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> I’m guessing that Apple will start hindering web apps because the new mouse support in iPadOS is going to be such a boon to web apps. As a web developer, I'v

> I’m guessing that Apple will start hindering web apps because the new mouse support in iPadOS is going to be such a boon to web apps. As a web developer, I've never believed Apple has hindered web development on their platform, purposefully or not. They just don't spend their resources adding in WebBluetooth or whatever new API-of-the-day Google has decided to come up with. As I see it, their focus is on the user, which is why they've been slow to adopt APIs that are privacy concerns, or drain battery, or have other negative implications.

untog 7y ago
That’s a very rosy way of looking at it. iOS has had bugs with its “add to home screen” webapps that kicked around literally for years. If they were being “user first” they’d support it fully or not support it at all. Instead they implemented then neglected it.
- machello13 7y ago
  How many users even know or care about that feature?
  - untog 7y ago
    How is that relevant to the conversation? If it is so little-used as to be irrelevant then the user-first thing to do would be to remove the functionality but Apple haven’t. I can speak from personal experience that users do use it when you include specific instructions on how to use it. And it’s used in a number of corporate settings for installing webapps on an iPad.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
  - dirkgently 7y ago
    Once you take your head out of that iAss, you may see how defensive and idiotic your comment is.
- fcarraldo 7y ago
  What bugs exactly? Been using this feature for years and have never had issues with it.
  - saagarjha 7y ago
    Until a recent iOS release they had a number of undesirable features that made them a bit inconvenient to use: they used UIWebView (instead of the faster WKWebView), they "restarted" if you ever left them, and generally had a number of other quirks.
- jedieaston 7y ago
  Probably because Apple giving a crap about web apps was depreciated with the release of iPhone OS 2.0 and the App Store over a decade ago. I'd bet few users even use the "add to home screen" button outside of corporate environments that want to add a shortcut to internal sites.
  - dzhiurgis 7y ago
    Facebook messenger is good use case for web app, but zuck want's to track you so you need to install app instead...
    - enos_feedler 7y ago
      Try sending an AR video capture to someone over the web, lol
      - dzhiurgis 7y ago
        I'm sure there's more efficient ways to send text messages lol
- akmarinov 7y ago
  To be fair, they've had bugs in iOS they've kicked around for years...
- madeofpalk 7y ago
  All parts of Apple's platform has had bugs that have kicked around for literally years. Their native SDK is infamously under documented and has all sorts of bugs https://twitter.com/caseyliss/status/1171778706878160897 https://twitter.com/caseyliss/status/1171778706878160897 The bugs in Apple's software, whether in web or native or in documentation are not part of some nefarious plot, its just a part of Apple's mismanagement and relatively minimal resources.
  - MFLoon 7y ago
    > relatively minimal resources Uh, they're the most well capitalized corporation in the world (or hovering in the top 3 plus or minus a few quarters). They have the resources to make it work if they wanted. There are undoubtedly thousands of engineers, hundreds of managers, and at least a handful of execs, working for Apple, lurking in this HN thread today, not because they're unaware of their ongoing sabotage of web standards on iOS, but because they're completely aware of it and want to take the temperature on how their latest kick to the shins of PWAs is going over.
    - millstone 7y ago
      Apple really does run with very small software teams. It's cultural.
    - madeofpalk 7y ago
      I’m fully aware of how much cash Apple has, but they’re known for having very relatively small software teams looking after whatever app needs updating that release. I wouldn’t be surprised if Safari/WebKit was one of the larger teams within Apple dedicated to a single app.
    - saagarjha 7y ago
      You’re between one to two orders of magnitude off in you estimate of the size of Apple’s web technologies team.
gear54rus 7y ago
> As I see it, their focus is on the user, Oh and let me guess, they know better than me that I don't need this or that. Let them suffocate inside their poisonous wall garden as the web gets richer and richer.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- Silhouette 7y ago
  Be careful what you wish for! I don't for an instant believe that Apple's motivations here are purely for their users' benefit, but their actions do at least tend to have some beneficial effect on privacy. Letting them suffocate so Google's spyware-laden ecosystem becomes the only viable way to access the web on mobile devices would not be an improvement.
  - gear54rus 7y ago
    In my opinion only we ourselves can save ourselves from Google. By using things like AdNauseam and educating everyone and their dog about ad blockers. I don't think the way to fix ad bullshit is to close down everything, I do think it's in opening everything and educating everyone. That way people actually win, not corps, as it should be.
Silhouette 7y ago
As a web developer, I've never believed Apple has hindered web development on their platform, purposefully or not. [...] As I see it, their focus is on the user, which is why they've been slow to adopt APIs that are privacy concerns, or drain battery, or have other negative implications. As another web developer, I find this entirely unrealistic. Apple's QoI even for popular new features like the HTML5 media elements was a bug-ridden mess for years before they fixed even basic problems. Conveniently, having managed to break the de facto standard for serving video on the web that had been working for years up to that point (Flash players), that left native apps as the only reliable way to do a lot of even quite simple things you might want to do with multimedia content. There is a deep irony that some of the breakage was because they were playing those media elements through effectively a separate plugin of their own that wasn't properly integrated into Safari and consequently broke other basic web behaviours like cookies. At this point, the idea that Apple's motivations for the constant breakage and even severe regression of web functionality on iOS devices are entirely altruistic and for the benefit of their users is about as credible as Google and Facebook lobbying for privacy regulations because they want to decrease tracking on the Internet.
- madeofpalk 7y ago
  Just to be clear, Apple didn't kill Flash, mobile killed Flash. Even on the Android phones that supported Flash, it ran like shit and drained battery. Apple just never opted into that experience. This revisionist history, of seeing people wanting the proprietary Flash to come back, is crazy.
  - Silhouette 7y ago
    Just to be clear, Apple didn't kill Flash, mobile killed Flash. I don't think that generalisation is warranted. Apple refused to support Flash at all, meaning everyone who wanted to provide (among other things) audio/video content had to switch to the nascent HTML5 functionality, which was at that time and for some years afterwards inferior to Flash in almost every way except availability. In that situation, it made little sense to invest in better Flash support on Android as it was presumably seen as a dying technology. However, there was no inherent reason why Flash couldn't have been improved to use less battery in the same way that the browsers themselves were, or that Flash could not have taken advantage of better hardware support on mobile devices for computationally expensive tasks like video decoding as this became available with newer devices. This revisionist history, of seeing people wanting the proprietary Flash to come back, is crazy. There's nothing revisionist in saying that people wanted A/V content on their sites, that Flash player had been by far the dominant way of providing that content up to that point, or that the then-new HTML5 alternatives were also very poor in quality and performance on mobile for several years afterwards. Remember how for several years everyone with iPhones couldn't watch the videos on a lot of websites, and how excited people were when the big video hosting sites started adding HTML5 players and, in time, support for better codecs? Probably many of those people had no idea what Flash or HTML5 even were, so I don't suppose they did "want Flash to come back", but they certainly weren't happy that they couldn't watch videos on websites like everyone else.

