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Apple's ban of all browsers but Safari turned out to be the main barrier preventing progressive web apps from being viable, deepening the duopoly power of thems

Apple's ban of all browsers but Safari turned out to be the main barrier preventing progressive web apps from being viable, deepening the duopoly power of themselves and Google, because Apple refuses to implement basic browser standards that are necessary for PWAs. And then when they do implement similar browser standards, they don't follow any web standards, they instead make their own proprietary bespoke web standard for Safari[1]. And they also did other fun things like wait until nearly 2021 to support WebP and let Safari be the the #1 source of one-click exploits on iOS. It's weird to see Safari trotted out in defense of web standards of all things. [1] https://developer.apple.com/notifications/safari-push-notifications/ https://developer.apple.com/notifications/safari-push-notifi...

KyeRussell 4y ago
You’re so dead set on “winning” that you’ve completely talked past the point that was being made. The commenter was not even saying that their point justifies Safari being the only browser engine available on iOS. They were making a specific point. If you don’t want to talk to that point, maybe try another thread.
SXX 4y ago
For years Google been stamping "standards" one after another even though other browser vendors were against many of them and they end up being Chrome-only. No matter what Apple itself does Safari being major non-Chromium browser helps Firefox a lot just by existing and having huge marketshare.
- heavyset_go 4y ago
  How does Apple dragging their feet on implementing the Web Push notification standard, that is necessary for PWAs, in anyway help in that situation? Literally every browser except Safari implemented the the standard, and not out of some noble anti-Google crusade. PWAs threaten the App Store monopoly's moneyhose. How does Apple releasing proprietary web standards just for Safari, like Safari Push Notifications, help in anyway with the purported problem of companies stamping out web standards without consensus? It seems like it's only a problem when Google does it, but when Apple does it, it's Safari "helping Firefox just exist".
  - threeseed 4y ago
    Push notifications are now available in iOS. And so I will be looking forward to the magical era of PWAs replacing all mobile applications because clearly push notifications was what was holding them back all these years. Even though a tiny fraction of mobile apps use them but I guess we will ignore that.
    - lxgr 4y ago
      Every single airline app on my phone is there only because of push notifications (which work more reliably than texts when traveling internationally with different SIMs). The same goes for most food delivery apps.
      - ryanianian 4y ago
        Food delivery apps seem to immediately abuse any form of push notifications in order to send spam. Lyft uses the same push stream for both driver ETA and 10% off coupons. They are indeed more reliable than SMS, yet I turn them off almost as fast as apps start to use them.
        lxgr 4y ago
        > Food delivery apps seem to immediately abuse any form of push notifications in order to send spam. Oh, definitely. But if they do (and don't at least give me a way to immediately opt out of that) the app is gone from my phone – and they have no other way of reaching me. Beats the absolute nightmare that is SMS notifications and spam, in my view.
        lern_too_spel 4y ago
        Android provides hooks to filter notifications from apps, while iOS does not, making the notification experience far worse. Allowing web push lets you filter notifications in a browser extension instead.
        dwaite 4y ago
- rektide 4y ago
  It's a three player world now, and Google wants a better web, Apple doesn't want a better web, and Mozilla is somewhere in-between, but increasingly playing the "privacy above all else" card too. In June 2020, Apple declared a bunch of APIs they will not implement (https://www.zdnet.com/article/apple-declined-to-implement-16-web-apis-in-safari-due-to-privacy-concerns/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/apple-declined-to-implement-16...), in a big press blitz trying to make it look like they were some noble hero. Web MIDI (incredible fun), Web USB (very useful for Arduino using folk for example, who have excellent web-based tools), Magnetometer/Ambient Light/Battery/Proximity sensors, WebHID, Device Memory, and that's just the