41–50 of 268 posts
The solution is simple beyond belief. Stop supporting Apple devices.
Found the article they linked[0] much more interesting / problematic: > Now, when a user in Europe taps a web app icon, they will see a system message asking if they wish to open it in Safari or cancel. The message adds that the web app "will open in your default browser from now on." When opened in Safari, the web app opens like a bookmark, with no dedicated windowing, notifications, or long-term local storage. User…
I love developing PWAs because I can quickly and easily make an app for myself and my family that works without having to provision their devices or pay a dev license to Apple. I also use it at work for internal apps. It’s great for all those things. It’s very obvious to me that I’m a second priority for Apple. Dark mode breaking in iOS 17 and still broken 5 months later. Updating the app is tricky, and making users…
Looks like Apple is going to fix dark mode in iOS 18 by dropping support for PWAs altogether in my part of the world. https://www.macrumors.com/2024/02/08/ios-17-4-nerfs-web-apps...
I do feel they'll lose this battle eventually, even if it takes a few years. Cross platform apps without a required compile step or walled garden are almost certainly the end state I expect we'll reach within the next decade (probably sooner).
Found the article they linked[0] much more interesting / problematic: > Now, when a user in Europe taps a web app icon, they will see a system message asking if they wish to open it in Safari or cancel. The message adds that the web app "will open in your default browser from now on." When opened in Safari, the web app opens like a bookmark, with no dedicated windowing, notifications, or long-term local storage. User…
I'm guessing they were only doing the little they did for PWAs to stave off anti-trust attention by being able to say "we're not gatekeepers. You can use the web," but now that the EU forced them allow alternative app stores, they don't want anybody using PWAs and they have no need for them anymore, so they're killing them.
PWAs will never be as good as native, definitionally. There is always API drift. There is always runtime cost. Nothing inside a system can ever have parity with its parent container. If it could, it would be the system itself. People's experience with hardware and physical objects matters. If you accept that, you should always want to be closer to the metal at the cost of convenience or portability.
Despite my best efforts and I still have no idea what a Progressive Web App is and why I need to use one. Seems like it's just a website that fits a certain accessibility criteria. It also seems like a hassle to get working correctly offline based on what I have read.
You can think of it like a web app that's been coded to have extra features when "added to the homescreen". When added, the app can work offline, doesn't have an address bar/back button/etc, gets the ability to access device sensors, can send push notifications, etc. A well-made PWA usually looks and feels just like a native app.
Maybe we should be pushing for fewer PWAs overall. I personally will not use any web-based app when I can use a native app (with a few exceptions). PWAs just add unnecessary bloat, and the current HTML/CSS/JS stack that the web uses was designed for delivering text documents, not apps, so that inherently limits the experience.
But I also consider Apple’s iron grip on the platform to be against the spirit of computing, and I think having a viable alternative is important. I think there is a segment of software that would benefit from a nice PWA, but where two native apps would not really be worth anyone’s time.
Found the article they linked[0] much more interesting / problematic: > Now, when a user in Europe taps a web app icon, they will see a system message asking if they wish to open it in Safari or cancel. The message adds that the web app "will open in your default browser from now on." When opened in Safari, the web app opens like a bookmark, with no dedicated windowing, notifications, or long-term local storage. User…
The DMA didn't come by surprise, but I guess they tried to play all their cards to get around it, or even get it pushed last minute. Maybe they were close to achieving that and in the end it didn't work out.
Like mentioned in another post there might be some alternative solutions via third party app stores, but my knowledge doesn't go deep enough into the iOS API and what options third party browsers are going to have.
I could imagine a "PWA Shell" app that can host multiple PWAs inside. The only limitation I see for now is that there will be only one app icon and it can only show up once in the task switcher on the iPhone. For the iPad multi-windows apps are possible.
Maybe we should be pushing for fewer PWAs overall. I personally will not use any web-based app when I can use a native app (with a few exceptions). PWAs just add unnecessary bloat, and the current HTML/CSS/JS stack that the web uses was designed for delivering text documents, not apps, so that inherently limits the experience.
I’m 50/50 on this: if I care about something enough to install it rather than going to a website, I’ll take a half decent native app over a PWA any day, even without the gimping on Apple’s part. Truly native anyway; I have a strong dislike for stuff like Flutter both conceptually and in practice. But I also consider Apple’s iron grip on the platform to be against the spirit of computing, and I think having a viable a…
But the problem here is the App Store, right? Both native iOS apps and PWAs need access to the hardware, which is provided by Apple.
Really my understanding is that people push hard for PWAs either because they want to work around the App Store, or because they are web dev (and every dev tends to be imperialist with their favourite language, that's not only a web thing).
PWAs will never be as good as native, definitionally. There is always API drift. There is always runtime cost. Nothing inside a system can ever have parity with its parent container. If it could, it would be the system itself. People's experience with hardware and physical objects matters. If you accept that, you should always want to be closer to the metal at the cost of convenience or portability.
I have no idea what you mean by this, can you give some justification? It sounds kind of nonsensical
> you should always want to be closer to the metal at the cost of convenience or portability.
Right but that isn't really a thing anymore. Even machine code is very abstract compared to the actual physical processes going on inside. Bare metal programming is an illusion for pipelined CPUs with speculative execution