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Apple's intentional crippling of Mobile Safari

pwa.gripe

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Re: Apple's intentional crippling of Mobile Safari

#171

Post by pjmlp »

rejhgadellaa wrote: post #135
troupo wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I keep asking: Android doesn't have all these perceived limitations. Where are all the amazing native-like PWAs on Android?

If a web app doesn't work on iOS, a business builds a native app instead. iOS is too important. So that fantastic native-like PWA never gets built in the first place. Apple is not just holding back PWA on iOS, they're holding back the entire web everywhere. Compare that with desktop, where web apps (maybe not PWAs, strictly speaking) are dominating: Gmail, Office/Docs, GitHub, Figma, you basically do everything in we…

There are many countries in the world where iPhones have hardly a presence, yet they also don't have PWAs.

https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/mobile/africa

Re: Apple's intentional crippling of Mobile Safari

#172

Post by rejhgadellaa »

mort96 wrote: post #168
rejhgadellaa wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think Chromium out-competing every other browser engine is a bad thing. Hmm. I believe that Apple can compete with Google if they want to. They have the money, they have the marketing chops, they have the incentive ($20B search engine deal) and they are the default browser. (also, they have trained iOS users that Safari is the only default browser on iOS for 14 yrs by not allowing other browsers to be set as the…

> Hmm. I believe that Apple can compete with Google if they want to. I don't think that would happen. I don't have much faith in Apple's abilities in this area, and their incentives are structured such that the less viable web apps are as a replacement to native apps, the more money they get from their 30% cut. Again, your arguments would make sense if my opinion was: "good guy Apple valiantly defends the open web fr…

> I care whether Apple would compete with Google, and they wouldn't.

They receive $20B a year from Google (search engine deal). Some estimates put WebKit/Safari's budget at $500M. That's a rounding error away from $20B of pure profits. I completely agree that Apple is not in it for the good of the web. They are in it for $20B a year.

And even if they wouldn't want to compete: fine. Let them give up. Make room for browsers that do want to compete (or at least, let them try).

> WebKit isn't a browser monopoly, it has less than 20% of the browser market share.

That monopoly on iOS is enough, though. The web has to work on iOS because the wealthiest users have an iPhone, and all they have is WebKit. I work at a place where most of our users are on mobile, and most of them are on iOS. So WebKit sets the bar for what we can do. In other words, Apple is in full control of what we are able to do. Building features for Android users is often not worth our time and money, so we just don't build it.

Re: Apple's intentional crippling of Mobile Safari

#173

Post by mort96 »

rejhgadellaa wrote: post #172
mort96 wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Hmm. I believe that Apple can compete with Google if they want to. I don't think that would happen. I don't have much faith in Apple's abilities in this area, and their incentives are structured such that the less viable web apps are as a replacement to native apps, the more money they get from their 30% cut. Again, your arguments would make sense if my opinion was: "good guy Apple valiantly defends the open web fr…

> I care whether Apple would compete with Google, and they wouldn't. They receive $20B a year from Google (search engine deal). Some estimates put WebKit/Safari's budget at $500M. That's a rounding error away from $20B of pure profits. I completely agree that Apple is not in it for the good of the web. They are in it for $20B a year. And even if they wouldn't want to compete: fine. Let them give up. Make room for bro…

> And even if they wouldn't want to compete: fine. Let them give up.

Again, this leads to Chromium out-competing everything else and getting as entrenched in mobile as it already is in desktop. This is a bad outcome.

> I work at a place where most of our users are on mobile, and most of them are on iOS. So WebKit sets the bar for what we can do.

In other words, Apple has successfully prevented you from writing a web application which only works in Chromium. This is a good outcome.

Re: Apple's intentional crippling of Mobile Safari

#174

Post by rejhgadellaa »

pjmlp wrote: post #171
rejhgadellaa wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a web app doesn't work on iOS, a business builds a native app instead. iOS is too important. So that fantastic native-like PWA never gets built in the first place. Apple is not just holding back PWA on iOS, they're holding back the entire web everywhere. Compare that with desktop, where web apps (maybe not PWAs, strictly speaking) are dominating: Gmail, Office/Docs, GitHub, Figma, you basically do everything in we…

There are many countries in the world where iPhones have hardly a presence, yet they also don't have PWAs. https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/mobile/africa

First of all: don't they? (honest question, I truly don't know if Africa has more PWAs compared to US/EU/etc)

Second: There are many reasons why businesses would opt for a native app. Notifications, for one (not available on the web on iOS until just a couple of years ago). Also, native apps allow for more tracking (whereas browsers are paranoid by default).

Third: A few years back, companies like FB, Google and Twitter all launched "Lite" versions of their apps, specifically targeted at Africa and other developing markets. They were all web apps (or wrappers around web apps). I will admit that this was years ago, and I have not checked if these Lite versions are still around and/or widely used.

Re: Apple's intentional crippling of Mobile Safari

#175

Post by rejhgadellaa »

otterley wrote: post #163
rejhgadellaa wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Businesses tend to relay costs onto their customers (someone has to pay the bills). - The app store tax - The extra work of maintaining at least 2 separate apps (iOS, Android, optionally(?) desktop web app) - Dealing with app store rules Some of these are not just costs. I have experience with native apps that have to make things worse for users (compared to the web app) or risk getting booted off the app store.

What outcomes are worse for users that arise out of you offering native apps?

I thought this was obvious, but higher costs for building and maintaining an app (vs a web app) means higher prices for users. I think people would love to pay less, and would hate to pay more.

