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As much as I would love to agree, the general population really does not care about features like "home screen web apps". Nobody outside of HN even knows what t

As much as I would love to agree, the general population really does not care about features like "home screen web apps". Nobody outside of HN even knows what they are. Everyone just goes on the app store and downloads random website app. Even if it is just a browser app that renders a website. Apple would have to eliminate something that people actually care about for any boycott Apple to happen.

lenkite 3y ago
The same argument could have been used against the anti-competitive practices of Microsoft in 2001 for illegally monopolizing the web browser. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Corp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor.... Your analogous dismissal: The general user doesn't really care about features like the web browser. Everyone just goes to a website and browses. Microsoft would have to eliminate something that people actually care about.
edhelas 3y ago
That's because... everything was made from de beginning to push people to go to the App Store.
- formerly_proven 3y ago
  No, I use iOS and friends in part because I want good, well-made apps that work well and integrate into the OS well - and not poorly made webapps that don't have an address bar. To that end I dislike all the faux-native iOS apps that are just a webview with a menu. It's always quite obvious when people do that. So even if I would've known about HSWAs being a thing (and not just "bookmarks on the home screen", which is approximately the exact same thing, but with an address bar), I wouldn't have cared to use them. Like evidently 99.99% of people. Yes, every thread on this has one or two people saying how badly this impacts them, yet, they are always vague about what these were used for. I have yet to see a single concrete example.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - szasamasa 3y ago
    there are poorly made native apps too there is a fix number of good programmers... these good programmers can create the exact same wonderful interactive pixels on your screen whether they use native or web tech, if web tech is allowed it is the decision of the developers what they use and offer to you but again, if good developers migrate to become good web programmers in the future that you fear then you become good web apps from them, you will not even know the difference currently, most good programmers use native languages because Apple restricts even now web tech and good programmers are payed to program in swift you can chill since those websites and web apps you see bad were made by bad programmers not because web tech is inferior... you know, js just instructs native browsers that are native apps so actually web tech can be just the same (with better security if you use secure browsers) if 1 million programmers create native apps and half is bad half is great and you really see a discrepancy in native vs. web itis simply because more bad than great programmers are currently "designing" web sites good programmers will not be forced to use web tech and fail to deleiver good UX :)
    - ufocia 3y ago
      It's apparent that by good you mean skillful and not benevolent. However, even skillful programmers write bad code especially when under time and budget constraints.
  - mmcnl 3y ago
    Everything is a trade-off. You can't publish native apps without Apple's 30% tax for example.
- zer00eyz 3y ago
  The same subset of people who just go to the App Store just take their car to the dealership for oil changes (a lot) As tech people we tend to see through apples "dealer" bullshit, just like car people.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - cqqxo4zV46cp 3y ago
    Is there a way that I can not like the same things that you like without you thinking that I’m not smart?
    - ffsm8 3y ago
      [flagged]
      - ufocia 3y ago
        You too can get off this train rather than play the victim with ad hominem attacks.
        ffsm8 3y ago
        It seems you're using words you don't know the meaning of. Please educate yourself before making such statements, unless you enjoy looking... quiet dumb. > Ad hominem means “against the man,” and this type of fallacy is sometimes called name calling or the personal attack fallacy. This type of fallacy occurs when someone attacks the person instead of attacking his or her argument. I literally said in my comment that the person I was responding to didn't actually articulate an opinion (nor any argument for that matter), as such, this is inapplicable. ...play the victim? Please enlighten me, where exactly did I do that...?
- adestefan 3y ago
  The App Store didn’t even exist until the iPhone 3G. Everything was suppose to be a web app until everyone, including HN, bitched about the lack of native apps. Now here you all are 15 years later bemoaning what you have helped create.
