Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

It’s Official, Apple Kills Web Apps in the EU

open-web-advocacy.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 329 posts

Re: It’s Official, Apple Kills Web Apps in the EU

#211

Post by szasamasa »

neximo64 wrote: post #68
lozenge wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't mean just adding an improved notification API, I mean they could literally allow access to the entire SwiftUI and all other iOS APIs from the web. Heck, they could allow PWAs to run in Objective-C instead of JavaScript. At that point it would be indistinguishable from a native app, except that it would not be beholden to Apple's policies like Core Technology Fee, notarisation, payment scare screens, etc ( htt…

You can use web notifications, and you can compile Objective C to webassembly. You're also able to use apple pay. Everything you've mentioned has a workaround. I'm really getting at how PWAs are basically something most people wouldn't use, not because they're missing APIs but because they're just a terrible experience and difficult to install and use. If its Apple that is holding back PWAs so much, its not that they…

your comment is terrible and a big tell you have no idea of web technology :)

there are plenty of web capabilities that have web standards, PWA is not even a thing officially... no such thing as PWA

actually, no such thing explicitly as web app, either... "installing" web apps is also non-existent officially, it is a very misleading buzzword

if you could call something web app it is a website that was switched to a "standalone UX" from a browser tab UX, according to this non-standard draft (!) https://www.w3.org/TR/appmanifest/

last time I checked, zero manifest members were mandatory... the ones you would use are "name" and "icon" which is how your homescreen button etc. would show up

nothing will be installed (but if we use this word, how on earth is "installation" difficult, you press a button and it is "installed": really fast I guess since nothing will be downloaded extra or installed... all that happens is you get some OS integratin in app discovery UI or a homescreen button or it actually depends on the OS and you can launch the website directly in standalone mode as an "app"... it is still browser run, browser sandboxed etc. just browser UI you have not

the real "progressivity" is entangled from standalone... the website may be a beast or a shitty scam site that just wanted homescreen presence and send you notifications (same with native, depends on developers not distribution platform used)

so objectively bullshit calling web apps in general terrible, difficult, something people would not use...

practically every website is a potential web app if they add a manifest file with 2 members and people use websites all the time...

the question is how good a website written, is it responsive, can it do offline etc... there are so many web capabilities now...

whether a website or a standalone website is good, easy, something people would use depends 100% on the quality... no website or web app is inherently something you described

Re: It’s Official, Apple Kills Web Apps in the EU

#212

Post by smoldesu »

troupo wrote: post #147
fifafu wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well on desktop Chrome/Edge has a high enough market share that the client would not have cared. I don’t think Apple can tell alternative browser engines what features it will allow and which not. Or is there something in the EU regulation that says browser engines must follow a standard?

> Well on desktop Chrome/Edge has a high enough market share that the client would not have cared. Indeed. People cry "Safari is the new IE" and then literally turn around and say "well, who cares, Chrome has dominant market share, so if it only works in Chrome, it's fine".

You need a competitive browser if you want to convince people to use it. Apple's only distribution scheme for Safari is forcibly pre-installing it on all of their devices. It's not akin to Chrome or Firefox where people deliberately install their app and weigh it against alternatives. You don't get a choice.

As a reminder, United States v. Microsoft Corp. was never about IE's market share. It was about the illegal monopoly manipulation of Windows to prevent third-party browsers from competing. With that in mind, Safari absolutely could be the next IE.

Re: It’s Official, Apple Kills Web Apps in the EU

#213

Post by c-hendricks »

geraldhh wrote: post #41
duiker101 wrote: post #16

Did anyone actually ever put web apps on their home screen?

have a 'link' to fast.com on my homescreen, but it's just a shortcut to an url, no 'web app' or am i mistaken?

You can add any website to your home screen.

If the site has some special meta information, it can display like any other app (full screen, its own entry in your multitasking UI). Otherwise it just opens in your regular browser.

Re: It’s Official, Apple Kills Web Apps in the EU

#214

Post by ruszki »

appplication wrote: post #210
crazygringo wrote: post #171

This subject was already discussed here 2 days ago (819 points, 778 comments) [1] and the top comment highlighted that Apple gives its reasoning in a way that is at least worth considering. From Apple [2]: ---- The iOS system has traditionally provided support for Home Screen web apps by building directly on WebKit and its security architecture. That integration means Home Screen web apps are managed to align with th…

> Without this type of isolation and enforcement, malicious web apps could read data from other web apps and recapture their permissions to gain access to a user’s camera, microphone or location without a user’s consent. Browsers also could install web apps on the system without a user’s awareness and consent. I’m not sure I fully understand the ire at Apple here. If any of this is true, killing PWAs sounds like the…

> [it] 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

So it can be done, DMA doesn’t require this, even according to Apple.

Re: It’s Official, Apple Kills Web Apps in the EU

#215

Post by Turing_Machine »

troupo wrote: post #140
agust wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Electron-based apps are not PWAs. PWAs do not need to be wrapped in a browser engine of their own, they use the installed browser engine. They are not inherently bloated or resource-intensive in any way. There are not many good example of great PWAs precisely because Apple has been crippling web capabilities on iOS by banning other engines and degrading the experience in Safari for a decade.

Just as I said: you add a P in front of web apps, suddenly as if by magic all the issues disappear. > PWAs do not need to be wrapped in a browser engine of their own, they use the installed browser engine. Ah yes, they don't need a browser engine, they just need a browser engine > They are not inherently bloated or resource-intensive in any way. So, let me get it straight. A web app running inside a web browser engin…

Web apps and Electron apps are two different things. Entirely.

> So, let me get it straight. A web app running inside a web browser engine is bloated, slow, and non-performant when it's on desktop. But the moment you put it on mobile it's not?

