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PWAs wont replace native iOS apps

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Re: PWAs wont replace native iOS apps

#211

Post by freedomben »

elevatedastalt wrote: post #170
MilaM wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They would probably ban browsers altogether from iOS, if they could get away with it. Fortunately we are not there yet.

I often say that the only reason email is in the form it is today is because it happened before corporate interests took over communication. If it had been invented today you could only iMessage other iDevice holders. Maybe you would also have had another for-profit middleware company just to deliver messages between Apple and Android devices. Something like a telephone exchange.

In one of the movies about Steve Jobs, he actually does want to make email proprietary and to only be able to send and receive emails on Macs. There was also talk (involving Bill Gates IIRC) about having an electronic stamp (basically a charge for email).

I very much agree, if it were invented today there's no way it would be an open standard. It almost wasn't even back then.

Re: PWAs wont replace native iOS apps

#212

Post by andix »

LorenDB wrote: post #201
andix wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me tell you a secret: a LOT of native apps are built on web technologies. Those apps are just shells with some web views.

That's why I avoid Electron software when possible. I use nheko instead of Element for my Matrix client, avoid VSCode unless I really need it, and shun Discord when possible.

I'm not talking about Electron software, Electron doesn't exist on iOS or Android.

Android and iOS have integrated webview componentes that are much more lightweight and are used in a lot of "native apps". Very often you will never notice if you don't look at the source code.

Re: PWAs wont replace native iOS apps

#213

Post by SirMaster »

CharlesW wrote: post #171
SirMaster wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are you talking about? With iOS 17.4 in the EU, you can no longer make a web app (PWA) that uses a full screen window with no browser ui controls. No longer use local storage for the web app's data, and no longer send push notifications and show badges on the home screen icon for web apps. Third party browsers can't add this functionality back. How do you expect them to make push notifications work with PWAs?

> With iOS 17.4 in the EU, you can no longer make a web app (PWA) that uses a full screen window with no browser ui controls. Are you sure? Go to https://sindresorhus.com/screenfull/ , tap "Request", and you should see a full-screen website. Any [website|webapp|PWA] can do this with Safari. (Screenshot: https://imgur.com/a/CTWFPol ) Third-party browsers using their own browser engines can do whatever they like. > How…

I’m not in the EU so I can’t test it.

But those that are are all claiming that all their PWAs are no longer full screen, lost all their local storage, and push notifications stopped working.

Re: PWAs wont replace native iOS apps

#214

Post by usrusr »

layer8 wrote: post #145
usrusr wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A separate app per PWA that is little more than a tiny shim for whatever API Apple refuses to provide in the browser (many of them for very good reasons) and a script for spinning up another instance of the system browser with the API shims available. That's the Tauri model: you wouldn't install tens of browsers, but tens of configurations for the browser that is already there.

It means that the PWAs wouldn’t appear as separate apps, but as tabs within the same browser app. Also, unlike native PWAs, you couldn’t have per-PWA notification badges on the app icons (because there’s only one). A browser app could maybe emulate this by providing different widgets per PWA, but still it would be a less straightforward experience.

On iOS, native app are not allowed to ship their own html renderer implementation and therefore have to delegate to the renderer provided by the OS. If that happens, does the markup appear as a view in the app instance, or does the content appear as a tab in the browser? I assume that it's the former. iOS Firefox is famously not gecko but a Firefox-flavored safari and if that would cause markup to appear as tabs in regular safari, FF-iOS would be little more than a URL bar. Each "PWA+" would be its own "safari dressed up as a different app", just like Firefox-flavored safari is.

This was about "PWA+" installed from the app store, individually, just like you can install both FF-iOS and Chrome-iOS (and it's still hardly more than a parody of Microsoft's troubles with forcing internet explorer into win98). Conventional PWA that don't come packaged from the app store appear as tabs or as separate depending on whatever mood Apple had been in the last update cycle I guess.

Re: PWAs wont replace native iOS apps

#215

Post by kyleee »

palata wrote: post #131
NorwegianDude wrote: post #69

I think developers need to clearly put blame on Apple for PWA not working. In apps you're not allowed to mention apple's shady behaviour when it comes to fees, but on the web you can. Since 2016 I've had the option for users to enable push notifications, with a big red disclaimer if the user is using iOS that it does not work on an iPhone. Still, I got so so many requests from user saying they had tried with Chrome(o…

> I think developers need to clearly put blame on Apple for PWA not working. I think that developers need to choose technologies that work on the platform they want to support, instead of blaming the platform. It is totally valid for Apple to say "if you want to develop an iOS app, use the iOS native framework". > If the user bought the phone expecting web push to work then they can probably return it and buy an Andr…

The surfboard analogy is silly; it’s reasonable that the user expects the iPhone to be a general computing device (since it’s a powerful computer).

