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Apple’s refusal to support Progressive Web Apps is a detriment to the web

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Re: Apple’s refusal to support Progressive Web Apps is a detriment to the web

#11

Post by 2muchcoffeeman »

jpttsn wrote: post #6
pluma wrote: post #4

I think push notifications and offline support are the real killer features that Apple currently doesn't support. It's kind of funny as a web developer because for the longest time Apple seemed to be the one pushing the mobile web forward but now that web apps are reaching for feature parity with native, Apple's initial momentum seems to be ancient history. It seems Apple still thinks of the mobile web as a content d…

If you're referring to the pre-App Store iPhone OS, have you considered the possibility that they were just late with the SDK?

Apparently according to the Jobs biography, Steve Really did oppose native apps

https://9to5mac.com/2011/10/21/jobs-original-vision-for-the-...

Re: Apple’s refusal to support Progressive Web Apps is a detriment to the web

#12

Post by spo81rty »

Apple doesn't want web applications to somehow replace apps in the app store. They make way too much money from their app store. Some of these key features like push notifications are the only reason to even make a native app, for some types of apps.

Re: Apple’s refusal to support Progressive Web Apps is a detriment to the web

#13

Post by andreashansen »

IBM wrote: post #10
pluma wrote: post #4

I think push notifications and offline support are the real killer features that Apple currently doesn't support. It's kind of funny as a web developer because for the longest time Apple seemed to be the one pushing the mobile web forward but now that web apps are reaching for feature parity with native, Apple's initial momentum seems to be ancient history. It seems Apple still thinks of the mobile web as a content d…

Is there a reason for users to care about this at all? Because it seems to me that this just solves problems for developers while making the user experience worse or not as good as it could be. The same goes for Electron-based apps.

Watch the State of the Web talk from Google IO 2017. Certain native apps (Twitter, OLA) are 70-100MB in size when downloaded from the app stores. Their progressive web app version are 0.2-0.6MB. Extremely important in countries with very limited and/or expensive mobile data.

Re: Apple’s refusal to support Progressive Web Apps is a detriment to the web

#14

Post by sotojuan »

rimliu wrote: post #7

I am starting to get a vibe that there is a new breed of programmers who think that knowing just one language is good enough and learning anything else is "stifling innovation". I don't even want to start on "PWAs work more seamlessly than native". I just cannot take person making such claims seriously.

Same. I always think these people come from a planet where JS is the only language and SPAs are actually good and fun to use.

Re: Apple’s refusal to support Progressive Web Apps is a detriment to the web

#15

Post by rsynnott »

As an iOS user, I'm actually quite glad that websites can't send me push notifications on it. And app loading screens are a feature?

If people _insist_ on making phone apps as websites, there's Cordova and all that. Such apps are never very good, of course. I still haven't seen a website-based desktop/phone app that wasn't a clunky non-native-looking resource-hogging mess.

Re: Apple’s refusal to support Progressive Web Apps is a detriment to the web

#17

Post by jvzr »

IBM wrote: post #10
pluma wrote: post #4

I think push notifications and offline support are the real killer features that Apple currently doesn't support. It's kind of funny as a web developer because for the longest time Apple seemed to be the one pushing the mobile web forward but now that web apps are reaching for feature parity with native, Apple's initial momentum seems to be ancient history. It seems Apple still thinks of the mobile web as a content d…

Is there a reason for users to care about this at all? Because it seems to me that this just solves problems for developers while making the user experience worse or not as good as it could be. The same goes for Electron-based apps.

Exactly. I don't want websites to send notifications. And I dislike websites with Offline support: I always have to refresh twice to make sure the content I'm seeing came from a fresh source and not from cache.

Re: Apple’s refusal to support Progressive Web Apps is a detriment to the web

#18

Post by Sjenk »

rimliu wrote: post #7

I am starting to get a vibe that there is a new breed of programmers who think that knowing just one language is good enough and learning anything else is "stifling innovation". I don't even want to start on "PWAs work more seamlessly than native". I just cannot take person making such claims seriously.

This kind of scares me to. The vibe that I have is that (web)developers want to make JS into a silver bullet to solve every problem (backend nodeJS, apps react native cordova etc). But I also wonder why they don't want to learn a new language. Some languages really make you look at a problem from a different perspective and to be honest also work better then JS.

Re: Apple’s refusal to support Progressive Web Apps is a detriment to the web

#19

Post by jvzr »

andreashansen wrote: post #13
IBM wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a reason for users to care about this at all? Because it seems to me that this just solves problems for developers while making the user experience worse or not as good as it could be. The same goes for Electron-based apps.

Watch the State of the Web talk from Google IO 2017. Certain native apps (Twitter, OLA) are 70-100MB in size when downloaded from the app stores. Their progressive web app version are 0.2-0.6MB. Extremely important in countries with very limited and/or expensive mobile data.

I'd say that's another issue. Duplicate frameworks in Facebook.app, monolithic tracking frameworks, etc. So much useless stuff prying on the user's privacy.

I remember Twitter.app had code to get the currently installed apps, to "better target ads." It's user hostile and we are paying with the multi gigabytes of data.

Re: Apple’s refusal to support Progressive Web Apps is a detriment to the web

#20

Post by kartan »

pluma wrote: post #4

I think push notifications and offline support are the real killer features that Apple currently doesn't support. It's kind of funny as a web developer because for the longest time Apple seemed to be the one pushing the mobile web forward but now that web apps are reaching for feature parity with native, Apple's initial momentum seems to be ancient history. It seems Apple still thinks of the mobile web as a content d…

> It seems Apple still thinks of the mobile web as a content delivery platform rather than an application platform.

Apple wants in-app purchases. Why deliver full flexed apps in the web were people pays using PayPal or VISA if you can force people to use your store?

This is the reason Apple killed Flash and is the reason why they may kill any other web technology.

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