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

It’s Official, Apple Kills Web Apps in the EU

open-web-advocacy.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 329 posts

Re: It’s Official, Apple Kills Web Apps in the EU

#101

Post by monkin »

bambax wrote: post #76

I made the mistake of only carrying an iPad during my most recent holidays. What a useless piece of junk this is. iPads work well enough at home to watch movies or play a couple of games, but trying to do any kind of serious work on them, either editing photos, writing something, sending files, even trying to use a sequencer is an exercise in frustration. We are sooo lucky there (still) exist alternative computing so…

You can code on it, design, edit photos, write books, sketch, edit videos... and a lot more with ease. For 3 years, I used only an iPad for work. Can you expand on your problems? Or was that a "it works differently on my beloved OS" kind of thing?

Re: It’s Official, Apple Kills Web Apps in the EU

#102

Post by Always42 »

bambax wrote: post #76

I made the mistake of only carrying an iPad during my most recent holidays. What a useless piece of junk this is. iPads work well enough at home to watch movies or play a couple of games, but trying to do any kind of serious work on them, either editing photos, writing something, sending files, even trying to use a sequencer is an exercise in frustration. We are sooo lucky there (still) exist alternative computing so…

is someone forcing you to buy apple products?

Re: It’s Official, Apple Kills Web Apps in the EU

#103

Post by p_l »

palata wrote: post #88
p_l wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find PWAs great for all those little used or temporary apps. I have a bunch of specialized calculators installed as PWAs - they work great for the purposes. Similarly, there's no reason a conference should have a native app that will only pollute my system over time - PWAs are ideal for once-only events that aren't going to reuse the app for next edition.

> temporary apps Can you not install a native app one day, and uninstall it the next day? Or does it not count as "temporary"? Or are PWAs uninstalling automatically somehow?

Native apps have tendency to linger more because of how auto update mechanisms etc will reinstall them after you forgot about them.

They have also way more permissions and ways to be exploited against you.

Additionally, it's the heavyweight process of installing but also distributing etc of native apps Vs PWAs

Re: It’s Official, Apple Kills Web Apps in the EU

#104

Post by szasamasa »

troupo wrote: post #50
fifafu wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One example: a while ago I worked on a bluetooth le based companion app for industrial sensors. The client would absolutely have built this as a web app if iOS had offered web bluetooth. With alternative engines this would be possible and Apple does not want these kind of applications outside the App Store. With the right engine basically any kind of app could be created as a webapp / pwa So in the US it doesn’t matt…

> One example: a while ago I worked on a bluetooth le based companion app for industrial sensors. The client would absolutely have built this as a web app if iOS had offered web bluetooth. With alternative engines Do you know that the only "alternative egnine" that implements hardware APIs is Chrome? Because it's a Chrome-only non-standard that Firefox opposes, too ?

is it not chromium, because Chromium browser, Edge, Brave, Opera, Vivaldi, Yandex, Samsung etc... (and Google Chrome) all use the open source chromium engine

only safari and firefox did not implement it according to: https://caniuse.com/?search=web%20bluetooth

which might be great because you have the choice...

and you can use open source chromium or brave (like the jvm to run cross platform java) to run web apps seemlessly that need web bluetooth or such but use safari or firefox for personal use if you find them more secure

I mean using chromium engine as the running environment where chromium only ever runs special trusted web domains and never goes to other "malicious" web domains that may fuck up iOS as Apple claims would be still a secure choice

like you will not download spyware from Apple Store because you are an adult not because Apple can protect you there

Re: It’s Official, Apple Kills Web Apps in the EU

#105

Post by meyum33 »

bambax wrote: post #76

I made the mistake of only carrying an iPad during my most recent holidays. What a useless piece of junk this is. iPads work well enough at home to watch movies or play a couple of games, but trying to do any kind of serious work on them, either editing photos, writing something, sending files, even trying to use a sequencer is an exercise in frustration. We are sooo lucky there (still) exist alternative computing so…

It weird so many young people do most of their work on iPhone, including producing videos, photos, and text. Yet when it comes to iPads most people don't want to touch it for work.

Re: It’s Official, Apple Kills Web Apps in the EU

#106

Post by beezlebroxxxxxx »

bambax wrote: post #76

I made the mistake of only carrying an iPad during my most recent holidays. What a useless piece of junk this is. iPads work well enough at home to watch movies or play a couple of games, but trying to do any kind of serious work on them, either editing photos, writing something, sending files, even trying to use a sequencer is an exercise in frustration. We are sooo lucky there (still) exist alternative computing so…

iPads aren't setup for "serious work" out of the box. There's a whole community who have developed workarounds and apps for serious work on it, but it prioritizes being "grandma proof" over a serious work machine from the get go.

Re: It’s Official, Apple Kills Web Apps in the EU

#107

Post by wiseowise »

neximo64 wrote: post #47
anon373839 wrote: post #14

> It’s telling that this is the feature that Apple refused to share. And it makes sense: the idea that users could install safe and secure apps that Apple can’t tax, block or control is terrifying to them. I think that’s what this decision is all about. When Safari was the only browser engine on iOS, PWAs didn’t threaten the App Store because Safari delivers a degraded experience with them. With alternative browser e…

This is quite often where people make the greatest mistake. It's all about distribution and customer usage. Most people hate and don't use PWAs. What stands in the way are Native iPhone apps are better. It also goes for android too. That's why PWAs fail. If they were successful Apple would find a way to monetise the hell out of them.

