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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

#301

Post by Joeri »

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 definitely build that contacts app as a web app on mobile safari. HTML5 appcache lets you take it offline, localstorage gives you 5 mb of storage, web sql or indexeddb gives you 50 mb. You can use something like pouchdb to give you a clean wrapper.

Yes, service workers would be nicer, but you don't have to go native to do an offline app on iOS. I built one years ago, appcache is good enough.

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

#302

Post by overcast »

hungerstrike wrote: post #287
overcast wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "walled garden" is what prevents the horrendous disjointed mess that is the Android phone market. Sure, for a guy who likes hacking around stuff, it's fun for you. But for everyone else, there is a thousand different phones, with a thousand different interfaces, all running different versions of the Android OS, that will never be updated by the phone manufacturer. I understand where you're coming from, I do. But…

The walled garden is not what prevents having multiple manufacturers of phones. Apple could easily tear down their walled garden and let users install whatever software they want on their own phones - and they'd still be the only one manufacturing iPhones. Your argument seems to indicate that you just like iPhones better. Otherwise, I think you would have said "I'd prefer that our company either standardize on one mo…

If there was a single manufacturer of Android phones, with the seamless ecosystem that Apple provides. I would absolutely consider their phones. Right now, it's a mess, and the reason Apple is the only alternative.

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

#303

Post by fenomas »

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.

> 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.

Um. Email?

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

#304

Post by danpalmer »

euyyn wrote: post #230
scarface74 wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 single codebase of open technologies. Why after over 30 years of experiencing cross platform "write once run anywhere* technologies do developers still think that's the best user experience? Yes it mak…

GMail was (and maybe keeps being) a much better user experience than native email clients for desktop PCs.

I can’t disagree more. I find gmail to be a perfect example of why web apps are playing to the lowest common denominator and result in poor user experiences everywhere. Just my opinion though, I realise most people love it.

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

#305

Post by sidlls »

dccoolgai wrote: post #281
sidlls wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because web apps are certainly very good at protecting privacy.

"To read news on this site, you must give permission to: Your phone Your camera All your files " I've never seen that on a web app, but it's de rigeur for native mobile.

Meanwhile webapps can potentially report on everything you do that touches your browser and at most you might have to acknowledge a cookie stored on your browser.

News readers requesting that level of access is bad, but at least they tell you when they're invading your privacy.

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

#306

Post by TheAceOfHearts »

octalmage wrote: post #238
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…

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.

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I was under the impression you would then be required to reinstall each app every 7 days. In addition, I've read online claims that they limit you to something like 3 App IDs per week on a personal account.

Doesn't mean you have to reinstall all your apps every week?

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

#308

Post by cloop_floop »

nothis wrote: post #34

IMO convoluted JavaScript hacks aren't the solution to "cross platform development" I'd want to settle on. Do I really want my weather app to be running on top of the browser app? And as far as cross-platform compatibility goes, we're now at a point where websites tell you to please load them with Chrome for the "full experience", that just reminds me of when websites used to tell you to please use Internet Explorer.…

I'd love more contributions to cross-platform native UI toolkits and frameworks. Write once, run anywhere native apps have a place.

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

#309

Post by fenwick67 »

phatbyte wrote: post #193
borland wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 les…

I'm with you on Swift as well, beautiful language. But regarding JS, nobody these days write vanilla JS, most of devs are either using ES6 or TypeScript(which supports types and generics).

I'm being a bit pedantic, but ES6 is vanilla JS.
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