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Is anything stopping people from going all-in HTML5 and not even worry about having a presence in the app store?

ChrisAntaki 7y ago
Sadly, Apple almost seems to purposefully keeps mobile Safari buggy for HTML5 apps. You might think, why not install Firefox or Chrome on iOS then? Well, turns out Apple only allows those apps to use an outdated version of Safari as their browser engine. Here's a regression that appeared in iOS 10, which affects HTML5 games. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/37808180/disable-viewport-zooming-ios-10-safari/45496370 https://stackoverflow.com/questions/37808180/disable-viewpor...
- reaperducer 7y ago
  Apple almost seems to purposefully keeps mobile Safari buggy for HTML5 apps Then your HTML5 app is broken. Back before there was an App Store, when all "apps" were web apps, I wrote one of the first non-Apple weather apps for the iPhone. It included animated radar, weather alerts, hurricane tracking, and even streaming audio from a real meteorologist. And this was more than a decade ago, on bog-standard launch-day iPhones. It was even featured by Apple back when it had a directory of iPhone web apps. Mobile web apps could be really incredible with today's technology, if so many of them weren't crammed with unnecessary/lazy/stupid garbage.
writepub 7y ago
Better user experience. Certain things are better, faster, etc. as a native app. Apple's policies are rooted in totalitarianism and greed. As both developers and consumers we shouldn't be enabling them. You really should be asking the reverse, what motivated Apple to block software from running freely on their phones. After all, their marketing campaign for a whole decade was how secure their non-locked-up Mac was compared to a PC, so we know security isn't the driving force here
- scarface74 7y ago
  Despite the outcry on HN, few users care about Apple’s “walled garden”.
  - api 7y ago
    iOS with its total walled garden and curated App Store is great for non-computer-people. What we're seeing is the bifurcation of computing into devices and software for computer aficionados, programmers, hobbyists, and others who want a "real computer" and devices and software for people who don't know much about computers and don't really care about them beyond using them for communication, entertainment, etc. I don't see anything inherently wrong with that as long as the stuff you can hack is still around and readily available. As it stands that's definitely true. I can still buy laptops and desktops that I can run anything I want on, and a Raspberry Pi 4 is $40. Curiously Apple's other machine and OS, the Mac, straddles both worlds. You can use a Mac almost like an iOS device with apps from the App Store, or you can use it almost the way you'd use a Linux desktop.
    - scarface74 7y ago
      And there is a lot to be said about purpose built devices. I enjoy the experience of my Apple TV much more than the Mac Mini I had connected to my TV in 2006. I’m debating about getting either a NAS that is powerful enough to transcode to run Plex or an Nvidia Shield as a dedicated Plex server.

Sadly, Apple almost seems to purposefully keeps mobile Safari buggy for HTML5 apps. You might think, why not install Firefox or Chrome on iOS then? Well, turns out Apple only allows those apps to use an outdated version of Safari as their browser engine. Here's a regression that appeared in iOS 10, which affects HTML5 games. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/37808180/disable-viewport-zooming-ios-10-safari/45496370 https://stackoverflow.com/questions/37808180/disable-viewpor...

reaperducer 7y ago
Apple almost seems to purposefully keeps mobile Safari buggy for HTML5 apps Then your HTML5 app is broken. Back before there was an App Store, when all "apps" were web apps, I wrote one of the first non-Apple weather apps for the iPhone. It included animated radar, weather alerts, hurricane tracking, and even streaming audio from a real meteorologist. And this was more than a decade ago, on bog-standard launch-day iPhones. It was even featured by Apple back when it had a directory of iPhone web apps. Mobile web apps could be really incredible with today's technology, if so many of them weren't crammed with unnecessary/lazy/stupid garbage.

writepub 7y ago

Better user experience. Certain things are better, faster, etc. as a native app. Apple's policies are rooted in totalitarianism and greed. As both developers and consumers we shouldn't be enabling them. You really should be asking the reverse, what motivated Apple to block software from running freely on their phones. After all, their marketing campaign for a whole decade was how secure their non-locked-up Mac was compared to a PC, so we know security isn't the driving force here

scarface74 7y ago
Despite the outcry on HN, few users care about Apple’s “walled garden”.
- api 7y ago
  iOS with its total walled garden and curated App Store is great for non-computer-people. What we're seeing is the bifurcation of computing into devices and software for computer aficionados, programmers, hobbyists, and others who want a "real computer" and devices and software for people who don't know much about computers and don't really care about them beyond using them for communication, entertainment, etc. I don't see anything inherently wrong with that as long as the stuff you can hack is still around and readily available. As it stands that's definitely true. I can still buy laptops and desktops that I can run anything I want on, and a Raspberry Pi 4 is $40. Curiously Apple's other machine and OS, the Mac, straddles both worlds. You can use a Mac almost like an iOS device with apps from the App Store, or you can use it almost the way you'd use a Linux desktop.
  - scarface74 7y ago
    And there is a lot to be said about purpose built devices. I enjoy the experience of my Apple TV much more than the Mac Mini I had connected to my TV in 2006. I’m debating about getting either a NAS that is powerful enough to transcode to run Plex or an Nvidia Shield as a dedicated Plex server.