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Apple broke iPhone web apps in the EU for anticompetitive reasons – Tim Sweeney

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Re: Apple broke iPhone web apps in the EU for anticompetitive reasons – Tim Sweeney

#51

Post by cybrox »

dubcanada wrote: post #20
Gareth321 wrote: post #2

He's right. Apple has been strangling web app progress on iOS for many years. They wanted to ensure that web apps could never compete with native apps on the App Store, because they can extract their 30% fee. Now that Apple are forced to permit third party browser engines, web apps would suddenly be a lot more powerful. Apple just won't have that, so they're disabling a useful feature for everyone. I think this will…

As much as I would love to agree, the general population really does not care about features like "home screen web apps". Nobody outside of HN even knows what they are. Everyone just goes on the app store and downloads random website app. Even if it is just a browser app that renders a website. Apple would have to eliminate something that people actually care about for any boycott Apple to happen.

People don't care because Apple has made sure they don't care. They have crippled web app adoption for years to push the app store and now argue that "well, only a few people use that anyways".

How many apps in the app store are just webviews? I myself have paid apple to publish webview wrappers around pages because they strictly raise users to expect these, instead of the web apps they have no control over (and cannot take 30% of every transaction).

Re: Apple broke iPhone web apps in the EU for anticompetitive reasons – Tim Sweeney

#52

Post by lozenge »

postalrat wrote: post #45
anon373839 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you’re going to use an app in Safari, I actually prefer to just restrict the thing to 100svh to force the full Safari UI to stick around. It’s distracting and disorienting to have the tab bar and address bar shrinking and growing at random while using an app, with the app UI wiggling all over the place.

At least in Android when you install and get a home screen button your page uses the full height with no browser chrome like any other app.

That's exactly the feature Apple is removing in the EU.

Re: Apple broke iPhone web apps in the EU for anticompetitive reasons – Tim Sweeney

#53

Post by cybrox »

adestefan wrote: post #49
lozenge wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look at how Google pushed Chrome on its websites and people picked it up. They could do the same for web apps. What's been limiting them all this time is Apple policy. Apple policy 1- PWAs on iPhone must use Safari, Safari only has features Apple chooses to implement Apple policy 2- Add to Home Screen is hidden away Now with DMA, Google could make its own web browser, provide all their apps as "PWAs that work with Ch…

So you’d rather have Google abuse its monopoly on search to get what you want?

s/Google/Mozilla then

Re: Apple broke iPhone web apps in the EU for anticompetitive reasons – Tim Sweeney

#54

Post by Dalewyn »

dubcanada wrote: post #20
Gareth321 wrote: post #2

He's right. Apple has been strangling web app progress on iOS for many years. They wanted to ensure that web apps could never compete with native apps on the App Store, because they can extract their 30% fee. Now that Apple are forced to permit third party browser engines, web apps would suddenly be a lot more powerful. Apple just won't have that, so they're disabling a useful feature for everyone. I think this will…

As much as I would love to agree, the general population really does not care about features like "home screen web apps". Nobody outside of HN even knows what they are. Everyone just goes on the app store and downloads random website app. Even if it is just a browser app that renders a website. Apple would have to eliminate something that people actually care about for any boycott Apple to happen.

>the general population really does not care about features like "home screen web apps".

I'm inclined to agree.

Anecdata, but I use precisely one HSWA, VisitJapanWeb, because the mongoloids known as the Japan Digital Agency are stuck in the triassic era and can't figure out what publishing on application stores is.

Note: I'm Japanese. I get free, top dibs on trashtalking my brethren.

Re: Apple broke iPhone web apps in the EU for anticompetitive reasons – Tim Sweeney

#56

Post by cybrox »

Thorrez wrote: post #46

What are people's thoughts on Apple's argument: >Addressing the complex security and privacy concerns associated with web apps using alternative browser engines would require building an entirely new integration architecture that does not currently exist in iOS and was not practical to undertake given the other demands of the DMA and the very low user adoption of Home Screen web apps. >In short, Apple is saying it kn…

It's not like the EU randomly compiled a list of 600 APIs that need to be added.