  - torlok 3y ago
    The obvious solution is to have both. Also, HTML5 at the beginning was much less feature-rich than it is now.
  - fireflash38 3y ago
    Do you think "apps" that are just webviews count as a native app?
  - FireBeyond 3y ago
    And yet web apps have NEVER been able to do the things native apps could, in fifteen years. That argument doesn't make sense.
lozenge 3y ago
Look at how Google pushed Chrome on its websites and people picked it up. They could do the same for web apps. What's been limiting them all this time is Apple policy. Apple policy 1- PWAs on iPhone must use Safari, Safari only has features Apple chooses to implement Apple policy 2- Add to Home Screen is hidden away Now with DMA, Google could make its own web browser, provide all their apps as "PWAs that work with Chrome and not Safari" and people could go along with it. Heck they could even start their own app store without the apps having to follow any of Apple's "alternative distribution" rules- because they're web apps, not native apps.
- adestefan 3y ago
  So you’d rather have Google abuse its monopoly on search to get what you want?
  - cybrox 3y ago
    s/Google/Mozilla then
  - lozenge 3y ago
    I'm just working through Apple's reasoning. The idea that PWAs aren't in common use now therefore they won't be used in the future is completely wrong and that's borne out by history. Apple held the door closed for PWAs and with the EU's new rules on web browsers that no longer applies. I'm in favor of being able to install whatever we want on devices we own, and the DMA is a step towards that.
  - BlueTemplar 3y ago
    Speaking of, this is all missing the bigger issues : Apple should not be allowed to control both the OS and the app store. Same as Google shouldn't be allowed to control both Google Search and Chrome. (And due to these and many other issues they should have been banned from operating in the EU years ago.)
hu3 3y ago
That's because there was never a comparable alternative to app store. EU is forcing Apple to allow alternates and Apple is doing all they can to delay and avoid, kicking and screaming.
cybrox 3y ago
People don't care because Apple has made sure they don't care. They have crippled web app adoption for years to push the app store and now argue that "well, only a few people use that anyways". How many apps in the app store are just webviews? I myself have paid apple to publish webview wrappers around pages because they strictly raise users to expect these, instead of the web apps they have no control over (and cannot take 30% of every transaction).
- brandensilva 3y ago
  Agreed. I and many developers could make killer PWAs if the support was there. The web has been hindered too long from Apple and that needs to change to support healthy competition.
- camillomiller 3y ago
  No people don't care because the world is wide and vast and people (99% of them) do not think like the average hacker news user. Maybe it would be helpful to think of people as persons with their own history that isn't automatically devalued to "part of a flock of gullible sheep" unless they care about your own values?
- curt15 3y ago
  Do you think there's a general lack of awareness or education these days about the world wide web? People who grew up with the internet couldn't get by without knowing the possibilities of websites and web browsers. Maybe I'm just old fashioned but I view web apps through that lens -- if an "app" merely wraps a website or otherwise relies on internet connectivity for core functionality I'd rather just use a full-blooded web browser.
  - cqqxo4zV46cp 3y ago
    Why would anyone care? Techies love to speak as if this is a matter of “education”. The reality is that people quite rightfully just don’t care.
  - ufocia 3y ago
    Yes, except maybe there could be a user setting to disable showing of the browser chrome. I don't like wrapper bloatware, but would like to be able to see that the app is essentially a bookmark and have a possibility of troubleshooting it.
Dalewyn 3y ago
>the general population really does not care about features like "home screen web apps". I'm inclined to agree. Anecdata, but I use precisely one HSWA, VisitJapanWeb, because the mongoloids known as the Japan Digital Agency are stuck in the triassic era and can't figure out what publishing on application stores is. Note: I'm Japanese. I get free, top dibs on trashtalking my brethren.
szasamasa 3y ago
