Apple’s refusal to support Progressive Web Apps is a detriment to the web • Hacker News Board

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

#131

Post by bluejekyll » Thu, Jul 27, 2017, 1:41 PM UTC

IBM wrote: post #113

bluejekyll wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a great post about why you should target iOS and macOS features specifically. But it misses the point, > we want to provide the most advanced and innovative platform to our developers, and we want them to stand directly on the shoulders of this platform and create the best apps the world has ever seen. Yes, that's what (you and) Apple want. But what developers really want is a simple cross platform framework…

Cool so then it just comes down to leverage. Developers who wants this have almost none and Apple has all of it. As a user who mostly doesn't care about the trials and tribulations that developers go through, my interests are aligned with Apple's. As long as Apple continues to sell more product that dynamic isn't going to change.

> Cool so then it just comes down to leverage. Developers who wants this have almost none and Apple has all of it.

You are definitely right that Apple has a lot of leverage for now. I love my Apple products, as a user I have no intention of switching away from them (I stuck with them through their worst period, '96 - '00, because I was so excited for the coming of Unix). Again as a user I want them to succeed because I love the products.

As a developer though, I want my favorite tools and languages available. And I want to spend the least effort in targeting users...

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

#132

Post by SquareWheel » Thu, Jul 27, 2017, 1:41 PM UTC

egeozcan wrote: post #110

SquareWheel wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd also add SQL to your language list, and often SASS, gulp/grunt configuration, JSON, ASP.NET, and so on. And come on, JS is a C-style language. If you know one you know them all. It's also not a difficult jump to OOP languages; especially now that Java 8 supported lambdas and C# supports async/await. It's hard to learn concepts, not syntax.

Don't you agree, though, thinking that web developers don't write iOS apps because they don't want to learn Swift, is a bit ridiculous at this point? Yet another language isn't even significant for a typical web developer. For me, tooling (XCode) took more time to learn than being able to write acceptable Swift...

Yes, I agree. I was agreeing with you before as well. Setting up a Mac, learning a new IDE, and getting your tooling/builds set up is a far bigger pain point than actually learning the new language.

At least that's the case if it's logically similar. C, Java, JS, etc are mostly transferable. I might not say the same about something like Haskell.

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

#133

Post by ivm » Thu, Jul 27, 2017, 1:41 PM UTC

Aaargh20318 wrote: post #87

christiangenco wrote: post #65

I think a lot of commenters here are missing the point and getting distracted by push notifications (who wants a website spamming them with notifications?) and loading screens (hardly a feature). Apple supporting PWA (Progressive Web Apps) is hugely important because it enables a future where web apps can natively support browser, Mac/Windows/Linux desktop, and mobile iPhone/Android/Windows native mobile with a singl…

You can make a a native app, which will always be better than a webapp. As an iOS user, I have no intention of ever using webapps (including things like Cordova apps). If you can’t be bothered to make a iOS-native app with iOS native look, feel and features then just don’t bother.

But it means learning something other than JS!

It feels like many developers are adamant to never leave their comfort zone. Hence, JS everywhere.

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

#134

Post by archagon » Thu, Jul 27, 2017, 1:41 PM UTC

interpol_p wrote: post #72

I hate using web apps. On desktop, mobile, wherever. The author's list of things they want supported by Mobile Safari is just aggravating: > Here are a list of things you still can’t do with mobile safari due to Apple’s refusal to support them: > > Create an app loading screen > Use push notifications > Add offline support > Create an initial app UI to load instantly > Prompt installation to the home screen through b…

Agreed -- squeezing these native app elements into the document-based paradigm of the web is a horrid, Frankenstein's monster of an idea. It's like doing app development in Excel.

If native web apps are to be more of a universal thing, I believe there ought to be a blank-canvas "meta-browser" layer that sits above the browser and that all web apps (including today's browsers) are built on top of. Basically a lightweight, sandboxed pseudo-OS that offers a robust standard library, a URL scheme and easy networking support, some sort of bytecode, maybe a UI toolkit, etc. Web apps would still take up the same amount of space and would still be able to run without installing, but they would now be endowed with native performance, app-specific features, and a consistent, functional UI. (Quiz: how often do your back/forward buttons fail when using, for example, your bank's website? The fact that these two ubiquitous controls simply break the web more often than not should be telling.)

Shoehorning all that stuff into a hyperlinked, navigable document browser is insanity, and you can always feel it unless your web-app has basically reimplemented the DOM from scratch[1]. The web is currently layered upside-down and I think web apps won't lose their reputation until this is fixed.

[1]: http://engineering.flipboard.com/2015/02/mobile-web

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

#135

Post by interpol_p » Thu, Jul 27, 2017, 1:42 PM UTC

SquareWheel wrote: post #105

interpol_p wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes but supporting the feature encourages developers to make web apps. Why would you want to encourage that?

