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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

#231

Post by dccoolgai »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #204
dccoolgai wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes I, too, pine for the days of "hyperlinks, text and images"-only web. So I turn off Javascript. You can too, if that's how you want to consume the web. That's the beauty of it - it allows for that by design. What I don't like is the position you are taking that "because I only want to consume the web that way, the Web itself should be hamstrung to my limited view of how it should work." There is no good reas…

There is one good reason. The web is a large ecosystem, and we're all living in it. You have a right to express your opinion about its development, and as a responsible inhabitant of that ecosystem, you should exercise that right. Or, in other words, since we live in it, if the web turns into shit (even more than it already has), we'll have to live in that shit.

I said they couldn't express their opinion? No - I even validated it by saying "sometimes I feel like that, too" and prescribed a simple remedy that would cure the problem: turn off JS.

My opinion, since we're expressing them as responsible inhabitants of the Web, is that bringing the web to feature parity with mobile apps - in a responsible and well-governed way as I believe the standards committees who worked on the ServiceWorker spec have done - does more to keep it relevant and provide good User Experiences than forcing devs to try to match user expectations without the facilities.

Since we're expressing opinions, here's another one: Apple is purposefully dragging their feet by not implementing these things fully on Safari because they want to protect their precious walled garden as long as they can to the detriment of everyone else using the web.

Back to the original point I made - if you are concerned about the things being bolted on to the web "turning it to shit" you can turn them off. Maybe the UA vendors should make that easier to do, or easier to do selectively? That's an opinion you could express to them.

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

#232

Post by rsynnott »

yellowapple wrote: post #138
SquareWheel wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Remember how Java applets and Java desktop applications took over the world?

A big part of the reason they didn't is the reason that people dislike these fake-native web-apps; they just don't feel right.

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

#233

Post by euyyn »

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.

As an iOS user, do you ever use websites that are more than plain hypertext, even if they don't try to have an iOS native look?

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

#234

Post by jdauriemma »

Spivak wrote: post #195
jasonlotito wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disable it. It's a feature some people like and use. I like getting notifications from some services I use without needing to keep a browser window open on that page to get notified. And I like not having to download and install yet another flipping app to get that feature.

I cant imagine a service that you frequent enough to want push notifications but not enough that you would be willing to install a native app for a smoother experience.

One where the developer does not have enough resources to develop for and support multiple platforms?

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

#235

Post by interpol_p »

Ajedi32 wrote: post #210
interpol_p wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On reading news articles: I can do that offline and fast right now. I add things to my reading list as I browse the web and Safari downloads them in the background. Then I can read articles when I'm offline (like on a flight). I'm a pretty voracious user of the Reading List and Reader Mode features of Safari. On booking a flight: I'm not sure how doing this offline helps? Last time I did it, I did have to wait for pa…

> I add things to my reading list as I browse the web and Safari downloads them in the background. Sure, but PWAs allow for so much more than that. For example, you could not only read the article offline, but also _comment_ on it offline and have your comment automatically posted next time you have a connection. Or you could click a button to have all future articles from a particular news site automatically synced…

I don't think a native flight booking app would be "near instant" at all.

You'd hit "Next", the screen would push over instantly. But there'd be a loading indicator right in the middle of it until the server returned the necessary data. Asynchronous apps or web sites or web apps will always need to load data from somewhere. PWA doesn't magically make loading go away.

I'm okay with adding offline support, faster loading, and all of that for web apps and sites I use in my browser. None of those features sound bad to me. In the browser.

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

#236

Post by amiga-workbench »

scarface74 wrote: post #168
cryptica wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not surprising of Apple. They've always been a walled garden, that's why I don't buy their products. I like to own products that give me full control as a user. When the iPod came out, I never understood why I couldn't just drag the music files directly onto the device and I had to get iTunes and use iTune's tedious interface. Now they have the app store; another unnecessary restriction. As a developer, it's…

So how do you do playlists when you just drag files to folders? What if you wanted the same song in multiple playlists? How do you do smart playlist? All of this is not as popular now as it was during the iPods heyday but it was popular then.

What is a M3U file

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

#237

Post by millstone »

> From now on, I won’t be building any more native apps. All my apps going forward will be progressive web apps.

To be sure, the guy who wrote that has never built a native app and knows nothing of native development. That is not actually a story of a native developer being converted by PWAs.

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

#238

Post by octalmage »

cryptica wrote: post #90
jaffathecake wrote: post #30

Safari engineers have attended all service worker working group meetings, and they do contribute. However, I do share the frustrations over transparency. It's tough to get developers to care about things like offline-first, because it's tough for them to convince managers to allow them to spend time on a feature that won't work on iOS (since it won't work in Safari, and Apple has banned other browser engines on their…

This is not surprising of Apple. They've always been a walled garden, that's why I don't buy their products. I like to own products that give me full control as a user. When the iPod came out, I never understood why I couldn't just drag the music files directly onto the device and I had to get iTunes and use iTune's tedious interface. Now they have the app store; another unnecessary restriction. As a developer, it's…

I just want to note that as a developer you can run any code you want on your iPhone through XCode for free. You just can't distribute it in the App Store without a license ($100 a year). You can distribute the code though, and users can compile and install it. This is how Kodi distributes on Apple platforms.

This is a newish change though, within the last couple of years.

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

#239

Post by jdauriemma »

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.

>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.

That seems like circular logic. IMO, very few products are "necessary," and sure, right now developers have pretty much no choice but to support native walled gardens if they want to support the list of features PWA offers.

But what if users had a real choice? What if the web browser could offer an immersive user experience on par with native mobile apps? What if browser vendors actually put in effort to optimize for user preferences regarding PWA call-to-actions? What if PWAs were as widely promoted as native app stores?

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

#240

Post by interpol_p »

Ajedi32 wrote: post #227
TeMPOraL wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Contrast that with Android, where it's now entirely possible to make a PWA so deeply integrated into the OS that the average user can't even tell it's not a native app Oh, but quite many will be able to tell after 5 seconds of using it. The rest will realize the moment the Internet connection drops temporarily.

> The rest will realize the moment the Internet connection drops temporarily. Nope. A properly-written PWA will continue working just fine when the user goes offline, just like a native app would.

Most native apps that rely on a web service backend are pretty unusable when the connection goes offline.
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