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Any chance we can get the original title which doesn't sound so childish: It’s Official, Apple Kills Web Apps in the EU And if PWA were such a threat to Apple

Any chance we can get the original title which doesn't sound so childish: It’s Official, Apple Kills Web Apps in the EU And if PWA were such a threat to Apple's business then why are they allowed in US.

Nursie 3y ago
IIRC In the EU apple may be forced to open up iOS to other browsers, including PWA using non-safari engines. Not sure why this is such a threat. I’m torn on this whole issue. I both enjoy my walled garden and want full-fat Firefox on iOS.
- troupo 3y ago
  It's unfortunate that the whole discourse is about one of the worst imaginable outcomes: replacing apps with shitty slow bloated underperforming web apps. That is, the discourse is valid, and Apple is to blame. But why did it have to be around PWAs of all things?
  - anon373839 3y ago
    Web apps aren’t inherently slow, bloated or underperforming. You can absolutely build a snappy, polished web app with a UI layer that rivals a native app. (I don’t personally enjoy working with JavaScript, but the reward of truly cross-platform development makes it worth doing when it’s a viable option.)
    - vinay427 3y ago
      I'm genuinely curious: do you have any examples you'd like to share? Not that React Native is the same as a PWA, but even in that space I have yet to find an RN app (at least those I know about from their Showcase page [1]) that rivals a native app on iOS, but perhaps it's wrong to assume a React Native app would be comparable to or strictly better than a PWA. [1] https://reactnative.dev/showcase https://reactnative.dev/showcase
      - anon373839 3y ago
        I don’t have an example I can show, unfortunately. I am currently building an app for internal use, and because I’m obsessive about presentation, I ironed out every wrinkle in this department. It’s 100% fluid, there are no layout shifts, no surprises anywhere. You would never know it’s not native. But I will admit it took a lot of effort to hunt down all the little idiosyncrasies and fix them. I think a problem with frontend web development is that there are a lot of mediocre practices that became standard operating procedure. When I do this type of work, I try to keep the dependencies very lean and write a lot of stuff from scratch.
        szasamasa 3y ago
        me too it is just totally possible, there are so many web api-s, you just need to be a good programmer and study a lot you will not really find or use big web apps because 1. most companies have already built their native apps with mobile engineers 2. web "programmers" or rather designers are stuck with old tech 3. web apps will start to become strategic targets(!) by most developers/companies if you are sure they are cross platform (which was crippled by Apple and now they even try to eliminate modern web capabilities on iOS
        troupo 3y ago
        Which modern web capabilities for a strategic investment that Apple tries to eliminate require you to load 2.5 megabytes of Javascript to show a few lines of text? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39413396 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39413396
    - troupo 3y ago
      Funny how the vast majority of web apps are not snappy, or polished, or rival native apps. The whole discourse around PWAs is frankly schizophrenic. Web apps (esp. Electron-based) on desktop: universally regarded as bloated, slow, resource-intensive for the simplest tasks, breaking platform conventions etc. You add a P in front, and talk about mobile? Oh, PWAs are the bee's knees, just as good or better than native etc. And yet, when you ask for examples of these amazing apps (after all, Android with full PWA support has dominated mobile market for over a decade) we get either silence or... Twitter.
      - agust 3y ago
        Electron-based apps are not PWAs. PWAs do not need to be wrapped in a browser engine of their own, they use the installed browser engine. They are not inherently bloated or resource-intensive in any way. There are not many good example of great PWAs precisely because Apple has been crippling web capabilities on iOS by banning other engines and degrading the experience in Safari for a decade.
        troupo 3y ago
        Just as I said: you add a P in front of web apps, suddenly as if by magic all the issues disappear. > PWAs do not need to be wrapped in a browser engine of their own, they use the installed browser engine. Ah yes, they don't need a browser engine, they just need a browser engine > They are not inherently bloated or resource-intensive in any way. So, let me get it straight. A web app running inside a web browser engine is bloated, slow, and non-performant when it's on desktop. But the moment you put it on mobile it's not? > There are not many good example of great PWAs precisely because Apple has been crippling web capabilities on iOS by banning other engines Two notes: - Which of the features that Apple "crippled" will help web apps not be bloated, non-performant, slow, with bad UI etc.? Is it the lack of an install banner that makes a web app struggle to display even a static text with any semblance of performance? Is it the lack of push of notifications that make Google say: okay, we give up, most sites load in over 2.5 seconds now, so we assume anything faster than that is a win [1]? Is it <the list is frankly endless>... - Android has been a dominant mobile OS for over a decade with "non-crippled" PWA support. Where are the not inherently bloated non-resource-intensive web apps we've been hearing about? Please say Twitter :)) [1] https://blog.chromium.org/2020/05/the-science-behind-web-vitals.html https://blog.chromium.org/2020/05/the-science-behind-web-vit...
  - szasamasa 3y ago
