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Apple confirms it's breaking iPhone web apps in the EU on purpose

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Re: Apple confirms it's breaking iPhone web apps in the EU on purpose

#341

Post by bhelkey »

layer8 wrote: post #322
bhelkey wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have enjoyed my Zenfone 10. It's a little Taiwanese phone that's a comparable size. Specifically, I like its battery life, its camera, and that it has a headphone jack.

The Zenfone 10 is almost the same size as the regular iPhone (a tad bit narrower, a tad bit thicker, same weight). The form factor is not like the iPhone mini.

> The form factor is not like the iPhone mini.

Compared to the iPhone 13 mini the Zenfone 10 is 15mm taller, 3.9mm wider, and 1.75mm deeper.

Re: Apple confirms it's breaking iPhone web apps in the EU on purpose

#342

Post by dangus »

thimp wrote: post #146
benguild wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The “low usage” comment is going to be more ammo against Apple unfortunately. The whole reason they are low usage on PWAs is because of a lack of investment from Apple and a lack of parity, yet for the longest time Apple has played both sides by saying PWAs are a viable alternative to the App Store, all while channeling people to App Store for actual app downloads and not providing similar marketing or anything for P…

Are you sure this isn't a tech industry viewpoint? I don't know anyone who knows what the difference between an app and a PWA is. I don't think I've seen anyone outside of the tech industry with a PWA active. In context 99% of the users I meet don't even know what USB-C is.

I think PWAs are an outright failure and a technical solution looking for a problem. I don’t even know where to find one.

For one thing, if Apple is complying with the EU’s alternative App Store and browser engine mandate, they’re even less useful than before. Why do I as a user want a PWA when I could have a native app?

Re: Apple confirms it's breaking iPhone web apps in the EU on purpose

#343

Post by dangus »

shuckles wrote: post #338
jdminhbg wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So are PWAs really popular on Android?

I think the advocate retort is that lack of support on iOS makes them a nonstarter for developers on all platforms. I think this argument is more of an excuse.

Right, Android has something like 70% global marketshare. PWAs aren’t popular because they don’t really benefit developers/businesses. They also don’t offer any advantages in user experience over a native app. Apart from the economics, there’s no developer friction advantage since you can use something like react native and deploy anywhere.

The kind of deep user information you can gather by installing a full blown app compared to a more sandboxed web app is worth way more than the 30% royalty cut.

Re: Apple confirms it's breaking iPhone web apps in the EU on purpose

#344

Post by trinsic2 »

jokethrowaway wrote: post #271
munk-a wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like this is a win for consumers - I'd much rather there remain more OS competition on mobile devices[1] but if Apple wants to pursue a business model that excludes large portions of the world from their customer base that's their decision. I don't believe there exists any maliciousness from the EU towards Apple - they do, after all, benefit greatly from corporation tax revenues from Apple and iPhones are stil…

I don't see how you can call EU having any expectation of freedom when commenting about a law which forces a company to comply to regulation. This actively reduces freedom, the freedom of running your business. You just don't care about it. If you don't like walled gardens you can just not use them (I certainly never bought anything Apple for this very reason), there's no need to infringe on the freedom of everyone e…

Companies don't have freedom. People do. Companies are a collection of people that have a responsibility to the people who allow them to operating by charters. In our current age, I'd say that justice in this regard isn't operating as it should, because our governments are allowing selfish individuals within companies to do illegal stuff that go against the original intent of charters. Individuals that would normally be held accountable for their actions are now being protected from being prosecuted for harms they commit while being part business.

Companies are designed and allowed, by characters, to operate within the scope of whats good for society. If it harms the public good then it needs to be reigned in. I have no illusions that companies have the same standing and rights as living beings do. They are lifeless entities meant to be subject to the will of people.

Re: Apple confirms it's breaking iPhone web apps in the EU on purpose

#345

Post by [deleted] »

ambigious7777 wrote: post #306
SllX wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> However, as I said, adding a simple confirmation prompt would be plenty enough. That would be enough for you. That is apparently not enough for Apple, and you can tell that isn’t enough for Apple by their actions because despite the fact that there were less expensive and time consuming ways they could have complied with the whole rest of the DMA, the only feature regression they’ve had is PWA support in the iPhone…

Yes, so rather than allowing other browsers to have PWAs with a warning, they instead don't allow anyone to do it. Allowing so may be insecure, but at least provide a way.