untog 7y ago

That’s a very rosy way of looking at it. iOS has had bugs with its “add to home screen” webapps that kicked around literally for years. If they were being “user first” they’d support it fully or not support it at all. Instead they implemented then neglected it.

machello13 7y ago
How many users even know or care about that feature?
- untog 7y ago
  How is that relevant to the conversation? If it is so little-used as to be irrelevant then the user-first thing to do would be to remove the functionality but Apple haven’t. I can speak from personal experience that users do use it when you include specific instructions on how to use it. And it’s used in a number of corporate settings for installing webapps on an iPad.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- dirkgently 7y ago
  Once you take your head out of that iAss, you may see how defensive and idiotic your comment is.
fcarraldo 7y ago
What bugs exactly? Been using this feature for years and have never had issues with it.
- saagarjha 7y ago
  Until a recent iOS release they had a number of undesirable features that made them a bit inconvenient to use: they used UIWebView (instead of the faster WKWebView), they "restarted" if you ever left them, and generally had a number of other quirks.
jedieaston 7y ago
Probably because Apple giving a crap about web apps was depreciated with the release of iPhone OS 2.0 and the App Store over a decade ago. I'd bet few users even use the "add to home screen" button outside of corporate environments that want to add a shortcut to internal sites.
- dzhiurgis 7y ago
  Facebook messenger is good use case for web app, but zuck want's to track you so you need to install app instead...
  - enos_feedler 7y ago
    Try sending an AR video capture to someone over the web, lol
    - dzhiurgis 7y ago
      I'm sure there's more efficient ways to send text messages lol
akmarinov 7y ago
To be fair, they've had bugs in iOS they've kicked around for years...
madeofpalk 7y ago
All parts of Apple's platform has had bugs that have kicked around for literally years. Their native SDK is infamously under documented and has all sorts of bugs https://twitter.com/caseyliss/status/1171778706878160897 https://twitter.com/caseyliss/status/1171778706878160897 The bugs in Apple's software, whether in web or native or in documentation are not part of some nefarious plot, its just a part of Apple's mismanagement and relatively minimal resources.
- MFLoon 7y ago
  > relatively minimal resources Uh, they're the most well capitalized corporation in the world (or hovering in the top 3 plus or minus a few quarters). They have the resources to make it work if they wanted. There are undoubtedly thousands of engineers, hundreds of managers, and at least a handful of execs, working for Apple, lurking in this HN thread today, not because they're unaware of their ongoing sabotage of web standards on iOS, but because they're completely aware of it and want to take the temperature on how their latest kick to the shins of PWAs is going over.
  - millstone 7y ago
    Apple really does run with very small software teams. It's cultural.
  - madeofpalk 7y ago
    I’m fully aware of how much cash Apple has, but they’re known for having very relatively small software teams looking after whatever app needs updating that release. I wouldn’t be surprised if Safari/WebKit was one of the larger teams within Apple dedicated to a single app.
  - saagarjha 7y ago
    You’re between one to two orders of magnitude off in you estimate of the size of Apple’s web technologies team.

