10 ms·

Apple's intentional crippling of Mobile Safari

233 points by xd1936 7mo ago

hx8 7mo ago
I'm writing this in Safari now, I'm a huge fan. There are several "features" that I actively dislike and disable in other browsers. I wonder if not being implemented in mobile safari is preventing them from being required in some webpages. * Vibration * Background Sync * Bluetooth * NFC * Notifications * Web Push
- traceroute66 7mo ago
  Same here. The first thing I do when I install a browser on my desktop is block all that crap in the privacy settings of the browser.
- notatoad 7mo ago
  I can understand notifications and vibration. But why not Bluetooth or NFC? I can’t imagine any way those could be annoyances, or even why websites would want them outside of some extremely specialized applications.
  - kg 7mo ago
    I'm personally a WebUSB, WebBT etc hater but I totally get why PWA developers want those features. For example, let's say you're manufacturing some sort of USB device and you need a way to flash drivers. The idea of being able to just make a webpage that can update your drivers is so appealing compared to having to ship apps on Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS and Android. Similarly, if my bank website could do NFC tap-to-pay securely, that would be pretty cool. I can imagine lots of interesting opt-in uses for NFC in a webapp. Arguments that these features are held back by Apple specifically in order to keep apps on the app store where they can control things and take 30% at least hold water, I think, even if that reasoning doesn't apply to Mozilla rejecting features.
    - traceroute66 7mo ago
      > The idea of being able to just make a webpage that can update your drivers is so appealing compared to having to ship apps on Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS and Android. I suspect like many here, at $work we use a shit-ton of Flexoptix SFPs. Flexoptix are not a $megacorp, they are a (very) small German company. They manage to ship cross-platform apps to flash the SFPs. So its really not that difficult. I would think a web app would be more of a pain the the butt to maintain because you have to deal with CSS reactive UI etc.
      - genthree 7mo ago
        For little utility apps where you don’t care to deviate from UI default appearance and behavior (and, as a user, it’s much better if you don’t anyway, though it’s very trendy to make UX worse by customizing everything) iOS and Android both are dead simple, very easy to write and maintain a utility app for either of them. An enormous amount of the cost of developing a lot of native apps is customizing the appearance and behavior, to match some slide deck mockup or to make it “on-brand” or whatever. It’s better for the user, and way cheaper, if you just… don’t do that. Hell a lot of common UI elements are easier in native than web if you just don’t try to customize them a ton (data-backed tables and list views and such are sooooo nice)
        skydhash 7mo ago
        I don't know much about Win32, but GTK, QT, Cocoa (Apple),... have nice customization options, and creating custom components is easy.
    - kstrauser 7mo ago
      I like WebUSB in Chrome to update my Meshtastic radios. I also like that I have to go out of my way to launch Chrome for that, and other websites can’t request permission to access local hardware in my normal browser.
  - mvanbaak 7mo ago
    BT and (although very very limited) NFC can be used for tracking and location detection.
  - eipi10_hn 7mo ago
    Read Firefox' stance of these APIs about users' privacy. Chromium gives 0 sh*t about users' privacy, and just pump the APIs out for websites to track their users more easily.
    - fennecfoxy 7mo ago
      Nonsense. Firefox on Android (and I'm sure everywhere else) allows endless redirects without prompting me about the redirect, sending me to sites I never wanted to go to. And even then, where does one draw the line on "privacy"? Especially given that every other app on the user's phone is granted every permission under the sun and feeding on as much data as possible. The core of the problem isn't supporting web bluetooth etc or not...the core of the problem is that dumbass humans will go "yes use all the permissions" because their hands are already shaking from tiktok withdrawal.
- sethops1 7mo ago
  Yeah, I see that list of disabled features as being a feature in and of itself.
- internet2000 7mo ago
  Agree and I’d add WebUSB and WebMIDI. Want to interface with USB? Go through the OS.
  - Lio 7mo ago
    I’m not sure why web-midi can’t be available behind a permission to control finger printing. I can think of several light weight patch editors I’d like be able to use. There’s probably not enough demand for someone to make a stand alone app for them. I can’t see any reason why this needs to be controlled by apple’s app store.
  - gertop 7mo ago
    WebUSB is incredibly useful to flash firmware and update configuration on random devices. The alternative is to install random software on your computer for every device (or, if you're a Linux user, you'll likely simply be excluded and whine about it).
    - kalleboo 7mo ago
      Making device companion utilities WebUSB means that when the hardware maker goes belly-up and their site goes down, or just decides to stop supporting a device, it's now a brick. When they are native software programs, someone can preserve them. Just look at all the old hardware like CNC machines still running just fine on old computers, and imagine if they were connected via WebUSB instead. WebUSB is just a terrible idea if you're not an ad company.
      - fennecfoxy 7mo ago
        WebUSB/Bluetooth/NFC/PWAs are an excellent idea. Not if it's an Open Source project made by a bunch of people for the love of the game. Install a PWA and you have it even when the site is down, if not code available on GH. It's possible to do on a computer (write code and distribute an app not via an app store)...but not in the magical protected-profits land of mobile devices. Your way of thinking is the reason why we now have a half dozen trillion dollar companies controlling the world.
- 8organicbits 7mo ago
  Notifications struck me as odd. I aggressively disable notifications in my apps because they are often just ads or engagement focused. But as a developer, it would be cool to have a way to notify an iOS user other than building a native app and paying the iOS tax. There's a bunch of utility apps not getting built because of this limitation.
  - kmeisthax 7mo ago
    iOS actually does support notifications in webapps, but only ones that have a homescreen icon. Furthermore, the notification support is different enough that I can't get my iPad to work with Android Messages for Web. So I have no clue if the API is neutered or if Google is being Google and insisting every browser be Chromium. Probably both.
  - lachlan_gray 7mo ago
    According to this, notifications are possible if you add the app to the home screen, which I didn't know. A feature more devs should use- I've been surprised how much websites behave like native apps if you just "add to homescreen" instead of downloading an official app, e.g. twitter, instagram. When you open the shortcut, it doesn't launch as a tab in safari, but appears independently in the app switcher. They are often indistinguishable from official apps! Seems like a great way for devs to avoid app store pains
    - xd1936 7mo ago
      This experience is exactly why PWAs could be great.
- mrweasel 7mo ago
  Looking down the list I can find more features that I'd like to yank out of Safari, and Chrome, than features I'd like to see added. Things that should be removed, according to me: * Audio recording * Geolocation * Motion * Media capture
  - leptons 7mo ago
    You have to explicitly allow all of those features to work in a webpage, they aren't on by default, so I'm not sure what you're worrying about.
    - mrweasel 7mo ago
      > so I'm not sure what you're worrying about. Complexity primarily.
      - leptons 7mo ago
        Complexity for who? The user having to click "Yes I want to enable Web Bluetooth for this website"? Or for the developers? Because if it's for the developers, it's literally their job to make complex things simple for users.
  - gertop 7mo ago
    You're right, nobody uses video conferencing in a browser. let's kill it!
dgxyz 7mo ago
Yeah sorry but as an end user I’d rather have an actual app than some PWA thanks. Keep going Apple.
- MostlyStable 7mo ago
  This is the first time I've actually heard the opinion that someone thinks we need more apps instead of more functional websites.
  - s3p 7mo ago
    I think it reflects the general HN sentiment that native apps > progressive web apps.
  - genthree 7mo ago
    Functional websites would be wonderful. Instead we get “webapps”.
  - functionmouse 7mo ago
    These are not features of functional websites, these are features that make every website an "app" and deprecate the idea of a traditional website. Google is embrace, extend, extinguishing the web as we know it. If Apple gives in, it's over, every website will just be an app and want access to your contacts, and your family history, and whether or not you are on Santa's naughty list or whatever.
- nickalekhine 7mo ago
  Better PWA support gives users (and developers) more optionality with app distribution. Apple building out these APIs would not take away from their native apps. The UX of visiting a site and with a single click of a button having an app on my home screen sounds great. I'd also like to have the option of side loading a native app too. And if those options sound unappealing, you can keep using the App Store if you want the assurance of using an 'officially approved' app. A lot of very prominent apps are written using web technologies anyways. Take a look at the continued popularity of React Native (and Flutter as well).
gib444 7mo ago
Well at least you can set a custom search engine URL – oh no, you can't, that would probably endanger some children or something !!
CamJN 7mo ago
Absolutely nothing listed on that site as unsupported by Safari has any business being part of the web. In fact several supported APIs should be chucked too. Fuck giving websites motion data or push notifications.
- spiderfarmer 7mo ago
  They should just ban unsolicited prompts. That's it. Push notifications are the #1 featured requests of my online community. Some even switched to Android over it. And people don't understand adding sites to their homescreen, especially since Apple buried that feature in the Share menu. No Android user of my website ever complained about the WebPush notifications.
  - vscode-rest 7mo ago
    Does android still give you a push notification to dismiss whenever you take a screenshot?
    - michalpleban 7mo ago
      No.
  - CamJN 7mo ago
    I don’t care what your website does, not one tiny bit. I care that the majority of websites are shit, and therefore the web platform should be as minimal and isoltated from the device as possible.
    - deleted 7mo ago
      [deleted]
    - spiderfarmer 7mo ago
      Well my website isn't shit so I don't care about your opinion.
  - burnerthrow008 7mo ago
troupo 7mo ago
Imagine if these countless of "Safari bad" sites didn't shill for Chrome by pretending that Chrome-only APIs are essential and standard web apis.
- kllrnohj 7mo ago
  yeah I'm using mobile Firefox and it has an awfully high overlap with Safari. Almost like a bunch of the stuff Chrome supports isn't actually a standard at all yet...
- traceroute66 7mo ago
  > Chrome by pretending that Chrome-only APIs are essential and standard web apis Reminds me of the days when all the corporate coders thought the IE apis were the only ones worth using. So if you accessed $megacorp website on a non-IE browser it was your fault for not using IE and not their fault for failing interop.
- mrmanner 7mo ago
  I noticed how they've marked the features that only Chrome supports (e.g. installation) but not the feature that only Firefox supports (orientation). (tbh I don't know if the list is simply Chrome-centric or if there's a good reason behind, but it struck me as interesting)
traceroute66 7mo ago
Frankly I am very happy indeed for Apple to "cripple" Safari. 99.9% of the things listed in that stupid table in the blog just stink of being potential attack vectors. And we know just how heavily smartphones are targeted and how smart and sneaky some of the latest vectors are.
- ivanjermakov 7mo ago
  Related: Firefox stance on Google's web proposals: https://mozilla.github.io/standards-positions/ https://mozilla.github.io/standards-positions/
