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> But they don’t. Why not? Because PWAs lack substantial capabilities that make them impossible to use for most app development. Which is what everyone has bee

> But they don’t. Why not? Because PWAs lack substantial capabilities that make them impossible to use for most app development. Which is what everyone has been saying. Note that developers do move out of the Android store, there are a host of applications available on F-Droid that are not available through the Android app store even though discoverability on F-Droid is nonexistent. But those developers don't build PWAs, because PWAs are not a viable platform for building modern apps. It has nothing to do with the 30% being worth it or not and everything to do with the fact that moving away from the app store on both Android and iOS is really only theoretically possible -- and PWAs in every practical sense can't actually be used to avoid the tax. You bring up Candy Crush above as an example of an app that could be a PWA. It couldn't. PWAs lack reliable storage mechanisms, unless Candy Crush starts requiring online accounts it's not going to ship as a PWA. Meanwhile, the last "big" app that tried to go down the PWA route was Wordle, which was both difficult for users to install and was immediately swamped with fraudulent clones in the app store claiming to be the official apps, which neither Google nor Apple did anything to stop. Once the NYT purchased Wordle, one of the first things they did was add an online account system -- in part to mitigate the common data losses that were present in the PWA. Wordle is the best possible candidate for a PWA, and the NYT is still struggling with it. I would not be surprised if at some point they don't turn it into a native app. It's not that the payments are worth 30%. It's that going outside the app store (even when you're not collecting any payments at all) isn't viable. Which is what everyone has been saying all this time. > Also if it is only Apple holding PWAs back It's not. Apple is one party holding PWAs back.