[deleted]

Re: Apple confirms it's breaking iPhone web apps in the EU on purpose

#346

Post by bloppe »

cherioo wrote: post #337
bloppe wrote: post #317

So, here's Apple's concern, which is valid: every website (PWA) should have isolated storage (cookies etc), and independent access to system resources (webcam etc) confirmed by the user on a per-site basis. I think we can all agree that's how things should be. Previously, Safari handled these requirements because it's a modern browser (isolated storage has been a cornerstone of browser security for a long time), and…

The difference is, whether or not, when iOS user clicks an icon to open an ”app”, they can be confident whether or not the app is “secured” or not. Hypothetically, without apple doing this, opening a PWA1 app can caused its data to be siphoned off by PWA2, up to isolation of the browser. Whether or not that is a legitimate enough concern is up to each individual.

I just don't understand what PWA's have to do with any of this. There is nothing that a PWA can do that a regular Chrome window would not be able to do. Apple is being force to support the latter. What's wrong with continuing to support the former?

If it all boils down to "Apple users expect Apple to have control over everything, and if that expectation is violated, it will be really bad", then I'm sure EU regulators will handle it. Is there anything I'm missing from a security perspective?

Re: Apple confirms it's breaking iPhone web apps in the EU on purpose

#347

Post by giantrobot »

derefr wrote: post #334
wokwokwok wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> By that logic, I shouldn't be allowed to load web pages because it's impossible to secure a browser. Indeeed, and 'whatever browser engine you picked here' is responsible for correctly implementing these additional security features. That's the argument; if you write an app that lets you run other apps inside it how do we make sure your app does security correctly? When you look at it from that perspective, you can…

> you can see that unless at an OS level you provide additional 'meta-security' features that allow apps that run in other apps to have fine grains access control that is managed by the OS, it's pretty much "security? Well, whatever...". I don't think that's the only solution. A simple alternative is to declare that "apps that run in other apps don't get to do anything at all." I.e. in this case, in response to a EU…

Then everyone will just bitch PWAs can't do anything.

Re: Apple confirms it's breaking iPhone web apps in the EU on purpose

#348

Post by afavour »

thimp wrote: post #146
benguild wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The “low usage” comment is going to be more ammo against Apple unfortunately. The whole reason they are low usage on PWAs is because of a lack of investment from Apple and a lack of parity, yet for the longest time Apple has played both sides by saying PWAs are a viable alternative to the App Store, all while channeling people to App Store for actual app downloads and not providing similar marketing or anything for P…

Are you sure this isn't a tech industry viewpoint? I don't know anyone who knows what the difference between an app and a PWA is. I don't think I've seen anyone outside of the tech industry with a PWA active. In context 99% of the users I meet don't even know what USB-C is.

You’re right but a lot of that has to do with discoverability and the lack thereof on iOS. On Android you can show an install prompt via the browser or even package your PWA to be distributed via the Play Store. On iOS you have to do a strange incantation of “sharing” a web page to your Home Screen via a submenu. Its utterly unituitive so it’s not too surprising that most don’t.

Re: Apple confirms it's breaking iPhone web apps in the EU on purpose

#349

Post by zappb »

addicted wrote: post #263
M4v3R wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to trust someone if you're using a computing device connected to the Internet. The point of being in Apple ecosystem is that you trust Apple, and then (supposedly) you can not trust anyone else. To many that's a very strong proposition.

Why can’t I choose to trust Apple for iOS and another developer for other functionality that runs on iOS? We do this all the time. I don’t uniquely depend on Microsoft for stuff that runs on Windows. Same for stuff that runs on macOS. And on Linux I’m not even sure who I’m trusting from the ground up other than a huge and disparate collection of people. So what makes iOS so unique that it can’t run PWAs, which is lit…

It’s not unique to Apple. It’s an inherent problem to securing Turing machines.

Re: Apple confirms it's breaking iPhone web apps in the EU on purpose

#350

Post by natch »

rchaud wrote: post #225
zer00eyz wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without this type of isolation and enforcement, malicious... camera, microphone or location ... Browsers ... 30 some million lines of code in chromium browsers. Thats bigger than the linux kernel. The HN crowed might not LIKE apples response but they have a very defensible position. Edit: Its not like we haven't seen this play out on the desktop recently: https://www.theverge.com/24054329/microsoft-edge-automatic-c..…

Android handles this just fine. These are the world's largest corporations we're talking about, not some mom and pop shop that will be crushed under the heel of overzealous regulation.

Android "handles it" if you want to call shrugging it off "handling it," by making different security tradeoffs that do not emphasize security as much as Apple does.
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