7 ms·

Users don’t want crappy PWAs, they want something that follows the platform UI conventions. It’s good that Apple care enough about about UX to actually enforce

by mnd999 4y ago

Users don’t want crappy PWAs, they want something that follows the platform UI conventions. It’s good that Apple care enough about about UX to actually enforce this.

jakub_jo 4y ago
If users don't want crappy PWAs than they wont use them. It's common sense to let "the market decide" -- why not in this case?
- rimliu 4y ago
  And they don't. How come Android still has apps that are not PWAs?
- LadyCailin 4y ago
  Market decisions don’t do anything to prevent the tragedy of the commons - is the general answer. I have mixed opinions on this specific case, but I absolutely see how this could make things worse. If everyone starts releasing their own versions, and not offering the apps in the App Store anymore, than the people who prefer the walled garden (for which there are good reasons to want) then they lose that choice. It’s possible that doesn’t happen - and allowing people that don’t want the walled garden should also have that choice, but you can’t simply boil this complex question down to “free market”. It’s intellectually dishonest, at best.
- mnd999 4y ago
  They won’t have a choice. Low quality crap is cheaper to make so in a lot of cases that is all there will be.
- kiicia 4y ago
  in this specific case its Google decision, not whole market, Google is usurping web space and web standards
- palata 4y ago
  Counter-example: I don't want crappy ElectronJS apps, but I don't have a choice. Discord/Slack don't have an open API that would allow a good third-party client. If I don't like PWAs but WhatsApp stops supporting anything else, how can I use WhatsApp without the PWA?
  - lxgr 4y ago
    There are definitely too many crappy Electron apps out there, but at least WhatsApp have been working on a native macOS/iPad OS app for more than a year now. Last time I tried the beta, it wasn't really usable yet, but at least there is hope.
    - palata 4y ago
      Nice! I'm always happy when companies make real native apps (in that case Electron can be kept as a fallback) :-). What would be great would be for them to have some kind of API to let people write their own clients. Maybe there are big downsides with that (Loss of control? Having to keep backward compatibility?) but I don't really see them.
- timeon 4y ago
  > It's common sense to let "the market decide" -- why not in this case? Apple is the market here. If people wants to have PWAs they do not buy Apple products. But in reality "the market decide" is not common sense - that is why we have regulations.
- Sporktacular 4y ago
  Because markets sometimes fail so it pays to be sure if that would or wouldn't happen. How many Android customers choose an app based on its API? What is the quality of the Android store? Why would it work differently for an Apple Store?
matsemann 4y ago
If they want it, download the app then. Allow others to not download it and use a PWA if they'd like. Actually I believe you're wrong: if people actually preferred Apple's way of doing it, Apple would have no reason to restrict other ways. They restrict it because people prefer the other way, and that would harm Apple's profits.
- Cthulhu_ 4y ago
  They continue to restrict it because look at how much trash was (is?) on the Android store; they restricted it even more in the early days because of the torrent of low effort fart / gag apps.
  - matsemann 4y ago
    That's a problem of having a single app store everyone has to go through. Why would you care about a thousand fart apps existing as PWAs online? They wouldn't affect you at all.
  - capableweb 4y ago
    > They continue to restrict it because look at how much trash was (is?) on the Android store You're saying this like there isn't any trash on the Apple App Store? Come on... Beyond the top lists or other discovery models, the Apple App Store contains bunch of things that will never even be downloaded by anyone... It was more exclusive in the beginning, I give you that. But today, it has as much trash as any other app store.
  - tormeh 4y ago
    The iOS app store has way more trash than the Android one. Android has lots of open source software. iOS has a bajillion crappy $2 apps instead. I got an iPad from work, and not only does it not have a calculator from Apple, it's really hard to find a lightweight, low-permission, ad-free calculator on the App Store. I eventually had to settle for one designed for iPhones.
  - palata 4y ago
    I don't think that they care about not having useless apps. They care about the apps looking "integrated" in their system, right? I am an Android user and an Android developer, and I must admit that iOS apps usually look more consistent (in terms of UX). And that's one of the values of Apple: this vertical integration that makes the overall thing look more polished (and probably easier to use to some extent). Of course, they are happy to keep the restriction because they can take 30% commission on the paid apps, I'm not saying they are perfect and that there is nothing to improve. But I am not completely convinced that forcing them to lower their standards of integration (by allowing any kind of apps) is necessarily beneficial for the users. After all, why do developers want PWAs? Probably mostly because it is cheaper for them, not because it's better for their users, right?
colordrops 4y ago
No thanks, freedom of choice should surpass UX in importance here.
synecdoche 4y ago
Thanks, but no thanks. I prefer to make my own choice over others "care".
alluro2 4y ago
I see this argument often, but I'm genuinely curious if it's actually the case - at least in my experience, a huge amount of apps nowadays have custom-designed UIs and very little conformance to "platform UI conventions". And that's even an expectation - if you see an app that uses standard UI controls, navigation etc - it comes off as basic and probably not really polished. I might be completely wrong. On the other side, if users want standard UI and that's a factor in adoption, wouldn't people making PWAs then just make the apps in such a way - there's nothing stopping them, and there's no lack of UI libraries enabling that.
- palata 4y ago
  > wouldn't people making PWAs then just make the apps in such a way I'd say look at popular cross-platform frameworks, and tell me if you think that cross-platform apps generally look native. I don't.
IceWreck 4y ago