half. A week latter Mozilla put out a similar PR using the exact same Fear Uncertainty and Doubt (FUD) to try to make themselves look good, to declare themselves virtuous non-implementors. Sure, I agree, not every site should have access to these sensors/capabilities. There are privacy risks of turning them on. But they're also excellent capabilities, that really help users do interesting things. Making users use less-secure less-sandboxed native apps is a downgrade. There should be some security regimes where these web techs can be permitted. For a while Mozilla wasn't even reviewing a sizable chunk of web standards (tracked via the excellent https://mozilla.github.io/standards-positions/ https://mozilla.github.io/standards-positions/), just declaring them unsafe & leaving the convo. They've at least started going back to old Request for Positions & reviewing a good number of them, even if they don't intend to implement. And there's a good number of standards they have about-faced on, have accepted as real asks. In general, I'm encouraged in seeing a much more interested & engaged & progressive Mozilla emerge quite recently, within the past year or so. I don't know what to do about web standards. Google takes a lot of flak, but who is there to work with? Edge, a Chromium fork, has some pro-web attitude, and indeed drives some new features for Chromium & participates. But there's largely no one but Google+Edge to deal with left in the web standards implementer world. The other browser vendors are broadly against a lot of features, for reasons of malicious-self-interest. Meanwhile Chrome continues to have one of the most open, progressive, interactive, review-seeking, concensus-desiring, most mature & responsible feature-lifecycle processes the world has ever seen. There is nothing else on the planet that gets shipped with such a high bar, such a socially pro-active, such a well planned & democratic process for how the feature gets developed. It's the gold standard of standards. https://www.chromium.org/blink/launching-features/#launch-process https://www.chromium.org/blink/launching-features/#launch-pr...
- commoner 4y ago
  > No matter what Apple itself does Safari being major non-Chromium browser helps Firefox a lot just by existing and having huge marketshare. That is incorrect because Apple has prevented and still prevents Firefox from properly implementing Gecko on iOS. Apple also restricts Firefox and browsers other than Safari from implementing full WebExtensions. Even though Firefox and browsers other than Safari are required to use WebKit on iOS, they are not allowed to access many of WebKit's iOS-integrated features including content blockers and Safari extensions. All of these Apple-imposed handicaps make Firefox a much less competitive browser on iOS than it could be, and in no way helps Firefox because users generally prefer to use the same browser across their devices. The EU's upcoming browser choice legislation will prohibit Apple's anticompetitive restrictions to put Firefox on a more level playing field with Safari on iOS.
kiicia 4y ago
you seem to be completely sure that everyone loves and wants pwa newsflash: many users hate pwa, they prefer native apps
- Hamuko 4y ago
  Why? Most of those """native""" apps are a pile of HTML and JS anyways.
  - palata 4y ago
    I hate PWAs not because I like shitty native apps (it seems like it's not obvious, somehow). I hate PWAs because I like good native apps, and PWAs give an opportunity for developers to replace their native app with a cross-platform web app. And in my experience, cross-platform generally comes at the cost of app quality on a single platform. Instead of hiring developers who know iOS, you now hire web developers who debug their web app on many platforms they don't really know well.
- heavyset_go 4y ago
  Someone's dislike of PWAs is irrelevant to whether or not someone else should be able to use them if they want to. It's also irrelevant when it comes to users who want to benefit from competition in the app distribution market. If you don't like PWAs, you're free to not use them, and you're even free to benefit from the improvements their competition brings to the whole mobile software ecosystem. It's also ironic to bring up Apple's hindering of web standards as evidence of anti-monopolization of standards, considering the fact that the lack of PWA support forces users to use the proprietary App Store monopoly to install apps instead.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - palata 4y ago
