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Apple reverses course on death of Progressive Web Apps in EU
- brycewray 3y ago[flagged]
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- jagged-chisel 3y agoNot a fan of that wording. I’m going to build a PWA, and I’m going to serve it from web server. What it runs on is determined by the user and/or their device.
- jansan 3y agoWhat does that even mean? Isn't a PWA just a webpage with some Javascript? How can that be built on WebKit only?
- the_mungler 3y agoA PWA usually makes use of a few features, most commonly push notifications, local storage, and install to home screen. The last one allows a web app to open as if it's a standalone native app, basically only a web view with no nav bar. It's these features that Apple is restricting to webkit.
- jansan 3y agoOk, thanks. But aren't all browsers webkit based on iOS anyway? Is this about other browsers or also about Chrome on MacOS?
- the_mungler 3y agoThat's sort of the point. The EU is requiring Apple to allow alternative app stores with all the same features as the main one. Originally Apple decided to remove these features from Safari rather than allow actual alternative browsers not based on webkit to have access.
- elevatedastalt 3y agoThe fact that this could be so easily reversed probably provides evidence in favor of the argument that this was a purely punitive move by Apple as a way of throwing a tantrum against DMA. Somewhat akin to an abusive spouse saying "See! You _made_ me hit you!" If this sort of behavior doesn't ring alarm bells in the minds of the regulators I don't know what will.
- dagmx 3y agoWhy would you assume that it’s malicious and not just the result of getting further clarification from lawyers on both ends? The DMA isn’t an exact set of steps to follow. A lot is left to interpretation
- RicoElectrico 3y agoSteve Jobs was legendarily spiteful and petty. They just carry over the tradition.
- arccy 3y agothey didn't need to remove a capability they already had, so any lawyer clarification would be on if they would be punished for being anticompetitive by removing the capability
- dmitrygr 3y agoSo..you've never written software with a lawyer standing over your shoulder? Very often legal requirements lead to removal of features that cannot easily comply rather than expansion of the feature to comply. Removal is less rick.
- dwaite 3y agoExcept they have had to do this multiple times (although usually patents). Examples include portions of AirPrint functionality on macOS, Bootcamp suspend/resume, and FaceTime peer-to-peer. The latter being the reason that Apple did not open up FaceTime as a broader industry initiative. In the US we currently have Apple Watch being sold without access to the blood oxygen feature due to an import restriction. There are also restrictions on showing certain maps in certain countries, as well as whether or not the Taiwan flag emoji displays in China.
- Apreche 3y agoApple: You can have it our way, or you can have it our way.
- smoldesu 3y agoI hope the commissioners write Apple another scary letter.
- turquoisevar 3y agoWho do you think gave their blessing for PWAs to run on WebKit only? https://9to5mac.com/2024/02/26/apple-blocking-web-apps/ https://9to5mac.com/2024/02/26/apple-blocking-web-apps/
- smoldesu 3y agoBeats me, it's their funeral.
- albert180 3y agoI hope they bonk them with a huge fine, for their bullshit compliance with the App Store. A few percent of global turnover will hurt badly
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- granzymes 3y ago> For support, the Progressive Web Apps will still need to be built on WebKit, with all that entails. I wonder if there was some sort of back channeling with the EU to determine that “actually this is fine, we don’t care about rendering engine competition for PWAs, WebKit-only is better than removing them.” The law ultimately only requires changes to features the EU cares about.
- smoldesu 3y agoI doubt there was back-channeling - Apple is seeing how liberally they can interpret this act. They tried doing the same thing when they threatened to use MFi on USB-C, up until an EU Comissioner threatened to boot them from the market. Plus, making per-company agreements would kinda render the entire "point" of the Digital Market Act moot. Apple knows exactly what the DMA wants from them, they're just deathly terrified of handing it over.
- Zak 3y agoI think terrified is the wrong take here. Apple could fully comply with the letter and spirit of the DMA and remain profitable in the EU, but they would be less profitable. They probably have a very good estimate of how much less profitable, and they're doing their best to minimize the impact.