pmdr 7mo ago
Used to have Firefox as a content filter for Safari on iOS (adblocking), but have since switched to Brave. It's a great option if you ignore all the crypto spam.
- DavideNL 7mo ago
  > if you ignore all the crypto spam you can disable all those "features"
functionmouse 7mo ago
Thank God. Thank God! Too much going on these days.
Darkstryder 7mo ago
As a daily Safari on iOS user, I don’t care about any of this, but since iOS 26 basic Safari features such as bookmarks and text search have become so buried deep underneath, they are basically unusable at this point. It infuriates me a lot more than all the liquid glass stuff (on which I’m neutral overall).
- spiderfarmer 7mo ago
  Yes. "Add to homescreen" is in the "Share" menu. That's where they burry all bodies.
  - nozzlegear 7mo ago
    Isn't that where it's been for ages?
    - JimDabell 7mo ago
      It’s been there since literally iPhoneOS 1.0. They are calling it “share” now, but really it’s always meant “put / send this somewhere”. The difference with recent versions of iOS is that the share button is no longer always visible but you need to press the ellipses button to reveal it. It’s there along with all the other dastardly actions Apple doesn’t want you to know about, such as “Add to Favourites”.
  - fennecfoxy 7mo ago
    A friend was telling me yesterday that this is how you can set custom ringtones on iOS. He seemed really excited about it, how cute. Because I literally could not believe the archaic process previously used until very recently to set a ringtone on iOS. And now it's under the share menu?! Why do Apple people put up with this shit? I've been able to set a custom ringtone in Android from the OS settings/any file browser app for at least 15 years and I would not be surprised if Android launched with it. >Apple still sells 30-second song ringtones for $1.29 each through the iTunes Store app. Oh...alright well now we know why.
- kennywinker 7mo ago
mrtedbear 7mo ago
I'm not sure the other commenters claiming all these features are attack vectors actually read the list? How is the barcode detection API a security risk for example? Having it implemented would be amazing for web apps. Also there's features like deep linking into PWAs that ought to be pretty basic PWA functionality that's not on this list that even Safari on Mac OSX has but Safari on iOS doesn't. Even the add to home screen menu option is deliberately made hard to find. Apple doing this for the benefit of the user is one of the less likely hypotheses.
pjmlp 7mo ago
The advocates of ChromeOS Platform keep pushing their agenda. Chrome APIs and Electron crap, and then everyone complains about Microsoft.
- xd1936 7mo ago
  Author here. I have no affiliation with Chrome, and use Zen and Firefox Mobile pretty much exclusively. I recently made an ESP32 hardware side project that I can configure entirely in the web browser via Web Bluetooth, got hyped, then immediately sad that my page was never going to work on iOS / iPad OS. So I threw together this webpage from caniuse.com data.
  - pjmlp 7mo ago
    Firefox doesn't do Web Bluetooth. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=674737 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=674737
  - shuckles 7mo ago
    No average person cares about your side project, and most people prefer Apple’s product decisions over the ones you’d like them to make. Based on your history with technology, you are a Windows developer who would like to distribute apps on Apple’s platform without learning about what makes for a great app on that platform.
ocdtrekkie 7mo ago
I very much appreciate the secure baseline Safari settles on. The entire ecosystem is protected by Safari being slow and reasonable. My only peeve is that Apple resets the feature flags with every update. So the one experimental feature I use I have to reenable each and every time I get a phone update.
agust 7mo ago
Worth noting that Apple doesn't just cripple iOS Safari, it cripples all iOS browsers because it also forces them to use WebKit, the crippled browser engine underneath Safari. It would be fine if they just made Safari bad, that's their choice. But they don't stop there: they make the entire web bad on iOS purposely to promote the native apps they can tax.
- ocdtrekkie 7mo ago
  [dead]
- tugten 7mo ago
  Firefox was planning a native gecko based ios app. But Apple decided to limit it to EU forcing developers to choose to maintain seperate projects for a limited users.
  - OptionOfT 7mo ago
    The Brussels Effect takes care of a lot of hardware changes for the better, for the world (think USB-C). But for software, not so much. Examples: * Windows N (no media player stuff) and KN (no media player stuff, no messenger) * Windows installed in the EEA (ability to disable / change start menu search with Bing, ability to remove Edge, ability to add widget providers) * iOS with only allowing 3rd party app stores and 3rd party browser engines in the EEA. * Google only allowing certain things when the phone is in the USA. And it's gonna get worse with age verification. All of the sudden the manufacturers have even more data.
- slashdave 7mo ago
  This is clearly for reasons of security. I don't think Apple is terribly interested in market share for Safari. What they are interested is preserving their competitive advantage in privacy.
  - agust 7mo ago
    The security/privacy argument has been debunked many times. How do you explain that all other OSes, including Apple's own macOS, manage to allow other browser engines? Do you think the iOS team is that incompetent?
nazgu1 7mo ago
Also WebUSB, WebMIDI. Not to mention that you can’t develop an app for you (and your family and friends) without have developer subscription :(
hk1337 7mo ago
How many of these features that chrome offers have been fully flushed out and in a true working stable state? Google Chrome has a habit of pushing features out before they're really ready and Safari is usually on par with Firefox for features from what I have seen.
- doomrobo 7mo ago
  I’ll ask the dual question: how many of the mobile safari checkmarks are fully fleshed out? Media Session has a check, but I have absolutely fought obvious Media Session implementation bugs in my own PWAs when designing for mobile safari
- gardnr 7mo ago
  It's not a question of readiness or capability. It's an MBA with a spreadsheet explaining to a room full of people how much money Apple will lose if they allow X feature to work in Safari. This is user-negative behavior from a company that has so much money the best thing they can think of to do with it is to bank it offshore in a tax haven.
  - kennywinker 7mo ago
    Conversly, there is an MBA at google saying how much money they can make for each extra piece of data they can extract off the user’s phone. I agree an open web platform is good. But i also think some of the things added to the browser don’t belong in the browser. Face detection? i don’t need that. I am much more partial to attempts to force apple to enable installing 3rd party apps than i am forcing them to bloat the browser with more ways for websites to monitize me.
  - rayiner 7mo ago
    Crippling web apps is a user-positive behavior. It just so happens that user’s incentives and apple’s incentives are aligned.
  - dpark 7mo ago
    > It's an MBA with a spreadsheet explaining to a room full of people how much money Apple will lose if they allow X feature to work in Safari. You forgot to mention the long mustache your cartoon villain MBA is twisting while they sabotage Safari.
matthewfcarlson 7mo ago
Like most people (at least on this thread). I’m okay with the vast majority of these things not supported in mobile safari. But man, Bluetooth would be nice. I often provision esp32 devices for various things and either I need an app or a laptop when my phone is perfectly capable.
- joezydeco 7mo ago
  Yeah it's killing me too. I make a product that's MFI certified and I still can't use a browser to talk to it.
samlinnfer 7mo ago
To be honest, I'm really surprised they let PWAs have notifications. That's literally the only use case we have on that entire page and it actually works.
easeout 7mo ago
Gotta meet your audience where they are. As a Mobile Safari user, the foremost way I feel my use of the web is crippled is that pages assume a bigger screen or are just poorly arranged. This of all web pages ought to be easy to read on an iPhone screen, but the way it's constructed prevents it. You can't zoom the whole page out to see the entire table width because the table is in a scrolling frame and wider than its box. You can only scroll the nested frame sideways to see how row labels relate to iPhone cells. If you give up and use landscape, it still scrolls vertically in its frame. You have to aim for the margin or else you'll scroll just an inch and be halted because you caught the table. Because it's critical that the web be as free as it is: • It's natural that some pages turn out like this • So it's natural the web is a little bit shitty all over • So it's natural the demand for richer web features is low
- deleted 7mo ago
  [deleted]
daft_pink 7mo ago
To be fair, some of these features are security issues some users don’t want to have in their browser.
MantisShrimp90 7mo ago
I recently posted about how I refuse to buy apple products because of stuff like this. The lock in has made iPhone users dependent on a app ecosystem when we could have had most of our functionality through the open web. People saying they don't want these features are missing the point. Its about control and if developers have the option to make something as a website that actually works that gives them less incentive to make an app that apple can take 30% of your profit from while you are forced to write in their proprietary language for the stuff that only works on their devices. So much engineering duplication of effort and waste just to satisfy a bottom line.
- kennywinker 7mo ago
  Break the app store monopoly, don’t make the web browser into a buggy leaky bloated mess. And you can write iOS apps in objective c, swift, kotlin, jacascript, rust, ruby, and a few dozen other languages.
  - rejhgadellaa 7mo ago
    The web can be a competitor for the app stores, breaking that monopoly. It already did on desktop (where most users spend > 90% of their time in a browser) And yes, you can write native apps in a lot of languages, but you can't choose how/where you distribute. On the web, you can. It's built that way.
    - kennywinker 7mo ago
      Except one of the main things i like about the web is that websites don’t have invasive access to my life. The web-as-app-platform idea erodes that. But either way the issue is the same - apple preventing us from installing what we want. But my solution protects freedom in a more robust way: if you break the app store monopoly, you can install chrome or firefox and do all the web-app-platform nonsense you want. If safari adds all the features on that list you’re still stuck demanding apple add a new feature every time you want to innovate. And as for programming - for the web you can write in a lot of languages but you only have two options For debugging - js and webassembly.
dagmx 7mo ago
It would be useful if the site listed whether these had been standardized outside of Chrome yet. It’s hard to delineate which of these are Chrome features or actual web standards. And it’s therefore hard to blame either Safari or Firefox for not supporting them if they’re not standardized yet.
- WhyNotHugo 7mo ago
  This is a huge list of "features from Chromium", which aren't really standard or even a thing outside of its ecosystem (the fact that both Firefox and Safari lack them is the obvious giveaway). I'm happy that Firefox doesn't expose Bluetooth, NFC or similar stuff to websites: the browser is huge enough without needing to mediate even more access to local hardware. It's unclear how some of these would even work for other Browser. E.g.: contacts. What data source would you use? I keep my contacts as vcard files in ~/contacts, but other folks might use a remove CalDAV server, a web-based GUI, or data stored in SQL which can be read by some other native client (I think KDE does this).
  - gertop 7mo ago
    Desktop Linux might not have a unified way of storing contacts but all other major operating systems do: Mac, Windows, Android, iOS. So if your blocker to accept this feature is that it's "difficult to support on desktop Linux" then all I can say is cry me a river.
  - ymolodtsov 7mo ago
