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This is the most likely theory. The notion that Apple was purposefully trying to kill PWAs never made sense in light of their significant investment in support

This is the most likely theory. The notion that Apple was purposefully trying to kill PWAs never made sense in light of their significant investment in supporting PWAs over the last four years, down to recruiting industry rockstars such as Jen Simmons. Nobody who was screaming bloody murder ever tried to reconcile that incongruence, much less succeeded. What’s more likely is that Apple’s lawyers went with the most careful interpretation of the DMA, concluded that they’d have to facilitate Home Screen install for other browsers as well, figured it wasn’t worth the engineering effort, especially on short notice, and instead just deactivated it for Safari as well. Then, after all the bloody murder that was being screamed about, the EU started to inquire[0] both with Apple as well as developers about the consequences for PWAs. Apple was told that their interpretation was too strict (or that they will be given more time to implement it for other browsers, but less likely because such decisions are typically made public) and that they’re fine (for now) with PWAs running in WebKit. 0: https://9to5mac.com/2024/02/26/apple-blocking-web-apps/ https://9to5mac.com/2024/02/26/apple-blocking-web-apps/

refulgentis 3y ago
The histrionical descriptions of other people's takes are like nails on chalkboard and kinda gross. (bloody murder?) No one thought removing them in the EU was the first step to removing them everywhere. Jen Simmons isn't a "rock star." Hiring someone with a lot of Twitter followers to do something doesn't preclude the company from stopping doing something. I think everyone over 30 in tech has seen that first hand. Couple right off the top of my head for Apple: Graeme Devine, Max Howell... In general, it is important for discussions to have nuance. I'm sure you've seen some un-nuanced discussions that I haven't. However, escalating rhetoric to condemn lack of nuance in others rhetoric should be reconsidered.
- turquoisevar 3y ago
  > The histrionical descriptions of other people's takes are like nails on chalkboard and kinda gross. (bloody murder?) Claiming that Apple is trying to “kill” PWAs is in and of itself histrionic. Especially when behavioral evidence that clearly points to the opposite is completely ignored and the bad faith intents are attributed wholly based on “vibes”. My categorizing that as screaming bloody murder isn’t an escalation in rhetoric[0] in the slightest. > Jen Simmons isn't a "rock star." It’s a figure of speech within the industry, granted, it typically also implies big ego issues, so perhaps the term isn’t so suitable when it comes to Simmons. > Hiring someone with a lot of Twitter followers Trying to diminish someone’s accomplishments and relevance within an industry by pretending they “just have a lot of Twitter followers” does nothing to refute my arguments. She’s one of 82 web developers with a Wiki bio and one of 177 programmers, that alone signifies notability. Point is that that she’s a high profile programmer and web developer and those come at a premium. That, plus the significant efforts made in the last four years to not only support PWAs but also improve standards, runs counter to the notion that Apple has ill will towards PWAs. While she has spearheaded a lot of the investment in PWAs, for the purposes of this debate I only brought her up to emphasize Apple’s investments in making improvements. Even with Simmons out of the equation there’s still four years of significant engineering efforts to reconcile. > doesn't preclude the company from stopping doing something. You’re begging the question here. Without you substantiating the implication that Apple has stopped improving PWAs, you’re just throwing around empty words. Nevertheless, it’s clear Apple hasn’t stopped their efforts on PWAs, given that the next Safari update will, again, include a slew of improvements to the benefit of PWAs as can be seen in the Safari Technology Preview release notes[1]. I’m amenable to debate this further, provided you put in some effort into make a credible case with substantiated arguments and you can keep the tone policing to yourself. 0: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/scream%20bloody%20murder https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/scream%20bloody%2... 1: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/safari-technology-preview-release-notes/stp-release-189 https://developer.apple.com/documentation/safari-technology-...
  - refulgentis 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - motoxpro 3y ago
