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That's a good question: Apple has argued in court that PWAs are a serviceable alternative to the app store. So why aren't developers using them? Is Apple wrong

That's a good question: Apple has argued in court that PWAs are a serviceable alternative to the app store. So why aren't developers using them? Is Apple wrong? Are they not a serviceable alternative to the app store? Android has better support than iOS, and Android's userbase spends less money on apps and is more often monetized through ads. So it's not the payment platform that causes developers to avoid PWAs, otherwise they'd be used all over the place on Android. Android also has a semi-thriving community of Open Source applications through F-Droid that are privacy preserving and completely non-monetized. But installing apps through F-Droid is complicated. And F-Droid has zero user reviews. So it's clearly not the ease of delivery or advertisement that's causing those developers to ship native apps that need to be sideloaded through a complicated process that involves going into your phone settings and turning on sideloading instead of just shipping web apps. So what's left? Well, invasive apps like Facebook/Twitter could ship as PWAs (with the caveat that their notification support would be worse). But they'd be giving up tracking ability by doing so. Web browsers are better secured than phones are. Facebook on iOS has an easier time tracking your behavior than Facebook in Safari does. Facebook on iOS could even at one point (and might still be able to, I can't find a source that this is patched) push custom code into web views of other articles through its iOS native app. So yeah, they're obviously interested in shipping an iOS app because (frankly) the Safari team is better at security than Apple's iOS developers are. The only reason left that explains that behavior is the fact that PWAs on both Android and iOS are severely lacking in APIs that would enable anything other than shallow internet-connected services. They are not alternatives to the app store in their current state, no matter how much Apple pretends otherwise. Notification support on Android for PWAs is a joke, it's basically only usable for advertisements. And it's even worse on iOS. If you want to make an alarm app as a PWA, it is literally impossible to do that reliably. Want to make an RSS reader? I have no clue how that would be done as a PWA, I don't think it can be done without a web server handling the article fetching. ---- And I'm sure you would say at this point that there are tons of apps that don't need this stuff and that really it's not about capabilities it's about payments and about what the users want and where they look for apps... And I would just repeat your question back to you -- there are a ton of apps that are not monetizing through app store payments that aren't shipping PWAs. There are a ton of apps that are not looking for mass-market appeal that are not shipping PWAs. And Apple is arguing in court that they could. But they're not. They're not using PWAs on iOS or on Android. They're not shipping PWAs when they rely on advertising. They're not shipping PWAs when they would benefit tremendously from not needing to pay so many commissions to Apple. Even when they're Open Source and don't monetize at all, they're not shipping PWAs. Why not? What do those developers know that Apple either doesn't know or is pretending not to know? There's no NewPipe for iOS shipping through Safari. Why is that?

