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Tell HN: PWAs on iPhone Still Suck

18 points by breckenedge 3y ago

I don’t want to require my users to install a PWA to their home screen in order to receive Push Notifications, but on iOS, it’s still a requirement despite support for Push Notifications “arriving” in iOS 16.4.

exabrial 3y ago
> PWAs Still Suck Fixed it for you.
- refulgentis 3y ago
  They're good on pretty much every platform but Mac. Being this glib is especially old & tired, Figma's been around for years, and years, and years. The greatest trick Apple ever pulled was being the one platform* that requires Electron to ship PWAs. People use the baggage from having to _ship the entire web runtime_ as circular reasoning. Only reason it changed at all recently is antitrust sent the message it was time to stop. I hope Apple continues to see value in reinvesting in the open web. * outside Linux. ** Disclaimer: I own a MacBook Pro M2 and have used Apple platforms exclusively in my personal life for 19 years.
  - frou_dh 3y ago
    Chrome runs on Mac and supports installable PWAs into /Applications/, doesn't it? No Electron involved.
    - BackBlast 3y ago
      Yes, it does.
- AntonCTO 3y ago
  Thank you for providing such a thorough and valuable explanation, along with high-quality arguments, on this topic! Your insights will be extremely helpful to HN folks and developers in their exciting projects!
jurmous 3y ago
I think allowing any website to just ask for permission for notifications, which by most non tech people would be clicked away with yes, would lead to a lot of spam. I see it already happen with people in regular browsers…
- AntonCTO 3y ago
  It could require user interaction first like for other APIs such as fullscreen: https://stackoverflow.com/a/30871435 https://stackoverflow.com/a/30871435
tehbeard 3y ago
That's actually a pretty good requirement and one I wish chrome/android would follow. It blocks the kind of low effort notification about hot new listicles on some crappy blog. There are zero good usecases for notification/push support outside of installed PWAs in the web ecosystem.
- breckenedge 3y ago
  I saw a really good one the other day: push notifications from BrowserStack when it’s about to shut down an instance due to inactivity. It was really nice to get notified of that without having to switch tabs or keep it in the foreground.
TexanFeller 3y ago
As a user I don't want browser based apps to try to send me notifications at all. I don't want them to have access to my clipboard or to rewrite my browser history either, but that's now a thing. Having people save the site to their home screen seems like a decent way to indicate "pretend this is a real app and allow app like features". Anything Apple can do to discourage web apps and force more development of native apps I'm grateful for.
- rektide 3y ago
  You should have a user-agent that respects your preference & lets you do that! These are good options that should be easy to make happen! You should be able to blanketly turn off these capabilities. And we should have protocols so you can tell websites you have these stated preferences, so they know it's not going to happen. We need to mature & iterate the capabilities/permissions negotiations that happen on the web. Yes. What I hope we can agree on is that your desires are minimal. You have a big anti-feature urge for how you want to experience the web. (I respect that, and am in ways partial!) But there's other people out here who want other behaviors. And since it's obvious the two don't have to be mutually exclusive, I hope we can talk about how to get you what you want, without necessarily imposing your strictures upon everyone else. Alas, your initial comment has a bit of zeal, forged in exclusionary dogmatisms: > Anything Apple can do to discourage web apps and force more development of native apps I'm grateful for.
  - PaulHoule 3y ago
    I dunno. I think every brand wants to spam me 100x more than I want to be spammed. There is little appreciation in the industry for how people feel about this. I think the very idea of Pocket in Firefox drives a lot of people crazy, not because it is bad, but we are so used to vendors harassing us with crap products we just don’t want. Had they called it “Firefox Super Bookmarks” or something like that and not introduced a new off-brand they might have bypassed our defenses and we might have used it and liked it. Microsoft schools us all by destroying very good products (OneNote before it went 100% cloud) by trying to shove it under our fingernails (three taskbar icons, added as a “printer”, etc.). Trouble is it normalizes this behavior for the rest of the industry which doesn’t see the value destruction Microsoft creates for itself since Windows and Office survive despite it all.
alwillis 3y ago
PWAs will suck less on macOS Sonoma and iOS 17 [1]. [1]: “What’s new in web apps”— https://developer.apple.com/wwdc23/10120 https://developer.apple.com/wwdc23/10120
- breckenedge 3y ago
  It still requires “standalone” to send push notifications on iOS, yea?

