Earlier quoted context omitted.
is someone forcing you to buy apple products?
Lack of alternatives.
What requirements do you have that are only served by apple?
It’s Official, Apple Kills Web Apps in the EU
181–190 of 329 posts
Re: It’s Official, Apple Kills Web Apps in the EU
#182Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
You can’t compile on it. You can’t run software in the background (for example a terminal, where you don’t have to bring the app to the foreground every few minutes). You can’t install software on it that Apple doesn’t want you to (regardless of whether or not they’re malicious). And the software you can run is more likely than not a subscription, because the only place you can buy it is the App Store, which pushes t…
You also can't run servers which writes off huge parts of web development.
Re: It’s Official, Apple Kills Web Apps in the EU
#183Earlier quoted context omitted.
Most people don't use PWAs... as they exist today. What would happen if Google added all the APIs to Chrome that are needed for every one of their iOS apps, and then offered them as "PWAs that work best with Google Chrome"? Google would not have to abide by App Store rules, nor the rules for app marketplaces, nor pay the Core Technology Fee of half a euro per install. Apple's entire approach of using their status as…
It may have to do something that if you cannot trust Apple not to break web apps like they are planning to do now, companies will not invest in web apps. Also, most companies have native apps already... Web apps are the future competitor, not present.
Yes because Apple never breaks native apps…
Do you remember when they completely removed 32 bit app support from iOS.
People on HN want to make every excuse in the world for why PWAs on Android aren’t more popular and how it’s Apple’s fault.
Re: It’s Official, Apple Kills Web Apps in the EU
#184> 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…
Everyone thinks that Apple really cares if you use PWAs? It came out in the Epic trial that 90% of the App Store revenue comes from pay to win games and in app purchases of loot boxes and coins. Those apps aren’t going to be PWAs. If it’s only mean old Apple keeping the great world of cross platform apps using web technologies, why aren’t PWAs more popular on Android?
> Those apps aren’t going to be PWAs.
Except when a manager learns that they can keep Apple’s 30% if they release a PWA instead. They don’t even need to know what a PWA is, they just ask the developer if it’s possible, who says “something something WebGL and web sockets?”
The manager thinks it’s a great idea.
Whether that translates to their users migrating to the new implementation could be up in the air. I suspect Apple will lose some revenue, at any rate, and they’re likely thinking similarly.
Re: It’s Official, Apple Kills Web Apps in the EU
#185Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is true, but it's naive to believe that the App Store wasn't planned long before those 18 months and was written in just a couple of month before its release.
I think we can tell that the App Store wasn't planned that early because if it was the earlier Apple apps would have been using the APIs that needed to be implemented and documented for the first App Store, and they didn't. Apple today is very different from the Apple that launched the iPhone and the original App Store - they started off thinking all apps could be PWAs, but the Web Platform wasn't mature enough at th…
In the Gamecraft podcast, Mitch Lasky shares an anecdote about Apple asking his team to make apps for the iPod in 2005. Apple then calls them back in 2006 to make games for an 'App Store' on the iPod. Mitch claims this was all a trial run for how an app store would work on the iPhone. [1]
This interaction was with Tony Fadell who had been involved with an Apple smartphone since 2004. The iPhone App Store would launch in 2008. 'Thoughts on Flash' would be penned in 2010.
There's maybe not a straight line march from iPhone to App Store, but the right people had had years to think about how an App Store business would work. And even built a first draft implementation for the iPod. When they ultimately decided on that direction, they weren't starting from zero.
Re: It’s Official, Apple Kills Web Apps in the EU
#186I usually find myself rolling my eyes when HN collectively complains about Apple, because the perspective is so dev-centric, completely ignoring the concerns of the actual users.
But this is a kick to @#&!s of users (and devs).
Even you stipulate that the DMA is a horrible, terrible regulation that should never have been enacted, Apple still absolutely has to find a better way to comply than this. This isn't going to just piss off some whiney developers, but also hit their customers.
I think this is a major screw-up by Apple that will have long term consequences for them.