This should be read more as "browser developers could now finally offer PWAs 600+ APIs that Apple explicitly forbid them to offer for years".

Re: Apple broke iPhone web apps in the EU for anticompetitive reasons – Tim Sweeney

#57

Post by Arch-TK »

I hate it when Tim Sweeney of all assholes is right.

Honestly this just makes Epic look less awful and is clearly just good PR no matter how you look at it.

But equally speaking, Tim's company heavily relies on locked down operating systems which restrict user freedoms.

It's the reason their anti-cheat comes with major caveats when enabled for Linux.

Re: Apple broke iPhone web apps in the EU for anticompetitive reasons – Tim Sweeney

#58

Post by Towaway69 »

CuriouslyC wrote: post #47
steve1977 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve always been vocal against web apps and pro native apps. Actions like this and also the direction Apple is taking with SwiftUI actually makes me interested in web apps again.

Web apps will win eventually, there's only so much chrome and flash you can stuff in a native app and with WebASM/WebGPU becoming more robust the performance difference between native and webapp for things short of stuff like games is not really meaningful.

From a technological point of view you're quite right but there are financial interests in creating gatekeeper-based app stores.

It becomes worse since the gatekeepers are also those that sell us the mobile devices to access the app stores.

It comes down to marketing. As longer there isn't a largish corporation marketing alternatives to native apps, the current situation won't change much - in the short term.

Re: Apple broke iPhone web apps in the EU for anticompetitive reasons – Tim Sweeney

#59

Post by pornel »

It's incredibly convenient for Apple that there's overlap between safety features and anti-competive behaviors.

Every time somebody says "I don't want vendor lock-in", they flip it to "Oh, so you don't want safety?"

But these are often false dichotomies created by Apple. Reviewing and rejecting apps for fraud and malware is great, but Apple bundled that with rejecting apps for using the word "Android" and whatever other curation they want.

Having built-in first-party subscriptions UI is safe and convenient for users, but the mobile duopoly and their control of the platform lets them charge for it whatever they want. Apple implies that allowing other payment processors means going to a dodgy website that makes unsubscribing and refunds impossible, but that's a false dichotomy Apple has created. They could require integration with iOS's subscription management APIs to use alternative payment processors (they already support PayPal as a back-end).

And this is another case where it's incredibly convenient that opening up internal APIs without safeguards to 3rd parties would be unsafe, so they haven't done it. But this is a false dichotomy – they don't have to run 3rd party browsers unsandboxed, or allow any app create homescreen icons willy-nilly. Adding to home screen is already a user gesture through the Share sheet, mediated by the OS. Browsers must be sandboxed anyway, and webapps were already allowed to run full screen.

And this isn't lack of just any feature. Apple has argued for years that App Store isn't mandatory, because anybody can just make a web app instead. That was never quite true do to Safari's limitations, but now is just a farce.

Re: Apple broke iPhone web apps in the EU for anticompetitive reasons – Tim Sweeney

#60

Post by lozenge »

adestefan wrote: post #49
lozenge wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look at how Google pushed Chrome on its websites and people picked it up. They could do the same for web apps. What's been limiting them all this time is Apple policy. Apple policy 1- PWAs on iPhone must use Safari, Safari only has features Apple chooses to implement Apple policy 2- Add to Home Screen is hidden away Now with DMA, Google could make its own web browser, provide all their apps as "PWAs that work with Ch…

So you’d rather have Google abuse its monopoly on search to get what you want?

I'm just working through Apple's reasoning. The idea that PWAs aren't in common use now therefore they won't be used in the future is completely wrong and that's borne out by history. Apple held the door closed for PWAs and with the EU's new rules on web browsers that no longer applies.

I'm in favor of being able to install whatever we want on devices we own, and the DMA is a step towards that.

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