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Understandable... PWAs are ultimately an alternative path from traditional mobile apps which will take away money from apple/google. But as a web dev community

Understandable... PWAs are ultimately an alternative path from traditional mobile apps which will take away money from apple/google. But as a web dev community we need to stand firm and build PWAs regardless. If we treat pwas on iOS like we did Internet explorer (i.e. giving it special attention and hack solutions as opposed to just not developing for it) we will lose the fight. I suggest you call out the issues with ios and put disclaimers on your app page saying what's not supported, or add taglines like "for the best experience, use <other broswer>". Apple can afford the dev work to update Safari or work with the standards committee, but im sure with their new vr goggles they will take the proprietary route

deergomoo 3y ago
> for the best experience, use <other broswer> In this case you’d need “use <other operating system>”. There’s no alternatives to Safari for PWAs on iOS.
- blantonl 3y ago
  This is unfortunately correct. Chrome on iOS uses Safari's Webkit, which is horribly broken on <insert here> things.
- mkreis 3y ago
  That just changed in the EU: https://developer.apple.com/support/alternative-browser-engines/ https://developer.apple.com/support/alternative-browser-engi...
  - deergomoo 3y ago
    As did the ability to install PWAs. It appears to be gone in the EU in the latest builds of iOS.
mulmen 3y ago
“Am I wrong? No, it is the users who are wrong.”
PaulHoule 3y ago
Can't we just give up on the "Progressive" branding and just say we are making Web Apps? There are just so many things that make "PWA" a bad smell. I mean, have you ever asked a user if they need more spam spamifications in their life? (Yeah, your app does and 95% say "hell no") Personally I find it much easier to find web sites with Safari (until last week I would hit "1" and Safari would automatically show me my RSS reader, now I have a choice of that or my Fraxinus bookmark manager) than it is to find icons on my iPad (there are so many signs of carelessness on both the part of Apple and app makers; the other day I realized part of it is that iOS doesn't draw boundaries around icons so if the colors of an icon are similar to the colors on the background the edges of the icon become invisible which means the icon becomes invisible) I can type "n" in Safari and it fills in Hacker News, if there was a (cr)app to use HN it might have an H for an icon, or maybe a N or another Y and it would be orange: orange icons tend to disappear into the background on my iPad and for any given letter there is some app that uses it for an icon. We should just have the story that we are making better and better web apps and Apple isn't keeping up with others.
- bbor 3y ago
  Yeah, your app does and 95% say "hell no" For some types of apps, particularly social media ones, the only path forward is those 5% of users that like your app enough to “commit”. And I think that’s what PWAs offer on a practical level — a way to commit to a website and keep it remindable. To say the least your typing-over-tapping preference is not universal, but even so I think both mobile OSs have type-to-search integrated natively now. So I think you can see why it’s a nice reminder, for those people. Plus, “progressive web app” tells a (well informed) user “this website can use your camera and gyroscope and GPS and such”. Plus plus, and I think this is the most important: it’s a fun community and a great resume term. It’s no fun to just be a “web developer”, you’ve gotta be a progressive, web3, 3D, local-first, no-js, all-js web developer ;)
  - PaulHoule 3y ago
    I make apps with A-Frame that use the gyroscope and all that and I wouldn't call them "progressive". My goal is to give a "it just works" experience and labels don't help with that.
andix 3y ago
This business model can only be broken via regulations from another country. The European Union is on it right now, and their plans give a little bit of hope. Apple/Google will never voluntarily give up their stores. And it's also not reasonable to think that the US will regulate it. Those stores bring a lot of money from all around the world into the US. It would be crazy from an US perspective to stop them doing this. Those profits can be taxed without taking away any money from their citizens. So basically free tax money.
brailsafe 3y ago
I agree with the sentiment, but building for IE was not just an interesting and hacky technical challenge, IE was basically the platform.
jwells89 3y ago
If I see a “best viewed in” badge I’m very likely to go find an alternative, regardless of the platform or browser I’m using. Those badges would best remain a vestige of the IE-Netscape era.
fiddlerwoaroof 3y ago
I for one would much rather have native mobile apps that use platform-appropriate controls rather than web apps that use whatever some designer came up with. We’ve already lost this battle on computers because of electron, but iOS is nice precisely because there isn’t an easy way to just ship web technology “apps”.
- moooo99 3y ago
  Is it though? A large portion of apps on the mobile app stores are already built using cross-platform technologies like React Native, Ionic or Flutter. In some instances it is very easy to tell, in other it's not. You can create quality experiences using cross-platform, you can create awful experiences using native tooling. In many instances, I'd rather have the not totally native app that exists than the absolutely perfectly native app that does not exist. As for PWAs, I am personally all for it. I have so many apps on my phone that don't need to be an app in the first place. Why not make a great PWA experience rather than a mediocre mobile app? In terms of capabilities, PWA are perfectly suitable for the majority of usecases.
  - szundi 3y ago
    Exactly. Pwa is cheap
  - wkat4242 3y ago
    One good thing about PWAs is that they run inside a browser. So if that's a good browser like firefox, you can use addons to limit tracking. Or force dark mode even for apps that don't bother implementing it (eg the Amazon shopping app) with dark reader.
    - fiddlerwoaroof 3y ago
      This is exactly what I dislike about PWAs: the move to sandboxing everything in the browser is a big step back because the browser silos everything in a non-composable way.
  - chrisandchris 3y ago
carlosjobim 3y ago
Depends on what outcome you want. If you're developing in a commercial outlet to make money you should do it iOS and MacOS first, because those users are more willing to pay for software and services. > "for the best experience, use <other browser>" You just lost a customer.
pjmlp 3y ago
Google alongside Microsoft, are the two main companies behind PWAs.
- xcrunner529 3y ago
  And yet do they really use it for the advantages? Office and docs still don’t work offline as PWAs.
  - pjmlp 3y ago
    For example, packing them as apps on the respective stores. https://developer.chrome.com/docs/android/trusted-web-activity https://developer.chrome.com/docs/android/trusted-web-activi... https://developer.android.com/reference/androidx/browser/trusted/TrustedWebActivityCallback https://developer.android.com/reference/androidx/browser/tru... https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/progressive-web-apps-chromium/how-to/microsoft-store https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/progressive... Just because you don't get Office as PWA, doesn't mean they aren't serious about them.
jaegerpicker 3y ago
I'm a web developer and native app developer but I'm also a user. If I want to use a service and they have a message saying "for the best experience, use <other os>" I will never use that service again. There are no apps or services that would cause me to switch. So you can take that stance but you are just hurting your app because you as a developer don't want to learn native apps.

