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

401–410 of 451 posts

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

#401

Post by AndrewUnmuted »

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…

Maybe developers should focus on the subset of platforms that they know they can deliver a first rate experience on, instead of forcing support for every platform imaginable.

It's a sad state of affairs for the web when we see articles claiming that one company's failure to adopt a standard amounts to threatening the web. The open web supports and should encourage competition, not blind homogeny.

I don't think it's misguided for a company to hesitate in supporting a platform which will enable its users to jump ship to another competing company.

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

#402

Post by LeoNatan25 »

RodericDay wrote: post #293
kitsunesoba wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never quite understood the complaint about having to learn a new tech stack to write native apps. As a native app dev, it feels kind of like getting angry that your skills in motorcycle mechanics don't transfer to building rockets. And this complaint practically always comes from the front end web crew... every other type of developer I've met has zero issues with learning the technologies relevant to a particular…

I'm a scientific programmer who just wants to have a few tools available across my devices, mobile as well as desktop. PWAs are a great idea for me. Getting an Apple developer license is not.

Then don't develop for Apple platforms. We don't want your "apps" anyway.

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

#403

Post by RodericDay »

LeoNatan25 wrote: post #402
RodericDay wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a scientific programmer who just wants to have a few tools available across my devices, mobile as well as desktop. PWAs are a great idea for me. Getting an Apple developer license is not.

Then don't develop for Apple platforms. We don't want your "apps" anyway.

I want them for me and my friends/family on Apple devices.

WebRTC support is arriving soonish so I'm getting what I want despite the downvotes :)

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

#404

Post by LeoNatan25 »

pavlakoos wrote: post #66
akmarinov wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://sensortower.com/blog/ios-app-size-growth According to this, Facebook was 32 MBs 4 years ago. It's similar with Twitter. It's their fault that they keep adding stuff to track you. And Facebook contains just about every library that has ever existed now.

But now Facebook mobile app is a different tech. It's ReactNative, not Obj-C, right?

Only a tiny fraction of the Facebook app is actually RN. Messenger uses none of it for performance reasons.

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

#405

Post by LeoNatan25 »

jbigelow76 wrote: post #297
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.

>The same goes for Electron-based apps. When it comes to Electron apps I think any failing to provider a top notch user experience is on the developer and not on the technology. Visual Studio Code is based on Electron and it is hands down the best text editor/IDE-lite out there because the team behind it put the time in to make seem like the type of app you would get out established UI frameworks within the target en…

Code is not native. Where is the accessibility support? Native tabs? Performance? Look and feel? Compared to something like BBEdit, Code is a joke.

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

#406

Post by gregblass »

summadat wrote: post #209

"Apple's refusal to support my chosen development platform means that Apple is holding back the entire web" ...really?

This is not the point I'm trying to make. Startups don't 'choose' the web. They choose whatever exists to make cross-platform apps, because having to develop and maintain 3 separate code bases is not feasible for most bootstrapped startups.

If I just picked iOS and told every one of my app's users that they have to use it, it would be pretty difficult for me to succeed.

Its not that I don't want to learn another language. Its that the time it takes me to maintain 3 separate codebases takes away from my ability to iterate on product features and build stuff that will actually help the people using the app, and ultimately make my company successful.

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

#407

Post by jsz0 »

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…

> This is unnecessary duplication of work that could've been spent writing new features

I bet that's how Apple feels about implementing PWA.

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

#408

Post by fredsir »

drusepth wrote: post #265
falcolas wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> iOS app written by someone like OP That's a business choice that they made, and will suffer for. If a developer and business choose to half-ass the native iOS application, there's no reason to believe it would behave any better on iOS when written as a webapp. > the tools they need to write the best product they can The best product that can be made will never be made with cross-platform tooling. It will always be…

>The best product that can be made will never be made with cross-platform tooling. It will always be lacking. My proof for this? Java programs. TCL programs. Electron programs. This is hard to argue for/against, because having one (native or cross-platform) generally precludes you from simultaneously having both (necessary for a proper comparison). Of note: I find Slack's Electron client as good as, if not better tha…

> I find Slack's Electron client as good as, if not better than, many native applications that I also use in my workflow

That says nothing except the sad state of the other native apps you use in your workflow.

The truth is that yes, indeed, I can find a lot of native apps that are just about as "good" as slacks native Mac (and iOS - it's really bad too) app, and I can also find a lot that are a lot worse. But why compare to them at all? We should be measuring how good an app is by comparing it to, in this case, the best of the best native apps on the particular platform, or across all platforms, if so desired.

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

#409

Post by fredsir »

marcosdumay wrote: post #387
gsich wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would be interested in the reason. Haven't seen a good Electron program yet. Slack is just painfully slow.

I don't know the reason. I just know enough to discard the "portable applications must be bad" hypothesis. If I'd have to guess, I'd say that all of your examples sucked in different ways and it is not a general trend.

Three common ways of sucking, I find, about cross-platform apps is that they are often slower, more resource heavy and "a bad citizen" on the platform. Not all cross-platform apps falls under any one or all of those things, but many does, in my experience, and those that don't always suck in another way.

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

#410

Post by fredsir »

emsy wrote: post #354
briandear wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They were happy because 80/100 is better than 0/100. But how much happier would they be with 100/100. Just because you feed your guests chicken and they like it doesn’t mean that they would not like lobster more. A good MacOS or Windows Dev can move just as fast as a web developer trying to make fake-native apps.

Yes, but one platform at a time. We served updates to Android and iOS users almost simultaneously. Again, I usually prefer native, non GCed apps. But I also don't try to fix problems where there are none. If Android and iOS made it easier to share middleware libraries (C++ is a second class citizen for both), I think there would be a smaller incentive for HTML5 apps.

But the fact is that they would probably still be happier if you have served them native apps at the same rate because the native apps probably had been better in some way.

I get that sometimes it's not feasible to built native apps because you have to do the work twice in the same time and so on, but that is completely irrelevant to how good the product is. Is it good enough? That is a different thing entirely.

Post reply on HN