scarface_74 3y ago
Just a quick Google search shows that App Store revenue is 67%/33% split Apple/Google. https://www.bigabid.com/apple-app-store-vs-google-play-store-differences/#:~:text=These%20trends%20have%20continued%2C%20and,for%20a%20better%20market%20share https://www.bigabid.com/apple-app-store-vs-google-play-store.... In that case, if PWAs were good enough on Android and they could avoid the 30% cut, why bother making native Android apps at all? All of the HN commenters blame mean old Apple for holding the web back. But the fact is that every mobile platform at one point announced that “you can make good apps using web technology” - Apple, Google, Microsoft, Palm, and RIM. They’ve all sucked Even before then, Sun promised that you could make great cross platform GUI apps and they sucked. Today Electron apps are, battery draining, memory hogging monstrosities. And the tracking thing is a non starter. You have much better ways to track on the we then through native apps - at least on iOS with a much better permission model. To the first approximation - no one cares about PWAs - not users, not companies.
- danShumway 3y ago
  > In that case, if PWAs were good enough on Android and they could avoid the 30% cut, why bother making native Android apps at all? I don't want to skirt too close to HN guidelines here, but I'm genuinely curious if you actually read my comment or not. This is exactly what I asked you. If PWAs are (as Apple claims) good enough alternatives to the app store, why isn't anyone using them? You can complain about Electron, but developers build Electron apps. They don't build PWAs. Because Electron apps are actually a feasible alternative to more native GUIs, and PWAs are not. The question you and I are asking (why isn't anyone using PWAs) reveals exactly how bullcrap Apple's legal arguments about PWAs are. They are not reasonable alternatives to the app store. > All of the HN commenters blame mean old Apple for holding the web back I don't blame Apple exclusively for holding the web back. They're a part of it, but so is Google. I don't think I've ever had much good to say about Google on here, and as the US and EU are actively proving right now, it is possible to pursue regulation for multiple companies at the same time. > You have much better ways to track on the we[b] then through native apps - at least on iOS with a much better permission model. This is not true by any metric. Native apps have more access to fingerprinting vectors than web apps do, are capable of requesting deeper levels of user information like contacts. Native Facebook on iOS got called out for injecting custom code into the in-app web view when users clicked on links within Facebook for 3rd-party sites. That's something that's not possible to do in any modern web browser. Native apps are indisputably easier to use to fingerprint and track users on both iOS and Android. Even if you're unfamiliar with the technical side of this, you can still think of it this way: if apps like Facebook had an easier time tracking you on the web than on mobile devices, they wouldn't try to get you to install mobile apps. They would force you to use the website. The reason why Facebook ships an iOS app is because it is easier to track you via iOS than through the Facebook website.

scarface_74 3y ago

Just a quick Google search shows that App Store revenue is 67%/33% split Apple/Google. https://www.bigabid.com/apple-app-store-vs-google-play-store-differences/#:~:text=These%20trends%20have%20continued%2C%20and,for%20a%20better%20market%20share https://www.bigabid.com/apple-app-store-vs-google-play-store.... In that case, if PWAs were good enough on Android and they could avoid the 30% cut, why bother making native Android apps at all? All of the HN commenters blame mean old Apple for holding the web back. But the fact is that every mobile platform at one point announced that “you can make good apps using web technology” - Apple, Google, Microsoft, Palm, and RIM. They’ve all sucked Even before then, Sun promised that you could make great cross platform GUI apps and they sucked. Today Electron apps are, battery draining, memory hogging monstrosities. And the tracking thing is a non starter. You have much better ways to track on the we then through native apps - at least on iOS with a much better permission model. To the first approximation - no one cares about PWAs - not users, not companies.

danShumway 3y ago
> In that case, if PWAs were good enough on Android and they could avoid the 30% cut, why bother making native Android apps at all? I don't want to skirt too close to HN guidelines here, but I'm genuinely curious if you actually read my comment or not. This is exactly what I asked you. If PWAs are (as Apple claims) good enough alternatives to the app store, why isn't anyone using them? You can complain about Electron, but developers build Electron apps. They don't build PWAs. Because Electron apps are actually a feasible alternative to more native GUIs, and PWAs are not. The question you and I are asking (why isn't anyone using PWAs) reveals exactly how bullcrap Apple's legal arguments about PWAs are. They are not reasonable alternatives to the app store. > All of the HN commenters blame mean old Apple for holding the web back I don't blame Apple exclusively for holding the web back. They're a part of it, but so is Google. I don't think I've ever had much good to say about Google on here, and as the US and EU are actively proving right now, it is possible to pursue regulation for multiple companies at the same time. > You have much better ways to track on the we[b] then through native apps - at least on iOS with a much better permission model. This is not true by any metric. Native apps have more access to fingerprinting vectors than web apps do, are capable of requesting deeper levels of user information like contacts. Native Facebook on iOS got called out for injecting custom code into the in-app web view when users clicked on links within Facebook for 3rd-party sites. That's something that's not possible to do in any modern web browser. Native apps are indisputably easier to use to fingerprint and track users on both iOS and Android. Even if you're unfamiliar with the technical side of this, you can still think of it this way: if apps like Facebook had an easier time tracking you on the web than on mobile devices, they wouldn't try to get you to install mobile apps. They would force you to use the website. The reason why Facebook ships an iOS app is because it is easier to track you via iOS than through the Facebook website.