(BTW, we don't have to wonder if freely allowing "side-loading" will cause a security catastrophe, as Apple claims. We already know it won't. "side-loading" is just called "installing" on Mac OS, linux, windows, and various other OSs, and is being done all the time on those OSs now. Yes, it's not perfect and people get scammed/pwned/etc, but that's true of iOS anyway. Go ahead and make the apple store the only built-in one and make a scary prompt to do others and have your kill switches and other modern protections -- its a rather dumb straw man to pretend the alternative to the current system is literally nothing.)
Re: It’s Official, Apple Kills Web Apps in the EU
#187I 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.
I remember everyone always was fascinated by all the kids in Japan that had a fancy flip phone but not a computer. Seems like Japan was simply 20 years ahead of everyone, as usual.
Re: It’s Official, Apple Kills Web Apps in the EU
#188Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree that native apps can offer better experiences and often do because they get more development effort. I disagree that most people hate PWAs because they are just websites. I think many mix bad websites with "PWA is a bad technology". All the cookie banners, ads and prompts to install the native app are the reason the experience is worse. What could a native app for Wikipedia, Google or a basic news pages (with…
but web apps can usually offer the same experiences if programmed well it may be a current situation that some web apps seem inferior, but it is not a necessity plenty of web developers cannot even use js as a programming language or companies do not heavily invest in web apps since 1. they already invested in a native app 2. apple crippled the web via webkit and now tries to flat out crash web capabilities on iPhone…
> if 90% of the best app programmers migrate to the web stack and flickering html-sites and css stylests are history,
Why would they be history? What's stopping these developers (or the developers not working on native apps) from creating non-flickering html-sites? Are you seriously suggesting that the only reason these sites flicker is because all capable people are creating native apps?
> but actually commanding pixels on a screen is just as possible with js as with other languages, in the end you instruct c++ or rust coded browsers with js to perform tasks and there is webassembly too
So where is this abundance of great beautiful amazing non-flickering web apps? What's stopping you from creating them now?
Re: It’s Official, Apple Kills Web Apps in the EU
#189Earlier quoted context omitted.
you should not generalize cherry picking examples does not mean the web MUST be slow, maybe the web apps were programmed badly... I can write even worse native apps than these web apps and it will not prove anything did you ever try compile c++ code to webassembly and check out the performance "degradation"? it still can be true that for this special task, a native app is the better choice and people would buy it fro…
> Chill! No self respecting company will publish inferior web apps if native is so much better in their special use case! Slack, Spotify, Teams, Notion... Why do I need to buy the top of the line M3 MacBook Pro to run these apps with a sane performance? What tells you that these same bloated apps won't be even more bloated in the future? There's something fundamentally broken with web apps. It's no wonder the Zed tea…
>There's something fundamentally broken with web apps.
While the web stack may be somewhat slower in the extreme, I think the reason why big bloated apps like Teams are slow is not down to technology at all.
I think the causality works the other way around.
Big corporations with large teams that are systemically incapable of paying attention to detail (including performance) choose web technologies because web tech allows them to churn out features faster and gain access to a large pool of easily replaceable developers.
Re: It’s Official, Apple Kills Web Apps in the EU
#190Earlier quoted context omitted.
Most people don't use PWAs... as they exist today. What would happen if Google added all the APIs to Chrome that are needed for every one of their iOS apps, and then offered them as "PWAs that work best with Google Chrome"? Google would not have to abide by App Store rules, nor the rules for app marketplaces, nor pay the Core Technology Fee of half a euro per install. Apple's entire approach of using their status as…
PWA's can do most things: https://whatpwacando.today . Steve Jobs also preferred PWAs and hated the app store. I'm curious as to ask what they can't do that a native app can do without any workaround whatsoever? I don't know of a single person, ordinary person, who uses PWAs. A Cordova app is a better experience.
> PWA's can do most things: https://whatpwacando.today.
At least half of those things are "not on any standards track" and are Chrome-only non-standards.
(But sure let's hear the wail that Safari is the new IE or something)