gear54rus 7y ago

> As I see it, their focus is on the user, Oh and let me guess, they know better than me that I don't need this or that. Let them suffocate inside their poisonous wall garden as the web gets richer and richer.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
Silhouette 7y ago
Be careful what you wish for! I don't for an instant believe that Apple's motivations here are purely for their users' benefit, but their actions do at least tend to have some beneficial effect on privacy. Letting them suffocate so Google's spyware-laden ecosystem becomes the only viable way to access the web on mobile devices would not be an improvement.
- gear54rus 7y ago
  In my opinion only we ourselves can save ourselves from Google. By using things like AdNauseam and educating everyone and their dog about ad blockers. I don't think the way to fix ad bullshit is to close down everything, I do think it's in opening everything and educating everyone. That way people actually win, not corps, as it should be.

Silhouette 7y ago

As a web developer, I've never believed Apple has hindered web development on their platform, purposefully or not. [...] As I see it, their focus is on the user, which is why they've been slow to adopt APIs that are privacy concerns, or drain battery, or have other negative implications. As another web developer, I find this entirely unrealistic. Apple's QoI even for popular new features like the HTML5 media elements was a bug-ridden mess for years before they fixed even basic problems. Conveniently, having managed to break the de facto standard for serving video on the web that had been working for years up to that point (Flash players), that left native apps as the only reliable way to do a lot of even quite simple things you might want to do with multimedia content. There is a deep irony that some of the breakage was because they were playing those media elements through effectively a separate plugin of their own that wasn't properly integrated into Safari and consequently broke other basic web behaviours like cookies. At this point, the idea that Apple's motivations for the constant breakage and even severe regression of web functionality on iOS devices are entirely altruistic and for the benefit of their users is about as credible as Google and Facebook lobbying for privacy regulations because they want to decrease tracking on the Internet.

madeofpalk 7y ago
Just to be clear, Apple didn't kill Flash, mobile killed Flash. Even on the Android phones that supported Flash, it ran like shit and drained battery. Apple just never opted into that experience. This revisionist history, of seeing people wanting the proprietary Flash to come back, is crazy.
- Silhouette 7y ago
  Just to be clear, Apple didn't kill Flash, mobile killed Flash. I don't think that generalisation is warranted. Apple refused to support Flash at all, meaning everyone who wanted to provide (among other things) audio/video content had to switch to the nascent HTML5 functionality, which was at that time and for some years afterwards inferior to Flash in almost every way except availability. In that situation, it made little sense to invest in better Flash support on Android as it was presumably seen as a dying technology. However, there was no inherent reason why Flash couldn't have been improved to use less battery in the same way that the browsers themselves were, or that Flash could not have taken advantage of better hardware support on mobile devices for computationally expensive tasks like video decoding as this became available with newer devices. This revisionist history, of seeing people wanting the proprietary Flash to come back, is crazy. There's nothing revisionist in saying that people wanted A/V content on their sites, that Flash player had been by far the dominant way of providing that content up to that point, or that the then-new HTML5 alternatives were also very poor in quality and performance on mobile for several years afterwards. Remember how for several years everyone with iPhones couldn't watch the videos on a lot of websites, and how excited people were when the big video hosting sites started adding HTML5 players and, in time, support for better codecs? Probably many of those people had no idea what Flash or HTML5 even were, so I don't suppose they did "want Flash to come back", but they certainly weren't happy that they couldn't watch videos on websites like everyone else.