So you're saying Apple knows what I like and what I don't ? It should be my choice
- Bendy 4y ago
  Apple doesn’t know what you want and neither do you. Apple makes you want. Nobody, least of all oneself, knows what one wants (except in the moment; I want some peanuts) so we have to be told. And you certainly do have a choice, so long as it’s the right one.
- mnd999 4y ago
  Apple knows what they think is good. It turns out lots of people agree or they wouldn’t be so successful. You have a choice, if you don’t like it buy an Android phone. Or a Sailfish phone, or a KDE phone our one of the other open source phones where the only “apps” are low quality PWA crap. Look how successful they are.
  - rpastuszak 4y ago
    > You have a choice, if you don’t like it buy an Android phone. Or a Sailfish phone, or a KDE phone our one of the other open source phones where the only “apps” are low quality PWA crap. Look how successful they are. Do you think that's because of PWA UX being inherently crappy and not, say, the fact that those projects don't have billion (or trillion) USD companies behind them? I think you're mistaking the effect for the cause. PWAs are a way of lowering the barrier of entry for new devs and that's important if you want to achieve any scale. > You have a choice It's kind of a like a thug saying that I have a choice between being slapped in the face, kicked in the butt or subscribing to his Twilight fanfic podcast. Yes, I do have a choice, but neither of the choices is really something I'm looking forward to. Betamax vs. VHS comes to mind too. I think the line of thinking in the parent comment is a bit naive. There's nothing inherently wrong with PWAs from the UX pov if we take monopolies and FUD into account. That's the reason it is harder to build a PWA with really good UX now (harder but not impossible).
  - justeleblanc 4y ago
    The fact that they're successful doesn't mean that they're right about every single decision they make. This kind of reasoning is inane.
Cort3z 4y ago
I want good PWAs. I don’t want borderline spyware-apps with access to all kinds of apis. There is no reason why a messaging app needs my gyro data, or gps, or all of the other stuff they just implicitly get because they are an app. I’m starting to think that some of the worst that ever happened was that Firefox OS failed.
- palata 4y ago
  How will PWAs prevent your messaging app from getting gps data? A bad native app can require the gps permission, but a bad PWA app will be able to do the same, right?
  - Cort3z 3y ago
    They would be running in a browser, and you can just deny it getting location information, but in general, apps have access to much more raw data than a tab in the browser does. It's also possible, in theory, to run a PWA in a different browser which masks your information.
    - palata 3y ago
      You can deny location data to a native app, can't you... I really don't think that sandboxing is a good argument in favour of PWAs, honestly.
JoeyJoJoJr 4y ago
Games are an obvious example where platform UI conventions aren’t applicable, and where Apple’s restrictions hinder not just UX (see discoverability in the App Store) but also incentivise shitty monetisation practices. Gaming on mobile friggen sucks and that is primarily because Apple wants to retain control and the biggest piece of the pie. Gaming in mobile browsers, in 2023, should be as easily accessible as it were in desktop browser in the Flash days. Apple just won’t come to the table to facilitate a decent gaming experience in Safari. Let’s also not forget Steve Jobs was all for web standards in his letter against Flash. Apple should make good on what was promised in that letter instead of dragging their feet. https://newslang.ch/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Thoughts-on-Flash.pdf https://newslang.ch/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Thoughts-on-F...
- kiratp 4y ago
  Gaming on mobile sucks because people voted with their $ that they prefer free to download, micro transaction laden games.
- palata 4y ago
  Are you trying to make the point that games would benefit from being web apps?
fuzzy2 4y ago
Just some anecdata: I use the Outlook PWA (on an iPhone!) to access my work mail and calendar. It does not have notifications, which I really liked for calendar events (because I’m forgetful), so that’s a bit sad. However, there is a decisive pro: It cannot enforce restrictive device policies. What a great feature! UX isn’t half bad either. It actually feels pretty native most of the time.
- extra88 4y ago
  iOS 16.4 added notification support for websites added to the home screen, does Microsoft need to make a change to use it?
  - fuzzy2 4y ago
    I would certainly think so? The PWA currently does not contain anything about notifications. Even on your run-off-the-mill desktop web browser, push notifications do not come “for free”. You need a service worker. You need a specific server implementation. It’s not just the Notification API.
- iggldiggl 4y ago
  On the other hand our IT recently blocked external sharing of calendars, which I'd used to gain read-only access to my work calendar on my private phone and I bloody hate it – by the time the browser and Outlook have loaded on my under-powered phone, I could have launched my calendar app ten times over, plus the work calendar is now no longer integrated with the system calendar APIs so it no longer appears on my homescreen calendar widget, I now I have to switch back and forth between separate apps for my private and my work calendar, offline access only works so-so and wastes additional space, etc. etc. (Plus I don't want to actually deal with full Outlook because I have zero interest in accessing my work mail privately, whereas I do need to take a look at my work calendar in order to avoid accidentally double-booking myself.)
sirsinsalot 4y ago
OK, so let people choose. They'll consistently choose native apps and PWAs will become second class. It doesn't need Apple to white Knight on behalf of their poor, dim, uninformed users. Because they're not.
- palata 4y ago
  Except if mainstream proprietary apps go to PWA. Just like I'm forced to use those damn ElectronJS apps. I wouldn't if I had a choice.
tyingq 4y ago
Aren't there a lot of "native apps" that just launch a webview though?
iSnow 4y ago
"Users" don't fall in one bucket. Me, I do want some PWA's, not least because Apple's prudish stance disallows anything sexual or adult on the App store.
dgellow 4y ago
Users mostly want the app features, the rest is secondary.