they will care in the future(!) 1. first ensure that companies may start to think strategically about putting their best to web programming (not web "designers" of flickering html screens who use css packages that are 1mb without dynamic loading and the page uses 1% of it) 2. wait 2 years 3. get the same UX (in standalone mode if you wish aka home screen web apps) via your freely chosen browser engine via the web for 100$ instead of 130$ in the App Store (some app lifetime cost, for the sake of argument) 4. see how people of the future decide :) Before you complain about shitty websites and nobody wants web apps anyways, first ask the question whether you know any good company or developers who re-focused their resources (programmers) to abandon native programming and take all the fix cost hits for a strategy that delivers the same experience without 30% tax getting a competitive edge. Oh, you cannot make such strategic decisions until regulators of the world force Apple to abandon anti-competitive practices? Like as you see even in 2024 there is still no clarity whether it will be possible to deliver the same standalone UX to iOS via the Web because of Apple? Your reasoning is somewhat circular. Let alternative "app stores" like the web deliver the same standalone UX to iOS because it is hell possible with current web capabilities and every OS including macOS is capable of supporting browser sandboxing. THEN wait 2-3-5 years so that best programmers can study the web and migrate to create the same fantastic experiences you claim by native apps. THEN write your above comment if still applies, thanks!
dartharva 3y ago
The general population in Canada and USA, perhaps. The rest of the world knows and uses mobile web apps extensively.
willsmith72 3y ago
hate to break it to you, but PWAs can be distributed to the app store too. that's not an argument against PWAs https://www.pwabuilder.com/ https://www.pwabuilder.com/ btw in teams i've worked in, the app store was never the biggest source of discovery for our app. it was way more often a direct link from our website, socials or other marketing
CharlieDigital 3y ago
While I think this is probably true, I was surprised that a recent ask for a PWA implementation of a web app that I built was an iOS user. They do exist and I actually think on Safari, the action to add to home page feels more accessible.
factormeta 3y ago
>As much as I would love to agree, the general population really does not care about features like "home screen web apps". Nobody outside of HN even knows what they are. This is always being thrown people when mentioning web app. How about let's start educating normal people outside of HN. Mozilla, Google, dump a bunch of campaign on it. Most app can be web, and don't need to be native.
nox101 3y ago
Google let's you put your progressive web app on the Google Play store so AFAIK there are tons of web apps on android and user's see them as apps https://developers.google.com/codelabs/pwa-in-play#0 https://developers.google.com/codelabs/pwa-in-play#0 My apartment's app is just a website though on iOS that's provided as a webview app, not a PWA. I know because (a) the terms of service and privacy policy all refer to the website, not the app and (b) you can just go to the website and see it's exactly the same.
beeboobaa 3y ago
The general population doesn't really care at all about anything that happens on their iphone as long as they can watch their funnies. Some of them think they care because they fell for apple's manipulations but they'll get over it.
mmcnl 3y ago
True, but it's not end users who should be caring about this at all, it's the developers. Developers can leverage the freedom of the web with PWAs: no gatekeepers, no 30% tax, no approvals. So it threatens the App Store model of Apple, even though PWAs are not nearly capable enough to do that today. But with this move, they sure won't be capable enough in the future either.
- dickersnoodle 3y ago
  Sorry, this stupid trope is everywhere on HN. Unless there are solid OS-level ways to block nefarious PWAs this would turn the iPhone into the same toxic dumpster fire that IE was back in the day w.r.t. security. How many "browser tab bars" did people get fooled into clicking on and installing? I remember, and I remember moving my family off of Windows entirely and onto Mac and Linux for this exact reason. Or do you expect companies to forego all that sweet, sweet customer tracking revenue just because they promise they will?
jijijijij 3y ago
> Nobody outside of HN even knows what they are. At least, FetLife users do. The default group has more than 10 million members, so that's not nothing. I can totally see how small, and/or web-ish services would prefer the PWA route, even if violating the prude Appstore's TOS wasn't their issue. Many apps in the Appstore are just wrapped webapps anyway, so why bother with Apple's shenanigans?! Wasn't until recently, iOS didn't support web push notifications... which are quite essential for lots of devs to even consider putting resources into a PWA, I presume. So, that may be one of the reasons we don't see them more frequently yet. Honestly, not hard to instruct users to "install" web apps. And if they've done it once, they may explore this option with other websites on their own. I think, there is good reason for Apple to be afraid of this option, as threat to their income/extortion source - cuz maybe their infrastructure isn't that important a contribution as claimed.