- smoldesu 3y agoThe fear of low-profitability is what drives that behavior, though. You're right that the DMA/DSA threatens Apple's bottom line, but as long as Apple continues to sell iPhone hardware in Europe then they should be turning a profit on hardware margins alone. Apple wants the control at any cost, and it's going to encourage more countries to draft even stronger legislation.
- Zak 3y agoI'm surprised the EU appears to be letting them get away with charging a fee for apps installed outside the app store.
- littlecranky67 3y agoSo glad they reversed that, it would have killed my side-project which I based around webapp push notifications just after they released PWA pushnotifications with iOS 16.4 not even 12 months ago. That backtrack would have been a punch in the face of all devs that jumped on that feature.
- archerx 3y agoI feel like it’s still very useless and they implemented it in a way that makes it practically unusable. “Apple's iOS has some limitations when it comes to push notifications. For example, iOS devices do not support background sync, which means that PWA push notifications cannot be delivered to the device when the user is not actively using the app. Additionally, iOS devices do not support silent push notifications, which means that notifications cannot be delivered to the device without the user's knowledge. Another limitation of iOS devices is that PWA push notifications cannot be delivered to the lock screen. Instead, they are delivered to the notification center, which can be accessed by swiping down from the top of the screen. This means that users may see the notification later, which could result in missed messages.” Apple will maliciously comply until people give up.
- MattBearman 3y agoI’ve written a PWA that I use daily on my iPhone, and it delivers push notifications when I’m not using the app to the lock screen. Don’t get me wrong, Apple’s PWA implementation is very limited, but you can definitely have background notifications and lock screen notifications.
- littlecranky67 3y agoYour information regarding push seem outdated - both statements are NOT true. Since iOS 16.4 you can deliver push notifications even when the PWA is not actively in use. You need, however, to have the website added to the home screen (=PWA install in iOS world). I use both features on lockmeout.online - which core functionality is based on delivering push notifications on the lock screen. You need however to give permission/configure lockscreen notifications as with any other (non-PWA) app.
- aeurielesn 3y agoI also wonder what's point of PWAs _only_ supported in WebKit. It feels like they trying to keep playing cat and mouse.
- readams 3y agoMostly Apple wants to ensure that PWAs can't emerge as a viable option. As long as they're on WebKit, they can ensure that the apps are limited in their functionality.
- kemayo 3y agoIf that's Apple's motivation, why have they been implementing PWAs at all? Killing them would be even simpler if they just weren't on iOS in the first place.
- jamesgeck0 3y agoThey’ve been on iOS since the beginning, predating the App Store. They were originally supposed to be the only public API for building 3rd party apps on iOS. For a long time they appeared to be in maintenance mode on iOS. They’re still years behind what Chrome allows PWAs to do.
- dunham 3y agoApple has also added PWA to Desktop Safari in the latest OS release (which seems to work well for Tana). So their Safari team is putting some continuing effort behind PWA in general. I used this when I was taking a break from chrome, because Firefox cancelled their PWA support for Desktop.
- albert180 3y agoBecause they are their go to excuse why the limitation to the App Store isn't a monopoly with the regulators.
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- ingen0s 3y agoThis is a good news <3
- charcircuit 3y agoIt was never dead. It was simply being unshipped in the EU until they could get it to be compliant. Compliance takes time and money to do and there are probably not many engineers for building out such a feature and they may have other priorities to balance.
- troupo 3y ago> and there are probably not many engineers for building out such a feature A trillion-dollar company with 161 000 employees that had known about the regulation for two years cannot enable something they already implemented.
- charcircuit 3y ago>A trillion-dollar company A company wants RoI for what they spend money on. Having a high market cap doesn't mean money is able to be spent indescriminantly. >with 161000 employees Which may already be assigned to be doing work for something more important to Apple. >had known about the regulation for two years There are trade offs a company can make. Knowing about a potential trade off for years does not mean a company will pursue that option. >cannot enable something they already implemented PWAs being able to be supported in a secure way across arbitrary browser engines was not already implemented. Making it so PWAs can only use Webkit is a legal trade off that has seemingly been reconsidered since the original announcement.
