4 ms·

It's not even legal departments having a fight, it's Tim Sweeney tilting at windmills I 100% believe that 3rd party app stores is a hill Apple is willing to di

by fooey 6y ago

It's not even legal departments having a fight, it's Tim Sweeney tilting at windmills I 100% believe that 3rd party app stores is a hill Apple is willing to die on. I would guess they're more likely to get rid of "apps" entirely than open up their ecosystem.

TotempaaltJ 6y ago
> would guess they're more likely to get rid of "apps" entirely than open up their ecosystem. You believe they'd rather give up the iPhone than compromise on a more consumer-friendly ecosystem policy?
- DaiPlusPlus 6y ago
  The iPhone had PWAs (under a different name) before it had the App Store though. I'd wager most App Store apps on the iPhone could be ported-over to PWA and retain 90% of their functionality - and people would still buy the iPhone. Looking at my Settings > Screen Time history for the past week, these are the apps I use the most (in no particular order) and how I feel they would work as a PWA: 1. Microsoft iOS Remote Desktop Client: this could be a PWA with a WebSocket+<canvas>-based interaction surface. 2. Twitter: there's nothing I use in the iOS native app that can't be done in their web-app. 3. Google Maps: I think I'd be okay if I had to use the built-in Apple Maps instead. 4. Telegram / WhatsApp / Slack etc: Apps like these can't be used offline anyway, so being PWAs web-apps is also fine. As Slack is an Electron App (on Windows at least) then porting it over to a PWA is straightforward. 5. Authy / Google Authenticator / Azure Authenticator: I'll admit this is one that can't be done properly as a PWA right now because there's no way to reliably and securely persist client-side secrets. 6. Star Walk: this is one that can't be PWA: while the 3D world can be rendered in a WebGL <canvas>, it needs a large offline data cache and PWAs can only store 50MB presently (and that's 50MB as text, not binary data). Most of the other apps I use are Apple's own or built-in to the device (iWork, Notes, Camera, iMessage, Mail, etc). As for games: I stopped buying and installing iOS games on my phone and iPad a few years ago because there's no way to reliably download and "keep" games and apps you've bought indefinitely (e.g. as IPA files). Once a publisher removes an app or game from the App Store and you've removed it from your phone then you're SOL - you will get a refund if you contact iTunes Customer Support, but I view games as art - and the idea for a games publisher to unilaterally prevent me from accessing content I've paid for is horrible and reeks of Orwell's Memory Hole. (Besides games-as-art that I've bought... and lost, the only other types of games I see in the stores are crass freemium bollocks - and I won't let myself get hooked on that business model). (I think the last game I ever got from the App Store was "Rainbrow" ( https://apps.apple.com/us/app/rainbrow/id1312458558 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/rainbrow/id1312458558 ) - which was an experimental game using the then-new iPhone X's face detection camera where you move a character on-screen using your eyebrows - that was almost 3 years ago).
  - speedgoose 6y ago
    PWA are super broken on iOs because Apple want you to publish a webview in their appstore, so they don't care about maintaining the PWA APIs.
    - DaiPlusPlus 6y ago
      WebView support and PWA support largely both depend on the same set of functionality (disregarding Cordova/PhoneGap). If Apple decides to arbitrarily disable some functionality in PWAs but not in-app WebViews then they're going to have a hard-time defending that, as all new web-standards specifications are built around privacy in-mind (as that seems to be Apple's overriding reason for not implementing some web-standard specification that benefits PWAs).
  - read_if_gay_ 6y ago
    If there only are PWAs, then there's no store and no 30% cut and so Epic wins I guess? They'd "just" need to port UE4 to WASM
    - DaiPlusPlus 6y ago
      Already done: https://docs.unrealengine.com/en-US/Platforms/HTML5/GettingStarted/index.html https://docs.unrealengine.com/en-US/Platforms/HTML5/GettingS... But PWAs aren't really suitable for Unreal Engine because of Apple's 50MB size-limit.
- dandellion 6y ago
  Maybe. We're talking about the same company that only allows their software to run on their own hardware. It looks like having full control of the entire user experience is a sacred rule that they must never break.
  - wilsonnb3 6y ago
    They break it sometimes - iCloud and iTunes on Windows, Apple Music on Android.
sheeshkebab 6y ago
And honestly, getting rid of apps would do wonders to the openness that all these app developers are complaining about.

by fooey 6y ago

TotempaaltJ 6y ago

> would guess they're more likely to get rid of "apps" entirely than open up their ecosystem. You believe they'd rather give up the iPhone than compromise on a more consumer-friendly ecosystem policy?

