5 ms·

Go and find a random person on the street and ask them to install a website on an iOS device and watch what happens. It is absolutely set up in such a way that

by mdhb 3y ago

Go and find a random person on the street and ask them to install a website on an iOS device and watch what happens. It is absolutely set up in such a way that normal people not only can not do it but don’t even know it’s possible. I should be able to trigger an install prompt as a developer at a minimum.

troupo 3y ago
> Go and find a random person on the street and ask them to install a website on an iOS device and watch what happens. Go and ask a random person to install a website on any OS, and watch what happens
- mdhb 3y ago
  You do understand that the main thrust of my argument here is that it doesn’t have to be like that correct? I should be able to prompt the user to install and it would just work.
  - plagiarist 3y ago
    I'm not receptive to allowing websites to prompt me for any reason whatever after observing everyone's behavior for the last two decades.
    - mdhb 3y ago
      That’s very interesting but we aren’t designing the web around your personal set of preferences so I don’t know if it’s particularly relevant to the conversation. I’m sure when it arrives like other APIs that require certain permissions you will be able to disable it and live in peace.
      - troupo 3y ago
        > That’s very interesting but we aren’t designing the web around your personal set of preferences Indeed. The (collective) you are designing the web around maximum profit to stakeholders. People's interests and preferences don't come in to it.
        mdhb 3y ago
        Respectfully what are you even talking about… How did we get from “I think app install prompts should be a thing so the web is on a level playing field with operating systems” to me somehow being responsible for the ills of capitalism? I literally said you should have an option to opt out and your response was an impassioned speech about “the will of the people”.
        troupo 3y ago
        I think this answers all the questions: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39029042 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39029042
      - plagiarist 3y ago
        It's not just my preference. People would want a nice and easy button to install a webapp to their homescreen. People would not want alert boxes from every website they visit. The latter will happen along with the former. I cannot disable these things when Apple has a profit incentive. I haven't been able to make the dumb Game Center thing permanently quit appearing. I guess they don't have a profit incentive, here, huh? So the result is that people who understand how to turn it off, will turn it off. Most everyone else will be trained to hit no instantly. A few people will have hundreds of webapps on their home screens like the browser bars of yore. For the record; I completely agree that side loading should be possible with minimal barrier and it would be nice if web apps were more discoverable and integrated. But preventing websites from nagging people with a system-level iOS prompt is a feature.
  - troupo 3y ago
    > You do understand that the main thrust of my argument here is that it doesn’t have to be like that correct? No, I don't > I should be able to prompt the user to install and it would just work. No, you shouldn't. Not until you prove that you can actually make proper prompts and not turn the web into what it is today: a collection of in your face modals, calls to action, popups etc.
    - mdhb 3y ago
      I don’t even understand the “no I don’t understand the thing that you just said” response here. I’m not sure where to go here if I’m supposed to be responsible for your sense of reading comprehension.
JimDabell 3y ago
> It is absolutely set up in such a way that normal people not only can not do it but don’t even know it’s possible. Would you say that Apple are deliberately hiding how to bookmark a website and that people are unable to do that? Because you do that the same way too. How about printing? Does Apple have a secret motive to stop people from printing? Because you do that the same way too. The share button is the “Send/Put/Open this somewhere else” button. That’s just how iOS works. It’s not a devious plan. It’s a standard platform convention. > I should be able to trigger an install prompt as a developer at a minimum. This is not currently part of any web standard. It was implemented unilaterally by Chromium and hasn’t been accepted by any other rendering engine yet. It’s explicitly not on a web standards track: > Status of This Document > This specification was published by the Web Platform Incubator Community Group. It is not a W3C Standard nor is it on the W3C Standards Track. https://wicg.github.io/manifest-incubations/ https://wicg.github.io/manifest-incubations/
- mdhb 3y ago
  I don’t understand why you’re acting purposely obtuse here. They have a multi billion dollar incentive here along with a long history of actions all clearly focused on protecting that revenue stream at the expense of the web platform. I’m making an argument that like any other application delivery platform I should have a clear and standard way for my users to install my software. The reason we don’t currently have that is largely tied up in Apple yet again with the exact same incentive structure as every other time they pulled shit like this.
  - JimDabell 3y ago
    > I don’t understand why you’re acting purposely obtuse here. Do you want to try that reply again in a less insulting way? Perhaps consider the possibility that people can have a legitimate difference of opinion with you without it being a stupid act?
    - mdhb 3y ago
      Im not trying to be insulting but this also isn’t a legitimate difference of opinion scenario. You tried to do a weird gotcha by claiming that the ability to install a web app is no different to print a webpage and implied that I was seeing conspiracies where there were none to be found. I’m saying that the thing I’m talking about has a very clear difference when it comes to incentive structures and I know you’re aware of it because we are in the middle of a discussion about it. So I don’t know what other conclusion to draw here other than you’re pretending to not understand the difference.
cpuguy83 3y ago
iOS has "app clips" which websites can (and absolutely do) prompt you to use. As for how to save a webpage to your Home Screen, that literally hasn't changed except maybe to have it together with other on-device interactions. It has been there since before there was even an App Store. It's not hidden in any way and never has been. It was demoed on stage by Steve Jobs. The App Store is a scam, for sure. But Apple has not been crippling the web... at least not in the way you claim here (only one browser on the platform is sucky, but that's a different discussion).
- mdhb 3y ago
  You’re replying to me here suggesting that they don’t cripple the web by providing an example of another proprietary thing that they control and has zero interoperability with any other devices. I don’t know what to do with that argument other than to use that exact same set of facts to support my own point. Also, that’s a nice historical fact that Steve Jobs once did a demo on stage years ago but my point was that nobody knows how to do it in real life or that it’s possible. I’m explicitly making the argument that this isn’t a coincidence but is very much on purpose.
  - cpuguy83 3y ago
    So you are saying they are crippling the web because they don't allow websites to add themselves to your home screen through a button on the page. OK. I'll cede this is to drive people to the App Store where they can get their cut.
    - mdhb 3y ago
      I just want to be clear here that when I made that claim it was in no way just because of that but was a decade of actions (or largely inaction) where they made sure that the web platform would be missing lots of functionality that app developers would require to consider the web as a viable option for their software business.
- toyg 3y ago
  > But Apple has not been crippling the web Well, they definitely drag their feet on keeping Safari up to date, not unlike what Microsoft did with Internet Explorer 20 years ago. IIRC, there are also some limitations in what web apps launched from the home screen can actually do, which are not in regular Safari - but I've not looked at this in a long time so I could be wrong. What I do remember very clearly is that the common consensus, as reflected in data from app developers, is that people just don't know (or don't want to use) the "pin to home screen" feature. One could argue that Apple should, maybe, sprinkle on that feature a bit of the effort they lavishly pour on emojis, so that more people could be enticed to use PWAs. That would go some way towards reassuring developers that they are not slaves to the AppStore.
kemotep 3y ago
Honestly, the average person probably couldn’t find an app in app store without direction.