- troupo 3y ago> A company wants RoI for what they spend money on. Indeed. They bet on being able to flaunt it weasel out of DMA by any means possible. So far that RoI bet hasn't panned out. Meanwhile you're defending a company that made 93 billion dollars in net profit last year.
- charcircuit 3y ago>Meanwhile you're defending a company that made 93 billion dollars in net profit last year. Yes
- nchmy 3y agoGreat work everybody. I had people literally laughing at me for helping get the word out, saying that it would be impossible to influence a behemoth like Apple. This goes to show the power that people have when they get together and fight for a common cause. But the work isn't done! Keep following OWA for news and ways to keep pressuring Apple and the other tech giants in favour of an open, competitive and capable Web.
- seanabrahams 3y agoOWA[0] 0: https://open-web-advocacy.org/ https://open-web-advocacy.org/
- robertoandred 3y agoI think people were laughing at the tactics OWA uses. For example, saying "web apps" are being killed is intentionally misleading.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- NicoJuicy 3y ago[flagged]
- Ringz 3y ago> Safari is IE 6 True. Let's see what other browsers on iOS can do if they actually get access to *all functions*.
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- rezonant 3y agoFantastic. That's one giant step backwards not taken for the web platform.
- xyst 3y ago[flagged]
- jamesgeck0 3y agoIt’s been years and nobody seems to be able to match Apple Silicon’s performance per watt or battery life. Seems innovative to me.
- r-spaghetti 3y agoSwitching to Grapheneos on a Pixel phone and e.g. Debian on your desktop gives your better privacy and an open infrastructure. The hardest part is finding a goal for the thousands of dollars you save.
- insin 3y agoIs there any chance they'll ever allow Safari web extensions to run in PWAs?
- ajross 3y agoBrowser extensions aren't web apps. It's a definitional thing. The whole model of the PWA is that it's an app implemented using only the fixed set of features, authentication and authorization mechanisms defined by the relevant standards, and thus requires no human to specifically audit and permit the installation. Anyone can put up a web app and run it on anyone's device, and we're all safe (modulo bugs). Extensions can in principle do anything the browser can, like snoop on traffic with foreign sites, etc... They have more capability (for good reason!), but require some level of authorization to happen by the user and (usually) OS vendor to make sure nothing bad happens. And bad things happen anyway.
- dwaite 3y agoIt is possible, but unlikely. Apple will give per-app prompts for system resources like location, but does not really have an iOS 'app prompts for permission to manipulate another app'. These sorts of permissions are confusing to users, they imply an execution model where both apps will be guaranteed to be runnable side-by-side (rather than one suspended while the other executes), and provide efficient vectors to share privacy/tracking information across those boundaries about the user.
- jespertheend 3y agoLast time I checked content blockers already seemed to work in PWAs, but there was no way to disable them. Ideally, of course, Apple would allow PWAs to use different browser engines and then competing browsers could add support for extensions in PWAs.
- nchmy 3y agoBecause this article decided not to do so, lets be very clear to give credit where it is due: The Open Web Advocacy group, who has been working for years with regulators around the world, and led this particular fight with an open letter to Tim Cook. It received 5500+ signatures in 3 days. Here is their debrief post about it: https://open-web-advocacy.org/blog/apple-backs-off-killing-web-apps/ https://open-web-advocacy.org/blog/apple-backs-off-killing-w... The fight isn't over though. WebKit is still garbage, so we need to keep pushing until other browser Engines have full capabilities!
- lakpan 3y agoI don’t think WebKit is garbage. That title belongs to Gecko. Apple picked up their slack with Safari a long time ago. They do have faults with these decisions to intentionally break or not support some features for years, like Push Notificafions.
- brimstedt 3y agoWould you mind elaborating? I still find Firefox superior to safari.
