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Private client-side-only PWAs are hard, but now Apple made them impossible

andregarzia.com

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Re: Private client-side-only PWAs are hard, but now Apple made them impossible

#751

Post by 40four »

This just sounds like a great reason to not use Safari. I switched to iOS recently, but I’m a dedicated Firefox user, so I personally don’t touch it except when I’m forced to by other apps opening links. (I was honestly REALLY disappointed in Apple when I realized that you’re not allowed to set a default browser besides safari, but that’s another story)

Forgive me, I’m a long time Android user, but do a lot of people choose to use safari as their main iOS browser, or are the usage numbers inflated because of the vendor lock in?

Re: Private client-side-only PWAs are hard, but now Apple made them impossible

#752

Post by Silhouette »

Razengan wrote: post #739
PudgePacket wrote: post #720

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, make 3 apps instead of 1? This was the whole idea behind PWA.

Yes, that's the whole idea behind having different devices and operating systems with different capabilities. Why should users suffer the lowest common denominator because of lazy developers?

The lowest common denominator is not having the application available on your platform at all.

Re: Private client-side-only PWAs are hard, but now Apple made them impossible

#753

Post by hoten »

40four wrote: post #751

This just sounds like a great reason to not use Safari. I switched to iOS recently, but I’m a dedicated Firefox user, so I personally don’t touch it except when I’m forced to by other apps opening links. (I was honestly REALLY disappointed in Apple when I realized that you’re not allowed to set a default browser besides safari, but that’s another story) Forgive me, I’m a long time Android user, but do a lot of people…

All browsers on iOS are webkit (read: safari) under the hood. Firefox and Chrome are just skins.

Re: Private client-side-only PWAs are hard, but now Apple made them impossible

#754

Post by Silhouette »

madeofpalk wrote: post #125
robenkleene wrote: post #60

I’m guessing that Apple will start hindering web apps because the new mouse support in iPadOS is going to be such a boon to web apps. Because of sandboxing, web apps are the only cross-platform apps that can run in their full versions on iPadOS. I wrote a quick summary of the situation[0]. Therefore, since native apps are more of a platform differentiator than web apps, moving forward we can expect Apple to start sys…

> I’m guessing that Apple will start hindering web apps because the new mouse support in iPadOS is going to be such a boon to web apps. As a web developer , I've never believed Apple has hindered web development on their platform, purposefully or not. They just don't spend their resources adding in WebBluetooth or whatever new API-of-the-day Google has decided to come up with. As I see it, their focus is on the user…

As a web developer, I've never believed Apple has hindered web development on their platform, purposefully or not. [...] As I see it, their focus is on the user, which is why they've been slow to adopt APIs that are privacy concerns, or drain battery, or have other negative implications.

As another web developer, I find this entirely unrealistic. Apple's QoI even for popular new features like the HTML5 media elements was a bug-ridden mess for years before they fixed even basic problems. Conveniently, having managed to break the de facto standard for serving video on the web that had been working for years up to that point (Flash players), that left native apps as the only reliable way to do a lot of even quite simple things you might want to do with multimedia content. There is a deep irony that some of the breakage was because they were playing those media elements through effectively a separate plugin of their own that wasn't properly integrated into Safari and consequently broke other basic web behaviours like cookies.

At this point, the idea that Apple's motivations for the constant breakage and even severe regression of web functionality on iOS devices are entirely altruistic and for the benefit of their users is about as credible as Google and Facebook lobbying for privacy regulations because they want to decrease tracking on the Internet.

Re: Private client-side-only PWAs are hard, but now Apple made them impossible

#755

Post by marmada »

Razengan wrote: post #692
burtonator wrote: post #543

I ported Polar ( https://getpolarized.io/ ) over to a PWA about a year ago. It's kind of a nightmare due to both Google and Apple messing things up. PWAs could be an amazing platform but both companies are really messing it up. Apple is trying to kill them by giving plausible explanations as to why they can't have PWAs. Security this, blah blah blah. There's no reason they can't have PWAs work well in Safari other th…

> ... Consumers are another problem. ... You blame Apple, Google and your consumers, instead of just making native apps. Why?

"just making native apps"

Re: Private client-side-only PWAs are hard, but now Apple made them impossible

#757

Post by sequoia »

40four wrote: post #751

This just sounds like a great reason to not use Safari. I switched to iOS recently, but I’m a dedicated Firefox user, so I personally don’t touch it except when I’m forced to by other apps opening links. (I was honestly REALLY disappointed in Apple when I realized that you’re not allowed to set a default browser besides safari, but that’s another story) Forgive me, I’m a long time Android user, but do a lot of people…

"do a lot of people chose to use safari" No. On iOS, www = safari to almost all users.

Re: Private client-side-only PWAs are hard, but now Apple made them impossible

#758

Post by searchableguy »

gridlockd wrote: post #479
vetinari wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue is elsewhere: you need to pay your developers to develop the second app. You would most probably need to bring in one more team, for each native platform. Will you get new users from that? If yes, they will pay for that (in principle). If not, just some existing users would migrate? Then you just increased your cost without increasing your revenues. So you would need to gain enough new users to make it wort…

You don't need a dedicated developer to ship a WebView app. That's the whole selling point behind tech like Cordova. Most of your code can stay the same and most likely all of it will stay Javascript (or whatever you are transpiling to it). Again, if you are actually affected by this issue right now, you have a web app that is more or less trivially ported to a web view app. Your user don't have to migrate, they alre…

Why is nobody mentioning that distribution of apps is behind apple's doors and they can stop you from distributing anything they don't like or want for any reason?

On android, you can side load apps. On iOS, you can't.

You have to pay 30% cut if you are doing payments.

You have to adhere to their reviews and design guidelines. Which is OK but not ok if you are a small team and your users are fine with somewhat lacking app.

Re: Private client-side-only PWAs are hard, but now Apple made them impossible

#759

Post by Silhouette »

gear54rus wrote: post #188
madeofpalk wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I’m guessing that Apple will start hindering web apps because the new mouse support in iPadOS is going to be such a boon to web apps. As a web developer , I've never believed Apple has hindered web development on their platform, purposefully or not. They just don't spend their resources adding in WebBluetooth or whatever new API-of-the-day Google has decided to come up with. As I see it, their focus is on the user…

> As I see it, their focus is on the user, Oh and let me guess, they know better than me that I don't need this or that. Let them suffocate inside their poisonous wall garden as the web gets richer and richer.

Be careful what you wish for! I don't for an instant believe that Apple's motivations here are purely for their users' benefit, but their actions do at least tend to have some beneficial effect on privacy. Letting them suffocate so Google's spyware-laden ecosystem becomes the only viable way to access the web on mobile devices would not be an improvement.

Re: Private client-side-only PWAs are hard, but now Apple made them impossible

#760

Post by searchableguy »

millstone wrote: post #740
jamiesonbecker wrote: post #694

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. There is no choice with IOS: you choose the same WebKit that they've chosen, or Safari. One engine and version, or one browser using that one engine.

Android is a web monoculture too. Non-Blink browsers on Android are at <1%.

You can install any browser you want from playstore or outside of playstore. There are no restrictions on what you can and cannot have on your phone on android.
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