Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

medium.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

331–340 of 451 posts

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

#331

Post by euyyn »

overcast wrote: post #214
euyyn wrote: post #206

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. This is a non-sequitur. Fragmentation of Androi…

I was responding to the first two lines of their comment. If they are going to divert that way, then I'm going to respond to it.

You're not making sense to me. u/jondubois dislikes the walled garden, which is the inability to run apps that don't go through Apple's app store (with the corresponding review and fees).

You respond to those two lines by saying that the walled garden prevents fragmentation.

It does not.

* If you were unable to run apps other than via the Google Play Store in Android phones, the OS versions would still be fragmented. App developers have nothing to do with that.

* If only Google manufactured and updated Android phones (hence no fragmentation), you would still be able to run whatever you wanted in the phone. "Walled garden" doesn't mean "closed source".

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

#332

Post by marcosdumay »

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.…

> convoluted JavaScript hacks

Yay for WebAssembly.

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

#333

Post by euyyn »

scaryclam wrote: post #300
euyyn wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the web app is portable across OS'es to start with.

A lot of the time web apps aren't even portable across different browsers...so...YMMV in regards to the whole portability thing.

> A lot of the time

That was the case in the 90s, and hasn't been the case since. "Some times, that are so rare that people point to it and comment on it on forums", yes.

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

#334

Post by pjmlp »

euyyn wrote: post #326
pjmlp wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Completly disagree. I only use GMail as gateway to aggregate my email accounts and synchronize with my Android devices, native mail client. On Windows and GNU/Linux systems at home, I happily keep using Thunderbird.

Without specifics there's not much to discuss. E.g. Thunderbird apparently only introduced threaded conversations 7 years after GMail did.

I hate threaded conversations, so that isn't something I even value.

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

#335

Post by iaml »

icebraining wrote: post #61
FussyZeus wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never met a single end user who wants desktop notifications for web "apps," including myself. In fact I wish I could turn it off globally and more easily. I'm sure there are a number of legitimate uses but as of now, every craptastic "news" website I visit now wants to pester the hell out of me with notifications when they post new clickbait.

I've never met a single end user who wants desktop notifications for web "apps," including myself. In fact I wish I could turn it off globally and more easily. In Firefox, just open "about:config", search for dom.webnotifications.enabled, then double-click it. If using other browsers, don't :) (PS: I like desktop notifications for Slack, but since I'd prefer not to use Slack in the first place, I'm not sure I count)

In chrome: settings -> advanced -> content settings

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

#336

Post by magic_beans »

euyyn wrote: post #233
Aaargh20318 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I think for most people, the answer is a resounding yes.

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

#337

Post by exodust »

illuminati1911 wrote: post #35

"all sorts of great features that you’d normally associate with native apps, like push notifications, offline support, and app loading screens — but on the web! Awesome." I didn't know app loading screens were "a great feature". Anyway I really don't see the point of PWAs or much future for them anyway. Even if Apple started supporting these with Safari, the web apps still could not interact with different hardware c…

> "I didn't know app loading screens were "a great feature".

Loading screens are obviously a good thing when lots of assets need to be loaded for a game. The presentation can inform the user where things are at in the process of fetching those items. Flash could do it quite well.

Isn't that obvious though? A loading screen is informative and functional.

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

#338

Post by euyyn »

matthewmacleod wrote: post #268
euyyn wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get plenty of push notifications from native apps that I find useful: e-mail, twitter, calendar events, chat. I can block those I don't want. That developers can't write a web app if they want as much as the option is ridiculous. Well, actually they can, as Twitter has shown. It looks like Apple is trying to pull an Internet Explorer on us though.

I don't agree with this. Web applications are fine, and have their place. I'd argue that place is not as frequently-used, heavily interactive applications; native apps exist for that, and are better in most ways. This is the thing – some publishers insist on using their stupid application when all I want to do is browse some content. Other publishers insist I use their shitty JS-HTML-Hybrid nonsense because they are…

Why try to dictate what developer tools are available to frequently-used, heavily interactive apps, vs the other types?

> This is the thing – some publishers insist on using their stupid application when all I want to do is browse some content.

That's exactly the problem PWAs solve. Those publishers want some features that on iOS are only available to native apps, and so have to make the experience suck for Apple users by using an installed native app instead of a web app. Both publishers and users have an aligned interest there for PWAs, which goes against Apple's own interest.

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

#339

Post by euyyn »

pjmlp wrote: post #334
euyyn wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without specifics there's not much to discuss. E.g. Thunderbird apparently only introduced threaded conversations 7 years after GMail did.

I hate threaded conversations, so that isn't something I even value.

Even if you personally dislike it, I think you can agree that it's one of the UX choices that made it storm over the alternatives at the time.

Not all our individual tastes align with what's most popular, obviously.

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

#340

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]
Post reply on HN