- nottorp 3y agoThey're all garbage, but you can at least run uBlock Origin in Firefox. Looking forward to being able to do that on my phone too.
- ezfe 3y agoWipr on my iPhone blocks all my ads, INCLUDING YouTube
- nottorp 3y agoI don't trust commercial apps for something like this, sorry. Gotta be public code and public block lists. Also "Wipr blocks all ads ... EU cookie and GDPR notices". That's another no. I want to see those notices so I can make an opinion on how predatory a web site is by how complex they have made their cookie dialog.
- pjmlp 3y agoCongrats everyone, it isn't cool that Web is practically ChromeOS, on the other hand Apple's behaviour as spoiled child against EU is much worse. It was either this, or having to explain EU why PWAs work just fine on Android and Windows, and not on iDevices.
- sylware 3y agoThe real fight is to get major online services to have safe and available noscript/basic (x)html portals. Because running on google blink|geeko or apple webkit is no better than native google|apple apps.
- laserlight 3y agoI'm not sure who backed off here, Apple or DMA officials. Apple's argument was that they wouldn't be able to enforce some privacy and security restrictions, if PWAs were running on a third-party browser engine. If DMA hadn't required PWAs to run on third-party browser engines, then Apple wouldn't have any concerns in the first place. From [0]: > “This support means Home Screen web apps continue to be built directly on WebKit and its security architecture, and align with the security and privacy model for native apps on iOS,” Apple explains today. [0] https://9to5mac.com/2024/03/01/apple-home-screen-web-apps-ios-17-eu/ https://9to5mac.com/2024/03/01/apple-home-screen-web-apps-io...
- rejhgadellaa 3y agoNowhere in Apple's statement or anywhere else does it say that the EU agrees with this. It's just Apple announcing a plan. I can imagine them being like "we showed we'd be willing to kill PWAs entirely, so they surely will be OK with our olive branch here and let us keep our WebKit restriction in place for PWAs" But I'm not so sure. I certainly don't hope so. The EU isn't stupid. They very much capable enough to see Apple's shenanigans for what they are.
- judge2020 3y agoI have to imagine Apple is in direct talks with EU regulators and passed this change by them and provided enough reasoning to do so. They might have even gave a concession in some other part of the OS to get this behavior greenlit.
- disgruntledphd2 3y agoI mean you'd think so, but my experience at another massive tech company during the GDPR transition period leads me to believe that this may not be the case.
- unglaublich 3y agoYes, but they also are smart enough to realize that the public can be swayed by Apple's shenanigans, and that sometimes you have to act low-key to not get the public opinion against you in these turbulent social times.
- aptgetrekt 3y agoDoes anyone else think that this was the plan all along? Apple gave us the worst possible outcome so that this now seems like a win.
- zamadatix 3y agoMaybe, maybe not. It can also be explained by Apple wanting to do the minimum required. First choice: no PWA support at all, Second choice: PWA support independent of custom browser support, and final choice (most work): PWA support on top of the custom browser support. The only thing we know for certain is Apple has shown no interest in making the best user experience given the rules vs complying with the rules only where required to.
- MatthiasPortzel 3y agoIf so, it’s working. Now all the commenters who assume that Apple is doing the worst thing possible at all times are praising the EU for forcing Apple to save PWAs. Otherwise they’d be complaining about how Apple was intentionally crippling PWA support by not letting you pick the rendering engine used.
- johnnyanmac 3y agoFoot in the door technique. Classic trick. That said, I doubt it here. they thought a feature was barely used and got enough flack to realize it may get them in deep wanted with DMA. But we don't know how strict they are with PWAs specifically. They probably backed off to prevent anymore of the various issues they caused themselves over this whole thing.
- monero-xmr 3y agoIt should be obvious to everyone that Apple is Microsoft of the 1990s vintage. There isn't a lot of innovation in hardware that requires huge numbers of people to upgrade their phones and laptops as often as they did before. This requires services revenue to make up for it, and Apple is taking very aggressive tactics to ensure the App Store cash cow continues. They are fighting in every battlefield and spending enormous legal and tactical resources to do so. Any wedge into their closed ecosystem, from alternative app stores to side loading to web apps to alternative payment rails, must be prevented at all costs.
