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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

#271

Post by ymolodtsov »

leptons wrote: post #103
mort96 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even so, conflating "Safari is holding the web platform back by not implementing standardized web features" with "Safari is holding the Google platform back by not implementing non-standard Google features" is kind of disingenuous. Going through some of the list from the top: * Shortcuts in the manifest: This seems to be standard. Would be nice if mobile Safari supported it. * Protocol Handling: This is non-standard.…

>Even so, conflating "Safari is holding the web platform back by not implementing standardized web features" with "Safari is holding the Google platform back by not implementing non-standard Google features" is kind of disingenuous. You missed the point completely. Apple >forbids any browser engine on iOS other than their own Safari. So you can't just install Chrome on iOS, because when you do you get Safari instead.…

You can still build a PWA and get most of the benefits (I use a few PWAs on my iPhone daily). Or you can package it through Expo and rely on the Reader app exception without letting users sign up on iOS (although the rules around that are changing and you might be able to).

I get the gist of the article but what specific features do you need to let people just use your app as a PWA on iOS? Do you need access to the NFC, for instance?

Re: Apple's intentional crippling of Mobile Safari

#272

Post by ymolodtsov »

jasonlotito wrote: post #134
burnerthrow008 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They are forcing me to write a native app instead of just tell my customers to install Chrome to have access to the APIs my product needs (web bluetooth). Why don’t you encourage them to get an Android? What makes you think that people who prefer an iOS device over Android would even install Chrome after you nag them with dark patterns? > I also do not plan to sell anything through my webapp, which is why Apple wan…

> What makes you think that people who prefer an iOS device over Android would even install Firefox 100% guaranteed people would. I know this for a fact. You somehow have proof of the negative for some reason. Maybe you can share that. Regardless, just because you are satisfied with iOS as a platform doesn't mean others don't continue to wish for improvements. Can I ask which version of iOS was perfect in our mind?

What fact? Have you checked Firefox's market share even on desktop?

Re: Apple's intentional crippling of Mobile Safari

#273

Post by ymolodtsov »

Google never really cared about Chrome on iOS. They barely care about Chrome on Android to be honest, that app still looks and feels more or less the same it did 10 years ago.

Yes, they can't bring their own engine, but it's in their interest to lock users in and ensure they continue using Chrome on iOS. But it took them years to implement available APIs like passwords (AFAIR it was out for 3-4 years before they allowed Chrome iOS to supply your passwords).

Re: Apple's intentional crippling of Mobile Safari

#274

Post by kennywinker »

rejhgadellaa wrote: post #250
kennywinker wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sa…

> if you break the app store monopoly, you can install chrome or firefox and do all the web-app-platform nonsense you want Apple would also need to be forced to provide the APIs that browsers need so they can properly integrate with the OS (a lot of those APIs are private, currently), but good point, that would absolutely be one way to break this open.

“Private api” is fairly meaningless outside of an app store context. The symbols are easily extracted and headers can be re-constructed in minutes. The issue has always been that if you use these apis your app will be rejected from the store.

Re: Apple's intentional crippling of Mobile Safari

#275

Post by ymolodtsov »

WhyNotHugo wrote: post #68
dagmx wrote: post #37

It would be useful if the site listed whether these had been standardized outside of Chrome yet. It’s hard to delineate which of these are Chrome features or actual web standards. And it’s therefore hard to blame either Safari or Firefox for not supporting them if they’re not standardized yet.

This is a huge list of "features from Chromium", which aren't really standard or even a thing outside of its ecosystem (the fact that both Firefox and Safari lack them is the obvious giveaway). I'm happy that Firefox doesn't expose Bluetooth, NFC or similar stuff to websites: the browser is huge enough without needing to mediate even more access to local hardware. It's unclear how some of these would even work for ot…

Agreed. I don't want websites to even request my NFC/Bluetooth/contacts.

Re: Apple's intentional crippling of Mobile Safari

#276

Post by boomskats »

Levitating wrote: post #269
boomskats wrote: post #199

This isn't about browsers, it's about Apple spending the last decade blocking PWAs on their platform by intentionally breaking something new with every new OS release, thus forcing people to build and ship bloated pointless 50meg webview packages through their aPp StOrE every time they update the width of their sidebar. PWAs are great. They were literally Steve Jobs' original vision for the iPhone. I don't know why p…

> PWAs are great. They were literally Steve Jobs' original vision for the iPhone. Was it? I think one of IOSs strength is its operating system and proper native apps. PWAs are inaccessible, bloated, slow and awkward to use.

> Was it?