    > If you don't like PWAs, you're free to not use them, and you're even free to benefit from the improvements their competition brings to the whole mobile software ecosystem. IMHO, that's very naive. Look at ElectronJS apps. I hate ElectronJS, still the most used apps on my Desktop computer are ElectronJS. Why? Because I don't have a choice, because it's cheaper for the developers. Before ElectronJS, I actually had real desktop apps. So yeah, I see the case against PWAs.
threeseed 4y ago
> turned out to be the main barrier preventing progressive web apps from being viable Until the issue is fixed and the goal posts are moved once again. Because PWAs have been available in one form or another for 14 years. And it's always because that the UX is terrible that makes them not viable not anything Apple has done.
- locustous 4y ago
  > And it's always because that the UX is terrible that makes them not viable not anything Apple has done. Obvious counter points. Lots of people use websites. Which have an identical UX experience to PWAs. A significant percentage of the app store is web view based apps that are near equivalents to PWAs. Been that way for years. If people love native so much, why do sites like Reddit and LinkedIn heavily push mobile web users to the app? Seems it's not a universal opinion.
  - chalst 4y ago
    > If people love native so much, why do sites like Reddit and LinkedIn heavily push mobile web users to the app? Because that's how sites can avoid the privacy features that are inherent to browsers. What proportion of visitors to the LinkedIn site use the app? I'm guessing it's pretty small.
    - locustous 4y ago
      I don't like installing apps I don't have to. I agree that the browser sandbox is superior.
smcleod 4y ago
I'd hate to see PWAs take hold - browser based apps are never as good on any platform. Give me native apps any day.
- brookst 4y ago
  Depends on your priorities. For people into standards and commoditization, PWAs are awesome because they reduce the ability of HW makers to differentiate. For people who just want the best possible app/phone experiences, PWAs are awful.
  - schwartzworld 4y ago
    For lots of use cases, you'd be unlikely to notice a difference in quality. For example, I tune my guitar using a PWA, and I doubt anybody would notice the difference. The real differentiator with native vs pwa is their ability to track the user.
    - brookst 4y ago
      PWAS are pretty good for high frame rate games, then?
      - schwartzworld 4y ago
        I didn't say they were perfect for every use case. I'm not a gamer, so I'll have to take your word for it. But look at your own phone. You really telling me most of your apps couldn't just be PWA?
- sofixa 4y ago
  > Give me native apps any day. Heavens no. I do not want to be forced to install an app for every single little thing - it's wasteful, detrimental to my security and privacy. Small examples from a recent trip: in Andalusia, there's a bunch of cities with very interesting old buildings (cathedrals, castles remaining from the Muslim era converted by the Spanish monarchs later on, etc.). Each and every one has a different app for their audio guide, map, etc. to help you navigate and understand them. It's just stupid, it's a one time thing and it could easily be served by a website; instead you have to download a 30-40 MB app for each one, and then remember to delete it afterwards.
dwaite 4y ago
> Apple's ban of all browsers but Safari turned out to be the main barrier preventing progressive web apps from being viable, deepening the duopoly power of themselves and Google, because Apple refuses to implement basic browser standards that are necessary for PWAs. I don't know if this is substantially true. When I hear of PWA features that people complain about, they are almost always things that Google Chrome as its own app with its own web engine can't add to the underlying OS, such as: - robust background processing - background push notifications - new video codecs (on a power-constrained device) - system-wide protocol handlers - web bluetooth/webUSB/webNFC - adding their own new synthetic "app" representing the PWA to the Home Screen. Many of the things people talk about with PWAs are not anything close to a web "standard" or even a recommendation - Google implemented them, because they were pressured internally to make a web-based programming environment for Chromebooks. > [1] https://developer.apple.com/notifications/safari-push-notifi https://developer.apple.com/notifications/safari-push-notifi... Both macOS and iOS have honest-to-goodness push notification support now.