- orev 3y agoFor people using Windows, Microsoft of the 2020s is also like Microsoft of the 1990s, and possibly even worse. All the bundled apps, cloud requirements, “accidental” pushes of features that people had already declined, telemetry, etc.
- amelius 3y agoPerhaps, but Apple in the 2020s is certainly worse than Microsoft in the 1990s. At least Microsoft has Microsoft Research. All Apple does is milking developers.
- danShumway 3y agoI'll chime in and say I'm not really interested in who's worse. Microsoft, Apple, and Google are all abusive in their own ways and should all be broken up. When talking about antitrust it's very easy to slip into comparing companies (the Apple vs Windows narrative is one that Apple ingrained into culture for years), but all of these companies are terrible and we are fully capable of pursuing antitrust against all of them simultaneously. They don't have to be ranked.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- aptgetrekt 3y agoDoes it seem like this was the plan all along to anyone else? Apple gave us the worst possible outcome so that this now seems like a win.
- TrianguloY 3y agoI was gonna say this. They need to allow third party browsers the ability to create PWAs, but they can't (or don't want to). So instead they just disabled it, saying that it was not possible, and wait for the backlash to restore it for them only. Now we are at the beginning, PWAs are locked to Apple...but apparently that's good? I don't understand...
- zarzavat 3y agoIf this was their plan it’s not a good one. There’s no indication that the EU was interested in PWAs before this, but now Apple have made it a cause célèbre and brought the issue to the attention of the EU. Hanlon’s razor should be applied.
- Nemo_bis 3y agoApple was already discussing PWAs in their DMA compliance plan, under "dedicated browser apps and apps providing in-app browsing experiences": https://developer.apple.com/support/dma-and-apps-in-the-eu/#browser-alt-eu https://developer.apple.com/support/dma-and-apps-in-the-eu/#... OWA says the plan was maliciously neglecting to mention the "killing" of PWAs. Hanlon's razor would require us to assume there was no malice and that there was mention because there was no such plan.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- Squarex 3y agoThanks god! I've already started porting my personal app from sveltekit pwa to react native...
- YetAnotherNick 3y agoWhy not just use WebView?
- Squarex 3y agoI've had problems with getting service workers to work.
- megaman821 3y agoAs a fan of PWAs, I like the direction this is headed. Apple will both have to open up PWAs to other browser engines while increasing the abilities of PWAs in Safari. App developers will realize 80% of apps are fine as PWAs and it is a great way to avoid the app store.
- nickthegreek 3y ago> For support, the Progressive Web Apps will still need to be built on WebKit, with all that entails. They are not opening PWA's to other browser engines.
- megaman821 3y agoFor the time being, their excuse of not having enough time to validate and secure those capabilities seems valid. In a year, that won't seem as reasonable, and other browser engines will rightly complain.
- rejhgadellaa 3y agoTo anyone reading this as "the EU is okay with PWAs being restricted to Safari/Webkit": (I've seen a couple of those comments go around here on HN) I don't think so. Nowhere in Apple's announcement does it say "the EU is okay with this". What Apple has announced today is a(n update to their) plan to comply with the DMA. The EU won't actually do anything until March 7th (the deadline for compliance). The fact that they did do something following Apple's announcements regarding PWAs just shows how obviously ludicrous those plans were. The EU recognized the urgency of the situation and acted [1] - If Apple would have shipped this update, many existing PWAs would stop working overnight, those apps would jump ship and offer their PWA in the App Store with (no way back?) and the damage to the reputation of PWAs would have been done: Apple would've sent a message that you can not rely on the web to reach your customers on iOS. Nowhere does anyone say that the EU is OK with PWAs being restricted to WebKit. In fact, the DMA demands the opposite: Apple has to open up iOS to 3rd party browsers, and Apple can't self-preference Safari/WebKit for any of its features. Like, say, run PWAs. I have read lots of comments and posts that said something along the lines of "Apple doesn't want other browsers to run Service Workers". That's not the reason for the attempt to remove PWAs on iOS. Service Workers are not PWA-only, every regular website in a browser tab can have a Service Worker. PWAs can be added to the home screen just fine without one. They are not mutually exclusive. Apple removed PWA support so they would not have to open up the APIs to other browsers. Period. So, to circle back to "the EU is okay with PWAs being restricted to Safari/Webkit": I very much doubt it. Apple has announced a plan to comply, forgot to mention they were going to kill support for PWAs, then did confirm it (only took them 2 weeks), and now they backed down. We're back where we left off a month ago - and I believe the EU is very much going to have an opinion on the WebKit restriction Apple is trying to keep in place. [1] The EU only announced they would start an investigation AFAIK, which is a long way from actually enforcing anything.
