5 ms·

I think the web did fine. People can't pin a web app because Apple made it difficult for them to do exactly that.

by goosejuice 1mo ago

tpmoney 1mo ago
Burger menu -> share -> add to home screen is difficult? How do you pin a web app in Android then?
- bel8 1mo ago
  How is "share" intuitive here? I want to pin the app, not share. That seems purposefully misplaced. As usual with malicious compliance. In Android: Menu > Install and create shortcut. Much cleaner, intentional, and visible with a single click for me.
  - tpmoney 1mo ago
    It’s intuitive in as much as anything on smart phones is, because the share menu is the OS mechanism for sending data from any iOS app to somewhere else. You use the same menu to save a file to Dropbox, put a photo into a note, add a bookmark etc. Effectively if you want to take something that lives in an app and have it live somewhere else, you use the share menu.
    - bel8 1mo ago
      You're not sending any "data" though, much less sharing anything. I just asked my colleague and they had no clue how to do it in their iPhone. I guess a win for Apple.
      - tpmoney 1mo ago
        Did your colleague even know that such a thing was possible at all, because it’s been in the share menu pretty much since day one. Sure it could be put somewhere else but it’s also been in a consistent spot for generations of iPhones, and the built in help app/manual will tell you how to do it if you don’t know how. If you want to argue the menu should be renamed, you won’t get any argument from me. But a poorly named menu is bad for initial discovery, but it does nothing to make the actual process any more difficult. The claim wasn’t that Apple put it in a poorly named menu, or that the share menu is bad UX in general. The claim was that iOS users can’t pin web apps because Apple made it “exceedingly difficult” to do so. A 3 click navigation through the standard menus that has been consistent for multiple generations and is documented in the on-device help doesn’t qualify as “exceedingly difficult”
  - isleyaardvark 1mo ago
    It’s been under “Share” since before the term “Progressive Web App” was coined.
- afavour 1mo ago
  There’s a whole API that the browser provides to prompt users to install: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Window/beforeinstallprompt_event https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Window/befo...
  - tpmoney 1mo ago
    I’m not sure one can say Apple is intentionally making it difficult to install a web app to the Home Screen because they haven’t implemented a draft proposal to the w3c working group that proposes a spec only chrome has implemented and no other browser except chrome and its derivatives supports.
    - goosejuice 1mo ago
      https://mashable.com/article/apple-reverses-decision-home-screen-web-apps-pwa-eu https://mashable.com/article/apple-reverses-decision-home-sc... Yes one can. They got greedy. https://williamkennedy.ninja/apple/2024/01/30/steve-jobs-introduces-the-pwa-progressive-web-app/ https://williamkennedy.ninja/apple/2024/01/30/steve-jobs-int...
      - indidjdjendk 1mo ago
        Yes and no. “Add to Home Screen” living on the share menu is as insane as “Find on Page” living there. Which both do. And I don’t think there’s a master plan behind “find on page” being tucked away bafflingly on the share button. It’s just bad UX. No conspiracy here.
        goosejuice 1mo ago
        It's not a conspiracy that they once promoted PWAs as being the future and then reversed course so far as to removing the ability completely.
        tpmoney 1mo ago
        They only removed it completely in a jurisdiction where they were being told that they had to open all of their internal APIs around web applications to all comers if they were going to use those APIs in their own applications. They claimed (whether you believe them or not) that doing so would open risks they didn’t want to take and so they removed it in that jurisdiction. If this was some grand plan to stop the few hundred PWAs out there entirely, one would think they would have removed the PWA functionality in other less hostile jurisdictions where no law makers were looking to force a change. I could absolutely believe that the security risks were overblown, but if the assertion is Apple is trying to suppress PWAs, they’re doing a pretty bad job of it given they could just turn it off in the US and no one would blink an eye.
- goosejuice 1mo ago
  Have you ever tried communicating this to consumers of a web app? Our android customers get a nice little install popup or a push of a button.. it's pretty seamless. With TWA it's also trivial to put it on the play store.