deergomoo 3y ago

> for the best experience, use <other broswer> In this case you’d need “use <other operating system>”. There’s no alternatives to Safari for PWAs on iOS.

blantonl 3y ago
This is unfortunately correct. Chrome on iOS uses Safari's Webkit, which is horribly broken on <insert here> things.
mkreis 3y ago
That just changed in the EU: https://developer.apple.com/support/alternative-browser-engines/ https://developer.apple.com/support/alternative-browser-engi...
- deergomoo 3y ago
  As did the ability to install PWAs. It appears to be gone in the EU in the latest builds of iOS.

mulmen 3y ago

“Am I wrong? No, it is the users who are wrong.”

PaulHoule 3y ago

Can't we just give up on the "Progressive" branding and just say we are making Web Apps? There are just so many things that make "PWA" a bad smell. I mean, have you ever asked a user if they need more spam spamifications in their life? (Yeah, your app does and 95% say "hell no") Personally I find it much easier to find web sites with Safari (until last week I would hit "1" and Safari would automatically show me my RSS reader, now I have a choice of that or my Fraxinus bookmark manager) than it is to find icons on my iPad (there are so many signs of carelessness on both the part of Apple and app makers; the other day I realized part of it is that iOS doesn't draw boundaries around icons so if the colors of an icon are similar to the colors on the background the edges of the icon become invisible which means the icon becomes invisible) I can type "n" in Safari and it fills in Hacker News, if there was a (cr)app to use HN it might have an H for an icon, or maybe a N or another Y and it would be orange: orange icons tend to disappear into the background on my iPad and for any given letter there is some app that uses it for an icon. We should just have the story that we are making better and better web apps and Apple isn't keeping up with others.

