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Sharecroppers complaining that the land baron has stacked the deck in his own favour. Spotify and Twitter began life on the web, not in the app store. No featu

by rchaud 4y ago

Sharecroppers complaining that the land baron has stacked the deck in his own favour. Spotify and Twitter began life on the web, not in the app store. No feature they offer requires a native app. Hence there was no reason to corral half the US userbase into someone else's pen and leave them there for over a decade. Epic has already gone to court on this matter (re: Fortnite on App Store) and lost. And Fortnite wasn't even web-first!

nvrspyx 4y ago
> No feature they offer requires a native app. Maybe not Twitter, but I don't see how Spotify's offline downloads would work through the iOS browser. Also, Spotify started as a native desktop app. The web player and full transition to electron wasn't until a couple of years later.
- Waterluvian 4y ago
  There's possibly smarter ways to handle this with Service Workers, CacheStorage, or other APIs. But with Indexeddb you could store blobs or array buffers up to 512MB on some mobile devices, 2GB on others. So there's like 100 songs offline.
  - nvrspyx 4y ago
    I won't pretend to understand the limits of Safari on iOS, but having the storage amount be based on the capabilities of one's device and not on the amount of actual storage available on it is a poor user experience, especially so if 512MB-2GB is the actual limit. In that sense, I would consider the ability to download as many songs for offline use as my phone's actual storage allows to be the feature, not necessarily simply being able to download a song for offline use.
    - Waterluvian 4y ago
      Sure, there's arguments to be made both ways. But it's a far cry from "there must be a native app because 100 offline songs isn't enough." This is kind of funny because you're describing the opposite of a ridiculously painful issue I've been dealing with: Signal on iOS eating up and refusing to free 20GB. I wish I could limit how much space an app is allowed to use. Furthermore, this is actually kind of proving the point: Apple is the one who picked the limit for their browser. Probably because they don't want you just using web apps. They want you thinking blissfully that the browser is inferior and you must go get native apps.
      - krick 4y ago
        To be fair, browser should be inferior to native apps. Browser is a virtual machine running a clumsy and severely limited operating system, executing all software via interpreted programming language. Either there shouldn't be other OS than Firefox OS, or browsers shouldn't be used as a replacement for your OS at all. I'm personally leaning towards the latter, and consider modern browsers to be a horrible atrocity, a fatal mistake that shouldn't be made, but couldn't be avoided. I hate web-browsers. That being said, it is just silly to equate native apps to centralized proprietary app-markets. I cannot even truly empathize to all these complaints, because to someone who uses Linux with all its packet managers like pacman/snap/F-Droid it's actually hilarious how people voluntarily buy iPhones and even overpay for them!
    - mrguyorama 4y ago
      >I would consider the ability to download as many songs for offline use as my phone's actual storage allows to be the feature, Last I knew you are hard limited to 3,333 songs on device, for licensing reasons.
      - mjcohen 4y ago
        I have over 14,000 songs in iTunes on my Mac, iPod Touch and Galaxy 10e.
        myroon5 4y ago
        They're referring to streaming subscription licensing. Not applicable if you buy songs individually https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/spotifys-3333-song-download-limit-jumps-to-10000/ https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/spotifys-333...
  - plantain 4y ago
    Apple has had poor support for PWA's for a very long time - the CacheStorage was limited to a useless size, still no Web Push Notifications, just generally broken and noncomplaint.
jeltz 4y ago
Sharecroppers complaining is part of what created the Russian revolution. And as for Spotify you are factually incorrect. Spotify started its life as a C++ desktop application and back then something similar could not have been built on the web.
- code_duck 4y ago
  In 2006? Why not? YouTube existed in 2006 as a website, so I’d think Spotify could have.
- crossroadsguy 4y ago
  And look where all the places it took Russia and where it is today.
- icebergonfire 4y ago
  Not sure if a literal Spotify could have been built on the web, but I recall using Grooveshark roughly around that timeframe (may have been 2009, 2010 at the latest). Grooveshark did work for me as fully-featured streaming music player, so I find it reasonable to infer that a Spotify-like service could have worked from a purely technical point of view... though maybe there is a year of two of leeway that makes all the difference.
scifibestfi 4y ago
Is it possible to do notifications without a native app?
- madeofpalk 4y ago
  Yes. https://w3c.github.io/push-api/ https://w3c.github.io/push-api/ https://developer.apple.com/notifications/safari-push-notifications/ https://developer.apple.com/notifications/safari-push-notifi...
  - hamandcheese 4y ago
    No, not on iOS safari.
paxys 4y ago
Spotify's web version came long after its desktop and mobile apps.
adam_arthur 4y ago
Epic’s case is being appealed, so they haven't lost yet. Lower court judges don’t get the final say
nhooyr 4y ago
Epic hasn't lost. The case remains ongoing as far as I know.

by rchaud 4y ago

nvrspyx 4y ago

> No feature they offer requires a native app. Maybe not Twitter, but I don't see how Spotify's offline downloads would work through the iOS browser. Also, Spotify started as a native desktop app. The web player and full transition to electron wasn't until a couple of years later.