lenkite 3y ago

The same argument could have been used against the anti-competitive practices of Microsoft in 2001 for illegally monopolizing the web browser. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Corp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor.... Your analogous dismissal: The general user doesn't really care about features like the web browser. Everyone just goes to a website and browses. Microsoft would have to eliminate something that people actually care about.

edhelas 3y ago

That's because... everything was made from de beginning to push people to go to the App Store.

formerly_proven 3y ago
No, I use iOS and friends in part because I want good, well-made apps that work well and integrate into the OS well - and not poorly made webapps that don't have an address bar. To that end I dislike all the faux-native iOS apps that are just a webview with a menu. It's always quite obvious when people do that. So even if I would've known about HSWAs being a thing (and not just "bookmarks on the home screen", which is approximately the exact same thing, but with an address bar), I wouldn't have cared to use them. Like evidently 99.99% of people. Yes, every thread on this has one or two people saying how badly this impacts them, yet, they are always vague about what these were used for. I have yet to see a single concrete example.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- szasamasa 3y ago
  there are poorly made native apps too there is a fix number of good programmers... these good programmers can create the exact same wonderful interactive pixels on your screen whether they use native or web tech, if web tech is allowed it is the decision of the developers what they use and offer to you but again, if good developers migrate to become good web programmers in the future that you fear then you become good web apps from them, you will not even know the difference currently, most good programmers use native languages because Apple restricts even now web tech and good programmers are payed to program in swift you can chill since those websites and web apps you see bad were made by bad programmers not because web tech is inferior... you know, js just instructs native browsers that are native apps so actually web tech can be just the same (with better security if you use secure browsers) if 1 million programmers create native apps and half is bad half is great and you really see a discrepancy in native vs. web itis simply because more bad than great programmers are currently "designing" web sites good programmers will not be forced to use web tech and fail to deleiver good UX :)
  - ufocia 3y ago
    It's apparent that by good you mean skillful and not benevolent. However, even skillful programmers write bad code especially when under time and budget constraints.
- mmcnl 3y ago
  Everything is a trade-off. You can't publish native apps without Apple's 30% tax for example.
zer00eyz 3y ago
The same subset of people who just go to the App Store just take their car to the dealership for oil changes (a lot) As tech people we tend to see through apples "dealer" bullshit, just like car people.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- cqqxo4zV46cp 3y ago
  Is there a way that I can not like the same things that you like without you thinking that I’m not smart?
  - ffsm8 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - ufocia 3y ago
      You too can get off this train rather than play the victim with ad hominem attacks.
      - ffsm8 3y ago
        It seems you're using words you don't know the meaning of. Please educate yourself before making such statements, unless you enjoy looking... quiet dumb. > Ad hominem means “against the man,” and this type of fallacy is sometimes called name calling or the personal attack fallacy. This type of fallacy occurs when someone attacks the person instead of attacking his or her argument. I literally said in my comment that the person I was responding to didn't actually articulate an opinion (nor any argument for that matter), as such, this is inapplicable. ...play the victim? Please enlighten me, where exactly did I do that...?
adestefan 3y ago
The App Store didn’t even exist until the iPhone 3G. Everything was suppose to be a web app until everyone, including HN, bitched about the lack of native apps. Now here you all are 15 years later bemoaning what you have helped create.
- torlok 3y ago
  The obvious solution is to have both. Also, HTML5 at the beginning was much less feature-rich than it is now.
- fireflash38 3y ago
  Do you think "apps" that are just webviews count as a native app?
- FireBeyond 3y ago
  And yet web apps have NEVER been able to do the things native apps could, in fifteen years. That argument doesn't make sense.