bbor 3y ago
Yeah, your app does and 95% say "hell no" For some types of apps, particularly social media ones, the only path forward is those 5% of users that like your app enough to “commit”. And I think that’s what PWAs offer on a practical level — a way to commit to a website and keep it remindable. To say the least your typing-over-tapping preference is not universal, but even so I think both mobile OSs have type-to-search integrated natively now. So I think you can see why it’s a nice reminder, for those people. Plus, “progressive web app” tells a (well informed) user “this website can use your camera and gyroscope and GPS and such”. Plus plus, and I think this is the most important: it’s a fun community and a great resume term. It’s no fun to just be a “web developer”, you’ve gotta be a progressive, web3, 3D, local-first, no-js, all-js web developer ;)
- PaulHoule 3y ago
  I make apps with A-Frame that use the gyroscope and all that and I wouldn't call them "progressive". My goal is to give a "it just works" experience and labels don't help with that.

andix 3y ago

This business model can only be broken via regulations from another country. The European Union is on it right now, and their plans give a little bit of hope. Apple/Google will never voluntarily give up their stores. And it's also not reasonable to think that the US will regulate it. Those stores bring a lot of money from all around the world into the US. It would be crazy from an US perspective to stop them doing this. Those profits can be taxed without taking away any money from their citizens. So basically free tax money.

brailsafe 3y ago

I agree with the sentiment, but building for IE was not just an interesting and hacky technical challenge, IE was basically the platform.

jwells89 3y ago

If I see a “best viewed in” badge I’m very likely to go find an alternative, regardless of the platform or browser I’m using. Those badges would best remain a vestige of the IE-Netscape era.

fiddlerwoaroof 3y ago

I for one would much rather have native mobile apps that use platform-appropriate controls rather than web apps that use whatever some designer came up with. We’ve already lost this battle on computers because of electron, but iOS is nice precisely because there isn’t an easy way to just ship web technology “apps”.

moooo99 3y ago
Is it though? A large portion of apps on the mobile app stores are already built using cross-platform technologies like React Native, Ionic or Flutter. In some instances it is very easy to tell, in other it's not. You can create quality experiences using cross-platform, you can create awful experiences using native tooling. In many instances, I'd rather have the not totally native app that exists than the absolutely perfectly native app that does not exist. As for PWAs, I am personally all for it. I have so many apps on my phone that don't need to be an app in the first place. Why not make a great PWA experience rather than a mediocre mobile app? In terms of capabilities, PWA are perfectly suitable for the majority of usecases.
- szundi 3y ago
  Exactly. Pwa is cheap
- wkat4242 3y ago
  One good thing about PWAs is that they run inside a browser. So if that's a good browser like firefox, you can use addons to limit tracking. Or force dark mode even for apps that don't bother implementing it (eg the Amazon shopping app) with dark reader.
  - fiddlerwoaroof 3y ago
    This is exactly what I dislike about PWAs: the move to sandboxing everything in the browser is a big step back because the browser silos everything in a non-composable way.
- chrisandchris 3y ago

carlosjobim 3y ago

Depends on what outcome you want. If you're developing in a commercial outlet to make money you should do it iOS and MacOS first, because those users are more willing to pay for software and services. > "for the best experience, use <other browser>" You just lost a customer.

pjmlp 3y ago

Google alongside Microsoft, are the two main companies behind PWAs.

xcrunner529 3y ago
And yet do they really use it for the advantages? Office and docs still don’t work offline as PWAs.
- pjmlp 3y ago
  For example, packing them as apps on the respective stores. https://developer.chrome.com/docs/android/trusted-web-activity https://developer.chrome.com/docs/android/trusted-web-activi... https://developer.android.com/reference/androidx/browser/trusted/TrustedWebActivityCallback https://developer.android.com/reference/androidx/browser/tru... https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/progressive-web-apps-chromium/how-to/microsoft-store https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/progressive... Just because you don't get Office as PWA, doesn't mean they aren't serious about them.

jaegerpicker 3y ago

I'm a web developer and native app developer but I'm also a user. If I want to use a service and they have a message saying "for the best experience, use <other os>" I will never use that service again. There are no apps or services that would cause me to switch. So you can take that stance but you are just hurting your app because you as a developer don't want to learn native apps.