Re: Apple's intentional crippling of Mobile Safari

#176

Post by strogonoff »

rejhgadellaa wrote: post #108
strogonoff wrote: post #56

As far as I can see based on pwa.gripe data, between 26.3 (my version) and the newcoming 26.4 Safari on iOS gains support for five new APIs: — Offline support — Media capture — Picture-in-picture — Storage — Speech synthesis As well as five more APIs with caveats: — Installation — Notifications — Web Push — Barcode detection — Speech recognition Even taking into account that it also evidently loses support for one (a…

Do you have a source link for this? I don't want to sound snarky, but this list doesn't make sense to me. Offline support has been available (and buggy, YMMV) for a long time. Web Push has been available since 16.4 (with a lot of caveats) I haven't heard anything about installation (but I may have missed something)

My source is TFA, as I stated. This is what I see in the table when I follow the link.

For example, in the column for my current iOS version offline support is crossed out, and for the upcoming version it has a check mark.

If the claim being made is that pwa.gripe is a bad source, I can only assure I have nothing to do with the site. If they misinform visitors about Safari’s capabilities with regard to PWAs, you should post it as a top-level comment.

Re: Apple's intentional crippling of Mobile Safari

#177

Post by rejhgadellaa »

troupo wrote: post #157
rejhgadellaa wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> many of these are in fact not a standard according to W3C and should not be implemented in any browser until it is. That's not exactly how standards work. A browser (or anyone) comes up with a spec, a browser can ship it (to test the waters in an origin-trial, to gain traction if they believe in it), and the standard (often) comes after the fact: "Working Groups don't gate what browsers ship, nor do they define wha…

> A browser (or anyone) comes up with a spec, a browser can ship it (to test the waters in an origin-trial, to gain traction if they believe in it), and the standard (often) comes after the fact: 1. Google often doesn't bother even with a spec. Or it creates a semblance of a spec, throws it up on a googler's Github account, ships it and advertises it as "emergin standard" on web.dev I mean, the status of many (if not…

> Google often doesn't bother even with a spec.

I'm sorry, but that doesn't seem to be right. They have a process: https://www.chromium.org/blink/launching-features/

> I wouldn't really quote Alex Russel on anything related to standards

I disagree :)

...but it's getting late here, have to shut down :)

Re: Apple's intentional crippling of Mobile Safari

#178

Post by rejhgadellaa »

mort96 wrote: post #173
rejhgadellaa wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I care whether Apple would compete with Google, and they wouldn't. They receive $20B a year from Google (search engine deal). Some estimates put WebKit/Safari's budget at $500M. That's a rounding error away from $20B of pure profits. I completely agree that Apple is not in it for the good of the web. They are in it for $20B a year. And even if they wouldn't want to compete: fine. Let them give up. Make room for bro…

> And even if they wouldn't want to compete: fine. Let them give up. Again, this leads to Chromium out-competing everything else and getting as entrenched in mobile as it already is in desktop. This is a bad outcome. > I work at a place where most of our users are on mobile, and most of them are on iOS. So WebKit sets the bar for what we can do. In other words, Apple has successfully prevented you from writing a web…

> In other words, Apple has successfully prevented you from writing a web application

... by abusing their monopoly position on iOS (instead of competing).

Good outcome?

Re: Apple's intentional crippling of Mobile Safari

#179

Post by kennywinker »

rejhgadellaa wrote: post #138
kennywinker wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Break the app store monopoly, don’t make the web browser into a buggy leaky bloated mess. And you can write iOS apps in objective c, swift, kotlin, jacascript, rust, ruby, and a few dozen other languages.

The web can be a competitor for the app stores, breaking that monopoly. It already did on desktop (where most users spend > 90% of their time in a browser) And yes, you can write native apps in a lot of languages, but you can't choose how/where you distribute. On the web, you can. It's built that way.

Except one of the main things i like about the web is that websites don’t have invasive access to my life. The web-as-app-platform idea erodes that.

But either way the issue is the same - apple preventing us from installing what we want. But my solution protects freedom in a more robust way: if you break the app store monopoly, you can install chrome or firefox and do all the web-app-platform nonsense you want. If safari adds all the features on that list you’re still stuck demanding apple add a new feature every time you want to innovate.

And as for programming - for the web you can write in a lot of languages but you only have two options For debugging - js and webassembly.

Re: Apple's intentional crippling of Mobile Safari

#180

Post by DrewADesign »

tshaddox wrote: post #149
freedomben wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think you're wrong, but what's especially interesting about this is that up until just a few years ago, it was completely the opposite. Giving any criticism of Apple would get so many rapid/reflexive downvotes that it often killed the comment before many people even got a change to see it. I experienced it myself a number of times. Having been reading HN now for ~13 years (I lurked for years before starting t…

> Giving any criticism of Apple would get so many rapid/reflexive downvotes that it often killed the comment before many people even got a change to see it. I experienced it myself a number of times. I’ve never found myself in any online community that meets that description. Certainly not HN, and HN hardly seems big enough to have Apple fanboy niches that you could accidentally find yourself in. In the heyday of Ste…

Same. I have always found people talking about the hoards of rabid Apple fanboys but I’ve just never seen it in the wild. That’s even having been critical of Apple countless times over the years going back to the mid 90s even before Slashdot, let alone OS X. I’ve obviously seen the odd Apple fanatic out there but less frequently than , say, Linux evangelists or zealots for any given gaming platform over the past couple of decades or sports teams or cult band followers. Maybe in, like, the Apple subreddit? Brand subreddits are always where fanboys live for everything.

I think it’s a combination of underdog vibes and confirmation bias that people have adopted as a community identity.

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