A web app doesn't require that you bundle an entire Chrome runtime with the app. There's a lot of your "bloated" right there. You've been told this several times, so it seems that you're being deliberately obtuse.

As far as "slow and bloated" as a whole, my (several years old) phone has 64 GB of storage, a hexacore 3.22 Ghz CPU and a quad-core GPU.

I. Just. Don't. Care.

I'm old enough to remember the exact same "slow and bloated" crapola when programs written in C (and, at that time, Pascal) started replacing hand-coded ASM. Now, modern C compilers are pretty whizzy, but at that time coding in C entailed a significant size and speed penalty.

Are you still writing in hand-coded ASM?

Yeah, that's what I thought.

If you don't want to use web apps, or Electron apps, don't use them. No one's forcing you to use them at gunpoint, mang.

Better yet, write your own "fast and slim" apps and take away the market for the "slow and bloated" ones.

Re: It’s Official, Apple Kills Web Apps in the EU

#216

Post by Turing_Machine »

troupo wrote: post #45
szasamasa wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

do I just hear the arguments again how java is slow vs c++? the browser is the jvm of a web app, very secure and js engines like V8 is extremely capable... although js programs can be run at near native speed (the browser is a c++ program normally and there is native compilation of some code fragments) you should also make yourself familiar with webassembly tech... some folks use even node.js on the server side... th…

> do I just hear the arguments again how java is slow vs c++? No, no you don't > the browser is the jvm of a web app, very secure and js engines like V8 is extremely capable And what this has to do with apps and the fact that web apps are universally slow, bloated, underperforming, and require significantly more resources to do the most primitive things than native apps? > you should also make yourself familiar with…

> No, no you don't

Yeah, yeah, he does. Not only C/C++ v. Java, but before that ASM v. C/C++.

> There will be no competition because lazy people and people who have never seen the world outside their web bubble will simply opt for the cheapest option.

This is what most people would consider an opportunity. Get off HN and write competing apps. If these are really "lazy" developers delivering "slow and bloated" apps, you should have no problem kicking their asses in the marketplace.

But you won't.

Re: It’s Official, Apple Kills Web Apps in the EU

#217

Post by fauigerzigerk »

rubymamis wrote: post #195
fauigerzigerk wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>There's something fundamentally broken with web apps. While the web stack may be somewhat slower in the extreme, I think the reason why big bloated apps like Teams are slow is not down to technology at all. I think the causality works the other way around. Big corporations with large teams that are systemically incapable of paying attention to detail (including performance) choose web technologies because web tech a…

That's all very well known. The fact remains that it's just too easy to write slow and resource hog apps (even when you really don't intend to) using web technologies. There are just countless examples. I think everyone can tell the difference when they run an Electron app or a native app. The only exception of late seems to be Notion Calendar (used to be Cron). It's an Electron app but runs pretty smoothly.

I think given a certain limited amount of resouces, creating a single web based app will often result in far higher quality than spreading the same resources across four different native apps.

Re: It’s Official, Apple Kills Web Apps in the EU

#218

Post by Turing_Machine »

amadeuspagel wrote: post #33
stephenr wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's a bit of a stretch to call a web app "develop[ed] for iOS" The whole point of the web is that it is cross platform. That isn't a negative thing it's a positive, but calling it "develop for iOS" is arguably disingenuous.

Most people just want to make apps for themselves. If you use an iOS device but not a Mac, there was no way to do that before web apps (which still offered a terrible dev experience, without debugging) and now there's again no way to do it.

> Most people just want to make apps for themselves.

"Most people"? Really?

Most people wouldn't recognize real source code if you tattooed it on them, much less have any desire to write code for themselves.

Re: It’s Official, Apple Kills Web Apps in the EU

#219

Post by manuelabeledo »

kibwen wrote: post #174
manuelabeledo wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an odd take. Native apps are usually just better looking and more performant.

To me, the odd take is thinking that the point of an app is to look good.

It is not, it's just an attribute, arguably important to the success of the app.

Re: It’s Official, Apple Kills Web Apps in the EU

#220

Post by szasamasa »

appplication wrote: post #210
crazygringo wrote: post #171

This subject was already discussed here 2 days ago (819 points, 778 comments) [1] and the top comment highlighted that Apple gives its reasoning in a way that is at least worth considering. From Apple [2]: ---- The iOS system has traditionally provided support for Home Screen web apps by building directly on WebKit and its security architecture. That integration means Home Screen web apps are managed to align with th…

> Without this type of isolation and enforcement, malicious web apps could read data from other web apps and recapture their permissions to gain access to a user’s camera, microphone or location without a user’s consent. Browsers also could install web apps on the system without a user’s awareness and consent. I’m not sure I fully understand the ire at Apple here. If any of this is true, killing PWAs sounds like the…

in a hypothetical spy browser maybe :) not in any of the modern browser engines like Gecko/Firefox

just be responsible and use Safari if you want the status quo or use a trusted browser engine like from a big company like Firefox/Edge/Chrome

do not be fooled, you people use web capabilities including service workers on websites in all OS, you even did it with Safari on iOS

if iOS had some vulnerability vs. android, windows, linux, mac that made this possible in other browser engines than webkit then Apple has to make the changes

you really think it is an effort if every other OS does this, including macOS?

and if with more information you see Apple tried something fishy here, do not forget like most LLMs most of the prompts in the past... never trust Apple again in this regard!

but you can use other browser engines in macOS (where no app store revenue originates) and Apple never had a problem implementing it and never fear mongered... this should be some kind of implicit proof

but of course Apple will have to prove this and they will fail to do so... they are just pushing the boundaries

Post reply on HN