    Agreed. I don't want websites to even request my NFC/Bluetooth/contacts.
- rafaelmn 7mo ago
  It's not even features - basic stuff like input handling/focus is broken on iOS PWAs it's an obviously ignored tech.
- JimDabell 7mo ago
  Here’s what Mozilla has to say about Web NFC, for example: > We believe Web NFC poses risks to users security and privacy because of the wide range of functionality of the existing NFC devices on which it would be supported, because there is no system for ensuring that private information is not accidentally exposed other than relying on user consent, and because of the difficulty of meaningfully asking the user for permission to share or write data when the browser cannot explain to the user what is being shared or written. — https://mozilla.github.io/standards-positions/#web-nfc https://mozilla.github.io/standards-positions/#web-nfc And here’s what they have to say about Web Bluetooth: > This API provides access to the Generic Attribute Profile (GATT) of Bluetooth, which is not the lowest level of access that the specifications allow, but its generic nature makes it impossible to clearly evaluate. Like WebUSB there is significant uncertainty regarding how well prepared devices are to receive requests from arbitrary sites. The generic nature of the API means that this risk is difficult to manage. The Web Bluetooth CG has opted to only rely on user consent, which we believe is not sufficient protection. This proposal also uses a blocklist, which will require constant and active maintenance so that vulnerable devices aren't exploited. This model is unsustainable and presents a significant risk to users and their devices. — https://mozilla.github.io/standards-positions/#web-bluetooth https://mozilla.github.io/standards-positions/#web-bluetooth The fact is that Google wrote these specifications, couldn’t convince any other rendering engine to implement them, and somehow it’s Apple’s fault the rest of the world rejected their idea. These are not web standards, they are Blink-only APIs that Google decided to build unilaterally. The web is not defined by whatever Google wants. Web standards are supposed to be arrived at through consensus, and the consensus is that these things should not be part of the web.
jjmint 7mo ago
I would gladly give up all those “features” to use Safari over Chrome on Android. I don’t even know what kind of dumbass on Hacker News voluntarily raw dogs the internet on Chrome Android. Pathetic that Safari has had extension support for multiple years now while Chrome is still ass.
politelemon 7mo ago
I argue that developers enable the egregious behaviour by supporting safari in the first place. Just as IE was called out and shunned for its shenanigans, before they started behaving better, so too does safari need to be treated. However, it does also feel too late, they have crippled other browsers too with their platform abuse masquerading as requirements while we celebrated it.
- kennywinker 7mo ago
  Ah yes, let’s break our site for 1.56 billion people to stick it to apple.
- dpark 7mo ago
  Is it really egregious that Apple doesn’t support everything Google decides to push? Most of these are features I don’t care about, or in some cases actively do not want. I’m also not sure how accurate this page is. They claim Chrome on Android supports registerProtocolHandler while MDN says it’s not supported there.
deleted 7mo ago
[deleted]
weedhopper 7mo ago
None of this is an issue, the real issue is webpages not working in safari due to large part of the web being made exclusively for chromium.
nerdjon 7mo ago
I am curious why Safari in particular is getting a lot of the hate here when firefox supports even less of the features which leads me to believe that the reason many of these features have not been accepted is because they have not been accepted by the larger ecosystem and is just google pushing their own things as standard (Feels like IE days in many ways). That being said, I am not sure why I would actually want most of these features in the browser? Many of these things feel like they further complicate what a browser is supposed to be doing and opens up security concerns at the same time. I think the idea of using a web app for many tasks instead of apps is fine, but I don't think the idea that a web app can do everything is the way to go. Edit: To be clear about the Firefox comment, notice that many of the features that are not supported non chromium browsers don't support on any platform. So the question on whether these are considered web standards is outside of whether iOS allows other engines. Edit again: Apparently the third column is based on your current browser instead of always comparing chrome, mobile safari, and firefox like I assumed. I am currently on Firefox on Windows, and there are more red X's under Firefox for me. Seems like a weird choice to not always compare all major browsers.
- reustle 7mo ago
  Firefox on iOS is just a wrapper around Safari, since that is all Apple allows.
  - nerdjon 7mo ago
    While true, that does not seem to align with what the checkboxes for firefox, looking at many of the ones that Safari does not support other non chromium browsers don't support on any OS. Mobile or not
    - rejhgadellaa 7mo ago
      The difference is that, on iOS, you can't switch to a different browser that does support these features. Om very other OS you can. A web app could ask you to use a different browser (not ideal, but if the web app requires a specific API, it's not an unreasonable). Safari is in a very special position because it controls what the web can do on iOS (all browsers on iOS have to use Apple's WebKit engine, they can't add web features). Apple is not just gatekeeping native (through the app store), but its competition, too (the open web, through the webkit requirement)
strogonoff 7mo ago
As far as I can see based on pwa.gripe data, between 26.3 (my version) and the newcoming 26.4 Safari on iOS gains support for five new APIs: — Offline support — Media capture — Picture-in-picture — Storage — Speech synthesis As well as five more APIs with caveats: — Installation — Notifications — Web Push — Barcode detection — Speech recognition Even taking into account that it also evidently loses support for one (audio session; I wonder if that that has to do with potential for fingerprinting), framing this feature differential between two minor(!) releases as “intentional crippling of Mobile Safari continues” strikes me as somewhat loaded.
- rejhgadellaa 7mo ago
  Do you have a source link for this? I don't want to sound snarky, but this list doesn't make sense to me. Offline support has been available (and buggy, YMMV) for a long time. Web Push has been available since 16.4 (with a lot of caveats) I haven't heard anything about installation (but I may have missed something)
  - strogonoff 7mo ago
    My source is TFA, as I stated. This is what I see in the table when I follow the link. For example, in the column for my current iOS version offline support is crossed out, and for the upcoming version it has a check mark. If the claim being made is that pwa.gripe is a bad source, I can only assure I have nothing to do with the site. If they misinform visitors about Safari’s capabilities with regard to PWAs, you should post it as a top-level comment.
    - xd1936 7mo ago
      The source is caniuse.com data. The build script for the page is open-source as well. https://github.com/leoherzog/pwa.gripe https://github.com/leoherzog/pwa.gripe
rayiner 7mo ago
Google has become the developer-focused company that Microsoft used to be, and I don’t mean that positively. Developers are lazy and want to inflict low-effort crap on users. Microsoft always made it easier to do that. Google is now doing the same thing. Offering developers more and more ways to cobble together box-checking functionality in web apps instead of developing proper native apps.
- JumpCrisscross 7mo ago
  > Google has become the developer-focused company They’re the advertiser-focused company. Bluetooth and NFC aren’t being exposed for developers first.
rayiner 7mo ago
“Catholics think Protestants are kooky” is a news headline that would work anytime in the last 509 years.
pokot0 7mo ago
You might want your browser to do Bluetooth, NFC, Background stuff, Face Detection but I don't. I like to use Apple products for things that are commodities to me because I am not gonna look into the details of those and when I do Apple reasoning often make sense to me (just like this list). There is a lot more we can criticize about these big tech corps (including Apple) than a product decision for a company that is known for making polarizing decisions on behalf of their customers. If people buy it... they must like it, no?
- hu3 7mo ago
  Then don't use it? These features require explicit permission.
  - pokot0 7mo ago
    exactly what I do. they are still annoying because providers want to me to be engaged on their terms and keep pushing these features and don’t offer a broad “never use bluetooth on any website ever” kind of option. Magic of KPIs anyway the point here is that I don’t really care if Safari is behind in support. The article was about blaming Safari for being behind.
otterley 7mo ago
For those of you who believe support for PWAs is critically important: in what way does it impact you? What kind of solution are you providing (or, put another way, what problem are you solving) for customers, and why would a PWA app be better than a native one for them? (As opposed to, say, convenience for you.)
- troupo 7mo ago
  I keep asking: Android doesn't have all these perceived limitations. Where are all the amazing native-like PWAs on Android?
  - rejhgadellaa 7mo ago
    If a web app doesn't work on iOS, a business builds a native app instead. iOS is too important. So that fantastic native-like PWA never gets built in the first place. Apple is not just holding back PWA on iOS, they're holding back the entire web everywhere. Compare that with desktop, where web apps (maybe not PWAs, strictly speaking) are dominating: Gmail, Office/Docs, GitHub, Figma, you basically do everything in web apps. And if you count Electron [1]: VSCode, Slack, Spotify, etc, etc. [1] Importantly, Electron lets you bring your own (browser) engine. You can build a native app on iOS that is just a wrapper around a web app, but it has to run on iOS' WebKit, and is thus limited by what Apple deems worthy
    - pjmlp 7mo ago
      There are many countries in the world where iPhones have hardly a presence, yet they also don't have PWAs. https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/mobile/africa https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/mobile/africa
      - rejhgadellaa 7mo ago
        First of all: don't they? (honest question, I truly don't know if Africa has more PWAs compared to US/EU/etc) Second: There are many reasons why businesses would opt for a native app. Notifications, for one (not available on the web on iOS until just a couple of years ago). Also, native apps allow for more tracking (whereas browsers are paranoid by default). Third: A few years back, companies like FB, Google and Twitter all launched "Lite" versions of their apps, specifically targeted at Africa and other developing markets. They were all web apps (or wrappers around web apps). I will admit that this was years ago, and I have not checked if these Lite versions are still around and/or widely used.
ubermonkey 7mo ago
This is just Google/Chrome apologia. Big nope from me, dog.
3oil3 7mo ago
I just want less ads.
luxuryballs 7mo ago
there’s a .gripe TLD now? this is the form feeling old comes in for me
FormularSumo 7mo ago
It's a cool page, although somewhat limited in scope. If you want a more complete picture of all the web progress Apple is holding back, not "just" PWA and more advanced capabilities, this is probably a better site for comparison: https://ios404.com https://ios404.com It includes dates for when these things were first shipped, explanations for that they do, and what kind of standards (or not) they are.
- troupo 7mo ago
  Note how it doesn't list which of these are Chrome-only non-standard APIs that Firefox doesn't support either. Oh wait. You don't care about small details like that. None of these Chrome shilling websites do.
  - rejhgadellaa 7mo ago
    First of all, features can be a standard without (full) FF and/or Safari support. Second, Safari has a monopoly on iOS and controls what other browsers can support on the platform (that also usually means "less than Safari", because SF gets to support things first). They are in a unique position to hold back the entire web, even on other platforms. They're holding the standards hostage by not allowing the market to decide which features are important to them (and put pressure on Safari and FF to implement them)