KyeRussell 4y ago

You’re so dead set on “winning” that you’ve completely talked past the point that was being made. The commenter was not even saying that their point justifies Safari being the only browser engine available on iOS. They were making a specific point. If you don’t want to talk to that point, maybe try another thread.

SXX 4y ago

For years Google been stamping "standards" one after another even though other browser vendors were against many of them and they end up being Chrome-only. No matter what Apple itself does Safari being major non-Chromium browser helps Firefox a lot just by existing and having huge marketshare.

heavyset_go 4y ago
How does Apple dragging their feet on implementing the Web Push notification standard, that is necessary for PWAs, in anyway help in that situation? Literally every browser except Safari implemented the the standard, and not out of some noble anti-Google crusade. PWAs threaten the App Store monopoly's moneyhose. How does Apple releasing proprietary web standards just for Safari, like Safari Push Notifications, help in anyway with the purported problem of companies stamping out web standards without consensus? It seems like it's only a problem when Google does it, but when Apple does it, it's Safari "helping Firefox just exist".
- threeseed 4y ago
  Push notifications are now available in iOS. And so I will be looking forward to the magical era of PWAs replacing all mobile applications because clearly push notifications was what was holding them back all these years. Even though a tiny fraction of mobile apps use them but I guess we will ignore that.
  - lxgr 4y ago
    Every single airline app on my phone is there only because of push notifications (which work more reliably than texts when traveling internationally with different SIMs). The same goes for most food delivery apps.
    - ryanianian 4y ago
      Food delivery apps seem to immediately abuse any form of push notifications in order to send spam. Lyft uses the same push stream for both driver ETA and 10% off coupons. They are indeed more reliable than SMS, yet I turn them off almost as fast as apps start to use them.
      - lxgr 4y ago
        > Food delivery apps seem to immediately abuse any form of push notifications in order to send spam. Oh, definitely. But if they do (and don't at least give me a way to immediately opt out of that) the app is gone from my phone – and they have no other way of reaching me. Beats the absolute nightmare that is SMS notifications and spam, in my view.
      - lern_too_spel 4y ago
        Android provides hooks to filter notifications from apps, while iOS does not, making the notification experience far worse. Allowing web push lets you filter notifications in a browser extension instead.
        dwaite 4y ago
rektide 4y ago
It's a three player world now, and Google wants a better web, Apple doesn't want a better web, and Mozilla is somewhere in-between, but increasingly playing the "privacy above all else" card too. In June 2020, Apple declared a bunch of APIs they will not implement (https://www.zdnet.com/article/apple-declined-to-implement-16-web-apis-in-safari-due-to-privacy-concerns/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/apple-declined-to-implement-16...), in a big press blitz trying to make it look like they were some noble hero. Web MIDI (incredible fun), Web USB (very useful for Arduino using folk for example, who have excellent web-based tools), Magnetometer/Ambient Light/Battery/Proximity sensors, WebHID, Device Memory, and that's just the half. A week latter Mozilla put out a similar PR using the exact same Fear Uncertainty and Doubt (FUD) to try to make themselves look good, to declare themselves virtuous non-implementors. Sure, I agree, not every site should have access to these sensors/capabilities. There are privacy risks of turning them on. But they're also excellent capabilities, that really help users do interesting things. Making users use less-secure less-sandboxed native apps is a downgrade. There should be some security regimes where these web techs can be permitted. For a while Mozilla wasn't even reviewing a sizable chunk of web standards (tracked via the excellent https://mozilla.github.io/standards-positions/ https://mozilla.github.io/standards-positions/), just declaring them unsafe & leaving the convo. They've at least started going back to old Request for Positions & reviewing a good number of them, even if they don't intend to implement. And there's a good number of standards they have about-faced on, have accepted as real asks. In general, I'm encouraged in seeing a much more interested & engaged & progressive Mozilla emerge quite recently, within the past year or so. I don't know what to do about web standards. Google takes a lot of flak, but who is there to work with? Edge, a Chromium fork, has some pro-web attitude, and indeed drives some new features for Chromium & participates. But there's largely no one but Google+Edge to deal with left in the web standards implementer world. The other browser vendors are broadly against a lot of features, for reasons of malicious-self-interest. Meanwhile Chrome continues to have one of the most open, progressive, interactive, review-seeking, concensus-desiring, most mature & responsible feature-lifecycle processes the world has ever seen. There is nothing else on the planet that gets shipped with such a high bar, such a socially pro-active, such a well planned & democratic process for how the feature gets developed. It's the gold standard of standards. https://www.chromium.org/blink/launching-features/#launch-process https://www.chromium.org/blink/launching-features/#launch-pr...
commoner 4y ago
> No matter what Apple itself does Safari being major non-Chromium browser helps Firefox a lot just by existing and having huge marketshare. That is incorrect because Apple has prevented and still prevents Firefox from properly implementing Gecko on iOS. Apple also restricts Firefox and browsers other than Safari from implementing full WebExtensions. Even though Firefox and browsers other than Safari are required to use WebKit on iOS, they are not allowed to access many of WebKit's iOS-integrated features including content blockers and Safari extensions. All of these Apple-imposed handicaps make Firefox a much less competitive browser on iOS than it could be, and in no way helps Firefox because users generally prefer to use the same browser across their devices. The EU's upcoming browser choice legislation will prohibit Apple's anticompetitive restrictions to put Firefox on a more level playing field with Safari on iOS.

kiicia 4y ago

you seem to be completely sure that everyone loves and wants pwa newsflash: many users hate pwa, they prefer native apps