I think the web did fine. People can't pin a web app because Apple made it difficult for them to do exactly that.

tpmoney 1mo ago

Burger menu -> share -> add to home screen is difficult? How do you pin a web app in Android then?

bel8 1mo ago
How is "share" intuitive here? I want to pin the app, not share. That seems purposefully misplaced. As usual with malicious compliance. In Android: Menu > Install and create shortcut. Much cleaner, intentional, and visible with a single click for me.
- tpmoney 1mo ago
  It’s intuitive in as much as anything on smart phones is, because the share menu is the OS mechanism for sending data from any iOS app to somewhere else. You use the same menu to save a file to Dropbox, put a photo into a note, add a bookmark etc. Effectively if you want to take something that lives in an app and have it live somewhere else, you use the share menu.
  - bel8 1mo ago
    You're not sending any "data" though, much less sharing anything. I just asked my colleague and they had no clue how to do it in their iPhone. I guess a win for Apple.
    - tpmoney 1mo ago
      Did your colleague even know that such a thing was possible at all, because it’s been in the share menu pretty much since day one. Sure it could be put somewhere else but it’s also been in a consistent spot for generations of iPhones, and the built in help app/manual will tell you how to do it if you don’t know how. If you want to argue the menu should be renamed, you won’t get any argument from me. But a poorly named menu is bad for initial discovery, but it does nothing to make the actual process any more difficult. The claim wasn’t that Apple put it in a poorly named menu, or that the share menu is bad UX in general. The claim was that iOS users can’t pin web apps because Apple made it “exceedingly difficult” to do so. A 3 click navigation through the standard menus that has been consistent for multiple generations and is documented in the on-device help doesn’t qualify as “exceedingly difficult”
- isleyaardvark 1mo ago
  It’s been under “Share” since before the term “Progressive Web App” was coined.
afavour 1mo ago
There’s a whole API that the browser provides to prompt users to install: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Window/beforeinstallprompt_event https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Window/befo...
- tpmoney 1mo ago
  I’m not sure one can say Apple is intentionally making it difficult to install a web app to the Home Screen because they haven’t implemented a draft proposal to the w3c working group that proposes a spec only chrome has implemented and no other browser except chrome and its derivatives supports.
  - goosejuice 1mo ago
    https://mashable.com/article/apple-reverses-decision-home-screen-web-apps-pwa-eu https://mashable.com/article/apple-reverses-decision-home-sc... Yes one can. They got greedy. https://williamkennedy.ninja/apple/2024/01/30/steve-jobs-introduces-the-pwa-progressive-web-app/ https://williamkennedy.ninja/apple/2024/01/30/steve-jobs-int...
    - indidjdjendk 1mo ago
      Yes and no. “Add to Home Screen” living on the share menu is as insane as “Find on Page” living there. Which both do. And I don’t think there’s a master plan behind “find on page” being tucked away bafflingly on the share button. It’s just bad UX. No conspiracy here.
      - goosejuice 1mo ago
        It's not a conspiracy that they once promoted PWAs as being the future and then reversed course so far as to removing the ability completely.
        tpmoney 1mo ago
        They only removed it completely in a jurisdiction where they were being told that they had to open all of their internal APIs around web applications to all comers if they were going to use those APIs in their own applications. They claimed (whether you believe them or not) that doing so would open risks they didn’t want to take and so they removed it in that jurisdiction. If this was some grand plan to stop the few hundred PWAs out there entirely, one would think they would have removed the PWA functionality in other less hostile jurisdictions where no law makers were looking to force a change. I could absolutely believe that the security risks were overblown, but if the assertion is Apple is trying to suppress PWAs, they’re doing a pretty bad job of it given they could just turn it off in the US and no one would blink an eye.
goosejuice 1mo ago
Have you ever tried communicating this to consumers of a web app? Our android customers get a nice little install popup or a push of a button.. it's pretty seamless. With TWA it's also trivial to put it on the play store.