    - troupo 7mo ago
      > First of all, features can be a standard without (full) FF and/or Safari support. No. No they can't. A feature that is shipped in a single browser is just that: that browser's non-interoperable feature. We literally lived through this with Internet Explorer. The only reason the web is thriving now is because browser vendors agreed not to push this shit any longer. Well, until Google decided that whatever it does is the web, and until people who are not even paid by Google started unironically pushing the idea of "whatever Google spits out is the essential web standard now". I mean, the status of multiple APIs on any of those "Safari is bad PWA is good" sites are literally in the "it's a napkin scribble, not on any standards track". > They're holding the standards hostage by not allowing the market to decide which features are important to them (and put pressure on Safari and FF to implement them) Who puts the pressure on FF to not implement Chrome-only non-standard APIs? Even desktop Firefox doesn't want to touch that pile of garbage with a 10-yard stick. And yeah, let's not pretend that Chrome somehow got to where it is by "market deciding".
runako 7mo ago
Ragebait page. I left after seeing Contact Picker API listed. Contact Picker API is, per the MDN link in the OP, marked as "This is an experimental technology." It is "not Baseline because it does not work in some of the most widely-used browsers."
dandiep 7mo ago
For me, the biggest hurdle to writing a PWA is the insane installation process [1]. There are also a ton of quirks, eg I don’t think you can update the icon if it’s installed as a PWA. It is hard to argue that this whole process has not been hobbled intentionally. 1. https://www.reddit.com/r/webdev/s/yVERKqoJgb https://www.reddit.com/r/webdev/s/yVERKqoJgb
raw_anon_1111 7mo ago
Yes I want more shitty web apps. Also you can’t imagine how much I love cross platform Electron apps. I have no desire for random websites to have that much access to my phone.
- goestoo 7mo ago
  [dead]
- xd1936 7mo ago
  People like you could turn off these features and continue installing and updating native binaries for the Starbucks app or random hardware companion apps all you want. I'd like first-class PWAs please.
  - raw_anon_1111 7mo ago
    Funny enough, I just replied to someone who posted a link to the great lengths Slack is going through to make it use less memory on the desktop. https://slack.engineering/reducing-slacks-memory-footprint/ https://slack.engineering/reducing-slacks-memory-footprint/ When the obvious answer I gave about how to reduce the memory footprint and make it more performant was “to stop using fucking [web technologies]” and create a native app But the question I always ask people who say that it’s mean old Apple keeping PWAs back, why is it that all of these same companies see a need to create an app for Android?
    - fennecfoxy 7mo ago
      To your last point surely it makes sense that they'd probably be rolling something like RN or similar where at that point they may as well build for Android app as well right? Versus with proper PWA support across the board, a single button on the company's site that installs a PWA no matter which platform your customers are on.
      - raw_anon_1111 7mo ago
        Papa John’s doesn’t need a website seemingly and everything you can do on the app you can do on the website. Why is the app so much faster? I can say the same for banking apps, Airbnb, hotel apps, etc There must be some reason that every major company decided to have an app even though today all of the same functionality is available on the web.
SkySkimmer 7mo ago
This table could stand to have a desktop safari column. For instance folliwing the "shortcuts" link https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Progressive_web_apps/Manifest/Reference/shortcuts https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Progressive_web... says "safari: yes (17.4), mobile safari: no". So it's not like Apple is fully against at least some of these APIs.
- merlindru 7mo ago
  it doesn't eat into AppStore sales to support it on mac because most use non appstore apps anyways. on iOS, PWAs are the one alternative to apps that Apple can take a sales cut from, which makes them a threat to their services revenue
granzymes 7mo ago
The irony of this webpage being terribly optimized for mobile clients… Nested scrollbars! Horizontal and vertical scroll!
skrrtww 7mo ago
I feel like the vast majority of these are features of an operating system? Not a web browser?
- xd1936 7mo ago
  The web is a developer platform, not just a static document viewer.
diebeforei485 7mo ago
I want location permissions for web apps installed to the home screen to be separate from Safari. I want to auto-deny websites asking me for location permissions. But I want to be able to grant location permissions to installed web apps on a case-by-case basis just like with regular apps.
- xd1936 7mo ago
  Agreed. Very reasonable, very simple, and already possible on Android.
northisup 7mo ago
It'd be nice if desktop safari was a column.
kevin061 7mo ago
Yeah, I don't want background sync. I mean, iOS is built upon the idea that any task in the background might be killed at any time and without warning by the OS. This is so the OS is able to manage battery and memory effective. You can of course dislike this, but not even native apps allow background sync anyway, so of course web apps would not be allowed to do this either.
deleted 7mo ago
[deleted]
boomskats 7mo ago
This isn't about browsers, it's about Apple spending the last decade blocking PWAs on their platform by intentionally breaking something new with every new OS release, thus forcing people to build and ship bloated pointless 50meg webview packages through their aPp StOrE every time they update the width of their sidebar. PWAs are great. They were literally Steve Jobs' original vision for the iPhone. I don't know why people are arguing about Firefox or the individual features - that's not the point, they're not the ones that matter. It's the decade of sabotage.
- Levitating 7mo ago
  > PWAs are great. They were literally Steve Jobs' original vision for the iPhone. Was it? I think one of IOSs strength is its operating system and proper native apps. PWAs are inaccessible, bloated, slow and awkward to use.
  - boomskats 7mo ago
    > Was it? Yes. Here's a quote for you from the original WWDC 2007 iPhone launch[0]: _"We've come up with a very sweet solution. An innovative new way to create applications... it’s all based on the fact that we have the full Safari engine in the iPhone. And so you can write amazing Web 2.0 and Ajax apps that look exactly and behave exactly like apps on the iPhone! And guess what? There’s no SDK that you need!"_ > I think one of IOSs strength is its operating system one of the OS' strengths is its OS, cool > and proper native apps not what we're talking about here at all > PWAs are inaccessible, bloated, slow and awkward to use. literally the opposite of all those things [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p1nwLilQy64 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p1nwLilQy64
    - Levitating 7mo ago
      > one of the OS' strengths is its OS, cool Woops, messed up the wording there. It's an interesting way to go about it. But I am not sure it's the same as what we get now. We aren't just leveraging the webkit renderer, we are using the browser as a complete OS/runtime for your applications. On top of an OS that already has its own UI libraries. The current standard is that when you visit a webpage you are downloading an application in the tens of megabytes. In 2007 that would barely be possible. When I think of PWAs I think of Microsoft Teams. It's slow as a website and somehow slower as a >100mb "native" app. Anyway thanks for the reference. I am curious how much the current method strays from what Apple envisioned back then.
Levitating 7mo ago
Websites don't need any of that. If you want to make software for an iPhone you can make an app.
DroneBetter 7mo ago
hey the AR/VR entry is wrong, right? Apple demonstrates it in the keynote webpages by having a 3D model relating to the keynotes' themes that can be placed and rotated in space, I doubt it would be for their own pages only. unless it means having the webpage itself render in VR and not just an isolated model
tuananh 7mo ago
the author puts a lot of unchecked boxes to the top, trying to make their point.
CharlesW 7mo ago
I built https://pwascore.com/ https://pwascore.com/ several months ago. Where pwa.gripe cherry-picks and has an axe to grind, pwascore.com is intended to be a more thorough and dispassionate evaluation. I will add desktop browsers soon. Click "Expand All" for a complete and detailed list. Click "How Scores Work" to understand the scoring heuristics.
- xutopia 7mo ago
  Well the notifications on your web site doesn't provide the full idea of how limited it is in Safari. We have to ask users to install the shortcut before allowing notifications with Safari. Guess how many users actually go through with installing the shortcut? Nearly none. If we had to ask users to go into their settings and switch the "enable notifications" flag we wouldn't call that supporting anything. The whole process of installing a shortcut to even get to the point where we can ask for notifications is even more convoluted on iOS.
  - CharlesW 7mo ago
    [dead]
- hasanhaja 7mo ago
  How did you determine the weighting for your scores?
  - CharlesW 7mo ago
    The most significant effect is that experimental and non-standard PWA capabilities aren't reflected in the primary score. You can see raw/unweighted scores by hovering over the primary score. Chrome wins handily if you count experimental/non-standard features. For standards-based features I used a 4-tier model, described about halfway through the README (which I should also add to About): ┌────────┬──────────────┬───────────────────────────────────────────────┐ │ Weight │ Tier │ Rationale │ ├────────┼──────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────┤ │ 3.0 │ Core PWA │ Prerequisites for production PWAs (6 features │ │ │ │ features: Web App Manifest, Service Workers, │ │ │ │ Caching, HTTPS, etc.) │ ├────────┼──────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────┤ │ 2.0 │ Important │ Enhance PWA functionality (18 features: Push │ │ │ │ API, Add to Home Screen, Offline Support, │ │ │ │ Display Modes, etc.) │ ├────────┼──────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────┤ │ 1.0 │ Standard │ Default weight (94 features) │ ├────────┼──────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────┤ │ 0.5 │ Experimental │ Nice-to-have capabilities (43 features: │ │ │ │ Sensor APIs, Bluetooth, NFC, AR/VR, etc.) │ └────────┴──────────────┴───────────────────────────────────────────────┘ This weighting turns out to be reasonably conservative. For example, if you hover over the score for Firefox (the largest benefactor), you'll see that it bumps Firefox's score by 5. I'm very open to feedback. This is a sincere attempt to quantify vendors' PWA support.
ymolodtsov 7mo ago
Google never really cared about Chrome on iOS. They barely care about Chrome on Android to be honest, that app still looks and feels more or less the same it did 10 years ago. Yes, they can't bring their own engine, but it's in their interest to lock users in and ensure they continue using Chrome on iOS. But it took them years to implement available APIs like passwords (AFAIR it was out for 3-4 years before they allowed Chrome iOS to supply your passwords).
antonyh 7mo ago
This is the current choice developers face - build for the app-store or build for the web. Or both. For me, I honestly don't care if Mobile Safari seems 'crippled' when everything I use works exactly the same on devices as on Firefox/Desktop. If anything I'd be more annoyed if it worked better on my fringe devices, but maybe I'm the outlier here - I only use mobile for comms/banking, tablet for light browsing, and it's more often I'll be on Desktop. Do I think it should have less functionality in Mobile Safari - yes if I get more battery life. Conversely no, if those features could give me more battery life back through intelligent apps.
kylehotchkiss 7mo ago
Apple's intentional protection of me from unsavory developers boundary pushing of the listed items by Mobile Safari