scarface_74 3y ago
Exactly what is stopping King from having an online account or just having “login with $x” where $x is Google/Apple/Facebook? You act as if creating an online account is a big barrier to entry. I can set up a scalable online account in literally a couple of hours that allows login with third parties like the above with Cognito, Lambda and DynamoDB. It’s not a heavy lift. Yes I’ve done that at scale.
- danShumway 3y ago
  > Exactly what is stopping King from having an online account or just having “login with $x” where $x is Google/Apple/Facebook? Privacy, security, convenience and the fact that it's a #$%&ing terrible user experience. Nobody wants to log in with Facebook every time they play a video game. I mean, heck, you're on here arguing about user privacy, and your solution to that is that more user data should be stored in the cloud? Come on. King does appear to have online accounts for at least the people who want them[0]. I would argue a lot of people probably don't want them. ---- [0]: Or at least did at one point, a "quick Google search" shows that King did at one point make its games available online and was forced to abandon that platform in 2020 due to (in their words), "changing web-based technology on major browsers". Seems like that suggests something about PWAs as a viable alternative to the app store, but whatever, I'm sure it's just a coincidence and we definitely shouldn't conclude anything from it other than that King loves forking over that 30% /s
  - scarface_74 3y ago
    > Privacy, security, convenience and the fact that it's a #$%&ing terrible user experience. Nobody wants to log in with Facebook every time they play a video game. I mean, heck, you're on here arguing about user privacy, and your solution to that is that more user data should be stored in the cloud? Come on. You mean like no one wants to log in with Steam, or their console? You realize that everyone on mobile is already logged in to an account where there game data can be saved an automatically synced right? > King does appear to have online accounts for at least the people who want them[0]. I would argue a lot of people probably don't want them. Since most people play on mobile, King didn’t need a separate online account, between saving in Game Center and just saving locally and letting iCloud taking care of the backups and online sync they didn’t have to.
    - danShumway 3y ago
      > You mean like no one wants to log in with Steam, or their console? You realize that everyone on mobile is already logged in to an account where there game data can be saved an automatically synced right? Do you not realize that people use consoles offline? Or that every single platform that you're talking about has options to disable online saves? Or that there are multiple platforms like the Switch which straight-up don't sync every game's data and keep a number of games purely clientside? Yes, people care about offline storage. They just do, I guess congratulations if you're one of the people who magically don't have to care about that, but lots of people do. Syncing is nice, but it does not get rid of the need for reliable offline storage. Every single platform -- literally every single one, including iOS, understands this and has mechanisms to allow users to keep data local. Literally every single one. Did you know that consoles like the base PS5 don't even require an Internet connection at all in order to play games? Not only do you not have to sync your saves, you don't have to use the Internet at all. Because some (not all, but enough) users care about this, and every single major games platform from iOS to Android to Steam to GoG to Itch to Windows to Mac all understand this and have all put resources into making sure that their platforms and distribution services work without requiring background sync or cloud storage. I will of course note that we have entirely moved away from the privacy argument. Your earlier claims about web privacy sound extra-nonsensical when viewed through the light that your solution to storage is to upload literally all of everyone's data to the cloud. But whatever. > Since most people play on mobile, King didn’t need a separate online account, between saving in Game Center and just saving locally and letting iCloud taking care of the backups and online sync they didn’t have to. Which is not available to PWAs. If you keep saying the same things over and over again, I'm going to keep giving you the same replies. PWAs can not save in Game Center, Game Center is irrelevant to any conversation about what King can and can't store in a PWA. If you want to store data in PWA, that does require a separate online account. And as I've said elsewhere, even that is not really a solution and you're still going to need to worry about data loss.
scarface_74 3y ago
Local storage is not the answer. It’s the expectation in 2024 that you should be able to use an app across devices and keep your state. And you act as if setting up accounts on a server is hard. It’s literally a CloudFormation template with Cognito, Lambda, IAM and DynamoDB. Yes, I’ve done it at scale and yes it’s that easy.
- danShumway 3y ago
  > It’s the expectation in 2024 that you should be able to use an app across devices and keep your state. Device sync is a solved problem on quite literally every single major platform, including iOS. There's no reason Apple couldn't sync PWA storage using the same mechanisms. > And you act as if setting up accounts on a server is hard. It objectively increases attack surface, decreases privacy, adds user friction, and is unnecessary for the majority of apps. Most users (myself included) don't want online accounts. I don't need an online account for an alarm. I don't need to log in with Facebook or Github or whatever just to do basic things on my phone. This is just unbelievably silly at this point. Of course reliable offline storage matters for app development, are you seriously going to try and argue that it doesn't? If Apple got rid of reliable offline storage for native applications, nobody would say that didn't matter or that it wasn't a big deal. Some of us actually like that we can do things like type into a text editor and know the text document will still be there when we come back to our computers, and that it doesn't have to get synced to somebody else's servers to guarantee that. The solution to app storage is not to completely abandon privacy, require an Internet connection for every app, and then put all of our information on somebody else's server.
  - scarface_74 3y ago
    Every single app on the App Store gets device sync for free via iCloud. I can drop my iPhone in the ocean, buy a new iPhone and and my new iPhone will have all of the data that my old iPhone had within the last 24 hours. How exactly do you do “device sync” without an account somewhere? > It objectively increases attack surface and is unnecessary for the majority of apps, and most users (myself included) don't want one. Because for the majority of users - they don’t need a separate account because all of their state can either be saved by the app just saving locally and letting iCloud take care of it. By logging the state in Game Center or some apps like Overcast use the users app specific iCloud token (each app gets a unique token per user not shared across apps) and stores state server side. I can guarantee you that most users expect to have everything backed up automatically and expect to be able to move between devices. > Some of us actually like that we can do things like type into a text editor and know the text document will still be there when we come back to our computers, and that it doesn't have to get synced to somebody else's servers to guarantee that. That must be why no one uses Google apps so their data is accessible across devices, Office 365 and why Chromebooks are so unpopular because people don’t like cloud backup….

scarface_74 3y ago

Exactly what is stopping King from having an online account or just having “login with $x” where $x is Google/Apple/Facebook? You act as if creating an online account is a big barrier to entry. I can set up a scalable online account in literally a couple of hours that allows login with third parties like the above with Cognito, Lambda and DynamoDB. It’s not a heavy lift. Yes I’ve done that at scale.