    do I just hear the arguments again how java is slow vs c++? the browser is the jvm of a web app, very secure and js engines like V8 is extremely capable... although js programs can be run at near native speed (the browser is a c++ program normally and there is native compilation of some code fragments) you should also make yourself familiar with webassembly tech... some folks use even node.js on the server side... the js UI model is also very good and nobody is replacing native apps, there will be a great competition and in those areas where native has competitive edge, it will win
    - troupo 3y ago
      > do I just hear the arguments again how java is slow vs c++? No, no you don't > the browser is the jvm of a web app, very secure and js engines like V8 is extremely capable And what this has to do with apps and the fact that web apps are universally slow, bloated, underperforming, and require significantly more resources to do the most primitive things than native apps? > you should also make yourself familiar with webassembly tech Same question as above > some folks use even node.js on the server side... Some folks use even java server side... this surely means we have an abundance of amazing great apps written in Java? > the js UI model is also very good There's literally no UI model in Javascript. > there will be a great competition and in those areas where native has competitive edge, it will win There will be no competition because lazy people and people who have never seen the world outside their web bubble will simply opt for the cheapest option.
      - Turing_Machine 3y ago
        > No, no you don't Yeah, yeah, he does. Not only C/C++ v. Java, but before that ASM v. C/C++. > There will be no competition because lazy people and people who have never seen the world outside their web bubble will simply opt for the cheapest option. This is what most people would consider an opportunity. Get off HN and write competing apps. If these are really "lazy" developers delivering "slow and bloated" apps, you should have no problem kicking their asses in the marketplace. But you won't.
        3y ago
- szasamasa 3y ago
  well you can use Firefox as it is you trust Mozilla and (the real) Firefox on iOS will not implement anything that is insecure right now, Mozilla will not be able to implement plenty of web standards even if it was secure according to Mozilla browser engineers no question with time, Apple will be forced to allow modern web capabilities in Firefox too and also make the iOS welcoming for modern web browsers like Firefox just like literally every other OS is welcoming, including macOS it will be a debate around whether these OS changes Apple supposedly has to make are a reasonable effort for Apple to make... being that big and and having macOS already capable, iOS will be just as secure for Firefox as every other OS however, you can trust Mozilla engineers that they will not expose Firefox browsers to security problems on iOS even when it is sub-optimal, so in some weeks just check out what Firefox on iOS already can and use it
szasamasa 3y ago
no chance and it is not childish but the truth in the US there are no alternative browser engines to webkit and the control of web capabilities is exercised through webkit, in the eu it is no longer possible and the control is planned to be exercised via iOS if the profit threat is not there, why not allow web capabilities in competing browsers? Apple could even claim if iPhone got compromised via Firefox or Chrome that they told you so from the very beginning, on your next iPhone you would just use Safari...
fifafu 3y ago
One example: a while ago I worked on a bluetooth le based companion app for industrial sensors. The client would absolutely have built this as a web app if iOS had offered web bluetooth. With alternative engines this would be possible and Apple does not want these kind of applications outside the App Store. With the right engine basically any kind of app could be created as a webapp / pwa So in the US it doesn’t matter because users are still stuck with Safari there
- troupo 3y ago
  > One example: a while ago I worked on a bluetooth le based companion app for industrial sensors. The client would absolutely have built this as a web app if iOS had offered web bluetooth. With alternative engines Do you know that the only "alternative egnine" that implements hardware APIs is Chrome? Because it's a Chrome-only non-standard that Firefox opposes, too?
  - fifafu 3y ago
    Well on desktop Chrome/Edge has a high enough market share that the client would not have cared. I don’t think Apple can tell alternative browser engines what features it will allow and which not. Or is there something in the EU regulation that says browser engines must follow a standard?
    - troupo 3y ago
      > Well on desktop Chrome/Edge has a high enough market share that the client would not have cared. Indeed. People cry "Safari is the new IE" and then literally turn around and say "well, who cares, Chrome has dominant market share, so if it only works in Chrome, it's fine".
      - smoldesu 3y ago
        You need a competitive browser if you want to convince people to use it. Apple's only distribution scheme for Safari is forcibly pre-installing it on all of their devices. It's not akin to Chrome or Firefox where people deliberately install their app and weigh it against alternatives. You don't get a choice. As a reminder, United States v. Microsoft Corp. was never about IE's market share. It was about the illegal monopoly manipulation of Windows to prevent third-party browsers from competing. With that in mind, Safari absolutely could be the next IE.
ncruces 3y ago
Because in the US they will not be forced to (and likely won't) allow Firefox, Chrome, Brave, etc, with their own rendering engines, on the App Store, and if they do, they will definitely not allow them to become the PWA storefronts they are on Android. Adoption of PWA on Apple platforms is low because they've always had a significantly degraded experience when compared to PWA on Android, ChromeOS, or desktop browsers other than Safari.
dang 3y ago
Yes - the submitted title ("iPissed: Apple is after web capabilities to protect close to 100B App Store Tax") broke the site guidelines badly and a moderator reverted it. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Nursie 3y ago

