the state of PWAs on iOS.

scarface74 9y ago
And Pandora chose that it was worth the trade off in time and resources to create a better native experience it seems like a win for users.
hamiltonkibbe 9y ago
Imagine you install $ANYTHING as a PWA. It's now on your homescreen, you launch it. You do $THING. now you switch to twitter. Now the PWA -- in the background -- loads some ad with an autoplaying video and now theres ad audio coming from ... well, you're not sure where, but it doesn't seem like it's coming from twitter. now you have to go find it and stop it. Meanwhile bitcoinminer.js is burning through your battery in the background because those video ads just weren't quite enough revenue. I'm not sure which one sounds worse.
- judah 9y ago
  Stepping back a moment, it's worth noting that this was Steve Jobs' original vision for the iPhone: “The full Safari engine is inside of iPhone. And so, you can write amazing Web 2.0 and Ajax apps that look exactly and behave exactly like apps on the iPhone. And these apps can integrate perfectly with iPhone services. They can make a call, they can send an email, they can look up a location on Google Maps.” Here we are, a decade later, and Apple has not only abandoned that vision, they are actively working against it by preventing web apps from becoming first-class citizens on their platform. I mean, consider an app that does 2FA. "To sign in, please enter the code sent to your mobile device." You switch over to Messenger, and...wooops! Your app just reloaded its home page, and the auth prompt is gone. Surely, any rational person can see this is too restrictive. Perhaps Apple will loosen these restrictions in the future. Yes, as you point out, there is the potential for abuse. But that's already there with native apps. The things you just mentioned can -- and have -- been done with native apps.
  - saagarjha 9y ago
    > it's worth noting that this was Steve Jobs' original vision for the iPhone One which they quickly backtracked on after realizing that it needlessly restricted what apps could do, and one which they could not shoehorn security into.
  - hamiltonkibbe 9y ago
    So now there's some awesome PWA api giving you all those native features, and a permissions model, and so you install SUPERPHONE app, and that needs access to your contacts and to make and receive calls, and you say "ok, yeah this is a better phone app so those are reasonable". Now everything running JS in the context of $SUPERPHONE_DOMAIN or whatever has these new permissions. superphone pwa's calls to window.PwaGetContacts() and window.PwaMakeCall() work and everyone's happy, and your phone really is super now. the app shows a banner ad from google and you're cool with that because it was free, and hey, developers need to eat too. Someone who makes ads figures out that ads can run JS. So your app pulls down an ad from some ad network and that ad has some cool JS that detects that those functions are available and starts calling all your friends from your phone and telling them that "`window.PwaGetOwnerName()` is really excited about LinkedIn and wants you to be their contact" after uploading your contact list to every 3rd party data broker that would pay for it. well, that sucks, maybe there's a better way to limit the code that can run on your phone with specific permissions
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - myguysi 9y ago
    That vision was abandoned while Jobs was still around. It was a way to bootstrap the first wave of apps but Apple’s principles of quality and security mean it’s not feasible. I’ll be really disappointed if they give in to the PWA movement and sacrifice those principles. I don’t quite understand what the issue with native apps is in all honesty?
    - fnordsensei 9y ago
      Yes, this is not a betrayal of Steve Jobs' legacy. It's just that it is an ideal that came into contact with the reality. The phishing industry is doing well for itself, and there's no sign of the scamming factories shutting down anytime soon.
FridgeSeal 9y ago
If I wanted functionality past the most basic kind, then I would use the full, native app. Web apps are not a sufficient replacement for a proper application and if a developer can't be bothered building an app properly then they shouldn't be surprised when I don't use it.
- thomasz 9y ago
  This is circular reasoning. Web Apps are not a replacement for a proper application because they are being sabotaged.
  - FridgeSeal 9y ago
    Ok, put it this way: they should be sabotaged if they're never going to be as good as native apps. Seeing as they're not going to be, and Apple has standards for how it's phone behaves and the quality of the ecosystem, I have no problems with them essentially insisting that developers build proper apps.
    - TheCoelacanth 9y ago
      They're never going to be as good because Apple is sabotaging them. A web app has many advantages over a native app. That is why people visit websites instead of installing an app for every website.
      - FridgeSeal 9y ago
        Almost literally by definition, a webapp isn't going to be as good as a proper application. If one of the advantages is "front end guys don't have to learn another language" I'm starting to be of the opinion that that's their reticence to use the proper tools, rather than the inherent superiority of JS. People visit websites because many of them don't need to be apps. I don't need an app (webapp or otherwise) for each of the half/dozen sites I visit once a week. That's just clutter and wasted space, and in the case of a web-app, clutter, wasted space and a shitty app that's no better than simply visiting the website directly.