DaiPlusPlus 6y ago
The iPhone had PWAs (under a different name) before it had the App Store though. I'd wager most App Store apps on the iPhone could be ported-over to PWA and retain 90% of their functionality - and people would still buy the iPhone. Looking at my Settings > Screen Time history for the past week, these are the apps I use the most (in no particular order) and how I feel they would work as a PWA: 1. Microsoft iOS Remote Desktop Client: this could be a PWA with a WebSocket+<canvas>-based interaction surface. 2. Twitter: there's nothing I use in the iOS native app that can't be done in their web-app. 3. Google Maps: I think I'd be okay if I had to use the built-in Apple Maps instead. 4. Telegram / WhatsApp / Slack etc: Apps like these can't be used offline anyway, so being PWAs web-apps is also fine. As Slack is an Electron App (on Windows at least) then porting it over to a PWA is straightforward. 5. Authy / Google Authenticator / Azure Authenticator: I'll admit this is one that can't be done properly as a PWA right now because there's no way to reliably and securely persist client-side secrets. 6. Star Walk: this is one that can't be PWA: while the 3D world can be rendered in a WebGL <canvas>, it needs a large offline data cache and PWAs can only store 50MB presently (and that's 50MB as text, not binary data). Most of the other apps I use are Apple's own or built-in to the device (iWork, Notes, Camera, iMessage, Mail, etc). As for games: I stopped buying and installing iOS games on my phone and iPad a few years ago because there's no way to reliably download and "keep" games and apps you've bought indefinitely (e.g. as IPA files). Once a publisher removes an app or game from the App Store and you've removed it from your phone then you're SOL - you will get a refund if you contact iTunes Customer Support, but I view games as art - and the idea for a games publisher to unilaterally prevent me from accessing content I've paid for is horrible and reeks of Orwell's Memory Hole. (Besides games-as-art that I've bought... and lost, the only other types of games I see in the stores are crass freemium bollocks - and I won't let myself get hooked on that business model). (I think the last game I ever got from the App Store was "Rainbrow" ( https://apps.apple.com/us/app/rainbrow/id1312458558 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/rainbrow/id1312458558 ) - which was an experimental game using the then-new iPhone X's face detection camera where you move a character on-screen using your eyebrows - that was almost 3 years ago).
- speedgoose 6y ago
  PWA are super broken on iOs because Apple want you to publish a webview in their appstore, so they don't care about maintaining the PWA APIs.
  - DaiPlusPlus 6y ago
    WebView support and PWA support largely both depend on the same set of functionality (disregarding Cordova/PhoneGap). If Apple decides to arbitrarily disable some functionality in PWAs but not in-app WebViews then they're going to have a hard-time defending that, as all new web-standards specifications are built around privacy in-mind (as that seems to be Apple's overriding reason for not implementing some web-standard specification that benefits PWAs).
- read_if_gay_ 6y ago
  If there only are PWAs, then there's no store and no 30% cut and so Epic wins I guess? They'd "just" need to port UE4 to WASM
  - DaiPlusPlus 6y ago
    Already done: https://docs.unrealengine.com/en-US/Platforms/HTML5/GettingStarted/index.html https://docs.unrealengine.com/en-US/Platforms/HTML5/GettingS... But PWAs aren't really suitable for Unreal Engine because of Apple's 50MB size-limit.
dandellion 6y ago
Maybe. We're talking about the same company that only allows their software to run on their own hardware. It looks like having full control of the entire user experience is a sacred rule that they must never break.
- wilsonnb3 6y ago
  They break it sometimes - iCloud and iTunes on Windows, Apple Music on Android.

sheeshkebab 6y ago

And honestly, getting rid of apps would do wonders to the openness that all these app developers are complaining about.