Hamuko 4y ago
Why? Most of those """native""" apps are a pile of HTML and JS anyways.
- palata 4y ago
  I hate PWAs not because I like shitty native apps (it seems like it's not obvious, somehow). I hate PWAs because I like good native apps, and PWAs give an opportunity for developers to replace their native app with a cross-platform web app. And in my experience, cross-platform generally comes at the cost of app quality on a single platform. Instead of hiring developers who know iOS, you now hire web developers who debug their web app on many platforms they don't really know well.
heavyset_go 4y ago
Someone's dislike of PWAs is irrelevant to whether or not someone else should be able to use them if they want to. It's also irrelevant when it comes to users who want to benefit from competition in the app distribution market. If you don't like PWAs, you're free to not use them, and you're even free to benefit from the improvements their competition brings to the whole mobile software ecosystem. It's also ironic to bring up Apple's hindering of web standards as evidence of anti-monopolization of standards, considering the fact that the lack of PWA support forces users to use the proprietary App Store monopoly to install apps instead.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- palata 4y ago
  > If you don't like PWAs, you're free to not use them, and you're even free to benefit from the improvements their competition brings to the whole mobile software ecosystem. IMHO, that's very naive. Look at ElectronJS apps. I hate ElectronJS, still the most used apps on my Desktop computer are ElectronJS. Why? Because I don't have a choice, because it's cheaper for the developers. Before ElectronJS, I actually had real desktop apps. So yeah, I see the case against PWAs.

threeseed 4y ago

> turned out to be the main barrier preventing progressive web apps from being viable Until the issue is fixed and the goal posts are moved once again. Because PWAs have been available in one form or another for 14 years. And it's always because that the UX is terrible that makes them not viable not anything Apple has done.

locustous 4y ago
> And it's always because that the UX is terrible that makes them not viable not anything Apple has done. Obvious counter points. Lots of people use websites. Which have an identical UX experience to PWAs. A significant percentage of the app store is web view based apps that are near equivalents to PWAs. Been that way for years. If people love native so much, why do sites like Reddit and LinkedIn heavily push mobile web users to the app? Seems it's not a universal opinion.
- chalst 4y ago
  > If people love native so much, why do sites like Reddit and LinkedIn heavily push mobile web users to the app? Because that's how sites can avoid the privacy features that are inherent to browsers. What proportion of visitors to the LinkedIn site use the app? I'm guessing it's pretty small.
  - locustous 4y ago
    I don't like installing apps I don't have to. I agree that the browser sandbox is superior.

smcleod 4y ago

I'd hate to see PWAs take hold - browser based apps are never as good on any platform. Give me native apps any day.

brookst 4y ago
Depends on your priorities. For people into standards and commoditization, PWAs are awesome because they reduce the ability of HW makers to differentiate. For people who just want the best possible app/phone experiences, PWAs are awful.
- schwartzworld 4y ago
  For lots of use cases, you'd be unlikely to notice a difference in quality. For example, I tune my guitar using a PWA, and I doubt anybody would notice the difference. The real differentiator with native vs pwa is their ability to track the user.
  - brookst 4y ago
    PWAS are pretty good for high frame rate games, then?
    - schwartzworld 4y ago
      I didn't say they were perfect for every use case. I'm not a gamer, so I'll have to take your word for it. But look at your own phone. You really telling me most of your apps couldn't just be PWA?
sofixa 4y ago
> Give me native apps any day. Heavens no. I do not want to be forced to install an app for every single little thing - it's wasteful, detrimental to my security and privacy. Small examples from a recent trip: in Andalusia, there's a bunch of cities with very interesting old buildings (cathedrals, castles remaining from the Muslim era converted by the Spanish monarchs later on, etc.). Each and every one has a different app for their audio guide, map, etc. to help you navigate and understand them. It's just stupid, it's a one time thing and it could easily be served by a website; instead you have to download a 30-40 MB app for each one, and then remember to delete it afterwards.

dwaite 4y ago

> Apple's ban of all browsers but Safari turned out to be the main barrier preventing progressive web apps from being viable, deepening the duopoly power of themselves and Google, because Apple refuses to implement basic browser standards that are necessary for PWAs. I don't know if this is substantially true. When I hear of PWA features that people complain about, they are almost always things that Google Chrome as its own app with its own web engine can't add to the underlying OS, such as: - robust background processing - background push notifications - new video codecs (on a power-constrained device) - system-wide protocol handlers - web bluetooth/webUSB/webNFC - adding their own new synthetic "app" representing the PWA to the Home Screen. Many of the things people talk about with PWAs are not anything close to a web "standard" or even a recommendation - Google implemented them, because they were pressured internally to make a web-based programming environment for Chromebooks. > [1] https://developer.apple.com/notifications/safari-push-notifi https://developer.apple.com/notifications/safari-push-notifi... Both macOS and iOS have honest-to-goodness push notification support now.