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To 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 th
by rejhgadellaa 3y ago
To 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 agoYou've posted your comment twice.
- dang 3y agoMight have been a mistake? I've killed the other one as a dupe now (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39565557 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39565557).
- rejhgadellaa 3y agoYep that was a mistake. Thank you!
- Aissen 3y agoI think this is spot on. It might not seem like much, but the EU announcing they would open an investigation, during the beta of an OS is unheard of. It's the kind of reactivity that might have surprised Apple, as it was a public response released even before the official answer to the current obviously malicious DMA compliance plan.
- johnnyanmac 3y ago>Apple would've sent a message that you can not rely on the web to reach your customers on iOS. I mean, given the rest of their malicious compliance over the paranoia of losing App store power, this seems to align with their goals. The only kink in this armor comes from old history where the Jobs era clearly didn't like the idea of the web on iPhone, but market forces made them add in all sort of specific exceptions and restrictions for browsers at the end of the day. But that was in the Jobs era, nearly a decade ago. I can see them wanting to slowly try again. >Apple removed PWA support so they would not have to open up the APIs to other browsers. Period. All other browsers of... Mozilla? Most other people are perfectly fine staying in webkit land. Even Google probably wouldn't change much if IOS opened up.