by mnd999 4y ago

Users don’t want crappy PWAs, they want something that follows the platform UI conventions. It’s good that Apple care enough about about UX to actually enforce this.

jakub_jo 4y ago

If users don't want crappy PWAs than they wont use them. It's common sense to let "the market decide" -- why not in this case?

rimliu 4y ago
And they don't. How come Android still has apps that are not PWAs?
LadyCailin 4y ago
Market decisions don’t do anything to prevent the tragedy of the commons - is the general answer. I have mixed opinions on this specific case, but I absolutely see how this could make things worse. If everyone starts releasing their own versions, and not offering the apps in the App Store anymore, than the people who prefer the walled garden (for which there are good reasons to want) then they lose that choice. It’s possible that doesn’t happen - and allowing people that don’t want the walled garden should also have that choice, but you can’t simply boil this complex question down to “free market”. It’s intellectually dishonest, at best.
mnd999 4y ago
They won’t have a choice. Low quality crap is cheaper to make so in a lot of cases that is all there will be.
kiicia 4y ago
in this specific case its Google decision, not whole market, Google is usurping web space and web standards
palata 4y ago
Counter-example: I don't want crappy ElectronJS apps, but I don't have a choice. Discord/Slack don't have an open API that would allow a good third-party client. If I don't like PWAs but WhatsApp stops supporting anything else, how can I use WhatsApp without the PWA?
- lxgr 4y ago
  There are definitely too many crappy Electron apps out there, but at least WhatsApp have been working on a native macOS/iPad OS app for more than a year now. Last time I tried the beta, it wasn't really usable yet, but at least there is hope.
  - palata 4y ago
    Nice! I'm always happy when companies make real native apps (in that case Electron can be kept as a fallback) :-). What would be great would be for them to have some kind of API to let people write their own clients. Maybe there are big downsides with that (Loss of control? Having to keep backward compatibility?) but I don't really see them.
timeon 4y ago
> It's common sense to let "the market decide" -- why not in this case? Apple is the market here. If people wants to have PWAs they do not buy Apple products. But in reality "the market decide" is not common sense - that is why we have regulations.
Sporktacular 4y ago
Because markets sometimes fail so it pays to be sure if that would or wouldn't happen. How many Android customers choose an app based on its API? What is the quality of the Android store? Why would it work differently for an Apple Store?

matsemann 4y ago

If they want it, download the app then. Allow others to not download it and use a PWA if they'd like. Actually I believe you're wrong: if people actually preferred Apple's way of doing it, Apple would have no reason to restrict other ways. They restrict it because people prefer the other way, and that would harm Apple's profits.

