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Apple’s refusal to support Progressive Web Apps is a detriment to the web

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Re: Apple’s refusal to support Progressive Web Apps is a detriment to the web

#201

Post by euyyn »

Spivak wrote: post #191
criley2 wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I completely disagree, to be frank. Why do I need a native binary, tens of thousands of lines of code, an app with a massive permissions access to my device... To read a news article? To book a flight? To comment on an internet post? Adding a few more "app features" to light web pages sounds a whole lot more attractive than banishing all useful functionality into the den of apps, where only larger teams and more expe…

But when everything is pushed to the web the same argument applies to your browser. > Why do I need a web app, tens of millions of lines of code, a website with massive permissions to my browser. > To read a news article? > ...

Because the web app is portable across OS'es to start with.

Re: Apple’s refusal to support Progressive Web Apps is a detriment to the web

#202

Post by meesterdude »

interpol_p wrote: post #72

I hate using web apps. On desktop, mobile, wherever. The author's list of things they want supported by Mobile Safari is just aggravating: > Here are a list of things you still can’t do with mobile safari due to Apple’s refusal to support them: > > Create an app loading screen > Use push notifications > Add offline support > Create an initial app UI to load instantly > Prompt installation to the home screen through b…

As a developer, I would love push notifications in safari. The only alternative is a native app, which is much more work.

Re: Apple’s refusal to support Progressive Web Apps is a detriment to the web

#203

Post by waitwutt »

What. Having a really hard time following what is exactly preventing the author from doing any of these:

> Create an app loading screen > Use push notifications > Add offline support > Create an initial app UI to load instantly > Prompt installation to the home screen through browser-guided dialog

All of these things are possible in Safari, no? It just doesn't support ServiceWorkers?

Aside: as a web security guy I think serviceworkers are a tragedy. Any crappy site you accidentally visit and immediately hit the back button on gets 10 minutes of freebie time to execute Javascript, roam your local network, exploit "slow" browser vulns, eat your bandwidth, etc. Gone are the days when the only things running Javascript are your open tabs.

Re: Apple’s refusal to support Progressive Web Apps is a detriment to the web

#204

Post by TeMPOraL »

dccoolgai wrote: post #180
interpol_p wrote: post #72

I hate using web apps. On desktop, mobile, wherever. The author's list of things they want supported by Mobile Safari is just aggravating: > Here are a list of things you still can’t do with mobile safari due to Apple’s refusal to support them: > > Create an app loading screen > Use push notifications > Add offline support > Create an initial app UI to load instantly > Prompt installation to the home screen through b…

Sometimes I, too, pine for the days of "hyperlinks, text and images"-only web. So I turn off Javascript. You can too, if that's how you want to consume the web. That's the beauty of it - it allows for that by design. What I don't like is the position you are taking that "because I only want to consume the web that way, the Web itself should be hamstrung to my limited view of how it should work." There is no good reas…

There is one good reason. The web is a large ecosystem, and we're all living in it. You have a right to express your opinion about its development, and as a responsible inhabitant of that ecosystem, you should exercise that right.

Or, in other words, since we live in it, if the web turns into shit (even more than it already has), we'll have to live in that shit.

Re: Apple’s refusal to support Progressive Web Apps is a detriment to the web

#205

Post by jaxondu »

As much as I want PWA to rule, web apps still give a noticeable lousy experience than native especially social apps with large feeds (Facebook, Twitter). After so many decades chasing the native experience, it appears HTML/CSS/DOM needs to be revamped/replaced in order for some hope. Maybe a brand new UX library build on top of web assembly? A cross-platform user interface library on top of Unity/Unreal Engine? Why must web apps rely on browser in order to run? If there is a UX component to docker/container, does it provide similar security mechanism as a browser? Maybe this world is not meant to have only one language/UX library/delivery mechanism for apps.