by mdhb 3y ago

troupo 3y ago

> Go and find a random person on the street and ask them to install a website on an iOS device and watch what happens. Go and ask a random person to install a website on any OS, and watch what happens

mdhb 3y ago
You do understand that the main thrust of my argument here is that it doesn’t have to be like that correct? I should be able to prompt the user to install and it would just work.
- plagiarist 3y ago
  I'm not receptive to allowing websites to prompt me for any reason whatever after observing everyone's behavior for the last two decades.
  - mdhb 3y ago
    That’s very interesting but we aren’t designing the web around your personal set of preferences so I don’t know if it’s particularly relevant to the conversation. I’m sure when it arrives like other APIs that require certain permissions you will be able to disable it and live in peace.
    - troupo 3y ago
      > That’s very interesting but we aren’t designing the web around your personal set of preferences Indeed. The (collective) you are designing the web around maximum profit to stakeholders. People's interests and preferences don't come in to it.
      - mdhb 3y ago
        Respectfully what are you even talking about… How did we get from “I think app install prompts should be a thing so the web is on a level playing field with operating systems” to me somehow being responsible for the ills of capitalism? I literally said you should have an option to opt out and your response was an impassioned speech about “the will of the people”.
        troupo 3y ago
        I think this answers all the questions: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39029042 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39029042
    - plagiarist 3y ago
      It's not just my preference. People would want a nice and easy button to install a webapp to their homescreen. People would not want alert boxes from every website they visit. The latter will happen along with the former. I cannot disable these things when Apple has a profit incentive. I haven't been able to make the dumb Game Center thing permanently quit appearing. I guess they don't have a profit incentive, here, huh? So the result is that people who understand how to turn it off, will turn it off. Most everyone else will be trained to hit no instantly. A few people will have hundreds of webapps on their home screens like the browser bars of yore. For the record; I completely agree that side loading should be possible with minimal barrier and it would be nice if web apps were more discoverable and integrated. But preventing websites from nagging people with a system-level iOS prompt is a feature.
- troupo 3y ago
  > You do understand that the main thrust of my argument here is that it doesn’t have to be like that correct? No, I don't > I should be able to prompt the user to install and it would just work. No, you shouldn't. Not until you prove that you can actually make proper prompts and not turn the web into what it is today: a collection of in your face modals, calls to action, popups etc.
  - mdhb 3y ago
    I don’t even understand the “no I don’t understand the thing that you just said” response here. I’m not sure where to go here if I’m supposed to be responsible for your sense of reading comprehension.