Cthulhu_ 4y ago
They continue to restrict it because look at how much trash was (is?) on the Android store; they restricted it even more in the early days because of the torrent of low effort fart / gag apps.
- matsemann 4y ago
  That's a problem of having a single app store everyone has to go through. Why would you care about a thousand fart apps existing as PWAs online? They wouldn't affect you at all.
- capableweb 4y ago
  > They continue to restrict it because look at how much trash was (is?) on the Android store You're saying this like there isn't any trash on the Apple App Store? Come on... Beyond the top lists or other discovery models, the Apple App Store contains bunch of things that will never even be downloaded by anyone... It was more exclusive in the beginning, I give you that. But today, it has as much trash as any other app store.
- tormeh 4y ago
  The iOS app store has way more trash than the Android one. Android has lots of open source software. iOS has a bajillion crappy $2 apps instead. I got an iPad from work, and not only does it not have a calculator from Apple, it's really hard to find a lightweight, low-permission, ad-free calculator on the App Store. I eventually had to settle for one designed for iPhones.
- palata 4y ago
  I don't think that they care about not having useless apps. They care about the apps looking "integrated" in their system, right? I am an Android user and an Android developer, and I must admit that iOS apps usually look more consistent (in terms of UX). And that's one of the values of Apple: this vertical integration that makes the overall thing look more polished (and probably easier to use to some extent). Of course, they are happy to keep the restriction because they can take 30% commission on the paid apps, I'm not saying they are perfect and that there is nothing to improve. But I am not completely convinced that forcing them to lower their standards of integration (by allowing any kind of apps) is necessarily beneficial for the users. After all, why do developers want PWAs? Probably mostly because it is cheaper for them, not because it's better for their users, right?

colordrops 4y ago

No thanks, freedom of choice should surpass UX in importance here.

synecdoche 4y ago

Thanks, but no thanks. I prefer to make my own choice over others "care".

alluro2 4y ago

I see this argument often, but I'm genuinely curious if it's actually the case - at least in my experience, a huge amount of apps nowadays have custom-designed UIs and very little conformance to "platform UI conventions". And that's even an expectation - if you see an app that uses standard UI controls, navigation etc - it comes off as basic and probably not really polished. I might be completely wrong. On the other side, if users want standard UI and that's a factor in adoption, wouldn't people making PWAs then just make the apps in such a way - there's nothing stopping them, and there's no lack of UI libraries enabling that.

palata 4y ago
> wouldn't people making PWAs then just make the apps in such a way I'd say look at popular cross-platform frameworks, and tell me if you think that cross-platform apps generally look native. I don't.

IceWreck 4y ago

So you're saying Apple knows what I like and what I don't ? It should be my choice

Bendy 4y ago
Apple doesn’t know what you want and neither do you. Apple makes you want. Nobody, least of all oneself, knows what one wants (except in the moment; I want some peanuts) so we have to be told. And you certainly do have a choice, so long as it’s the right one.
mnd999 4y ago
Apple knows what they think is good. It turns out lots of people agree or they wouldn’t be so successful. You have a choice, if you don’t like it buy an Android phone. Or a Sailfish phone, or a KDE phone our one of the other open source phones where the only “apps” are low quality PWA crap. Look how successful they are.
- rpastuszak 4y ago
  > You have a choice, if you don’t like it buy an Android phone. Or a Sailfish phone, or a KDE phone our one of the other open source phones where the only “apps” are low quality PWA crap. Look how successful they are. Do you think that's because of PWA UX being inherently crappy and not, say, the fact that those projects don't have billion (or trillion) USD companies behind them? I think you're mistaking the effect for the cause. PWAs are a way of lowering the barrier of entry for new devs and that's important if you want to achieve any scale. > You have a choice It's kind of a like a thug saying that I have a choice between being slapped in the face, kicked in the butt or subscribing to his Twilight fanfic podcast. Yes, I do have a choice, but neither of the choices is really something I'm looking forward to. Betamax vs. VHS comes to mind too. I think the line of thinking in the parent comment is a bit naive. There's nothing inherently wrong with PWAs from the UX pov if we take monopolies and FUD into account. That's the reason it is harder to build a PWA with really good UX now (harder but not impossible).
- justeleblanc 4y ago
  The fact that they're successful doesn't mean that they're right about every single decision they make. This kind of reasoning is inane.