IIRC In the EU apple may be forced to open up iOS to other browsers, including PWA using non-safari engines. Not sure why this is such a threat. I’m torn on this whole issue. I both enjoy my walled garden and want full-fat Firefox on iOS.

troupo 3y ago
It's unfortunate that the whole discourse is about one of the worst imaginable outcomes: replacing apps with shitty slow bloated underperforming web apps. That is, the discourse is valid, and Apple is to blame. But why did it have to be around PWAs of all things?
- anon373839 3y ago
  Web apps aren’t inherently slow, bloated or underperforming. You can absolutely build a snappy, polished web app with a UI layer that rivals a native app. (I don’t personally enjoy working with JavaScript, but the reward of truly cross-platform development makes it worth doing when it’s a viable option.)
  - vinay427 3y ago
    I'm genuinely curious: do you have any examples you'd like to share? Not that React Native is the same as a PWA, but even in that space I have yet to find an RN app (at least those I know about from their Showcase page [1]) that rivals a native app on iOS, but perhaps it's wrong to assume a React Native app would be comparable to or strictly better than a PWA. [1] https://reactnative.dev/showcase https://reactnative.dev/showcase
    - anon373839 3y ago
      I don’t have an example I can show, unfortunately. I am currently building an app for internal use, and because I’m obsessive about presentation, I ironed out every wrinkle in this department. It’s 100% fluid, there are no layout shifts, no surprises anywhere. You would never know it’s not native. But I will admit it took a lot of effort to hunt down all the little idiosyncrasies and fix them. I think a problem with frontend web development is that there are a lot of mediocre practices that became standard operating procedure. When I do this type of work, I try to keep the dependencies very lean and write a lot of stuff from scratch.
      - szasamasa 3y ago
        me too it is just totally possible, there are so many web api-s, you just need to be a good programmer and study a lot you will not really find or use big web apps because 1. most companies have already built their native apps with mobile engineers 2. web "programmers" or rather designers are stuck with old tech 3. web apps will start to become strategic targets(!) by most developers/companies if you are sure they are cross platform (which was crippled by Apple and now they even try to eliminate modern web capabilities on iOS
        troupo 3y ago
        Which modern web capabilities for a strategic investment that Apple tries to eliminate require you to load 2.5 megabytes of Javascript to show a few lines of text? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39413396 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39413396
  - troupo 3y ago
    Funny how the vast majority of web apps are not snappy, or polished, or rival native apps. The whole discourse around PWAs is frankly schizophrenic. Web apps (esp. Electron-based) on desktop: universally regarded as bloated, slow, resource-intensive for the simplest tasks, breaking platform conventions etc. You add a P in front, and talk about mobile? Oh, PWAs are the bee's knees, just as good or better than native etc. And yet, when you ask for examples of these amazing apps (after all, Android with full PWA support has dominated mobile market for over a decade) we get either silence or... Twitter.
    - agust 3y ago
      Electron-based apps are not PWAs. PWAs do not need to be wrapped in a browser engine of their own, they use the installed browser engine. They are not inherently bloated or resource-intensive in any way. There are not many good example of great PWAs precisely because Apple has been crippling web capabilities on iOS by banning other engines and degrading the experience in Safari for a decade.
      - troupo 3y ago