233 points by xd1936 7mo ago

hx8 7mo ago

I'm writing this in Safari now, I'm a huge fan. There are several "features" that I actively dislike and disable in other browsers. I wonder if not being implemented in mobile safari is preventing them from being required in some webpages. * Vibration * Background Sync * Bluetooth * NFC * Notifications * Web Push

traceroute66 7mo ago
Same here. The first thing I do when I install a browser on my desktop is block all that crap in the privacy settings of the browser.
notatoad 7mo ago
I can understand notifications and vibration. But why not Bluetooth or NFC? I can’t imagine any way those could be annoyances, or even why websites would want them outside of some extremely specialized applications.
- kg 7mo ago
  I'm personally a WebUSB, WebBT etc hater but I totally get why PWA developers want those features. For example, let's say you're manufacturing some sort of USB device and you need a way to flash drivers. The idea of being able to just make a webpage that can update your drivers is so appealing compared to having to ship apps on Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS and Android. Similarly, if my bank website could do NFC tap-to-pay securely, that would be pretty cool. I can imagine lots of interesting opt-in uses for NFC in a webapp. Arguments that these features are held back by Apple specifically in order to keep apps on the app store where they can control things and take 30% at least hold water, I think, even if that reasoning doesn't apply to Mozilla rejecting features.
  - traceroute66 7mo ago
    > The idea of being able to just make a webpage that can update your drivers is so appealing compared to having to ship apps on Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS and Android. I suspect like many here, at $work we use a shit-ton of Flexoptix SFPs. Flexoptix are not a $megacorp, they are a (very) small German company. They manage to ship cross-platform apps to flash the SFPs. So its really not that difficult. I would think a web app would be more of a pain the the butt to maintain because you have to deal with CSS reactive UI etc.
    - genthree 7mo ago
      For little utility apps where you don’t care to deviate from UI default appearance and behavior (and, as a user, it’s much better if you don’t anyway, though it’s very trendy to make UX worse by customizing everything) iOS and Android both are dead simple, very easy to write and maintain a utility app for either of them. An enormous amount of the cost of developing a lot of native apps is customizing the appearance and behavior, to match some slide deck mockup or to make it “on-brand” or whatever. It’s better for the user, and way cheaper, if you just… don’t do that. Hell a lot of common UI elements are easier in native than web if you just don’t try to customize them a ton (data-backed tables and list views and such are sooooo nice)
      - skydhash 7mo ago
        I don't know much about Win32, but GTK, QT, Cocoa (Apple),... have nice customization options, and creating custom components is easy.
  - kstrauser 7mo ago
    I like WebUSB in Chrome to update my Meshtastic radios. I also like that I have to go out of my way to launch Chrome for that, and other websites can’t request permission to access local hardware in my normal browser.
- mvanbaak 7mo ago
  BT and (although very very limited) NFC can be used for tracking and location detection.
- eipi10_hn 7mo ago
  Read Firefox' stance of these APIs about users' privacy. Chromium gives 0 sh*t about users' privacy, and just pump the APIs out for websites to track their users more easily.
  - fennecfoxy 7mo ago
    Nonsense. Firefox on Android (and I'm sure everywhere else) allows endless redirects without prompting me about the redirect, sending me to sites I never wanted to go to. And even then, where does one draw the line on "privacy"? Especially given that every other app on the user's phone is granted every permission under the sun and feeding on as much data as possible. The core of the problem isn't supporting web bluetooth etc or not...the core of the problem is that dumbass humans will go "yes use all the permissions" because their hands are already shaking from tiktok withdrawal.
sethops1 7mo ago
Yeah, I see that list of disabled features as being a feature in and of itself.
internet2000 7mo ago
Agree and I’d add WebUSB and WebMIDI. Want to interface with USB? Go through the OS.
- Lio 7mo ago
  I’m not sure why web-midi can’t be available behind a permission to control finger printing. I can think of several light weight patch editors I’d like be able to use. There’s probably not enough demand for someone to make a stand alone app for them. I can’t see any reason why this needs to be controlled by apple’s app store.
- gertop 7mo ago
  WebUSB is incredibly useful to flash firmware and update configuration on random devices. The alternative is to install random software on your computer for every device (or, if you're a Linux user, you'll likely simply be excluded and whine about it).
  - kalleboo 7mo ago
    Making device companion utilities WebUSB means that when the hardware maker goes belly-up and their site goes down, or just decides to stop supporting a device, it's now a brick. When they are native software programs, someone can preserve them. Just look at all the old hardware like CNC machines still running just fine on old computers, and imagine if they were connected via WebUSB instead. WebUSB is just a terrible idea if you're not an ad company.
    - fennecfoxy 7mo ago
      WebUSB/Bluetooth/NFC/PWAs are an excellent idea. Not if it's an Open Source project made by a bunch of people for the love of the game. Install a PWA and you have it even when the site is down, if not code available on GH. It's possible to do on a computer (write code and distribute an app not via an app store)...but not in the magical protected-profits land of mobile devices. Your way of thinking is the reason why we now have a half dozen trillion dollar companies controlling the world.
8organicbits 7mo ago
Notifications struck me as odd. I aggressively disable notifications in my apps because they are often just ads or engagement focused. But as a developer, it would be cool to have a way to notify an iOS user other than building a native app and paying the iOS tax. There's a bunch of utility apps not getting built because of this limitation.
- kmeisthax 7mo ago
  iOS actually does support notifications in webapps, but only ones that have a homescreen icon. Furthermore, the notification support is different enough that I can't get my iPad to work with Android Messages for Web. So I have no clue if the API is neutered or if Google is being Google and insisting every browser be Chromium. Probably both.
- lachlan_gray 7mo ago
  According to this, notifications are possible if you add the app to the home screen, which I didn't know. A feature more devs should use- I've been surprised how much websites behave like native apps if you just "add to homescreen" instead of downloading an official app, e.g. twitter, instagram. When you open the shortcut, it doesn't launch as a tab in safari, but appears independently in the app switcher. They are often indistinguishable from official apps! Seems like a great way for devs to avoid app store pains
  - xd1936 7mo ago
    This experience is exactly why PWAs could be great.
mrweasel 7mo ago
Looking down the list I can find more features that I'd like to yank out of Safari, and Chrome, than features I'd like to see added. Things that should be removed, according to me: * Audio recording * Geolocation * Motion * Media capture
- leptons 7mo ago
  You have to explicitly allow all of those features to work in a webpage, they aren't on by default, so I'm not sure what you're worrying about.
  - mrweasel 7mo ago
    > so I'm not sure what you're worrying about. Complexity primarily.
    - leptons 7mo ago
      Complexity for who? The user having to click "Yes I want to enable Web Bluetooth for this website"? Or for the developers? Because if it's for the developers, it's literally their job to make complex things simple for users.
- gertop 7mo ago
  You're right, nobody uses video conferencing in a browser. let's kill it!

dgxyz 7mo ago

Yeah sorry but as an end user I’d rather have an actual app than some PWA thanks. Keep going Apple.

MostlyStable 7mo ago
This is the first time I've actually heard the opinion that someone thinks we need more apps instead of more functional websites.
- s3p 7mo ago
  I think it reflects the general HN sentiment that native apps > progressive web apps.
- genthree 7mo ago
  Functional websites would be wonderful. Instead we get “webapps”.
- functionmouse 7mo ago
  These are not features of functional websites, these are features that make every website an "app" and deprecate the idea of a traditional website. Google is embrace, extend, extinguishing the web as we know it. If Apple gives in, it's over, every website will just be an app and want access to your contacts, and your family history, and whether or not you are on Santa's naughty list or whatever.
nickalekhine 7mo ago
Better PWA support gives users (and developers) more optionality with app distribution. Apple building out these APIs would not take away from their native apps. The UX of visiting a site and with a single click of a button having an app on my home screen sounds great. I'd also like to have the option of side loading a native app too. And if those options sound unappealing, you can keep using the App Store if you want the assurance of using an 'officially approved' app. A lot of very prominent apps are written using web technologies anyways. Take a look at the continued popularity of React Native (and Flutter as well).

gib444 7mo ago

Well at least you can set a custom search engine URL – oh no, you can't, that would probably endanger some children or something !!

CamJN 7mo ago

Absolutely nothing listed on that site as unsupported by Safari has any business being part of the web. In fact several supported APIs should be chucked too. Fuck giving websites motion data or push notifications.

spiderfarmer 7mo ago
They should just ban unsolicited prompts. That's it. Push notifications are the #1 featured requests of my online community. Some even switched to Android over it. And people don't understand adding sites to their homescreen, especially since Apple buried that feature in the Share menu. No Android user of my website ever complained about the WebPush notifications.
- vscode-rest 7mo ago
  Does android still give you a push notification to dismiss whenever you take a screenshot?
  - michalpleban 7mo ago
    No.
- CamJN 7mo ago
  I don’t care what your website does, not one tiny bit. I care that the majority of websites are shit, and therefore the web platform should be as minimal and isoltated from the device as possible.
  - deleted 7mo ago
    [deleted]
  - spiderfarmer 7mo ago
    Well my website isn't shit so I don't care about your opinion.
- burnerthrow008 7mo ago

troupo 7mo ago

Imagine if these countless of "Safari bad" sites didn't shill for Chrome by pretending that Chrome-only APIs are essential and standard web apis.

kllrnohj 7mo ago
yeah I'm using mobile Firefox and it has an awfully high overlap with Safari. Almost like a bunch of the stuff Chrome supports isn't actually a standard at all yet...
traceroute66 7mo ago
> Chrome by pretending that Chrome-only APIs are essential and standard web apis Reminds me of the days when all the corporate coders thought the IE apis were the only ones worth using. So if you accessed $megacorp website on a non-IE browser it was your fault for not using IE and not their fault for failing interop.
mrmanner 7mo ago
I noticed how they've marked the features that only Chrome supports (e.g. installation) but not the feature that only Firefox supports (orientation). (tbh I don't know if the list is simply Chrome-centric or if there's a good reason behind, but it struck me as interesting)

traceroute66 7mo ago

Frankly I am very happy indeed for Apple to "cripple" Safari. 99.9% of the things listed in that stupid table in the blog just stink of being potential attack vectors. And we know just how heavily smartphones are targeted and how smart and sneaky some of the latest vectors are.

ivanjermakov 7mo ago
Related: Firefox stance on Google's web proposals: https://mozilla.github.io/standards-positions/ https://mozilla.github.io/standards-positions/

pmdr 7mo ago

Used to have Firefox as a content filter for Safari on iOS (adblocking), but have since switched to Brave. It's a great option if you ignore all the crypto spam.

