I always knew Apple was an evil company... glad to see them finally admitting it...
Apple confirms it's breaking iPhone web apps in the EU on purpose
391–400 of 829 posts
Re: Apple confirms it's breaking iPhone web apps in the EU on purpose
#392I’m primed to be upset with Apple these days, but this doesn’t seem like an unreasonable position. The EU is forcing them to do a bunch of work to support alternate browser engines, this in turn creates a bunch of additional work if Apple wants to fully support PWAs, and PWAs aren’t really in Apple’s financial interest to begin with, so f-it. They're not going to spend resources to add support for PWAs in the EU. It'…
The EU is not forcing Apple to do any work. Apple is choosing to do the work mostly to make competing browsers as limited and non-compelling as possible, while still hoping to stay within the letter of the law. They could in reality comply pretty much by removing their arbitrary restrictions. > It's a rational choice. Apple isn’t a charity, so why would they spend resources on extra work that they didn’t want to do i…
Telling a company they must implement an API is absolutely telling them to do work. And you're well within the right to refuse entirely.
Re: Apple confirms it's breaking iPhone web apps in the EU on purpose
#393Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
I mean, the problem is the same one introduced since the two big mobile platforms were established: "I want to publish to IOS/Android as a native app without needing to have two separate builds to manage". PWAs make that pitch to those who already have websites to triple dip. It never has to promise to be as good as a native app, just "good enough". Does it live up to that? YMMV. It's probably fine for very simple ap…
I've built large, complex and beautiful healthcare apps as a PWA.
The only two things I've ever missed from native functionality are:
- background geolocation
- push notifications on ios
The second one was fixed recently.
In contrast, from what I've seen 90+ percent of apps I see in the app stores would be better as a web page / PWA.
Re: Apple confirms it's breaking iPhone web apps in the EU on purpose
#394Re: Apple confirms it's breaking iPhone web apps in the EU on purpose
#395Said it before and it seems clearer every day, that we're in an era reminiscent of the 1920s with big mobs fighting it out. One of the old games back in town is protection rackets [0], digital forms of ransacking, vandalism, threats and "tax" collecting are all the rage dontchyknow. Everyone's got their "security" to give you. But it ain't your security, and it ain't compatible with noone else's. Nice app store you g…
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How is it a mob if it's democratically elected?
People have the most random and poorly thought out talking points.
Re: Apple confirms it's breaking iPhone web apps in the EU on purpose
#396It's news like this that makes me want to trade my iPhone for the closest Android phone.
Then do it and stop complaining. This isn’t a charity it’s a company. What company doesn’t have their best interest in mind? Don’t even say a FOSS company like Red Hat because that would be bull.
Re: Apple confirms it's breaking iPhone web apps in the EU on purpose
#397Earlier quoted context omitted.
I hope EU comes down HARD on them for trying to pull this shit
What exactly does that look like, in your mind? The EU coerces Apple engineers to work for free?
I'd personally love a sort of anti-trust czar who can just very unbureaucratically slap large tech companies with sensitive fines.
If you had someone like that in charge and the moment companies engage in malicious compliance (for example cookie acceptance dark patterns) you go "now you pay 2% of your revenue in fines, you pull the same thing again we'll double the fine next month", how long does it take until companies play ball?
Re: Apple confirms it's breaking iPhone web apps in the EU on purpose
#398Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is exactly why this legislation is stupid: if you don’t like the way Apple does things just buy an android.
But I do like the way Apple does things. To be specific, I want to buy Apple hardware and I want to run Linux on it. What I don't like is the little digital fiefdom they created. When we buy stuff, we're supposed to own them. The problem is they just refuse to give us the keys to the machines. So we absolutely should make it a matter of law.
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Re: Apple confirms it's breaking iPhone web apps in the EU on purpose
#399Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't necessarily think it applies in your example, but I've heard some very silly reasons given by people as their reason for upgrading. I think a lot of the time people give an excuse, or perhaps even a justification to themselves, when they really just want the excitement of new phone. I often catch myself inventing reasons why I should replace my perfectly fine phone.
No it was 6 months old and she doesn't care about it or phones. She thought it was broken. I charged it with my powerbank, an anker PD one and she ordered a proper charger off amazon. I gave her my spare USB-C cable. It was seen as a potential financial inconvenience having to do anything about it as well. Literally many people do not care enough to understand it. It's just a modern necessity, a tool.
This is my wife. She purchased a bunch of USB-A to USB-c cables off Amazon and wonders why her laptop runs out of power while plugged in - it's because the laptop needs 25-30 watts and those cables can only put out 5 watts because they're limited by the USB-A port.
USB-c PD is such a dumpster fire of a standard. Even with supposedly high end cables like Anker you often can't charge a Macbook Pro faster than it can drain it's own battery under load. We can't expect normal people to understand why there are a dozen different cable types that all have the same tip but charge at vastly different rates...
Re: Apple confirms it's breaking iPhone web apps in the EU on purpose
#400Since the article doesn't actually repeat what Apple has said, here's what Apple says: == Begin quote == The iOS system has traditionally provided support for Home Screen web apps by building directly on WebKit and its security architecture. That integration means Home Screen web apps are managed to align with the security and privacy model for native apps on iOS, including isolation of storage and enforcement of sys…
Thanks for posting that. I'm no iOS expert but it actually sounds like a pretty reasonable explanation. It's at least good to hear Apple's side here, and more knowledgeable commenters here can weigh in as to whether it really does seem genuine.
It's a massive blow for PWAs. There are a lot of corporate apps that are PWAs as the app stores do not really support "private" distribution of apps (other than via MDM-based solutions which doesn't work for use cases where you don't control the users' devices). Furthermore, by forcing the apps to load in a browser tab (rather than as a full screen home screen app) it breaks the support for push notifications. In my opinion this is malicious compliance.