18 points by breckenedge 3y ago

exabrial 3y ago

> PWAs Still Suck Fixed it for you.

refulgentis 3y ago
They're good on pretty much every platform but Mac. Being this glib is especially old & tired, Figma's been around for years, and years, and years. The greatest trick Apple ever pulled was being the one platform* that requires Electron to ship PWAs. People use the baggage from having to _ship the entire web runtime_ as circular reasoning. Only reason it changed at all recently is antitrust sent the message it was time to stop. I hope Apple continues to see value in reinvesting in the open web. * outside Linux. ** Disclaimer: I own a MacBook Pro M2 and have used Apple platforms exclusively in my personal life for 19 years.
- frou_dh 3y ago
  Chrome runs on Mac and supports installable PWAs into /Applications/, doesn't it? No Electron involved.
  - BackBlast 3y ago
    Yes, it does.
AntonCTO 3y ago
Thank you for providing such a thorough and valuable explanation, along with high-quality arguments, on this topic! Your insights will be extremely helpful to HN folks and developers in their exciting projects!

jurmous 3y ago

I think allowing any website to just ask for permission for notifications, which by most non tech people would be clicked away with yes, would lead to a lot of spam. I see it already happen with people in regular browsers…

AntonCTO 3y ago
It could require user interaction first like for other APIs such as fullscreen: https://stackoverflow.com/a/30871435 https://stackoverflow.com/a/30871435

tehbeard 3y ago

That's actually a pretty good requirement and one I wish chrome/android would follow. It blocks the kind of low effort notification about hot new listicles on some crappy blog. There are zero good usecases for notification/push support outside of installed PWAs in the web ecosystem.

breckenedge 3y ago
I saw a really good one the other day: push notifications from BrowserStack when it’s about to shut down an instance due to inactivity. It was really nice to get notified of that without having to switch tabs or keep it in the foreground.

TexanFeller 3y ago

As a user I don't want browser based apps to try to send me notifications at all. I don't want them to have access to my clipboard or to rewrite my browser history either, but that's now a thing. Having people save the site to their home screen seems like a decent way to indicate "pretend this is a real app and allow app like features". Anything Apple can do to discourage web apps and force more development of native apps I'm grateful for.

rektide 3y ago
You should have a user-agent that respects your preference & lets you do that! These are good options that should be easy to make happen! You should be able to blanketly turn off these capabilities. And we should have protocols so you can tell websites you have these stated preferences, so they know it's not going to happen. We need to mature & iterate the capabilities/permissions negotiations that happen on the web. Yes. What I hope we can agree on is that your desires are minimal. You have a big anti-feature urge for how you want to experience the web. (I respect that, and am in ways partial!) But there's other people out here who want other behaviors. And since it's obvious the two don't have to be mutually exclusive, I hope we can talk about how to get you what you want, without necessarily imposing your strictures upon everyone else. Alas, your initial comment has a bit of zeal, forged in exclusionary dogmatisms: > Anything Apple can do to discourage web apps and force more development of native apps I'm grateful for.
- PaulHoule 3y ago
  I dunno. I think every brand wants to spam me 100x more than I want to be spammed. There is little appreciation in the industry for how people feel about this. I think the very idea of Pocket in Firefox drives a lot of people crazy, not because it is bad, but we are so used to vendors harassing us with crap products we just don’t want. Had they called it “Firefox Super Bookmarks” or something like that and not introduced a new off-brand they might have bypassed our defenses and we might have used it and liked it. Microsoft schools us all by destroying very good products (OneNote before it went 100% cloud) by trying to shove it under our fingernails (three taskbar icons, added as a “printer”, etc.). Trouble is it normalizes this behavior for the rest of the industry which doesn’t see the value destruction Microsoft creates for itself since Windows and Office survive despite it all.

alwillis 3y ago

PWAs will suck less on macOS Sonoma and iOS 17 [1]. [1]: “What’s new in web apps”— https://developer.apple.com/wwdc23/10120 https://developer.apple.com/wwdc23/10120

breckenedge 3y ago
It still requires “standalone” to send push notifications on iOS, yea?