DavideNL 7mo ago
> if you ignore all the crypto spam you can disable all those "features"

functionmouse 7mo ago

Thank God. Thank God! Too much going on these days.

Darkstryder 7mo ago

As a daily Safari on iOS user, I don’t care about any of this, but since iOS 26 basic Safari features such as bookmarks and text search have become so buried deep underneath, they are basically unusable at this point. It infuriates me a lot more than all the liquid glass stuff (on which I’m neutral overall).

spiderfarmer 7mo ago
Yes. "Add to homescreen" is in the "Share" menu. That's where they burry all bodies.
- nozzlegear 7mo ago
  Isn't that where it's been for ages?
  - JimDabell 7mo ago
    It’s been there since literally iPhoneOS 1.0. They are calling it “share” now, but really it’s always meant “put / send this somewhere”. The difference with recent versions of iOS is that the share button is no longer always visible but you need to press the ellipses button to reveal it. It’s there along with all the other dastardly actions Apple doesn’t want you to know about, such as “Add to Favourites”.
- fennecfoxy 7mo ago
  A friend was telling me yesterday that this is how you can set custom ringtones on iOS. He seemed really excited about it, how cute. Because I literally could not believe the archaic process previously used until very recently to set a ringtone on iOS. And now it's under the share menu?! Why do Apple people put up with this shit? I've been able to set a custom ringtone in Android from the OS settings/any file browser app for at least 15 years and I would not be surprised if Android launched with it. >Apple still sells 30-second song ringtones for $1.29 each through the iTunes Store app. Oh...alright well now we know why.
kennywinker 7mo ago

mrtedbear 7mo ago

I'm not sure the other commenters claiming all these features are attack vectors actually read the list? How is the barcode detection API a security risk for example? Having it implemented would be amazing for web apps. Also there's features like deep linking into PWAs that ought to be pretty basic PWA functionality that's not on this list that even Safari on Mac OSX has but Safari on iOS doesn't. Even the add to home screen menu option is deliberately made hard to find. Apple doing this for the benefit of the user is one of the less likely hypotheses.

pjmlp 7mo ago

The advocates of ChromeOS Platform keep pushing their agenda. Chrome APIs and Electron crap, and then everyone complains about Microsoft.

xd1936 7mo ago
Author here. I have no affiliation with Chrome, and use Zen and Firefox Mobile pretty much exclusively. I recently made an ESP32 hardware side project that I can configure entirely in the web browser via Web Bluetooth, got hyped, then immediately sad that my page was never going to work on iOS / iPad OS. So I threw together this webpage from caniuse.com data.
- pjmlp 7mo ago
  Firefox doesn't do Web Bluetooth. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=674737 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=674737
- shuckles 7mo ago
  No average person cares about your side project, and most people prefer Apple’s product decisions over the ones you’d like them to make. Based on your history with technology, you are a Windows developer who would like to distribute apps on Apple’s platform without learning about what makes for a great app on that platform.

ocdtrekkie 7mo ago

I very much appreciate the secure baseline Safari settles on. The entire ecosystem is protected by Safari being slow and reasonable. My only peeve is that Apple resets the feature flags with every update. So the one experimental feature I use I have to reenable each and every time I get a phone update.

agust 7mo ago

Worth noting that Apple doesn't just cripple iOS Safari, it cripples all iOS browsers because it also forces them to use WebKit, the crippled browser engine underneath Safari. It would be fine if they just made Safari bad, that's their choice. But they don't stop there: they make the entire web bad on iOS purposely to promote the native apps they can tax.

ocdtrekkie 7mo ago
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tugten 7mo ago
Firefox was planning a native gecko based ios app. But Apple decided to limit it to EU forcing developers to choose to maintain seperate projects for a limited users.
- OptionOfT 7mo ago
  The Brussels Effect takes care of a lot of hardware changes for the better, for the world (think USB-C). But for software, not so much. Examples: * Windows N (no media player stuff) and KN (no media player stuff, no messenger) * Windows installed in the EEA (ability to disable / change start menu search with Bing, ability to remove Edge, ability to add widget providers) * iOS with only allowing 3rd party app stores and 3rd party browser engines in the EEA. * Google only allowing certain things when the phone is in the USA. And it's gonna get worse with age verification. All of the sudden the manufacturers have even more data.
slashdave 7mo ago
This is clearly for reasons of security. I don't think Apple is terribly interested in market share for Safari. What they are interested is preserving their competitive advantage in privacy.
- agust 7mo ago
  The security/privacy argument has been debunked many times. How do you explain that all other OSes, including Apple's own macOS, manage to allow other browser engines? Do you think the iOS team is that incompetent?

nazgu1 7mo ago

Also WebUSB, WebMIDI. Not to mention that you can’t develop an app for you (and your family and friends) without have developer subscription :(

hk1337 7mo ago

How many of these features that chrome offers have been fully flushed out and in a true working stable state? Google Chrome has a habit of pushing features out before they're really ready and Safari is usually on par with Firefox for features from what I have seen.

doomrobo 7mo ago
I’ll ask the dual question: how many of the mobile safari checkmarks are fully fleshed out? Media Session has a check, but I have absolutely fought obvious Media Session implementation bugs in my own PWAs when designing for mobile safari
gardnr 7mo ago
It's not a question of readiness or capability. It's an MBA with a spreadsheet explaining to a room full of people how much money Apple will lose if they allow X feature to work in Safari. This is user-negative behavior from a company that has so much money the best thing they can think of to do with it is to bank it offshore in a tax haven.
- kennywinker 7mo ago
  Conversly, there is an MBA at google saying how much money they can make for each extra piece of data they can extract off the user’s phone. I agree an open web platform is good. But i also think some of the things added to the browser don’t belong in the browser. Face detection? i don’t need that. I am much more partial to attempts to force apple to enable installing 3rd party apps than i am forcing them to bloat the browser with more ways for websites to monitize me.
- rayiner 7mo ago
  Crippling web apps is a user-positive behavior. It just so happens that user’s incentives and apple’s incentives are aligned.
- dpark 7mo ago
  > It's an MBA with a spreadsheet explaining to a room full of people how much money Apple will lose if they allow X feature to work in Safari. You forgot to mention the long mustache your cartoon villain MBA is twisting while they sabotage Safari.

matthewfcarlson 7mo ago

Like most people (at least on this thread). I’m okay with the vast majority of these things not supported in mobile safari. But man, Bluetooth would be nice. I often provision esp32 devices for various things and either I need an app or a laptop when my phone is perfectly capable.

joezydeco 7mo ago
Yeah it's killing me too. I make a product that's MFI certified and I still can't use a browser to talk to it.

samlinnfer 7mo ago

To be honest, I'm really surprised they let PWAs have notifications. That's literally the only use case we have on that entire page and it actually works.

easeout 7mo ago

Gotta meet your audience where they are. As a Mobile Safari user, the foremost way I feel my use of the web is crippled is that pages assume a bigger screen or are just poorly arranged. This of all web pages ought to be easy to read on an iPhone screen, but the way it's constructed prevents it. You can't zoom the whole page out to see the entire table width because the table is in a scrolling frame and wider than its box. You can only scroll the nested frame sideways to see how row labels relate to iPhone cells. If you give up and use landscape, it still scrolls vertically in its frame. You have to aim for the margin or else you'll scroll just an inch and be halted because you caught the table. Because it's critical that the web be as free as it is: • It's natural that some pages turn out like this • So it's natural the web is a little bit shitty all over • So it's natural the demand for richer web features is low

deleted 7mo ago
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daft_pink 7mo ago

To be fair, some of these features are security issues some users don’t want to have in their browser.

MantisShrimp90 7mo ago

I recently posted about how I refuse to buy apple products because of stuff like this. The lock in has made iPhone users dependent on a app ecosystem when we could have had most of our functionality through the open web. People saying they don't want these features are missing the point. Its about control and if developers have the option to make something as a website that actually works that gives them less incentive to make an app that apple can take 30% of your profit from while you are forced to write in their proprietary language for the stuff that only works on their devices. So much engineering duplication of effort and waste just to satisfy a bottom line.

kennywinker 7mo ago
Break the app store monopoly, don’t make the web browser into a buggy leaky bloated mess. And you can write iOS apps in objective c, swift, kotlin, jacascript, rust, ruby, and a few dozen other languages.
- rejhgadellaa 7mo ago
  The web can be a competitor for the app stores, breaking that monopoly. It already did on desktop (where most users spend > 90% of their time in a browser) And yes, you can write native apps in a lot of languages, but you can't choose how/where you distribute. On the web, you can. It's built that way.
  - kennywinker 7mo ago
    Except one of the main things i like about the web is that websites don’t have invasive access to my life. The web-as-app-platform idea erodes that. But either way the issue is the same - apple preventing us from installing what we want. But my solution protects freedom in a more robust way: if you break the app store monopoly, you can install chrome or firefox and do all the web-app-platform nonsense you want. If safari adds all the features on that list you’re still stuck demanding apple add a new feature every time you want to innovate. And as for programming - for the web you can write in a lot of languages but you only have two options For debugging - js and webassembly.

dagmx 7mo ago

It would be useful if the site listed whether these had been standardized outside of Chrome yet. It’s hard to delineate which of these are Chrome features or actual web standards. And it’s therefore hard to blame either Safari or Firefox for not supporting them if they’re not standardized yet.