Waterluvian 4y ago
There's possibly smarter ways to handle this with Service Workers, CacheStorage, or other APIs. But with Indexeddb you could store blobs or array buffers up to 512MB on some mobile devices, 2GB on others. So there's like 100 songs offline.
- nvrspyx 4y ago
  I won't pretend to understand the limits of Safari on iOS, but having the storage amount be based on the capabilities of one's device and not on the amount of actual storage available on it is a poor user experience, especially so if 512MB-2GB is the actual limit. In that sense, I would consider the ability to download as many songs for offline use as my phone's actual storage allows to be the feature, not necessarily simply being able to download a song for offline use.
  - Waterluvian 4y ago
    Sure, there's arguments to be made both ways. But it's a far cry from "there must be a native app because 100 offline songs isn't enough." This is kind of funny because you're describing the opposite of a ridiculously painful issue I've been dealing with: Signal on iOS eating up and refusing to free 20GB. I wish I could limit how much space an app is allowed to use. Furthermore, this is actually kind of proving the point: Apple is the one who picked the limit for their browser. Probably because they don't want you just using web apps. They want you thinking blissfully that the browser is inferior and you must go get native apps.
    - krick 4y ago
      To be fair, browser should be inferior to native apps. Browser is a virtual machine running a clumsy and severely limited operating system, executing all software via interpreted programming language. Either there shouldn't be other OS than Firefox OS, or browsers shouldn't be used as a replacement for your OS at all. I'm personally leaning towards the latter, and consider modern browsers to be a horrible atrocity, a fatal mistake that shouldn't be made, but couldn't be avoided. I hate web-browsers. That being said, it is just silly to equate native apps to centralized proprietary app-markets. I cannot even truly empathize to all these complaints, because to someone who uses Linux with all its packet managers like pacman/snap/F-Droid it's actually hilarious how people voluntarily buy iPhones and even overpay for them!
  - mrguyorama 4y ago
    >I would consider the ability to download as many songs for offline use as my phone's actual storage allows to be the feature, Last I knew you are hard limited to 3,333 songs on device, for licensing reasons.
    - mjcohen 4y ago
      I have over 14,000 songs in iTunes on my Mac, iPod Touch and Galaxy 10e.
      - myroon5 4y ago
        They're referring to streaming subscription licensing. Not applicable if you buy songs individually https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/spotifys-3333-song-download-limit-jumps-to-10000/ https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/spotifys-333...
- plantain 4y ago
  Apple has had poor support for PWA's for a very long time - the CacheStorage was limited to a useless size, still no Web Push Notifications, just generally broken and noncomplaint.

jeltz 4y ago

Sharecroppers complaining is part of what created the Russian revolution. And as for Spotify you are factually incorrect. Spotify started its life as a C++ desktop application and back then something similar could not have been built on the web.

code_duck 4y ago
In 2006? Why not? YouTube existed in 2006 as a website, so I’d think Spotify could have.
crossroadsguy 4y ago
And look where all the places it took Russia and where it is today.
icebergonfire 4y ago
Not sure if a literal Spotify could have been built on the web, but I recall using Grooveshark roughly around that timeframe (may have been 2009, 2010 at the latest). Grooveshark did work for me as fully-featured streaming music player, so I find it reasonable to infer that a Spotify-like service could have worked from a purely technical point of view... though maybe there is a year of two of leeway that makes all the difference.

scifibestfi 4y ago

Is it possible to do notifications without a native app?

madeofpalk 4y ago
Yes. https://w3c.github.io/push-api/ https://w3c.github.io/push-api/ https://developer.apple.com/notifications/safari-push-notifications/ https://developer.apple.com/notifications/safari-push-notifi...
- hamandcheese 4y ago
  No, not on iOS safari.

paxys 4y ago

Spotify's web version came long after its desktop and mobile apps.

adam_arthur 4y ago

Epic’s case is being appealed, so they haven't lost yet. Lower court judges don’t get the final say

nhooyr 4y ago

Epic hasn't lost. The case remains ongoing as far as I know.