Re: Apple’s refusal to support Progressive Web Apps is a detriment to the web

#206

Post by euyyn »

overcast wrote: post #166
cryptica wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not surprising of Apple. They've always been a walled garden, that's why I don't buy their products. I like to own products that give me full control as a user. When the iPod came out, I never understood why I couldn't just drag the music files directly onto the device and I had to get iTunes and use iTune's tedious interface. Now they have the app store; another unnecessary restriction. As a developer, it's…

The "walled garden" is what prevents the horrendous disjointed mess that is the Android phone market. Sure, for a guy who likes hacking around stuff, it's fun for you. But for everyone else, there is a thousand different phones, with a thousand different interfaces, all running different versions of the Android OS, that will never be updated by the phone manufacturer. I understand where you're coming from, I do. But…

> The "walled garden" is what prevents the horrendous disjointed mess that is the Android phone market. Sure, for a guy who likes hacking around stuff, it's fun for you. But for everyone else, there is a thousand different phones, with a thousand different interfaces, all running different versions of the Android OS, that will never be updated by the phone manufacturer.

This is a non-sequitur. Fragmentation of Android OS versions isn't caused by Android letting you use web apps.

Re: Apple’s refusal to support Progressive Web Apps is a detriment to the web

#207

Post by pavlakoos »

jaxondu wrote: post #170
pavlakoos wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But now Facebook mobile app is a different tech. It's ReactNative, not Obj-C, right?

React Native under the hood uses Obj-C to bridge to native Cocoa frameworks. For example when you uses a tag in JavaScript, it ends up calling iOS UIView.

Still, it's not the very same tech. Especially in this discussion, where we are talking about apps performance and languages, which need to get under the hood instead of talking directly with the engine, are presented as "worse".

Re: Apple’s refusal to support Progressive Web Apps is a detriment to the web

#208

Post by euyyn »

scarface74 wrote: post #168
cryptica wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not surprising of Apple. They've always been a walled garden, that's why I don't buy their products. I like to own products that give me full control as a user. When the iPod came out, I never understood why I couldn't just drag the music files directly onto the device and I had to get iTunes and use iTune's tedious interface. Now they have the app store; another unnecessary restriction. As a developer, it's…

So how do you do playlists when you just drag files to folders? What if you wanted the same song in multiple playlists? How do you do smart playlist? All of this is not as popular now as it was during the iPods heyday but it was popular then.

iTunes' UI for creating playlists and letting me add and remove songs from the device by dragging and dropping the files could be perfectly compatible.

Re: Apple’s refusal to support Progressive Web Apps is a detriment to the web

#210

Post by Ajedi32 »

interpol_p wrote: post #198
Ajedi32 wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now imagine if you could do all of that faster and offline, while still avoiding the need to install a native app. That's something PWAs would enable.

On reading news articles: I can do that offline and fast right now. I add things to my reading list as I browse the web and Safari downloads them in the background. Then I can read articles when I'm offline (like on a flight). I'm a pretty voracious user of the Reading List and Reader Mode features of Safari. On booking a flight: I'm not sure how doing this offline helps? Last time I did it, I did have to wait for pa…

> I add things to my reading list as I browse the web and Safari downloads them in the background.

Sure, but PWAs allow for so much more than that. For example, you could not only read the article offline, but also _comment_ on it offline and have your comment automatically posted next time you have a connection. Or you could click a button to have all future articles from a particular news site automatically synced in the background while you're on WiFi so they're available for reading next time you're out; no manual downloading of each individual article required.

> On booking a flight: I'm not sure how doing this offline helps? Last time I did it, I did have to wait for pages to load after clicking links but it was on the order of seconds or less.

A PWA would allow much faster interaction than that. Seconds or less? That's terrible compared to the performance you _could_ be getting out of a PWA (i.e. near instant, like what you'd expect from a native app).

> Doing it offline is not really interesting to me, and I'm not sure how that would work (which is why I'm happy to do it in a browser). Hacker News is more than fast enough. It's really minimal.

Sounds to me like you're already content with the experience you're getting from the web. That's fine, but it's no reason to oppose features that would make the experience even better for those of us who do want them.

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