Cort3z 4y ago

I want good PWAs. I don’t want borderline spyware-apps with access to all kinds of apis. There is no reason why a messaging app needs my gyro data, or gps, or all of the other stuff they just implicitly get because they are an app. I’m starting to think that some of the worst that ever happened was that Firefox OS failed.

palata 4y ago
How will PWAs prevent your messaging app from getting gps data? A bad native app can require the gps permission, but a bad PWA app will be able to do the same, right?
- Cort3z 3y ago
  They would be running in a browser, and you can just deny it getting location information, but in general, apps have access to much more raw data than a tab in the browser does. It's also possible, in theory, to run a PWA in a different browser which masks your information.
  - palata 3y ago
    You can deny location data to a native app, can't you... I really don't think that sandboxing is a good argument in favour of PWAs, honestly.

JoeyJoJoJr 4y ago

Games are an obvious example where platform UI conventions aren’t applicable, and where Apple’s restrictions hinder not just UX (see discoverability in the App Store) but also incentivise shitty monetisation practices. Gaming on mobile friggen sucks and that is primarily because Apple wants to retain control and the biggest piece of the pie. Gaming in mobile browsers, in 2023, should be as easily accessible as it were in desktop browser in the Flash days. Apple just won’t come to the table to facilitate a decent gaming experience in Safari. Let’s also not forget Steve Jobs was all for web standards in his letter against Flash. Apple should make good on what was promised in that letter instead of dragging their feet. https://newslang.ch/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Thoughts-on-Flash.pdf https://newslang.ch/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Thoughts-on-F...

kiratp 4y ago
Gaming on mobile sucks because people voted with their $ that they prefer free to download, micro transaction laden games.
palata 4y ago
Are you trying to make the point that games would benefit from being web apps?

fuzzy2 4y ago

Just some anecdata: I use the Outlook PWA (on an iPhone!) to access my work mail and calendar. It does not have notifications, which I really liked for calendar events (because I’m forgetful), so that’s a bit sad. However, there is a decisive pro: It cannot enforce restrictive device policies. What a great feature! UX isn’t half bad either. It actually feels pretty native most of the time.

extra88 4y ago
iOS 16.4 added notification support for websites added to the home screen, does Microsoft need to make a change to use it?
- fuzzy2 4y ago
  I would certainly think so? The PWA currently does not contain anything about notifications. Even on your run-off-the-mill desktop web browser, push notifications do not come “for free”. You need a service worker. You need a specific server implementation. It’s not just the Notification API.
iggldiggl 4y ago
On the other hand our IT recently blocked external sharing of calendars, which I'd used to gain read-only access to my work calendar on my private phone and I bloody hate it – by the time the browser and Outlook have loaded on my under-powered phone, I could have launched my calendar app ten times over, plus the work calendar is now no longer integrated with the system calendar APIs so it no longer appears on my homescreen calendar widget, I now I have to switch back and forth between separate apps for my private and my work calendar, offline access only works so-so and wastes additional space, etc. etc. (Plus I don't want to actually deal with full Outlook because I have zero interest in accessing my work mail privately, whereas I do need to take a look at my work calendar in order to avoid accidentally double-booking myself.)

sirsinsalot 4y ago

OK, so let people choose. They'll consistently choose native apps and PWAs will become second class. It doesn't need Apple to white Knight on behalf of their poor, dim, uninformed users. Because they're not.

palata 4y ago
Except if mainstream proprietary apps go to PWA. Just like I'm forced to use those damn ElectronJS apps. I wouldn't if I had a choice.

tyingq 4y ago

Aren't there a lot of "native apps" that just launch a webview though?

iSnow 4y ago

"Users" don't fall in one bucket. Me, I do want some PWA's, not least because Apple's prudish stance disallows anything sexual or adult on the App store.

dgellow 4y ago

Users mostly want the app features, the rest is secondary.