danShumway 3y ago
> Exactly what is stopping King from having an online account or just having “login with $x” where $x is Google/Apple/Facebook? Privacy, security, convenience and the fact that it's a #$%&ing terrible user experience. Nobody wants to log in with Facebook every time they play a video game. I mean, heck, you're on here arguing about user privacy, and your solution to that is that more user data should be stored in the cloud? Come on. King does appear to have online accounts for at least the people who want them[0]. I would argue a lot of people probably don't want them. ---- [0]: Or at least did at one point, a "quick Google search" shows that King did at one point make its games available online and was forced to abandon that platform in 2020 due to (in their words), "changing web-based technology on major browsers". Seems like that suggests something about PWAs as a viable alternative to the app store, but whatever, I'm sure it's just a coincidence and we definitely shouldn't conclude anything from it other than that King loves forking over that 30% /s
- scarface_74 3y ago
  > Privacy, security, convenience and the fact that it's a #$%&ing terrible user experience. Nobody wants to log in with Facebook every time they play a video game. I mean, heck, you're on here arguing about user privacy, and your solution to that is that more user data should be stored in the cloud? Come on. You mean like no one wants to log in with Steam, or their console? You realize that everyone on mobile is already logged in to an account where there game data can be saved an automatically synced right? > King does appear to have online accounts for at least the people who want them[0]. I would argue a lot of people probably don't want them. Since most people play on mobile, King didn’t need a separate online account, between saving in Game Center and just saving locally and letting iCloud taking care of the backups and online sync they didn’t have to.
  - danShumway 3y ago
    > You mean like no one wants to log in with Steam, or their console? You realize that everyone on mobile is already logged in to an account where there game data can be saved an automatically synced right? Do you not realize that people use consoles offline? Or that every single platform that you're talking about has options to disable online saves? Or that there are multiple platforms like the Switch which straight-up don't sync every game's data and keep a number of games purely clientside? Yes, people care about offline storage. They just do, I guess congratulations if you're one of the people who magically don't have to care about that, but lots of people do. Syncing is nice, but it does not get rid of the need for reliable offline storage. Every single platform -- literally every single one, including iOS, understands this and has mechanisms to allow users to keep data local. Literally every single one. Did you know that consoles like the base PS5 don't even require an Internet connection at all in order to play games? Not only do you not have to sync your saves, you don't have to use the Internet at all. Because some (not all, but enough) users care about this, and every single major games platform from iOS to Android to Steam to GoG to Itch to Windows to Mac all understand this and have all put resources into making sure that their platforms and distribution services work without requiring background sync or cloud storage. I will of course note that we have entirely moved away from the privacy argument. Your earlier claims about web privacy sound extra-nonsensical when viewed through the light that your solution to storage is to upload literally all of everyone's data to the cloud. But whatever. > Since most people play on mobile, King didn’t need a separate online account, between saving in Game Center and just saving locally and letting iCloud taking care of the backups and online sync they didn’t have to. Which is not available to PWAs. If you keep saying the same things over and over again, I'm going to keep giving you the same replies. PWAs can not save in Game Center, Game Center is irrelevant to any conversation about what King can and can't store in a PWA. If you want to store data in PWA, that does require a separate online account. And as I've said elsewhere, even that is not really a solution and you're still going to need to worry about data loss.

scarface_74 3y ago

Local storage is not the answer. It’s the expectation in 2024 that you should be able to use an app across devices and keep your state. And you act as if setting up accounts on a server is hard. It’s literally a CloudFormation template with Cognito, Lambda, IAM and DynamoDB. Yes, I’ve done it at scale and yes it’s that easy.

danShumway 3y ago
> It’s the expectation in 2024 that you should be able to use an app across devices and keep your state. Device sync is a solved problem on quite literally every single major platform, including iOS. There's no reason Apple couldn't sync PWA storage using the same mechanisms. > And you act as if setting up accounts on a server is hard. It objectively increases attack surface, decreases privacy, adds user friction, and is unnecessary for the majority of apps. Most users (myself included) don't want online accounts. I don't need an online account for an alarm. I don't need to log in with Facebook or Github or whatever just to do basic things on my phone. This is just unbelievably silly at this point. Of course reliable offline storage matters for app development, are you seriously going to try and argue that it doesn't? If Apple got rid of reliable offline storage for native applications, nobody would say that didn't matter or that it wasn't a big deal. Some of us actually like that we can do things like type into a text editor and know the text document will still be there when we come back to our computers, and that it doesn't have to get synced to somebody else's servers to guarantee that. The solution to app storage is not to completely abandon privacy, require an Internet connection for every app, and then put all of our information on somebody else's server.
- scarface_74 3y ago
  Every single app on the App Store gets device sync for free via iCloud. I can drop my iPhone in the ocean, buy a new iPhone and and my new iPhone will have all of the data that my old iPhone had within the last 24 hours. How exactly do you do “device sync” without an account somewhere? > It objectively increases attack surface and is unnecessary for the majority of apps, and most users (myself included) don't want one. Because for the majority of users - they don’t need a separate account because all of their state can either be saved by the app just saving locally and letting iCloud take care of it. By logging the state in Game Center or some apps like Overcast use the users app specific iCloud token (each app gets a unique token per user not shared across apps) and stores state server side. I can guarantee you that most users expect to have everything backed up automatically and expect to be able to move between devices. > Some of us actually like that we can do things like type into a text editor and know the text document will still be there when we come back to our computers, and that it doesn't have to get synced to somebody else's servers to guarantee that. That must be why no one uses Google apps so their data is accessible across devices, Office 365 and why Chromebooks are so unpopular because people don’t like cloud backup….