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

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141–150 of 194 posts

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

#141

Post by gwill »

Angostura wrote: post #134
cybrox wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 cann…

Go on. Explain as you would for a layperson the advantages of a webapp over a regular web page. I’ll go first - notifications. What else.

i think the biggest is you can run them offline. kind of the whole point of having a service worker.

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

#142

Post by amelius »

ufocia wrote: post #135
stephen_g wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not a monopoly position by any legal (or really even useful) definition. In the EU they are 24% or so of phone shipments… This is more a “we want money from those users because they’re mostly rich” situations…

I agree that they should make it more of a luxury item in the EU and avoid all of this monopoly talk. If Apple were Bugatti we wouldn't be talking about it.

> If Apple were Bugatti we wouldn't be talking about it.

Yeah, because only 0.001% of people would own one.

Bugatti is orders of magnitude more luxury than Apple, if you look at ownership percentage; also there are many car brands versus very few OS brands; some Samsung flipphones are more expensive and in some ways more luxurious than iPhones; the comparison is silly.

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

#143

Post by szasamasa »

matwood wrote: post #35
endisneigh wrote: post #16

I wish all of these folks complaining about Apple would go on strike and stop developing stuff on their hardware instead of whining. Even better if they could make their own hardware without any of the supposed baggage with the software. A lot of these companies whining are worth billions so they can afford it. Of course, they won’t because they want money just like Apple, but if Spotify, epic etc stopped working on…

IDK about making their own hardware, but it is weird to me that people complain and then continue to buy iPhones and develop for iOS. If developers and users moved to Android, Apple would change. Is Android really so bad that people feel forced to use iOS?

millions of users have iPhones so developers MUST deploy there

therefore competition MUST be forced because (it is actually a deeper question, my microeconomy professor told us monopoly makes profit and it is the potential source of innovation, in perfect competition there is no innovation money)

because it favors us consumers in the long run not just because products become cheaper but monopolies also suppress innovation

I guess Apple was innovative and created monopolies but they should innovate from monopolistic profit and create new monopolies and let old ones gently fade away in competition... plenty of big companies become stagnant

actually Apple is withholding web innovation and plenty of cross platform innovations never were born in the last decade... nowadays even single developers can create great cross platform products via web tech

Apple could have innovated in web instead of withholding it and they would have the best web browser and they could deliver apple products on all OS

strategically it is a very bad decision to try to do the same over and over again (vision pro, closed walled garden)

they misjudged browsers, electric cars

I mean face id and optic id and eye tracking is great but we live in a world with chinese and south koreans who copy like hell or a company that is even called meta... apple is nobody in AI too... no cloud business

what else did they miss that steve has never had?

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

#144

Post by whimsicalism »

carlosjobim wrote: post #118
dkjaudyeqooe wrote: post #13

Does Apple think its shenanigans are going to precipitate a backlash against EU regulation? Because every time I read about a new round of BS my blood boils and my attitude against Apple and other huge anticompetitive corporates just hardens.

> my blood boils Why? You have the option to avoid Apple completely and not have them interfere in your life what so ever, and it's an easy choice. Just don't buy their products. Your blood should boil for things that you can not easily avoid in life. You're wasting your passion on completely meaningless things. In the end, it's just phones and computers.

for the younger of us, there is honestly significant social friction in parts of the US if you do not have an iphone.

I’ve noticed lots of people on here scoff at that idea but I suspect that many are not gen z

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

#145

Post by postalrat »

lozenge wrote: post #52
postalrat wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That, notifications, etc, anything for installed web apps.

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

#146

Post by Ezhik »

nozzlegear wrote: post #120
Ezhik wrote: post #11

Let's say I want to make a little dashboard for a home server that I can view on my iPhone in full screen. If I live in the EU, how am I supposed to add it to my home screen? I can't put it on the App Store even if I wanted to - it's for a local server so it won't pass review. I can't just use a local debug build - those expire after a week or so. What can I even do here?

Taking your question in good faith, you can create an iOS Shortcut using the Shortcuts app that just opens up your dashboard. Then you pin the shortcut to your Home Screen instead.

Shortcuts seems like a nice approach. On iPhone the sheet is almost full screen. The main disadvantage seems to be that the page won't show up in the app switcher.

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

#147

Post by endisneigh »

szasamasa wrote: post #143
matwood wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IDK about making their own hardware, but it is weird to me that people complain and then continue to buy iPhones and develop for iOS. If developers and users moved to Android, Apple would change. Is Android really so bad that people feel forced to use iOS?

millions of users have iPhones so developers MUST deploy there therefore competition MUST be forced because (it is actually a deeper question, my microeconomy professor told us monopoly makes profit and it is the potential source of innovation, in perfect competition there is no innovation money) because it favors us consumers in the long run not just because products become cheaper but monopolies also suppress innov…

Your premise is wrong. There are plenty of exclusive apps on both platforms and you can easily make a living only supporting just one.

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

#148

Post by brandensilva »

cybrox wrote: post #51
dubcanada wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 cann…

Agreed. I and many developers could make killer PWAs if the support was there. The web has been hindered too long from Apple and that needs to change to support healthy competition.

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

#149

Post by szasamasa »

edandersen wrote: post #32

Presuming Apple left PWAs in just as they were with no changes, i.e. hardcoded to Safari, wouldn't Mozilla (and potentially MS) have immediately sued or complained that Apple was in violation of the DMA by not allowing their browser engines to launch from user added home screen icons? If this is the case then leaving PWAs as they stood risked bazillions in fines from the EU. No?

the right way would have been:

1. pay some macOS developers if iOS developers are that bad and implement necessary changes on a weekend since both OS are linux and macOS is capable (and they had years)

2. if Apple wants to play the oh-so-difficult card, they have to prove according to DMA why is it so much of a burden, which they cannot because it is not... still, they could have talked to EU to get an exemption to keep Safari web apps unbroken until they make the necessary changes that every web browser is ready to use web apps on iOS

what they did is to break all iOS web apps because they were only possible in Safari, fight one additional year with EU then allow them again after they lost

is not that evil? they dare this because it is only a minority of their users that uses web apps now...

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

#150

Post by szasamasa »

madeofpalk wrote: post #140
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…

I don’t believe Apple “strangles” Safari to promote their App Store and protect its 30% cut. There’s a mountain of web capabilities that Apple lead the charge and either invented the specs on, or adopted before others, on to make more native-like experiences for the web. I think things like backdrop-filter, position: sticky, and css snap points do a whole lot more to make websites feel like native app than stuff like…

sure :)
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