lozenge 3y ago

Look at how Google pushed Chrome on its websites and people picked it up. They could do the same for web apps. What's been limiting them all this time is Apple policy. Apple policy 1- PWAs on iPhone must use Safari, Safari only has features Apple chooses to implement Apple policy 2- Add to Home Screen is hidden away Now with DMA, Google could make its own web browser, provide all their apps as "PWAs that work with Chrome and not Safari" and people could go along with it. Heck they could even start their own app store without the apps having to follow any of Apple's "alternative distribution" rules- because they're web apps, not native apps.

adestefan 3y ago
So you’d rather have Google abuse its monopoly on search to get what you want?
- cybrox 3y ago
  s/Google/Mozilla then
- lozenge 3y ago
  I'm just working through Apple's reasoning. The idea that PWAs aren't in common use now therefore they won't be used in the future is completely wrong and that's borne out by history. Apple held the door closed for PWAs and with the EU's new rules on web browsers that no longer applies. I'm in favor of being able to install whatever we want on devices we own, and the DMA is a step towards that.
- BlueTemplar 3y ago
  Speaking of, this is all missing the bigger issues : Apple should not be allowed to control both the OS and the app store. Same as Google shouldn't be allowed to control both Google Search and Chrome. (And due to these and many other issues they should have been banned from operating in the EU years ago.)

hu3 3y ago

That's because there was never a comparable alternative to app store. EU is forcing Apple to allow alternates and Apple is doing all they can to delay and avoid, kicking and screaming.

cybrox 3y ago

People don't care because Apple has made sure they don't care. They have crippled web app adoption for years to push the app store and now argue that "well, only a few people use that anyways". How many apps in the app store are just webviews? I myself have paid apple to publish webview wrappers around pages because they strictly raise users to expect these, instead of the web apps they have no control over (and cannot take 30% of every transaction).

brandensilva 3y ago
Agreed. I and many developers could make killer PWAs if the support was there. The web has been hindered too long from Apple and that needs to change to support healthy competition.
camillomiller 3y ago
No people don't care because the world is wide and vast and people (99% of them) do not think like the average hacker news user. Maybe it would be helpful to think of people as persons with their own history that isn't automatically devalued to "part of a flock of gullible sheep" unless they care about your own values?
curt15 3y ago
Do you think there's a general lack of awareness or education these days about the world wide web? People who grew up with the internet couldn't get by without knowing the possibilities of websites and web browsers. Maybe I'm just old fashioned but I view web apps through that lens -- if an "app" merely wraps a website or otherwise relies on internet connectivity for core functionality I'd rather just use a full-blooded web browser.
- cqqxo4zV46cp 3y ago
  Why would anyone care? Techies love to speak as if this is a matter of “education”. The reality is that people quite rightfully just don’t care.
- ufocia 3y ago
  Yes, except maybe there could be a user setting to disable showing of the browser chrome. I don't like wrapper bloatware, but would like to be able to see that the app is essentially a bookmark and have a possibility of troubleshooting it.

Dalewyn 3y ago

>the general population really does not care about features like "home screen web apps". I'm inclined to agree. Anecdata, but I use precisely one HSWA, VisitJapanWeb, because the mongoloids known as the Japan Digital Agency are stuck in the triassic era and can't figure out what publishing on application stores is. Note: I'm Japanese. I get free, top dibs on trashtalking my brethren.