      “She is not a rock star” That is a statement about relevance and I would argue to be a “rock star” you also have to have a lot of accomplishments. You might not agree that she is a rock start but you did make comments about her relevance (“twitter followers” etc)
      - refulgentis 3y ago
        It is quite explicitly not a statement indicating I believe them to be irrelevant or not famous. This is immediately clear when, immediately after these two words, I mention Twitter followers, clearly indicating I believe they have fame and relevance. It's abundantly clear when I spell out that companies don't make product decisions based on famous hires. (n.b. rock stars get to dictate the concert and album schedule) It's ever the more clear when I name famous and relevant people as similes. It's absolutely abundantly clear once you notice I never used the words famous and relevant, or words with stems of the same. It's a fools errand to spend time imagining thoughts in other people's heads that twist their words into insults of other people.
    - turquoisevar 3y ago
      Really? This is what you want to spend your time on doing? > Source for where I claimed this? Source for where I said you claimed this? > Source for where I said anything about accomplishments or relevance? Source for where I said anything about you straight up saying anything about accomplishments or relevance? > Source? I don't know where this is from at all. You said: “Hiring someone with a lot of Twitter followers to do something doesn't preclude the company from stopping doing something.” Now you’re gonna act coy by acting undignified about me interpreting “to do something” and “stopping doing something” to refer to working on PWA support when that has been the topic of this thread the entire time? Have some dignity.
- nemo8551 3y ago
  Gene Simmons however is a rock star.
- vundercind 3y ago
  > The histrionical descriptions of other people's takes are like nails on chalkboard and kinda gross. (bloody murder?) Just shows the poster read the relevant threads on this very site.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
afavour 3y ago
> in light of their significant investment in supporting PWAs over the last four years Investing in PWAs for four years is only going to get you so far when you’re eight years behind the competition. Obviously I’m making numbers up here but to my perspective Apple’s recent investments (bringing them to a level still behind competitors) has a lot more to do with staving off legal threats to their 30% cut on native apps (e.g. the Epic lawsuit) than any benevolence towards the web platform.
- turquoisevar 3y ago
  > Investing in PWAs for four years is only going to get you so far when you’re eight years behind the competition. I don’t think this speaks to intention, the investments that have been made and are still being made bring with them a cost, both in a monetary sense and in other ways. Regardless of the separate question with regards to them having been able to catch up with the competition. A generous interpretation, with the presupposed premise that they haven’t been able to catch up, could say that it warrants a more favorable interpretation of their intentions if they were willing to invest after having lagged behind for so long, because the required investment would be greater and the pay off less clear. > (bringing them to a level still behind competitors) Let’s be honest here. When people say something like this, they’re mainly thinking of Chrome/Chromium-based browsers. Google is known to have no qualms supporting certain things that both Mozilla and Apple are uncomfortable with, while at the same time implementing a bunch of stuff that isn’t standardized. On the whole, Safari/WebKit has roughly met Mozilla’s level of support for frameworks and APIs and even surpassed Mozilla on certain things (especially desktop). Of course if the benchmark is just Chromium, then none of it will ever be enough, then again, Mozilla doesn’t seem to catch a lot of flack for drawing a line in the sand in terms of support. Other than that, Safari seems to be doing great on test suites/benchmarks that focus on progress such as the annual Interop. Consistently[0] keeping up[1] over the years[2], and sometimes coming out on top[3]. > has a lot more to do with staving off legal threats to their 30% cut on native apps (e.g. the Epic lawsuit) than any benevolence towards the web platform. I tend to stay clear with attributing maleficence or less than generous intentions without something substantial to back it up. Especially when behavior seems to contradict such attributions. For example, if that where the main motivator then I’d expect a bare minimum approach and Apple dragging their feet, like we see with DMA implementations (e.g., only allowing what must be allowed in the EU instead of globally), instead we not only see improvement of PWA support, in part beyond what Mozilla supports, but also direct contributions of standards that PWAs rely on in the form of improvements.. 0: https://wpt.fyi/interop-2021?stable https://wpt.fyi/interop-2021?stable 1: https://wpt.fyi/interop-2023?stable https://wpt.fyi/interop-2023?stable 2: https://wpt.fyi/interop-2024 https://wpt.fyi/interop-2024 3: https://wpt.fyi/interop-2022?stable https://wpt.fyi/interop-2022?stable