The only reason why I would install native application is if it's the only way of distribution and I absolutely NEED to use it (banking, government, etc.), for everything else if it's not in a browser - it doesn't exist to me.

Native applications might offer marginal performance boost, but given how optimized modern web is and how powerful are devices that I use - that's not an argument to me unless I do something computing intensive.

I don't know how incredibly self-centered and obtuse you might be to think that your specific crud #383835 is not like all those other™ crud apps and absolutely requires a native application.

In a browser I can: * Freely select ANY text(unless for some reason some special snowflake website thinks that it needs to disable text selection) * Bookmark, add tags, sort, organize websites how I want * Sync all of my information and access it on all platforms, not platforms that vendor decided to lock me in * Add plugins that allow me to modify and work with content how I see fit * Prohibit JS, ads or any sorts of tracking

And probably at least another 10 things if I think longer than 2 minutes about it.

All of this is just from perspective of a user. If I were to write from perspective of a developer, that would take a whole blogpost to explain how native applications are relic of the past and should just roll over and die.

Re: It’s Official, Apple Kills Web Apps in the EU

#108

Post by szasamasa »

firtoz wrote: post #86
szasamasa wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

and they changed my title not just the link was new from open web advocacy, I also posted actually a piece to try to have a more focused and deep conversation so they changed my original title that was actually funny and to the point, marked as duplicate and so the writer of the article from open web advocacy and my article-like comment was shadow banned, thanks!

The title does need to match the one within the website

apparently my former title was too much for this site: "iPissed: Apple is after web capabilities to protect close-to-100B App Store Tax"

which was relating to the article (and you can read the title of the original article after clicking) but I did not like "kills web apps" because it is not true in my opinion, tries to kill web apps or fights against them or cripples them in the next iOS release...

it sounded too eternal and I think Apple will be forced by DMA to do the opposite

I really am curiouos why and who did my creativity bother?

Re: It’s Official, Apple Kills Web Apps in the EU

#109

Post by Cockbrand »

mrkeen wrote: post #70
throwaway49849 wrote: post #5

The creation of the Vision Pro, and now this direct assault on the open web, makes me believe that Apple is no longer has the vision to lead the industry effectively. It's a shame because it has enormous momentum behind it, which means every bad decision, like this one, will be felt be millions of people for years.

Eh. Lightning instead of usb. Firewire instead of usb. Getting rid of all non-usbc ports. Touch bar without physical escape. Ctrl in the wrong place on the keyboard. Every mbp looking the same with their attrocious glowing branding on the lid. One-button mouse. No audio jack. The walled garden. Charging a fee for the dev tools. Yeah, these are all subjective - it's all crap I hate. But my point is: is anything that a…

OK, I'll bite. While I agree with many of your criticisms, some are IMHO incorrect.

- Apple did Firewire at a time when it was the leading interface for professional video stuff. As Apple marketed their computers to video professionals back then, it made a lot of sense. Also, USB 2.0 wasn't on the market yet or hardly had any adoption, and FW was pretty much the only modern high-speed serial interface. At the time, FW was also a much more capable (if more complex) interface than USB. After USB 2.0 got more adoption, FW 800 was released with almost twice the bandwidth of USB 2.0.

- Forcing USB C adoption upon the industry was a good thing, just like getting rid of floppy disks, serial and parallel ports, and Flash (the latter one being debatable as the beginner-friendly authoring system still leaves a big gap that hasn't been filled since). The transition period was admittedly very painful with all the adapters. But now pretty much all devices charge via USB C, just how neat is that? I know that Apple didn't give up Lightning for USB C in iPhones voluntarily, so they needed a bit of help by the EU in their own mission here :)

- They reversed on the touch bar, thus admitting their mistake. It was indeed horrible, though.

- The glowing Apple on the lid hasn't been there any more for a decade or so

- Dev tools aka Xcode are free, the fee you're probably referring to is for getting stuff into the App Store

In the end, you're correct - haters gonna hate, Apple will be Apple, people will buy their stuff anyway.

Re: It’s Official, Apple Kills Web Apps in the EU

#110

Post by wiseowise »

palata wrote: post #88
p_l wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find PWAs great for all those little used or temporary apps. I have a bunch of specialized calculators installed as PWAs - they work great for the purposes. Similarly, there's no reason a conference should have a native app that will only pollute my system over time - PWAs are ideal for once-only events that aren't going to reuse the app for next edition.

> temporary apps Can you not install a native app one day, and uninstall it the next day? Or does it not count as "temporary"? Or are PWAs uninstalling automatically somehow?

> Can you not install a native app one day, and uninstall it the next day? Or does it not count as "temporary"?

"Don't you guys have phones?"

> Or are PWAs uninstalling automatically somehow?

They don't weigh 100MBs. I feel extremely privileged to have access to super fast networks, but it doesn't mean that lazy developers get right to hog it all.

Post reply on HN