Why wouldn't you want that? PWAs are seamless (no downloading/installing), allow native features, can be saved offline for later, run in a secure sandbox, and are completely open and cross-platform.

I don't really value cross-platform in the sense that the code I write for platform A can run on platform B. At least for applications.

I think it's valuable for games. Unity and Unreal engine have demonstrated that.

Applications necessarily intersect with the underlying platform in a way which games do not. Accessibility, system-wide services (e.g., dictionary), system-wide interactions (e.g., drag and drop). There are reasons I choose macOS, and when applications embrace the design philosophy and features of the platform they become great applications. PWAs will not do this to the same extent (and if they try to, the effort would be so significant they might as well go native).

I feel strongly that the platforms you develop for should be the platforms you love using. And so the things you develop should bring out the best and most valuable features of those platforms.

I would rather encourage developers to embrace each platform's strengths. I understand that many companies might not care — they want as many users as possible as cheaply as possible. But I do not appreciate that attitude at all.

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

#136

Post by Sjenk » Thu, Jul 27, 2017, 1:42 PM UTC

egeozcan wrote: post #31

Sjenk wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The vibe you have is wrong. It's not about learning a new language. Most web developers are comfortable in many languages. Plase stop attacking a straw-man. Not many web developers say stuff like "omg these new things are web scale" or "oh javascript is everything I need, I hate everything else". Yeah the author didn't want to learn a new language. Which is not an insane decision at the very beginning of a project. T…

I understand code reuse can be a hassle, but not as big as some make it out to be. One way to reduce a bunch of work is to make use of swagger for your API. Which enables you to generate a client for your languages of choice.

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

#137

Post by borland » Thu, Jul 27, 2017, 1:43 PM UTC

scrumper wrote: post #29

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.

There's more than a whiff of that in the article, for sure. Author at one point is put off Native by having to learn a "more complicated" language, i.e. Swift. It's hard to defend the assertion that Swift is more complicated than JS.

Full disclaimer, Swift is my favourite language by a long shot and I'd love to use it everywhere, but it really is very complicated in some places.

Consider, for example, the interaction between generics in structs and classes, and protocols with associated types, and why you have to make stupid type-erasing wrappers like 'AnyObject' and so forth.

JS barely even has types at all, let alone generics. There's a lot less to go wrong there :-)

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

#138

Post by yellowapple » Thu, Jul 27, 2017, 1:43 PM UTC

SquareWheel wrote: post #105

interpol_p wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes but supporting the feature encourages developers to make web apps. Why would you want to encourage that?

Why wouldn't you want that? PWAs are seamless (no downloading/installing), allow native features, can be saved offline for later, run in a secure sandbox, and are completely open and cross-platform.

I'm pretty sure it boils down to "we're fancy iOS users who want nothing to do with those peasants over in the Android world". It seems like the majority of the comments opposing web apps oppose them because they're cross-platform and not written specifically for their chosen platform, which is a very silly stance to have.

There are some more coherent arguments in play, don't get me wrong (in particular, the argument that web apps are a bastardization of what the World Wide Web was intended to be for; I agree with that wholeheartedly), but a lot of the rhetoric around here really reeks of elitism.

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

#139

Post by y_u_no_rust » Thu, Jul 27, 2017, 1:43 PM UTC

tallanvor wrote: post #55

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…

A lot of people are already sick and tired of websites asking to be able to send push notifications in the browser. Annoying people isn't a "killer feature", it's an aggravation. If a normal website can't do the job, and the developer isn't willing to develop a native app, then maybe the product simply isn't necessary.

I'm also sick and tired of bloated apps with loading screens

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

#140

Post by celeritascelery » Thu, Jul 27, 2017, 1:43 PM UTC

IBM wrote: post #69

pluma wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Push notifications? Every single messenger or anything that lets you set reminders. Note that features like push notifications are implemented with a discrete opt-in on every other platform already. Don't want notifications? Just say "Deny" when you're prompted. Offline support? Only if you happen to live in the 99.99% of the world that doesn't have 24/7 perfect WiFi/4G coverage with unlimited data. If you've ever ke…

All of these things are already available in native apps. Putting aside all the business reasons for why Apple wouldn't want to do this, why should Apple spend any time to enable this for web apps? You say the choice is between a web app and no app, and I'm sure on the margin this impacts companies that can't afford to create a native app, but why should Apple cater to the lowest common denominator? Steve Jobs' post…

that quote basically sums it up. third-party cross-platform solutions are good for developers but bad for Apple and all it's users. The reason I choose Apple is because they make these kind of user-first decisions.