temac 3y ago
Maybe it is a tactical move to create a precedent were the EU tells Apple "in this case this is ok to require execution by safari"
- brookst 3y ago
  Business is hard enough operating directly. Triple bank shots that require business and legal to coordinate are too complicated to attempt.
  - wraptile 3y ago
    One of the most valuable tech giants in the world is definitely capable of a simple red herring like this. This is amateur stuff. Apple likely has contingencies and plans for almost every scenario and if we learned anything apple email leaks is that they are keen on following up on any sound strategies, even ones that involve "we can't talk about this on email".
- ranguna 3y ago
  They already did that with iMessages though.
jrochkind1 3y ago
From the bottom of OP: > Apple's move also comes after a threat to look into the issue by European Commission authorities. > "We are indeed looking at the compliance packages of all gatekeepers, including Apple," the European Commission said in a statement on February 26. "In that context, we're in particular looking into the issue of progressive web apps, and can confirm sending the requests for information to Apple and to app developers, who can provide useful information for our assessment."
danShumway 3y ago
If (as many people have suggested) Apple's intention in suddenly devoting significant resources into PWAs (after completely ignoring them for years) was to avoid app store regulation, it makes perfect sense that when they failed to stave off regulation in the EU Apple would no longer have a motivation for investing into them within the EU. Additionally, even if Apple is still looking at PWAs as a way of staving off regulation in the EU, it still makes perfect sense that Apple is running a cost-benefit analysis on PWAs being open to other browsers. PWAs on iOS are significantly limited even after Apple's increase in support. Supporting PWAs just well enough to stave off regulation while keeping them locked down so that other browsers can not extend them or push capabilities further is entirely in Apple's interest. ---- My take is that Apple as a company would prefer not to be working on PWAs at all. But that's not really an option, because both the EU and the US are looking at regulating the app store. The next best option is to have PWAs be a serviceable but ultimately inferior option for offline-only and privacy-preserving apps (and in fact many of the APIs Apple supports are entirely unusable for offline-only apps, although to be fair that's probably more Google's fault than Apple's). Apple may very well have thought the option of a semi-supported but ultimately inferior, controlled PWA experience was off the table in the EU; or they thought that with the app store opening up they could get away with killing the platform for EU users entirely. In either case, they now seem to believe they can keep PWAs locked down to only support Safari capabilities. Maybe they're right, I'm sure Apple has more access to regulators to ask these questions than anyone else here does. And so none of this is incompatible with the notion that Apple wants to kill PWAs. The idea that a company can completely ignore a technology for years and years and years, and then suddenly out of the blue as soon as regulation gets suggested start pouring resources into their browser and openly arguing in court, "see, you don't need to regulate us, we have a browser" -- and we're supposed to believe that this means that Apple is suddenly on board with the technology and that they don't have ulterior motives or that their motives wouldn't shift back if the threat of regulation went away. That is just silly. Apple has had literal years to both clarify with regulators what the browser regulations would mean and to build APIs for PWAs that Microsoft and Google have been perfectly capable of creating. And in light of their last-minute scrambling, the most likely and reasonable interpretation is that Apple thought they could get away with killing off PWAs now that they were no longer useful for avoiding app store regulation, a bunch of people screamed about it, regulators reached out, and suddenly Apple had a (partial) change of heart. Note, of course, Apple has no timeline or plans or announcements about when (or if) PWA APIs are going to stop being 1st-party privileged and exclusive to Safari, despite the fact that Apple has known that this regulation would