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- ivanjermakov 3y ago
- rejhgadellaa 3y ago[dupe]
- whywhywhywhy 3y agoDon’t agree with politicians using this as a money making opportunity with no clear rules where the money can be spent. Would be happier if it were burned to be honest.
- kevingadd 3y agoI don't understand how this is politicians making money. It happens all the time, sure, but what about the DMA is making politicians rich?
- andy_ppp 3y agoI might try an Android if Apple keep being dicks.
- jamwil 3y agoSee ya in six months.
- eklavya 3y agoAfter using an iPhone for more than 7 years, I started using Android again, close to 1.5 years now. Honestly don't miss a thing. I have realized I don't care about mobile or desktop OS these days. I use the same apps everywhere. Although browser experience is much better on Android.
- eknkc 3y agoI do it from time to time, just to keep tabs on how Android is doing. It is doing shit. Still, you need to use both to see if you like one better so, do it.
- redox99 3y agoI find Android OS (Samsung in particular) to be vastly superior to iOS. I only like iPhone's hardware. But to each their own.
- rvba 3y agoThree physical buttons at the bottom are much better user experience than apple, where the back is somewhere on top of the phone. Maybe that design worked when Jobs was alive and artificially kept them small, but it just makes it feel like those phones were toys for kids. On a side note, I would also like a physical "forward" button, to jump through some screens faster.
- nozzlegear 3y ago> Three physical buttons at the bottom are much better user experience than apple, where the back is somewhere on top of the phone. If the app is a native iOS app, or at least built following Apple’s design guidelines, then swiping right will always navigate back in any app. It’s a universal gesture, and this is one way to easily spot apps that weren’t built for iOS.
- amelius 3y agoWhen will apps on iOS get the same status as apps on MacOS? Apple can't keep hiding behind the "it's for your own safety", because everything they argue about happens on MacOS already. A modern smartphone is a capable computer, yet I still feel like I'm carrying an expensive brick in my pocket.
- jamwil 3y agoPeople like you are an extreme minority. Most people just want a phone that works and that doesn’t get ‘viruses’. iOS accomplishes that; macOS does not.
- ENGNR 3y agoiOS and the web accomplishes that (not that I’ve ever had a virus on a mac)
- amelius 3y agoMost people also want a MacBook that just works. Or are you saying that people can't have that, so they love their iPhones and are unhappy about their MacBooks?
- jamwil 3y agoNon-technical people do seem to show a strong preference for their phones and iPads, yes.
- endisneigh 3y agowhy not get pinephone?
- t00 3y agoJust. Stop. Using. Their. Products. Apologies but it had to be said.
- willi59549879 3y agoi agree. apple wants to control everything from how the users use the devices to what developers are allowed to do. android is much more open for users to do what they want.
- niutech 3y agoYes, use Sailfish OS or Ubuntu Touch instead!
- _8j50 3y agoHonest question: why PWAs? As a user it's a lose/lose situation for me. I don't get a nice solid/stable native up and it will use up resources wastefully because of blink/webkit/gecko running nth process on the device and draining battery, the app's data is intertwined with web stuff which inclues a lot if anti-privacy and dynamic content not reviewed by the app store but like normal apps now has access to sensors, files,etc... My opinion is that it makes life easier for devs and surveillance capitalists but not users. Am I incorrect? If so, why? For privacy, security and performance wouldn't native apps beat PWAs? Aside from the whole anti-apple bandwagon, why is the EU invested in enforcing this?