by judah 9y ago

scarface74 9y ago

And Pandora chose that it was worth the trade off in time and resources to create a better native experience it seems like a win for users.

hamiltonkibbe 9y ago

Imagine you install $ANYTHING as a PWA. It's now on your homescreen, you launch it. You do $THING. now you switch to twitter. Now the PWA -- in the background -- loads some ad with an autoplaying video and now theres ad audio coming from ... well, you're not sure where, but it doesn't seem like it's coming from twitter. now you have to go find it and stop it. Meanwhile bitcoinminer.js is burning through your battery in the background because those video ads just weren't quite enough revenue. I'm not sure which one sounds worse.

judah 9y ago
Stepping back a moment, it's worth noting that this was Steve Jobs' original vision for the iPhone: “The full Safari engine is inside of iPhone. And so, you can write amazing Web 2.0 and Ajax apps that look exactly and behave exactly like apps on the iPhone. And these apps can integrate perfectly with iPhone services. They can make a call, they can send an email, they can look up a location on Google Maps.” Here we are, a decade later, and Apple has not only abandoned that vision, they are actively working against it by preventing web apps from becoming first-class citizens on their platform. I mean, consider an app that does 2FA. "To sign in, please enter the code sent to your mobile device." You switch over to Messenger, and...wooops! Your app just reloaded its home page, and the auth prompt is gone. Surely, any rational person can see this is too restrictive. Perhaps Apple will loosen these restrictions in the future. Yes, as you point out, there is the potential for abuse. But that's already there with native apps. The things you just mentioned can -- and have -- been done with native apps.
- saagarjha 9y ago
  > it's worth noting that this was Steve Jobs' original vision for the iPhone One which they quickly backtracked on after realizing that it needlessly restricted what apps could do, and one which they could not shoehorn security into.
- hamiltonkibbe 9y ago
  So now there's some awesome PWA api giving you all those native features, and a permissions model, and so you install SUPERPHONE app, and that needs access to your contacts and to make and receive calls, and you say "ok, yeah this is a better phone app so those are reasonable". Now everything running JS in the context of $SUPERPHONE_DOMAIN or whatever has these new permissions. superphone pwa's calls to window.PwaGetContacts() and window.PwaMakeCall() work and everyone's happy, and your phone really is super now. the app shows a banner ad from google and you're cool with that because it was free, and hey, developers need to eat too. Someone who makes ads figures out that ads can run JS. So your app pulls down an ad from some ad network and that ad has some cool JS that detects that those functions are available and starts calling all your friends from your phone and telling them that "`window.PwaGetOwnerName()` is really excited about LinkedIn and wants you to be their contact" after uploading your contact list to every 3rd party data broker that would pay for it. well, that sucks, maybe there's a better way to limit the code that can run on your phone with specific permissions
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- myguysi 9y ago
  That vision was abandoned while Jobs was still around. It was a way to bootstrap the first wave of apps but Apple’s principles of quality and security mean it’s not feasible. I’ll be really disappointed if they give in to the PWA movement and sacrifice those principles. I don’t quite understand what the issue with native apps is in all honesty?
  - fnordsensei 9y ago
    Yes, this is not a betrayal of Steve Jobs' legacy. It's just that it is an ideal that came into contact with the reality. The phishing industry is doing well for itself, and there's no sign of the scamming factories shutting down anytime soon.

FridgeSeal 9y ago

If I wanted functionality past the most basic kind, then I would use the full, native app. Web apps are not a sufficient replacement for a proper application and if a developer can't be bothered building an app properly then they shouldn't be surprised when I don't use it.

thomasz 9y ago
This is circular reasoning. Web Apps are not a replacement for a proper application because they are being sabotaged.
- FridgeSeal 9y ago
  Ok, put it this way: they should be sabotaged if they're never going to be as good as native apps. Seeing as they're not going to be, and Apple has standards for how it's phone behaves and the quality of the ecosystem, I have no problems with them essentially insisting that developers build proper apps.
  - TheCoelacanth 9y ago
    They're never going to be as good because Apple is sabotaging them. A web app has many advantages over a native app. That is why people visit websites instead of installing an app for every website.
    - FridgeSeal 9y ago
      Almost literally by definition, a webapp isn't going to be as good as a proper application. If one of the advantages is "front end guys don't have to learn another language" I'm starting to be of the opinion that that's their reticence to use the proper tools, rather than the inherent superiority of JS. People visit websites because many of them don't need to be apps. I don't need an app (webapp or otherwise) for each of the half/dozen sites I visit once a week. That's just clutter and wasted space, and in the case of a web-app, clutter, wasted space and a shitty app that's no better than simply visiting the website directly.