be coming for multiple years. Which does seem to conflict a little bit with the narrative that Apple is all-aboard with PWAs as a technology and that they've been investing into them as a long-term strategy or commitment to the web, but what do I know? --- But I really, genuinely do not see what the past 4 years prove other than that Apple's motivations about the web can change on a dime the moment that regulation enters the picture. And I think that's really revealing, and I think it says something about Apple's commitment to the web that it took the threat of regulation to make them care at all about the web as a platform, and I think it really says something about Apple's motivations that the moment that regulation went through anyway, Apple suddenly reverted back to its previous stance on PWAs and was comfortable throwing all of the PWA investment of the past 4 years out the window. I very honestly do not understand how people can look at these series of events and say, "this proves that Apple cares about the web." We're looking at the same timeline, but it's like you're reading it in a different language than I am.
nox101 3y ago
AFAIK Apple still doesn't support PWAs. As one example AFAIK, iOS Webkit doesn't support fullscreen mode and orientation so it's impossible to make a landscape game as a PWA. That is supported on Android Firefox and Chrome for like 10 years? And would likely be supported on an alternate browser on iOS I'm pretty sure there are many other APIs that PWAs want, that native apps have, that Firefox and Chrome offer on Android, but since 3rd party browsers are not supported on iOS, don't exist there. That to me says Apple doesn't want PWAs.
- latexr 3y ago
  > AFAIK, iOS Webkit doesn't support fullscreen mode and orientation I just opened a web app saved to the Home Screen, and it’s both full screen and rotates orientation.
  - jwells89 3y ago
    Yes, installed PWAs can run fullscreen. This limitation exists only inside of Safari proper. The intent here is likely to avoid the messes that could be caused by arbitrary sites being able to fullscreen and confuse or trick the user. Requiring a user interaction to fullscreen doesn’t help here much, it’s easy to attach the function to an innocuous looking link or image that baits users into tapping them.
    - nox101 3y ago
      And yet (1) Firefox and Chrome has shipped with that ability for 10+ years on Android and the world hasn't ended (2) PWAs are effectively apps. Native apps can do that those things so there's no difference in terms of risks. You could certainly make it so web pages can't but PWAs can. Also, no, Safari PWAs do not do allow you to lock the screen orientation
  - nox101 3y ago
    "rotates" is not the same as "forces a rotation". If there's a PWA that forces landscape orientation in iOS, same as a native app, please post a link.
mvdtnz 3y ago
> The notion that Apple was purposefully trying to kill PWAs never made sense in light of their significant investment in supporting PWAs over the last four years, down to recruiting industry rockstars such as Jen Simmons. Apple's investment into PWA support can charitably be characterised as "begrudging". You don't need to defend this company. They have been behaving badly for a long time.
NicoJuicy 3y ago
Significant investment... For apple or app store profits it's just a rounding error ( to put things in perspective). What is the end result?
ruszki 3y ago
Apple stated in their first statement regarding multiple engines support for PWAs, that it can be done, they just decided not to make it. Also, it’s an about 18 months old law. Not that they wouldn’t have time or resources for that matter. So there was clearly a purpose to kill PWAs on iOS, and it was clearly their decision according to them. Another thing with EU, you can ask them. And normally, first, you ask them when something is questionable. This either didn’t happen, or Apple didn’t wait, or they already know what is the response. This was clearly a PR move. So it’s totally understandable when people have problems with Apple, how they handled this.
quitit 3y ago
Just like Apple's 3-months free trial for the Apple Music service, keeping the Webkit-only PWAs were going to be seen as anticompetitive by Apple's opponents. Making the change early is a strategy to exploit Apple's opponents into loudly decrying how important and useful PWAs are - and that removing PWAs is the true, evil, anti-competitive strategy. (With all of their typical exaggeration, in reality we know PWAs are a limited-use feature.) In short, Apple played the useful idiots into being their cheerleaders and provided Apple exactly what they needed to maintain this feature. It didn't even take an "open letter" from "Taylor Swift" to "Tim Cook" this time. tl,dr: Apple exploits anti-apple rhetoric to get their way, again.