- shrimp_emoji 3y agoIt's mainly dev experience. Making a native app that's as cross platform as an Electron app is much more difficult than making an Electron app, from objective burden of work to finding the required talent. We only have Discord and Slack on Linux (as an installable application out of the browser) because it's Electron-based.
- MiddleEndian 3y agoAgreed. Any time there's an option for something that could be native to instead be web-based, it's a loss for users. And as far as cross platform stuff goes, may as well just keep it in a browser. Would rather have eight web apps and two native desktop programs than ten electron apps.
- postalrat 3y agoYou get to run an app without worrying its tracking your location, contacts, who knows what else.
- danShumway 3y agoMostly this. Sandboxing on basically every single modern browser is better than sandboxing on mobile devices. Nearly any app that's delivered as a PWA is going to have better privacy guarantees than an equivalent native app. The difficulty of course being that PWA limitations make many offline-only or account-free apps nearly impossible to build as PWAs.
- andix 3y agoI think we might see third party browser support for PWAs soon in iOS. Maybe with the next major iOS release. This might've been a stunt to delay that feature and buy them some time and plausible deniability that they tried their best and it just took longer than expected, because of poor decision making.
- j45 3y agoThe real reversal is committing to not trying this again
- jfoster 3y agoWould there actually be a security problem in allowing PWAs to run under whichever browser engine put them there? Added from Chrome? Runs in Chrome. Added from Safari? Runs in WebKit. etc. Why the drama?
- Rohansi 3y agoApparently the level of security required for home screen web apps can only be met by Apple. Because nobody else can be trusted to isolate the data of different web apps from each other.
- jfoster 3y agoI can tell from the phrasing that you don't agree with Apple on that, but just want to respond anyway. Apple will still be sandboxing the browser engines, so even if Apple doesn't trust the browser vendors, this still isn't a logical argument against allowing them to run PWAs.
- simondotau 3y agoIt might not be practical for the OS to enforce sandboxes between multiple PWAs running on the same third party browser engines. Browsers are incredible resource hogs and loading many instances with perfect isolation enforced by the OS could result in a poor experience.
- redox99 3y agoOn Android I think PWAs do indeed share the same browser process. So it's like having another tab. Still, tab level isolation is taken extremely seriously by browser developers.
- stefanlindbohm 3y agoRuntime access, yes. But I’m assuming this is to also prevent cookie/storage sharing between PWA:s too, which third party browser vendors (well, Google) have incentive to allow and Apple wants to prevent.
- sylware 3y agoUntil there is a nocript/basic (x)html browser, critical online services should be fine (if they have the decency to provide not only google/apple apps).
- miramba 3y agoMan that makes my day! I was prepared to not update to 17.4 and leave the Apple ecosystem in the longterm because of this, already checking out linux phones…same situation when they threatened to scan my photos. In both cases they reversed.
- tempodox 3y agoI'll believe it when I see it. I'm sure they'll find new ways to drag their feet.
- egberts1 3y agoThis Web App support needs to die, until Apple finds a way to prevent 3rd party from digging into our personal info.
- dickersnoodle 3y ago>This Web App support needs to die, until Apple finds a way to prevent 3rd party from digging into our personal info. Yep. Otherwise iOS will turn into "Blade Runner" with ads everywhere you look.
- suralind 3y agoNow I'm glad I wrote that email to Tim Cook about this. Seems like the general backslash they got was so big that even Apple (which, I would add, always knows better) bent.
- ngcc_hk 3y agoIs there any guide to develop such web based app?
- niutech 3y agohttps://web.dev/learn/pwa https://web.dev/learn/pwa https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/training/paths/create-pwas-with-pwabuilder/ https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/training/paths/create-pwas...