JimDabell 3y ago

> It is absolutely set up in such a way that normal people not only can not do it but don’t even know it’s possible. Would you say that Apple are deliberately hiding how to bookmark a website and that people are unable to do that? Because you do that the same way too. How about printing? Does Apple have a secret motive to stop people from printing? Because you do that the same way too. The share button is the “Send/Put/Open this somewhere else” button. That’s just how iOS works. It’s not a devious plan. It’s a standard platform convention. > I should be able to trigger an install prompt as a developer at a minimum. This is not currently part of any web standard. It was implemented unilaterally by Chromium and hasn’t been accepted by any other rendering engine yet. It’s explicitly not on a web standards track: > Status of This Document > This specification was published by the Web Platform Incubator Community Group. It is not a W3C Standard nor is it on the W3C Standards Track. https://wicg.github.io/manifest-incubations/ https://wicg.github.io/manifest-incubations/

mdhb 3y ago
I don’t understand why you’re acting purposely obtuse here. They have a multi billion dollar incentive here along with a long history of actions all clearly focused on protecting that revenue stream at the expense of the web platform. I’m making an argument that like any other application delivery platform I should have a clear and standard way for my users to install my software. The reason we don’t currently have that is largely tied up in Apple yet again with the exact same incentive structure as every other time they pulled shit like this.
- JimDabell 3y ago
  > I don’t understand why you’re acting purposely obtuse here. Do you want to try that reply again in a less insulting way? Perhaps consider the possibility that people can have a legitimate difference of opinion with you without it being a stupid act?
  - mdhb 3y ago
    Im not trying to be insulting but this also isn’t a legitimate difference of opinion scenario. You tried to do a weird gotcha by claiming that the ability to install a web app is no different to print a webpage and implied that I was seeing conspiracies where there were none to be found. I’m saying that the thing I’m talking about has a very clear difference when it comes to incentive structures and I know you’re aware of it because we are in the middle of a discussion about it. So I don’t know what other conclusion to draw here other than you’re pretending to not understand the difference.

cpuguy83 3y ago

iOS has "app clips" which websites can (and absolutely do) prompt you to use. As for how to save a webpage to your Home Screen, that literally hasn't changed except maybe to have it together with other on-device interactions. It has been there since before there was even an App Store. It's not hidden in any way and never has been. It was demoed on stage by Steve Jobs. The App Store is a scam, for sure. But Apple has not been crippling the web... at least not in the way you claim here (only one browser on the platform is sucky, but that's a different discussion).

mdhb 3y ago
You’re replying to me here suggesting that they don’t cripple the web by providing an example of another proprietary thing that they control and has zero interoperability with any other devices. I don’t know what to do with that argument other than to use that exact same set of facts to support my own point. Also, that’s a nice historical fact that Steve Jobs once did a demo on stage years ago but my point was that nobody knows how to do it in real life or that it’s possible. I’m explicitly making the argument that this isn’t a coincidence but is very much on purpose.
- cpuguy83 3y ago
  So you are saying they are crippling the web because they don't allow websites to add themselves to your home screen through a button on the page. OK. I'll cede this is to drive people to the App Store where they can get their cut.
  - mdhb 3y ago
    I just want to be clear here that when I made that claim it was in no way just because of that but was a decade of actions (or largely inaction) where they made sure that the web platform would be missing lots of functionality that app developers would require to consider the web as a viable option for their software business.
toyg 3y ago
> But Apple has not been crippling the web Well, they definitely drag their feet on keeping Safari up to date, not unlike what Microsoft did with Internet Explorer 20 years ago. IIRC, there are also some limitations in what web apps launched from the home screen can actually do, which are not in regular Safari - but I've not looked at this in a long time so I could be wrong. What I do remember very clearly is that the common consensus, as reflected in data from app developers, is that people just don't know (or don't want to use) the "pin to home screen" feature. One could argue that Apple should, maybe, sprinkle on that feature a bit of the effort they lavishly pour on emojis, so that more people could be enticed to use PWAs. That would go some way towards reassuring developers that they are not slaves to the AppStore.

kemotep 3y ago

Honestly, the average person probably couldn’t find an app in app store without direction.