WhyNotHugo 7mo ago
This is a huge list of "features from Chromium", which aren't really standard or even a thing outside of its ecosystem (the fact that both Firefox and Safari lack them is the obvious giveaway). I'm happy that Firefox doesn't expose Bluetooth, NFC or similar stuff to websites: the browser is huge enough without needing to mediate even more access to local hardware. It's unclear how some of these would even work for other Browser. E.g.: contacts. What data source would you use? I keep my contacts as vcard files in ~/contacts, but other folks might use a remove CalDAV server, a web-based GUI, or data stored in SQL which can be read by some other native client (I think KDE does this).
- gertop 7mo ago
  Desktop Linux might not have a unified way of storing contacts but all other major operating systems do: Mac, Windows, Android, iOS. So if your blocker to accept this feature is that it's "difficult to support on desktop Linux" then all I can say is cry me a river.
- ymolodtsov 7mo ago
  Agreed. I don't want websites to even request my NFC/Bluetooth/contacts.
rafaelmn 7mo ago
It's not even features - basic stuff like input handling/focus is broken on iOS PWAs it's an obviously ignored tech.
JimDabell 7mo ago
Here’s what Mozilla has to say about Web NFC, for example: > We believe Web NFC poses risks to users security and privacy because of the wide range of functionality of the existing NFC devices on which it would be supported, because there is no system for ensuring that private information is not accidentally exposed other than relying on user consent, and because of the difficulty of meaningfully asking the user for permission to share or write data when the browser cannot explain to the user what is being shared or written. — https://mozilla.github.io/standards-positions/#web-nfc https://mozilla.github.io/standards-positions/#web-nfc And here’s what they have to say about Web Bluetooth: > This API provides access to the Generic Attribute Profile (GATT) of Bluetooth, which is not the lowest level of access that the specifications allow, but its generic nature makes it impossible to clearly evaluate. Like WebUSB there is significant uncertainty regarding how well prepared devices are to receive requests from arbitrary sites. The generic nature of the API means that this risk is difficult to manage. The Web Bluetooth CG has opted to only rely on user consent, which we believe is not sufficient protection. This proposal also uses a blocklist, which will require constant and active maintenance so that vulnerable devices aren't exploited. This model is unsustainable and presents a significant risk to users and their devices. — https://mozilla.github.io/standards-positions/#web-bluetooth https://mozilla.github.io/standards-positions/#web-bluetooth The fact is that Google wrote these specifications, couldn’t convince any other rendering engine to implement them, and somehow it’s Apple’s fault the rest of the world rejected their idea. These are not web standards, they are Blink-only APIs that Google decided to build unilaterally. The web is not defined by whatever Google wants. Web standards are supposed to be arrived at through consensus, and the consensus is that these things should not be part of the web.

jjmint 7mo ago

I would gladly give up all those “features” to use Safari over Chrome on Android. I don’t even know what kind of dumbass on Hacker News voluntarily raw dogs the internet on Chrome Android. Pathetic that Safari has had extension support for multiple years now while Chrome is still ass.

politelemon 7mo ago

I argue that developers enable the egregious behaviour by supporting safari in the first place. Just as IE was called out and shunned for its shenanigans, before they started behaving better, so too does safari need to be treated. However, it does also feel too late, they have crippled other browsers too with their platform abuse masquerading as requirements while we celebrated it.

kennywinker 7mo ago
Ah yes, let’s break our site for 1.56 billion people to stick it to apple.
dpark 7mo ago
Is it really egregious that Apple doesn’t support everything Google decides to push? Most of these are features I don’t care about, or in some cases actively do not want. I’m also not sure how accurate this page is. They claim Chrome on Android supports registerProtocolHandler while MDN says it’s not supported there.

deleted 7mo ago

[deleted]

weedhopper 7mo ago

None of this is an issue, the real issue is webpages not working in safari due to large part of the web being made exclusively for chromium.

nerdjon 7mo ago

I am curious why Safari in particular is getting a lot of the hate here when firefox supports even less of the features which leads me to believe that the reason many of these features have not been accepted is because they have not been accepted by the larger ecosystem and is just google pushing their own things as standard (Feels like IE days in many ways). That being said, I am not sure why I would actually want most of these features in the browser? Many of these things feel like they further complicate what a browser is supposed to be doing and opens up security concerns at the same time. I think the idea of using a web app for many tasks instead of apps is fine, but I don't think the idea that a web app can do everything is the way to go. Edit: To be clear about the Firefox comment, notice that many of the features that are not supported non chromium browsers don't support on any platform. So the question on whether these are considered web standards is outside of whether iOS allows other engines. Edit again: Apparently the third column is based on your current browser instead of always comparing chrome, mobile safari, and firefox like I assumed. I am currently on Firefox on Windows, and there are more red X's under Firefox for me. Seems like a weird choice to not always compare all major browsers.

reustle 7mo ago
Firefox on iOS is just a wrapper around Safari, since that is all Apple allows.
- nerdjon 7mo ago
  While true, that does not seem to align with what the checkboxes for firefox, looking at many of the ones that Safari does not support other non chromium browsers don't support on any OS. Mobile or not
  - rejhgadellaa 7mo ago
    The difference is that, on iOS, you can't switch to a different browser that does support these features. Om very other OS you can. A web app could ask you to use a different browser (not ideal, but if the web app requires a specific API, it's not an unreasonable). Safari is in a very special position because it controls what the web can do on iOS (all browsers on iOS have to use Apple's WebKit engine, they can't add web features). Apple is not just gatekeeping native (through the app store), but its competition, too (the open web, through the webkit requirement)

strogonoff 7mo ago

As far as I can see based on pwa.gripe data, between 26.3 (my version) and the newcoming 26.4 Safari on iOS gains support for five new APIs: — Offline support — Media capture — Picture-in-picture — Storage — Speech synthesis As well as five more APIs with caveats: — Installation — Notifications — Web Push — Barcode detection — Speech recognition Even taking into account that it also evidently loses support for one (audio session; I wonder if that that has to do with potential for fingerprinting), framing this feature differential between two minor(!) releases as “intentional crippling of Mobile Safari continues” strikes me as somewhat loaded.

rejhgadellaa 7mo ago
Do you have a source link for this? I don't want to sound snarky, but this list doesn't make sense to me. Offline support has been available (and buggy, YMMV) for a long time. Web Push has been available since 16.4 (with a lot of caveats) I haven't heard anything about installation (but I may have missed something)
- strogonoff 7mo ago
  My source is TFA, as I stated. This is what I see in the table when I follow the link. For example, in the column for my current iOS version offline support is crossed out, and for the upcoming version it has a check mark. If the claim being made is that pwa.gripe is a bad source, I can only assure I have nothing to do with the site. If they misinform visitors about Safari’s capabilities with regard to PWAs, you should post it as a top-level comment.
  - xd1936 7mo ago
    The source is caniuse.com data. The build script for the page is open-source as well. https://github.com/leoherzog/pwa.gripe https://github.com/leoherzog/pwa.gripe

rayiner 7mo ago

Google has become the developer-focused company that Microsoft used to be, and I don’t mean that positively. Developers are lazy and want to inflict low-effort crap on users. Microsoft always made it easier to do that. Google is now doing the same thing. Offering developers more and more ways to cobble together box-checking functionality in web apps instead of developing proper native apps.

JumpCrisscross 7mo ago
> Google has become the developer-focused company They’re the advertiser-focused company. Bluetooth and NFC aren’t being exposed for developers first.

rayiner 7mo ago

“Catholics think Protestants are kooky” is a news headline that would work anytime in the last 509 years.

pokot0 7mo ago

You might want your browser to do Bluetooth, NFC, Background stuff, Face Detection but I don't. I like to use Apple products for things that are commodities to me because I am not gonna look into the details of those and when I do Apple reasoning often make sense to me (just like this list). There is a lot more we can criticize about these big tech corps (including Apple) than a product decision for a company that is known for making polarizing decisions on behalf of their customers. If people buy it... they must like it, no?

hu3 7mo ago
Then don't use it? These features require explicit permission.
- pokot0 7mo ago
  exactly what I do. they are still annoying because providers want to me to be engaged on their terms and keep pushing these features and don’t offer a broad “never use bluetooth on any website ever” kind of option. Magic of KPIs anyway the point here is that I don’t really care if Safari is behind in support. The article was about blaming Safari for being behind.

otterley 7mo ago

For those of you who believe support for PWAs is critically important: in what way does it impact you? What kind of solution are you providing (or, put another way, what problem are you solving) for customers, and why would a PWA app be better than a native one for them? (As opposed to, say, convenience for you.)

troupo 7mo ago
I keep asking: Android doesn't have all these perceived limitations. Where are all the amazing native-like PWAs on Android?
- rejhgadellaa 7mo ago
  If a web app doesn't work on iOS, a business builds a native app instead. iOS is too important. So that fantastic native-like PWA never gets built in the first place. Apple is not just holding back PWA on iOS, they're holding back the entire web everywhere. Compare that with desktop, where web apps (maybe not PWAs, strictly speaking) are dominating: Gmail, Office/Docs, GitHub, Figma, you basically do everything in web apps. And if you count Electron [1]: VSCode, Slack, Spotify, etc, etc. [1] Importantly, Electron lets you bring your own (browser) engine. You can build a native app on iOS that is just a wrapper around a web app, but it has to run on iOS' WebKit, and is thus limited by what Apple deems worthy
  - pjmlp 7mo ago
    There are many countries in the world where iPhones have hardly a presence, yet they also don't have PWAs. https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/mobile/africa https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/mobile/africa
    - rejhgadellaa 7mo ago
      First of all: don't they? (honest question, I truly don't know if Africa has more PWAs compared to US/EU/etc) Second: There are many reasons why businesses would opt for a native app. Notifications, for one (not available on the web on iOS until just a couple of years ago). Also, native apps allow for more tracking (whereas browsers are paranoid by default). Third: A few years back, companies like FB, Google and Twitter all launched "Lite" versions of their apps, specifically targeted at Africa and other developing markets. They were all web apps (or wrappers around web apps). I will admit that this was years ago, and I have not checked if these Lite versions are still around and/or widely used.

ubermonkey 7mo ago

This is just Google/Chrome apologia. Big nope from me, dog.