refulgentis 3y ago

The histrionical descriptions of other people's takes are like nails on chalkboard and kinda gross. (bloody murder?) No one thought removing them in the EU was the first step to removing them everywhere. Jen Simmons isn't a "rock star." Hiring someone with a lot of Twitter followers to do something doesn't preclude the company from stopping doing something. I think everyone over 30 in tech has seen that first hand. Couple right off the top of my head for Apple: Graeme Devine, Max Howell... In general, it is important for discussions to have nuance. I'm sure you've seen some un-nuanced discussions that I haven't. However, escalating rhetoric to condemn lack of nuance in others rhetoric should be reconsidered.

turquoisevar 3y ago
> The histrionical descriptions of other people's takes are like nails on chalkboard and kinda gross. (bloody murder?) Claiming that Apple is trying to “kill” PWAs is in and of itself histrionic. Especially when behavioral evidence that clearly points to the opposite is completely ignored and the bad faith intents are attributed wholly based on “vibes”. My categorizing that as screaming bloody murder isn’t an escalation in rhetoric[0] in the slightest. > Jen Simmons isn't a "rock star." It’s a figure of speech within the industry, granted, it typically also implies big ego issues, so perhaps the term isn’t so suitable when it comes to Simmons. > Hiring someone with a lot of Twitter followers Trying to diminish someone’s accomplishments and relevance within an industry by pretending they “just have a lot of Twitter followers” does nothing to refute my arguments. She’s one of 82 web developers with a Wiki bio and one of 177 programmers, that alone signifies notability. Point is that that she’s a high profile programmer and web developer and those come at a premium. That, plus the significant efforts made in the last four years to not only support PWAs but also improve standards, runs counter to the notion that Apple has ill will towards PWAs. While she has spearheaded a lot of the investment in PWAs, for the purposes of this debate I only brought her up to emphasize Apple’s investments in making improvements. Even with Simmons out of the equation there’s still four years of significant engineering efforts to reconcile. > doesn't preclude the company from stopping doing something. You’re begging the question here. Without you substantiating the implication that Apple has stopped improving PWAs, you’re just throwing around empty words. Nevertheless, it’s clear Apple hasn’t stopped their efforts on PWAs, given that the next Safari update will, again, include a slew of improvements to the benefit of PWAs as can be seen in the Safari Technology Preview release notes[1]. I’m amenable to debate this further, provided you put in some effort into make a credible case with substantiated arguments and you can keep the tone policing to yourself. 0: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/scream%20bloody%20murder https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/scream%20bloody%2... 1: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/safari-technology-preview-release-notes/stp-release-189 https://developer.apple.com/documentation/safari-technology-...
- refulgentis 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - motoxpro 3y ago
    “She is not a rock star” That is a statement about relevance and I would argue to be a “rock star” you also have to have a lot of accomplishments. You might not agree that she is a rock start but you did make comments about her relevance (“twitter followers” etc)
    - refulgentis 3y ago
      It is quite explicitly not a statement indicating I believe them to be irrelevant or not famous. This is immediately clear when, immediately after these two words, I mention Twitter followers, clearly indicating I believe they have fame and relevance. It's abundantly clear when I spell out that companies don't make product decisions based on famous hires. (n.b. rock stars get to dictate the concert and album schedule) It's ever the more clear when I name famous and relevant people as similes. It's absolutely abundantly clear once you notice I never used the words famous and relevant, or words with stems of the same. It's a fools errand to spend time imagining thoughts in other people's heads that twist their words into insults of other people.
  - turquoisevar 3y ago
    Really? This is what you want to spend your time on doing? > Source for where I claimed this? Source for where I said you claimed this? > Source for where I said anything about accomplishments or relevance? Source for where I said anything about you straight up saying anything about accomplishments or relevance? > Source? I don't know where this is from at all. You said: “Hiring someone with a lot of Twitter followers to do something doesn't preclude the company from stopping doing something.” Now you’re gonna act coy by acting undignified about me interpreting “to do something” and “stopping doing something” to refer to working on PWA support when that has been the topic of this thread the entire time? Have some dignity.
nemo8551 3y ago
Gene Simmons however is a rock star.
vundercind 3y ago
> The histrionical descriptions of other people's takes are like nails on chalkboard and kinda gross. (bloody murder?) Just shows the poster read the relevant threads on this very site.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]

afavour 3y ago

> in light of their significant investment in supporting PWAs over the last four years Investing in PWAs for four years is only going to get you so far when you’re eight years behind the competition. Obviously I’m making numbers up here but to my perspective Apple’s recent investments (bringing them to a level still behind competitors) has a lot more to do with staving off legal threats to their 30% cut on native apps (e.g. the Epic lawsuit) than any benevolence towards the web platform.

turquoisevar 3y ago
> Investing in PWAs for four years is only going to get you so far when you’re eight years behind the competition. I don’t think this speaks to intention, the investments that have been made and are still being made bring with them a cost, both in a monetary sense and in other ways. Regardless of the separate question with regards to them having been able to catch up with the competition. A generous interpretation, with the presupposed premise that they haven’t been able to catch up, could say that it warrants a more favorable interpretation of their intentions if they were willing to invest after having lagged behind for so long, because the required investment would be greater and the pay off less clear. > (bringing them to a level still behind competitors) Let’s be honest here. When people say something like this, they’re mainly thinking of Chrome/Chromium-based browsers. Google is known to have no qualms supporting certain things that both Mozilla and Apple are uncomfortable with, while at the same time implementing a bunch of stuff that isn’t standardized. On the whole, Safari/WebKit has roughly met Mozilla’s level of support for frameworks and APIs and even surpassed Mozilla on certain things (especially desktop). Of course if the benchmark is just Chromium, then none of it will ever be enough, then again, Mozilla doesn’t seem to catch a lot of flack for drawing a line in the sand in terms of support. Other than that, Safari seems to be doing great on test suites/benchmarks that focus on progress such as the annual Interop. Consistently[0] keeping up[1] over the years[2], and sometimes coming out on top[3]. > has a lot more to do with staving off legal threats to their 30% cut on native apps (e.g. the Epic lawsuit) than any benevolence towards the web platform. I tend to stay clear with attributing maleficence or less than generous intentions without something substantial to back it up. Especially when behavior seems to contradict such attributions. For example, if that where the main motivator then I’d expect a bare minimum approach and Apple dragging their feet, like we see with DMA implementations (e.g., only allowing what must be allowed in the EU instead of globally), instead we not only see improvement of PWA support, in part beyond what Mozilla supports, but also direct contributions of standards that PWAs rely on in the form of improvements.. 0: https://wpt.fyi/interop-2021?stable https://wpt.fyi/interop-2021?stable 1: https://wpt.fyi/interop-2023?stable https://wpt.fyi/interop-2023?stable 2: https://wpt.fyi/interop-2024 https://wpt.fyi/interop-2024 3: https://wpt.fyi/interop-2022?stable https://wpt.fyi/interop-2022?stable