        Just as I said: you add a P in front of web apps, suddenly as if by magic all the issues disappear. > PWAs do not need to be wrapped in a browser engine of their own, they use the installed browser engine. Ah yes, they don't need a browser engine, they just need a browser engine > They are not inherently bloated or resource-intensive in any way. So, let me get it straight. A web app running inside a web browser engine is bloated, slow, and non-performant when it's on desktop. But the moment you put it on mobile it's not? > There are not many good example of great PWAs precisely because Apple has been crippling web capabilities on iOS by banning other engines Two notes: - Which of the features that Apple "crippled" will help web apps not be bloated, non-performant, slow, with bad UI etc.? Is it the lack of an install banner that makes a web app struggle to display even a static text with any semblance of performance? Is it the lack of push of notifications that make Google say: okay, we give up, most sites load in over 2.5 seconds now, so we assume anything faster than that is a win [1]? Is it <the list is frankly endless>... - Android has been a dominant mobile OS for over a decade with "non-crippled" PWA support. Where are the not inherently bloated non-resource-intensive web apps we've been hearing about? Please say Twitter :)) [1] https://blog.chromium.org/2020/05/the-science-behind-web-vitals.html https://blog.chromium.org/2020/05/the-science-behind-web-vit...
- szasamasa 3y ago
  do I just hear the arguments again how java is slow vs c++? the browser is the jvm of a web app, very secure and js engines like V8 is extremely capable... although js programs can be run at near native speed (the browser is a c++ program normally and there is native compilation of some code fragments) you should also make yourself familiar with webassembly tech... some folks use even node.js on the server side... the js UI model is also very good and nobody is replacing native apps, there will be a great competition and in those areas where native has competitive edge, it will win
  - troupo 3y ago
    > do I just hear the arguments again how java is slow vs c++? No, no you don't > the browser is the jvm of a web app, very secure and js engines like V8 is extremely capable And what this has to do with apps and the fact that web apps are universally slow, bloated, underperforming, and require significantly more resources to do the most primitive things than native apps? > you should also make yourself familiar with webassembly tech Same question as above > some folks use even node.js on the server side... Some folks use even java server side... this surely means we have an abundance of amazing great apps written in Java? > the js UI model is also very good There's literally no UI model in Javascript. > there will be a great competition and in those areas where native has competitive edge, it will win There will be no competition because lazy people and people who have never seen the world outside their web bubble will simply opt for the cheapest option.
    - Turing_Machine 3y ago
      > No, no you don't Yeah, yeah, he does. Not only C/C++ v. Java, but before that ASM v. C/C++. > There will be no competition because lazy people and people who have never seen the world outside their web bubble will simply opt for the cheapest option. This is what most people would consider an opportunity. Get off HN and write competing apps. If these are really "lazy" developers delivering "slow and bloated" apps, you should have no problem kicking their asses in the marketplace. But you won't.
      - 3y ago
szasamasa 3y ago
well you can use Firefox as it is you trust Mozilla and (the real) Firefox on iOS will not implement anything that is insecure right now, Mozilla will not be able to implement plenty of web standards even if it was secure according to Mozilla browser engineers no question with time, Apple will be forced to allow modern web capabilities in Firefox too and also make the iOS welcoming for modern web browsers like Firefox just like literally every other OS is welcoming, including macOS it will be a debate around whether these OS changes Apple supposedly has to make are a reasonable effort for Apple to make... being that big and and having macOS already capable, iOS will be just as secure for Firefox as every other OS however, you can trust Mozilla engineers that they will not expose Firefox browsers to security problems on iOS even when it is sub-optimal, so in some weeks just check out what Firefox on iOS already can and use it

