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> there are apps outside of the App Store that you aren't willing to ignore. Seems to be that the tables need to be turned: if there are apps that I can’t igno

> there are apps outside of the App Store that you aren't willing to ignore. Seems to be that the tables need to be turned: if there are apps that I can’t ignore, then they need to be required to be available on a common, accessible platform like the web, and not locked to any proprietary platform whatsoever.

danShumway 5y ago
I want the Web to be a first-class app platform for mobile phones as much as anyone. Currently iOS is lagging on this front, and their lack of support for multiple browser engines is a problem, but honestly -- given the choice between sideloading on iOS or Apple devoting the resources into making their browser engine more capable, supporting things like push notifications, Bluetooth/NFC... I think I'd rather the Web just win. I'm not opposed to native, I write native software occasionally, and there are some very real problems with the web. But in terms of sandboxing, privacy, the controls baked into browsers are imo just a lot better than most native platforms, including iOS. So in the absence of a better alternative, I'm inclined to say that yeah, more apps should be moved out of the app store and onto the Web. I think a lot of it is just a matter of getting the Web to parity with the capabilities that native platforms provide. The big issues off the top of my head: - the lack of background scheduling/tasks. It's tough to make a website play a song in the background (even Android would occasionally just shut down the app last time I checked), or to do things like set alarms/notifications. - installation UX. - the lack of good, reliable offline storage. A major weakness of the web is that it is inherently tied very heavily to serverside code. This encourages every website to have user accounts, your data needs to be stored on some server someplace. It's a major step backwards. So we want to get filesystem support, and we want to get that in a form that the user can easily inspect and modify and copy files into an out of. And obviously we want that to be heavily sandboxed from the rest of the filesystem. We also want to lean more heavily into offline access for websites, and we want better user controls about managing what websites are cached, not just a button buried in browser settings. We want users to be able to do things like control when an offline website updates, or even whether it's allowed to connect to the Internet at all. - the lack of just general integration with things like intents, subscriptions, etc... Apple users want to be able to continue to use the same tools to manage things like subscriptions, parental restrictions, so it would be good to allow them to continue to do that with web apps. - the lack of just general access to phone features like NFC/Bluetooth. There's probably one or two other things I'm missing. I think iOS is supporting WASM now, so dealing with Javascript should become less of a problem for people in the future. Timer accuracy is still a problem as far as I know, which makes developing games pretty annoying, but not unsolveable.
- sbuk 5y ago
  > I want the Web to be a first-class app platform for mobile phones as much as anyone. So did Apple. But a massive amount of developers wanted native apps - a lot of them here. Don't forget that, at the time, Apple wasn't the behemoth it is today - far from it. I'm guessing it was an either/or descision at the time.
  - mthoms 5y ago
    Your point may have been true around the late 2000's and early 2010's. But there's no way Apple of today lacks the resources to make Safari better. That's what's so frustrating. It's very obviously a conscious decision to let it languish in order to push people towards native (and Apple's 30% cut).
    - 9wzYQbTYsAIc 5y ago
      It might almost be time for Apple to step up to the browser-wars plate and push W3C standards like they push privacy.
    - sbuk 5y ago
      Rhetorically, why kill the golden goose?
      - mthoms 5y ago
        Because the open web is possibly mankind's greatest advancement in the last 30 (or so) years. Intentionally crippling its continued advancement in the interest of greed is repugnant. Yeah I know, its a moral argument not a business one. But, Apple does market itself as a highly moral, socially conscious, and highly progressive company. Maybe one day they will do the right thing. A guy can dream.
- 9wzYQbTYsAIc 5y ago
  > the lack of good, reliable offline storage. A good use case for something like Tim Berners-Lee’s Solid idea: https://solidproject.org/ https://solidproject.org/

danShumway 5y ago

I want the Web to be a first-class app platform for mobile phones as much as anyone. Currently iOS is lagging on this front, and their lack of support for multiple browser engines is a problem, but honestly -- given the choice between sideloading on iOS or Apple devoting the resources into making their browser engine more capable, supporting things like push notifications, Bluetooth/NFC... I think I'd rather the Web just win. I'm not opposed to native, I write native software occasionally, and there are some very real problems with the web. But in terms of sandboxing, privacy, the controls baked into browsers are imo just a lot better than most native platforms, including iOS. So in the absence of a better alternative, I'm inclined to say that yeah, more apps should be moved out of the app store and onto the Web. I think a lot of it is just a matter of getting the Web to parity with the capabilities that native platforms provide. The big issues off the top of my head: - the lack of background scheduling/tasks. It's tough to make a website play a song in the background (even Android would occasionally just shut down the app last time I checked), or to do things like set alarms/notifications. - installation UX. - the lack of good, reliable offline storage. A major weakness of the web is that it is inherently tied very heavily to serverside code. This encourages every website to have user accounts, your data needs to be stored on some server someplace. It's a major step backwards. So we want to get filesystem support, and we want to get that in a form that the user can easily inspect and modify and copy files into an out of. And obviously we want that to be heavily sandboxed from the rest of the filesystem. We also want to lean more heavily into offline access for websites, and we want better user controls about managing what websites are cached, not just a button buried in browser settings. We want users to be able to do things like control when an offline website updates, or even whether it's allowed to connect to the Internet at all. - the lack of just general integration with things like intents, subscriptions, etc... Apple users want to be able to continue to use the same tools to manage things like subscriptions, parental restrictions, so it would be good to allow them to continue to do that with web apps. - the lack of just general access to phone features like NFC/Bluetooth. There's probably one or two other things I'm missing. I think iOS is supporting WASM now, so dealing with Javascript should become less of a problem for people in the future. Timer accuracy is still a problem as far as I know, which makes developing games pretty annoying, but not unsolveable.

sbuk 5y ago
> I want the Web to be a first-class app platform for mobile phones as much as anyone. So did Apple. But a massive amount of developers wanted native apps - a lot of them here. Don't forget that, at the time, Apple wasn't the behemoth it is today - far from it. I'm guessing it was an either/or descision at the time.
- mthoms 5y ago
  Your point may have been true around the late 2000's and early 2010's. But there's no way Apple of today lacks the resources to make Safari better. That's what's so frustrating. It's very obviously a conscious decision to let it languish in order to push people towards native (and Apple's 30% cut).
  - 9wzYQbTYsAIc 5y ago
    It might almost be time for Apple to step up to the browser-wars plate and push W3C standards like they push privacy.
  - sbuk 5y ago
    Rhetorically, why kill the golden goose?
    - mthoms 5y ago
      Because the open web is possibly mankind's greatest advancement in the last 30 (or so) years. Intentionally crippling its continued advancement in the interest of greed is repugnant. Yeah I know, its a moral argument not a business one. But, Apple does market itself as a highly moral, socially conscious, and highly progressive company. Maybe one day they will do the right thing. A guy can dream.
9wzYQbTYsAIc 5y ago
> the lack of good, reliable offline storage. A good use case for something like Tim Berners-Lee’s Solid idea: https://solidproject.org/ https://solidproject.org/