temac 3y ago

Maybe it is a tactical move to create a precedent were the EU tells Apple "in this case this is ok to require execution by safari"

brookst 3y ago
Business is hard enough operating directly. Triple bank shots that require business and legal to coordinate are too complicated to attempt.
- wraptile 3y ago
  One of the most valuable tech giants in the world is definitely capable of a simple red herring like this. This is amateur stuff. Apple likely has contingencies and plans for almost every scenario and if we learned anything apple email leaks is that they are keen on following up on any sound strategies, even ones that involve "we can't talk about this on email".
ranguna 3y ago
They already did that with iMessages though.

jrochkind1 3y ago

From the bottom of OP: > Apple's move also comes after a threat to look into the issue by European Commission authorities. > "We are indeed looking at the compliance packages of all gatekeepers, including Apple," the European Commission said in a statement on February 26. "In that context, we're in particular looking into the issue of progressive web apps, and can confirm sending the requests for information to Apple and to app developers, who can provide useful information for our assessment."

danShumway 3y ago

If (as many people have suggested) Apple's intention in suddenly devoting significant resources into PWAs (after completely ignoring them for years) was to avoid app store regulation, it makes perfect sense that when they failed to stave off regulation in the EU Apple would no longer have a motivation for investing into them within the EU. Additionally, even if Apple is still looking at PWAs as a way of staving off regulation in the EU, it still makes perfect sense that Apple is running a cost-benefit analysis on PWAs being open to other browsers. PWAs on iOS are significantly limited even after Apple's increase in support. Supporting PWAs just well enough to stave off regulation while keeping them locked down so that other browsers can not extend them or push capabilities further is entirely in Apple's interest. ---- My take is that Apple as a company would prefer not to be working on PWAs at all. But that's not really an option, because both the EU and the US are looking at regulating the app store. The next best option is to have PWAs be a serviceable but ultimately inferior option for offline-only and privacy-preserving apps (and in fact many of the APIs Apple supports are entirely unusable for offline-only apps, although to be fair that's probably more Google's fault than Apple's). Apple may very well have thought the option of a semi-supported but ultimately inferior, controlled PWA experience was off the table in the EU; or they thought that with the app store opening up they could get away with killing the platform for EU users entirely. In either case, they now seem to believe they can keep PWAs locked down to only support Safari capabilities. Maybe they're right, I'm sure Apple has more access to regulators to ask these questions than anyone else here does. And so none of this is incompatible with the notion that Apple wants to kill PWAs. The idea that a company can completely ignore a technology for years and years and years, and then suddenly out of the blue as soon as regulation gets suggested start pouring resources into their browser and openly arguing in court, "see, you don't need to regulate us, we have a browser" -- and we're supposed to believe that this means that Apple is suddenly on board with the technology and that they don't have ulterior motives or that their motives wouldn't shift back if the threat of regulation went away. That is just silly. Apple has had literal years to both clarify with regulators what the browser regulations would mean and to build APIs for PWAs that Microsoft and Google have been perfectly capable of creating. And in light of their last-minute scrambling, the most likely and reasonable interpretation is that Apple thought they could get away with killing off PWAs now that they were no longer useful for avoiding app store regulation, a bunch of people screamed about it, regulators reached out, and suddenly Apple had a (partial) change of heart. Note, of course, Apple has no timeline or plans or announcements about when (or if) PWA APIs are going to stop being 1st-party privileged and exclusive to Safari, despite the fact that Apple has known that this regulation would be coming for multiple years. Which does seem to conflict a little bit with the narrative that Apple is all-aboard with PWAs as a technology and that they've been investing into them as a long-term strategy or commitment to the web, but what do I know? --- But I really, genuinely do not see what the past 4 years prove other than that Apple's motivations about the web can change on a dime the moment that regulation enters the picture. And I think that's really revealing, and I think it says something about Apple's commitment to the web that it took the threat of regulation to make them care at all about the web as a platform, and I think it really says something about Apple's motivations that the moment that regulation went through anyway, Apple suddenly reverted back to its previous stance on PWAs and was comfortable throwing all of the PWA investment of the past 4 years out the window. I very honestly do not understand how people can look at these series of events and say, "this proves that Apple cares about the web." We're looking at the same timeline, but it's like you're reading it in a different language than I am.