szasamasa 3y ago

they will care in the future(!) 1. first ensure that companies may start to think strategically about putting their best to web programming (not web "designers" of flickering html screens who use css packages that are 1mb without dynamic loading and the page uses 1% of it) 2. wait 2 years 3. get the same UX (in standalone mode if you wish aka home screen web apps) via your freely chosen browser engine via the web for 100$ instead of 130$ in the App Store (some app lifetime cost, for the sake of argument) 4. see how people of the future decide :) Before you complain about shitty websites and nobody wants web apps anyways, first ask the question whether you know any good company or developers who re-focused their resources (programmers) to abandon native programming and take all the fix cost hits for a strategy that delivers the same experience without 30% tax getting a competitive edge. Oh, you cannot make such strategic decisions until regulators of the world force Apple to abandon anti-competitive practices? Like as you see even in 2024 there is still no clarity whether it will be possible to deliver the same standalone UX to iOS via the Web because of Apple? Your reasoning is somewhat circular. Let alternative "app stores" like the web deliver the same standalone UX to iOS because it is hell possible with current web capabilities and every OS including macOS is capable of supporting browser sandboxing. THEN wait 2-3-5 years so that best programmers can study the web and migrate to create the same fantastic experiences you claim by native apps. THEN write your above comment if still applies, thanks!

dartharva 3y ago

The general population in Canada and USA, perhaps. The rest of the world knows and uses mobile web apps extensively.

willsmith72 3y ago

hate to break it to you, but PWAs can be distributed to the app store too. that's not an argument against PWAs https://www.pwabuilder.com/ https://www.pwabuilder.com/ btw in teams i've worked in, the app store was never the biggest source of discovery for our app. it was way more often a direct link from our website, socials or other marketing

CharlieDigital 3y ago

While I think this is probably true, I was surprised that a recent ask for a PWA implementation of a web app that I built was an iOS user. They do exist and I actually think on Safari, the action to add to home page feels more accessible.

factormeta 3y ago

>As much as I would love to agree, the general population really does not care about features like "home screen web apps". Nobody outside of HN even knows what they are. This is always being thrown people when mentioning web app. How about let's start educating normal people outside of HN. Mozilla, Google, dump a bunch of campaign on it. Most app can be web, and don't need to be native.

nox101 3y ago

Google let's you put your progressive web app on the Google Play store so AFAIK there are tons of web apps on android and user's see them as apps https://developers.google.com/codelabs/pwa-in-play#0 https://developers.google.com/codelabs/pwa-in-play#0 My apartment's app is just a website though on iOS that's provided as a webview app, not a PWA. I know because (a) the terms of service and privacy policy all refer to the website, not the app and (b) you can just go to the website and see it's exactly the same.

beeboobaa 3y ago

The general population doesn't really care at all about anything that happens on their iphone as long as they can watch their funnies. Some of them think they care because they fell for apple's manipulations but they'll get over it.

mmcnl 3y ago

True, but it's not end users who should be caring about this at all, it's the developers. Developers can leverage the freedom of the web with PWAs: no gatekeepers, no 30% tax, no approvals. So it threatens the App Store model of Apple, even though PWAs are not nearly capable enough to do that today. But with this move, they sure won't be capable enough in the future either.

dickersnoodle 3y ago
Sorry, this stupid trope is everywhere on HN. Unless there are solid OS-level ways to block nefarious PWAs this would turn the iPhone into the same toxic dumpster fire that IE was back in the day w.r.t. security. How many "browser tab bars" did people get fooled into clicking on and installing? I remember, and I remember moving my family off of Windows entirely and onto Mac and Linux for this exact reason. Or do you expect companies to forego all that sweet, sweet customer tracking revenue just because they promise they will?

jijijijij 3y ago

> Nobody outside of HN even knows what they are. At least, FetLife users do. The default group has more than 10 million members, so that's not nothing. I can totally see how small, and/or web-ish services would prefer the PWA route, even if violating the prude Appstore's TOS wasn't their issue. Many apps in the Appstore are just wrapped webapps anyway, so why bother with Apple's shenanigans?! Wasn't until recently, iOS didn't support web push notifications... which are quite essential for lots of devs to even consider putting resources into a PWA, I presume. So, that may be one of the reasons we don't see them more frequently yet. Honestly, not hard to instruct users to "install" web apps. And if they've done it once, they may explore this option with other websites on their own. I think, there is good reason for Apple to be afraid of this option, as threat to their income/extortion source - cuz maybe their infrastructure isn't that important a contribution as claimed.