Yes. Here's a quote for you from the original WWDC 2007 iPhone launch[0]: _"We've come up with a very sweet solution. An innovative new way to create applications... it’s all based on the fact that we have the full Safari engine in the iPhone. And so you can write amazing Web 2.0 and Ajax apps that look exactly and behave exactly like apps on the iPhone! And guess what? There’s no SDK that you need!"_

> I think one of IOSs strength is its operating system

one of the OS' strengths is its OS, cool

> and proper native apps

not what we're talking about here at all

> PWAs are inaccessible, bloated, slow and awkward to use.

literally the opposite of all those things

[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p1nwLilQy64

Re: Apple's intentional crippling of Mobile Safari

#277

Post by omnimus »

cromka wrote: post #268
bspinner wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No browser in iOS can use anything but WebKit Your statement is true only outside of EU countries.

Is any popular browser actually available with non-WebKit browser in EU? So far I wasn't able to confirm this.

No it's not. The percentage of people who actually can use alt stores is so small that nobody will really dedicate money to make browser build for iOS. Why would they when Apple would just make the work impossible anyway.

It's pure malicious compliance from Apple. Anybody defending Apple on this is simply delusional.

Re: Apple's intentional crippling of Mobile Safari

#278

Post by fennecfoxy »

JimDabell wrote: post #84
dagmx wrote: post #37

It would be useful if the site listed whether these had been standardized outside of Chrome yet. It’s hard to delineate which of these are Chrome features or actual web standards. And it’s therefore hard to blame either Safari or Firefox for not supporting them if they’re not standardized yet.

Here’s what Mozilla has to say about Web NFC, for example: > We believe Web NFC poses risks to users security and privacy because of the wide range of functionality of the existing NFC devices on which it would be supported, because there is no system for ensuring that private information is not accidentally exposed other than relying on user consent, and because of the difficulty of meaningfully asking the user for…

>and because of the difficulty of meaningfully asking the user for permission to share or write data when the browser cannot explain to the user what is being shared or written

So fucking moronic privacy virtue signalling BS holding technology back.

They're doing the same thing with Web Bluetooth.

"hurr de durr we can't ask permission" Yes you fucking can, you give me a modal to confirm leaving the current page and being redirected to a new one (in some cases, but not all), you give me a pop up when a site asks to send shitty notifications (as they all do).

An app can sit and use nfc/bluetooth in the background all day long...a site can only do it while I actually have it open in the browser and presumably it's foregrounded etc.

It's really, really NOT hard for them to implement this stuff & I feel like it's less "this tech that has been in phones for more than a decade is unsafe!" and more "we need to cry about features that Chrome is pushing for us to support because otherwise we're letting them lead".

Re: Apple's intentional crippling of Mobile Safari

#279

Post by fennecfoxy »

kalleboo wrote: post #249
gertop wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WebUSB is incredibly useful to flash firmware and update configuration on random devices. The alternative is to install random software on your computer for every device (or, if you're a Linux user, you'll likely simply be excluded and whine about it).

Making device companion utilities WebUSB means that when the hardware maker goes belly-up and their site goes down, or just decides to stop supporting a device, it's now a brick. When they are native software programs, someone can preserve them. Just look at all the old hardware like CNC machines still running just fine on old computers, and imagine if they were connected via WebUSB instead. WebUSB is just a terrible…

WebUSB/Bluetooth/NFC/PWAs are an excellent idea.

Not if it's an Open Source project made by a bunch of people for the love of the game. Install a PWA and you have it even when the site is down, if not code available on GH. It's possible to do on a computer (write code and distribute an app not via an app store)...but not in the magical protected-profits land of mobile devices.

Your way of thinking is the reason why we now have a half dozen trillion dollar companies controlling the world.

Re: Apple's intentional crippling of Mobile Safari

#280

Post by fennecfoxy »

eipi10_hn wrote: post #235
notatoad wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can understand notifications and vibration. But why not Bluetooth or NFC? I can’t imagine any way those could be annoyances, or even why websites would want them outside of some extremely specialized applications.

Read Firefox' stance of these APIs about users' privacy. Chromium gives 0 sh*t about users' privacy, and just pump the APIs out for websites to track their users more easily.

Nonsense. Firefox on Android (and I'm sure everywhere else) allows endless redirects without prompting me about the redirect, sending me to sites I never wanted to go to.

And even then, where does one draw the line on "privacy"? Especially given that every other app on the user's phone is granted every permission under the sun and feeding on as much data as possible.

The core of the problem isn't supporting web bluetooth etc or not...the core of the problem is that dumbass humans will go "yes use all the permissions" because their hands are already shaking from tiktok withdrawal.

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