nox101 3y ago

AFAIK Apple still doesn't support PWAs. As one example AFAIK, iOS Webkit doesn't support fullscreen mode and orientation so it's impossible to make a landscape game as a PWA. That is supported on Android Firefox and Chrome for like 10 years? And would likely be supported on an alternate browser on iOS I'm pretty sure there are many other APIs that PWAs want, that native apps have, that Firefox and Chrome offer on Android, but since 3rd party browsers are not supported on iOS, don't exist there. That to me says Apple doesn't want PWAs.

latexr 3y ago
> AFAIK, iOS Webkit doesn't support fullscreen mode and orientation I just opened a web app saved to the Home Screen, and it’s both full screen and rotates orientation.
- jwells89 3y ago
  Yes, installed PWAs can run fullscreen. This limitation exists only inside of Safari proper. The intent here is likely to avoid the messes that could be caused by arbitrary sites being able to fullscreen and confuse or trick the user. Requiring a user interaction to fullscreen doesn’t help here much, it’s easy to attach the function to an innocuous looking link or image that baits users into tapping them.
  - nox101 3y ago
    And yet (1) Firefox and Chrome has shipped with that ability for 10+ years on Android and the world hasn't ended (2) PWAs are effectively apps. Native apps can do that those things so there's no difference in terms of risks. You could certainly make it so web pages can't but PWAs can. Also, no, Safari PWAs do not do allow you to lock the screen orientation
- nox101 3y ago
  "rotates" is not the same as "forces a rotation". If there's a PWA that forces landscape orientation in iOS, same as a native app, please post a link.

mvdtnz 3y ago

> The notion that Apple was purposefully trying to kill PWAs never made sense in light of their significant investment in supporting PWAs over the last four years, down to recruiting industry rockstars such as Jen Simmons. Apple's investment into PWA support can charitably be characterised as "begrudging". You don't need to defend this company. They have been behaving badly for a long time.

NicoJuicy 3y ago

Significant investment... For apple or app store profits it's just a rounding error ( to put things in perspective). What is the end result?

ruszki 3y ago

Apple stated in their first statement regarding multiple engines support for PWAs, that it can be done, they just decided not to make it. Also, it’s an about 18 months old law. Not that they wouldn’t have time or resources for that matter. So there was clearly a purpose to kill PWAs on iOS, and it was clearly their decision according to them. Another thing with EU, you can ask them. And normally, first, you ask them when something is questionable. This either didn’t happen, or Apple didn’t wait, or they already know what is the response. This was clearly a PR move. So it’s totally understandable when people have problems with Apple, how they handled this.

quitit 3y ago

Just like Apple's 3-months free trial for the Apple Music service, keeping the Webkit-only PWAs were going to be seen as anticompetitive by Apple's opponents. Making the change early is a strategy to exploit Apple's opponents into loudly decrying how important and useful PWAs are - and that removing PWAs is the true, evil, anti-competitive strategy. (With all of their typical exaggeration, in reality we know PWAs are a limited-use feature.) In short, Apple played the useful idiots into being their cheerleaders and provided Apple exactly what they needed to maintain this feature. It didn't even take an "open letter" from "Taylor Swift" to "Tim Cook" this time. tl,dr: Apple exploits anti-apple rhetoric to get their way, again.