Re: PWAs wont replace native iOS apps

#216

Post by jemmyw »

palata wrote: post #122
etchalon wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Apple's failure to provide sufficient capabilities for PWAs is a valid excuse here. If PWAs are limited competitively on the platform with the highest ROI for developers … that's a problem.

I think it is debatable. Can I make an iOS app in pure Python, and should Apple make it possible? I think Apple has the right to decide what kind of API they provide to their users. Just like nobody is forcing Tesla to allow running Windows "because some developers would like to run Windows apps in their Tesla". I can see a problem with the monopoly on the App Store given the dominant position of Apple. But if Apple…

Why do they have a right to decide what kind of API users can use? I know that's not exactly how you worded it, but on other computing platforms like Windows, Microsoft provides APIs but doesn't prevent developers putting in other APIs. You should be able to write an iOS app in pure Python, but maybe with reliance that someone else provides the bindings so that you can display the graphics. iOS and Android locking out whole possible ecosystems with "only we can decide what code is allowed to run" really sucks.

Re: PWAs wont replace native iOS apps

#217

Post by jemmyw »

fiddlerwoaroof wrote: post #97
addicted wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Electron apps are getting much better. VS Code is considered the best app in its class by a distant margin and it’s an electron app. The first round of Electron apps were created by people who were simply trying to get some cross platform native version of their apps out. It’s only been recently that companies are now creating electron apps as first class products and now those apps are doing very well.

The popularity of VSCode is mystifying to me: IntelliJ is a much nicer application and VSCode always ends up lagging randomly for me.

They both lag. They're both resource hogs. IntelliJ has a better out of the box experience. VSCode has a much much more diverse and interesting plugin ecosystem. I run both. VSCode is interesting in that, depending on the project and/or the plugins required for that project, it can be much kinder or much worse on my battery life. IntelliJ is more predictably bad.

All being equal I'd choose VSCode at this point. When I want to do something like run tests the test plugins for pretty much everything I've looked at are way better. IntelliJ has some powerful configuration capabilities that somehow always manage to be constrained in a sucky way. Support answers are like "oh you want to do THAT. No, you can't do that, read this doc" where the VSCode way would tend to not be as configurable but support the thing you actually wanted to do.

Plus VSCode plugins are majority free. It's not that I mind playing for plugins per se, but my experience with Intellij plugins has been poor, so I don't want to go through the hassle of paying to find out it's rubbish.

Re: PWAs wont replace native iOS apps

#218

Post by smallerfish »

paulddraper wrote: post #169
smallerfish wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They started this on a recent gen, maybe 7. Certainly 8.

It hasn't been 7 years yet for either the Pixel 7 or the 8, but I suppose Google never cancels things.

Sure, but they'll open themselves up to lawsuits if they back out of this. Cancelling a saas product is one thing; cancelling "guaranteed updates" is another.

Re: PWAs wont replace native iOS apps

#219

Post by mmis1000 »

Alifatisk wrote: post #3

“There are no silent pushes, so we can only update the app icon badge with a displayed push. Ideally, if you clear your notifications elsewhere, we automatically remove the badge on your phone. This isn’t possible with PWAs via push.” Damn, is Apple doing these slight annoyances on purpose to degrade the user experience?

Weird, I saw mdn says safari support silent property of notification constructor. Does the article specify how it didn't work? Like does nothing at at even specified. Work in browser but not pwa, and so on?

Re: PWAs wont replace native iOS apps

#220

Post by DANmode »

palata wrote: post #199
DANmode wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Android emulators for development are: 1) mostly free 2) ...even somewhat available on iPads! Is it even necessary ? Safari seems to be the only odd one out that can't even properly implement CSS, out of the top 5 modern browsers. I'm super glad all of these ridiculous "arguments" are being put on display.

Can I run an Android emulator on my musl-based system? Can I even run Android-Studio on OpenBSD? What about Plan9? Should I complain to Google because they don't support all the platforms under the sun? If I want to develop with Qualcomm boards, I need to sign all sorts of NDAs, and they don't even have emulators for development. Do you think that should be illegal? I wish we tried to honestly make the difference bet…

Asking Apple to properly support CSS is crying abuse?

What comment did you read?

Could you reply to mine, if you're replying to me?

Specifically my reply in the context of the OP (is emulation necessary, when your web view of your OS just...does what it's supposed to?)

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