3oil3 7mo ago

I just want less ads.

luxuryballs 7mo ago

there’s a .gripe TLD now? this is the form feeling old comes in for me

FormularSumo 7mo ago

It's a cool page, although somewhat limited in scope. If you want a more complete picture of all the web progress Apple is holding back, not "just" PWA and more advanced capabilities, this is probably a better site for comparison: https://ios404.com https://ios404.com It includes dates for when these things were first shipped, explanations for that they do, and what kind of standards (or not) they are.

troupo 7mo ago
Note how it doesn't list which of these are Chrome-only non-standard APIs that Firefox doesn't support either. Oh wait. You don't care about small details like that. None of these Chrome shilling websites do.
- rejhgadellaa 7mo ago
  First of all, features can be a standard without (full) FF and/or Safari support. Second, Safari has a monopoly on iOS and controls what other browsers can support on the platform (that also usually means "less than Safari", because SF gets to support things first). They are in a unique position to hold back the entire web, even on other platforms. They're holding the standards hostage by not allowing the market to decide which features are important to them (and put pressure on Safari and FF to implement them)
  - troupo 7mo ago
    > First of all, features can be a standard without (full) FF and/or Safari support. No. No they can't. A feature that is shipped in a single browser is just that: that browser's non-interoperable feature. We literally lived through this with Internet Explorer. The only reason the web is thriving now is because browser vendors agreed not to push this shit any longer. Well, until Google decided that whatever it does is the web, and until people who are not even paid by Google started unironically pushing the idea of "whatever Google spits out is the essential web standard now". I mean, the status of multiple APIs on any of those "Safari is bad PWA is good" sites are literally in the "it's a napkin scribble, not on any standards track". > They're holding the standards hostage by not allowing the market to decide which features are important to them (and put pressure on Safari and FF to implement them) Who puts the pressure on FF to not implement Chrome-only non-standard APIs? Even desktop Firefox doesn't want to touch that pile of garbage with a 10-yard stick. And yeah, let's not pretend that Chrome somehow got to where it is by "market deciding".

runako 7mo ago

Ragebait page. I left after seeing Contact Picker API listed. Contact Picker API is, per the MDN link in the OP, marked as "This is an experimental technology." It is "not Baseline because it does not work in some of the most widely-used browsers."

dandiep 7mo ago

For me, the biggest hurdle to writing a PWA is the insane installation process [1]. There are also a ton of quirks, eg I don’t think you can update the icon if it’s installed as a PWA. It is hard to argue that this whole process has not been hobbled intentionally. 1. https://www.reddit.com/r/webdev/s/yVERKqoJgb https://www.reddit.com/r/webdev/s/yVERKqoJgb

raw_anon_1111 7mo ago

Yes I want more shitty web apps. Also you can’t imagine how much I love cross platform Electron apps. I have no desire for random websites to have that much access to my phone.

goestoo 7mo ago
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xd1936 7mo ago
People like you could turn off these features and continue installing and updating native binaries for the Starbucks app or random hardware companion apps all you want. I'd like first-class PWAs please.
- raw_anon_1111 7mo ago
  Funny enough, I just replied to someone who posted a link to the great lengths Slack is going through to make it use less memory on the desktop. https://slack.engineering/reducing-slacks-memory-footprint/ https://slack.engineering/reducing-slacks-memory-footprint/ When the obvious answer I gave about how to reduce the memory footprint and make it more performant was “to stop using fucking [web technologies]” and create a native app But the question I always ask people who say that it’s mean old Apple keeping PWAs back, why is it that all of these same companies see a need to create an app for Android?
  - fennecfoxy 7mo ago
    To your last point surely it makes sense that they'd probably be rolling something like RN or similar where at that point they may as well build for Android app as well right? Versus with proper PWA support across the board, a single button on the company's site that installs a PWA no matter which platform your customers are on.
    - raw_anon_1111 7mo ago
      Papa John’s doesn’t need a website seemingly and everything you can do on the app you can do on the website. Why is the app so much faster? I can say the same for banking apps, Airbnb, hotel apps, etc There must be some reason that every major company decided to have an app even though today all of the same functionality is available on the web.

SkySkimmer 7mo ago

This table could stand to have a desktop safari column. For instance folliwing the "shortcuts" link https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Progressive_web_apps/Manifest/Reference/shortcuts https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Progressive_web... says "safari: yes (17.4), mobile safari: no". So it's not like Apple is fully against at least some of these APIs.

merlindru 7mo ago
it doesn't eat into AppStore sales to support it on mac because most use non appstore apps anyways. on iOS, PWAs are the one alternative to apps that Apple can take a sales cut from, which makes them a threat to their services revenue

granzymes 7mo ago

The irony of this webpage being terribly optimized for mobile clients… Nested scrollbars! Horizontal and vertical scroll!

skrrtww 7mo ago

I feel like the vast majority of these are features of an operating system? Not a web browser?

xd1936 7mo ago
The web is a developer platform, not just a static document viewer.

diebeforei485 7mo ago

I want location permissions for web apps installed to the home screen to be separate from Safari. I want to auto-deny websites asking me for location permissions. But I want to be able to grant location permissions to installed web apps on a case-by-case basis just like with regular apps.

xd1936 7mo ago
Agreed. Very reasonable, very simple, and already possible on Android.

northisup 7mo ago

It'd be nice if desktop safari was a column.

kevin061 7mo ago

Yeah, I don't want background sync. I mean, iOS is built upon the idea that any task in the background might be killed at any time and without warning by the OS. This is so the OS is able to manage battery and memory effective. You can of course dislike this, but not even native apps allow background sync anyway, so of course web apps would not be allowed to do this either.

deleted 7mo ago

[deleted]

boomskats 7mo ago

This isn't about browsers, it's about Apple spending the last decade blocking PWAs on their platform by intentionally breaking something new with every new OS release, thus forcing people to build and ship bloated pointless 50meg webview packages through their aPp StOrE every time they update the width of their sidebar. PWAs are great. They were literally Steve Jobs' original vision for the iPhone. I don't know why people are arguing about Firefox or the individual features - that's not the point, they're not the ones that matter. It's the decade of sabotage.

Levitating 7mo ago
> PWAs are great. They were literally Steve Jobs' original vision for the iPhone. Was it? I think one of IOSs strength is its operating system and proper native apps. PWAs are inaccessible, bloated, slow and awkward to use.
- boomskats 7mo ago
  > Was it? Yes. Here's a quote for you from the original WWDC 2007 iPhone launch[0]: _"We've come up with a very sweet solution. An innovative new way to create applications... it’s all based on the fact that we have the full Safari engine in the iPhone. And so you can write amazing Web 2.0 and Ajax apps that look exactly and behave exactly like apps on the iPhone! And guess what? There’s no SDK that you need!"_ > I think one of IOSs strength is its operating system one of the OS' strengths is its OS, cool > and proper native apps not what we're talking about here at all > PWAs are inaccessible, bloated, slow and awkward to use. literally the opposite of all those things [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p1nwLilQy64 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p1nwLilQy64
  - Levitating 7mo ago
    > one of the OS' strengths is its OS, cool Woops, messed up the wording there. It's an interesting way to go about it. But I am not sure it's the same as what we get now. We aren't just leveraging the webkit renderer, we are using the browser as a complete OS/runtime for your applications. On top of an OS that already has its own UI libraries. The current standard is that when you visit a webpage you are downloading an application in the tens of megabytes. In 2007 that would barely be possible. When I think of PWAs I think of Microsoft Teams. It's slow as a website and somehow slower as a >100mb "native" app. Anyway thanks for the reference. I am curious how much the current method strays from what Apple envisioned back then.

Levitating 7mo ago

Websites don't need any of that. If you want to make software for an iPhone you can make an app.

DroneBetter 7mo ago

hey the AR/VR entry is wrong, right? Apple demonstrates it in the keynote webpages by having a 3D model relating to the keynotes' themes that can be placed and rotated in space, I doubt it would be for their own pages only. unless it means having the webpage itself render in VR and not just an isolated model

tuananh 7mo ago

the author puts a lot of unchecked boxes to the top, trying to make their point.

CharlesW 7mo ago

I built https://pwascore.com/ https://pwascore.com/ several months ago. Where pwa.gripe cherry-picks and has an axe to grind, pwascore.com is intended to be a more thorough and dispassionate evaluation. I will add desktop browsers soon. Click "Expand All" for a complete and detailed list. Click "How Scores Work" to understand the scoring heuristics.

xutopia 7mo ago
Well the notifications on your web site doesn't provide the full idea of how limited it is in Safari. We have to ask users to install the shortcut before allowing notifications with Safari. Guess how many users actually go through with installing the shortcut? Nearly none. If we had to ask users to go into their settings and switch the "enable notifications" flag we wouldn't call that supporting anything. The whole process of installing a shortcut to even get to the point where we can ask for notifications is even more convoluted on iOS.
- CharlesW 7mo ago
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hasanhaja 7mo ago
How did you determine the weighting for your scores?
- CharlesW 7mo ago
  The most significant effect is that experimental and non-standard PWA capabilities aren't reflected in the primary score. You can see raw/unweighted scores by hovering over the primary score. Chrome wins handily if you count experimental/non-standard features. For standards-based features I used a 4-tier model, described about halfway through the README (which I should also add to About): ┌────────┬──────────────┬───────────────────────────────────────────────┐ │ Weight │ Tier │ Rationale │ ├────────┼──────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────┤ │ 3.0 │ Core PWA │ Prerequisites for production PWAs (6 features │ │ │ │ features: Web App Manifest, Service Workers, │ │ │ │ Caching, HTTPS, etc.) │ ├────────┼──────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────┤ │ 2.0 │ Important │ Enhance PWA functionality (18 features: Push │ │ │ │ API, Add to Home Screen, Offline Support, │ │ │ │ Display Modes, etc.) │ ├────────┼──────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────┤ │ 1.0 │ Standard │ Default weight (94 features) │ ├────────┼──────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────┤ │ 0.5 │ Experimental │ Nice-to-have capabilities (43 features: │ │ │ │ Sensor APIs, Bluetooth, NFC, AR/VR, etc.) │ └────────┴──────────────┴───────────────────────────────────────────────┘ This weighting turns out to be reasonably conservative. For example, if you hover over the score for Firefox (the largest benefactor), you'll see that it bumps Firefox's score by 5. I'm very open to feedback. This is a sincere attempt to quantify vendors' PWA support.

ymolodtsov 7mo ago

Google never really cared about Chrome on iOS. They barely care about Chrome on Android to be honest, that app still looks and feels more or less the same it did 10 years ago. Yes, they can't bring their own engine, but it's in their interest to lock users in and ensure they continue using Chrome on iOS. But it took them years to implement available APIs like passwords (AFAIR it was out for 3-4 years before they allowed Chrome iOS to supply your passwords).

antonyh 7mo ago

This is the current choice developers face - build for the app-store or build for the web. Or both. For me, I honestly don't care if Mobile Safari seems 'crippled' when everything I use works exactly the same on devices as on Firefox/Desktop. If anything I'd be more annoyed if it worked better on my fringe devices, but maybe I'm the outlier here - I only use mobile for comms/banking, tablet for light browsing, and it's more often I'll be on Desktop. Do I think it should have less functionality in Mobile Safari - yes if I get more battery life. Conversely no, if those features could give me more battery life back through intelligent apps.

kylehotchkiss 7mo ago

Apple's intentional protection of me from unsavory developers boundary pushing of the listed items by Mobile Safari