szasamasa 3y ago

no chance and it is not childish but the truth in the US there are no alternative browser engines to webkit and the control of web capabilities is exercised through webkit, in the eu it is no longer possible and the control is planned to be exercised via iOS if the profit threat is not there, why not allow web capabilities in competing browsers? Apple could even claim if iPhone got compromised via Firefox or Chrome that they told you so from the very beginning, on your next iPhone you would just use Safari...

fifafu 3y ago

One example: a while ago I worked on a bluetooth le based companion app for industrial sensors. The client would absolutely have built this as a web app if iOS had offered web bluetooth. With alternative engines this would be possible and Apple does not want these kind of applications outside the App Store. With the right engine basically any kind of app could be created as a webapp / pwa So in the US it doesn’t matter because users are still stuck with Safari there

troupo 3y ago
> One example: a while ago I worked on a bluetooth le based companion app for industrial sensors. The client would absolutely have built this as a web app if iOS had offered web bluetooth. With alternative engines Do you know that the only "alternative egnine" that implements hardware APIs is Chrome? Because it's a Chrome-only non-standard that Firefox opposes, too?
- fifafu 3y ago
  Well on desktop Chrome/Edge has a high enough market share that the client would not have cared. I don’t think Apple can tell alternative browser engines what features it will allow and which not. Or is there something in the EU regulation that says browser engines must follow a standard?
  - troupo 3y ago
    > Well on desktop Chrome/Edge has a high enough market share that the client would not have cared. Indeed. People cry "Safari is the new IE" and then literally turn around and say "well, who cares, Chrome has dominant market share, so if it only works in Chrome, it's fine".
    - smoldesu 3y ago
      You need a competitive browser if you want to convince people to use it. Apple's only distribution scheme for Safari is forcibly pre-installing it on all of their devices. It's not akin to Chrome or Firefox where people deliberately install their app and weigh it against alternatives. You don't get a choice. As a reminder, United States v. Microsoft Corp. was never about IE's market share. It was about the illegal monopoly manipulation of Windows to prevent third-party browsers from competing. With that in mind, Safari absolutely could be the next IE.

ncruces 3y ago

Because in the US they will not be forced to (and likely won't) allow Firefox, Chrome, Brave, etc, with their own rendering engines, on the App Store, and if they do, they will definitely not allow them to become the PWA storefronts they are on Android. Adoption of PWA on Apple platforms is low because they've always had a significantly degraded experience when compared to PWA on Android, ChromeOS, or desktop browsers other than Safari.

dang 3y ago

Yes - the submitted title ("iPissed: Apple is after web capabilities to protect close to 100B App Store Tax") broke the site guidelines badly and a moderator reverted it. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html