
Apple TV – A World Without Webviews - sinak
https://medium.com/@dlpasco/apple-tv-a-world-without-webkit-5c428a64a6dd/
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steve19
Kodi, the hugely popular open source media center platform/application, also
lacks webviews and nobody seems to have any interest in adding them. I guess
the reasons are UI related, rather than technical/crossplatform/bloat reasons.

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lstamour
A workaround for OAuth-type flows not mentioned in the article -- or for any
flow that requires going out to a web browser -- would be for Apple to cleanly
establish a Handoff/Continuity mechanism from the Apple TV running tvOS to
your iPhone, iPad or Mac. Which is to say -- using today's technology, an
Apple TV app communicates with a server to see if you're also signed in on an
iOS or Mac device with the same app installed. The remote service can then, on
the request of the Apple TV, trigger a push notification on your phone, tablet
or computer. You can see this happening already using OATH one-time passwords
AKA two factor authentication, particularly in Facebook app's implementation,
which presents a push notification on your phone when you're trying to do
something on your computer.

So, that's one way they could easily overcome these limitations on the TV. See
also: Existing Apple TV's approach to sign in, requiring users to use a
computer or web browser to visit a page protected by OAuth and then type in a
code from their TV to pass the session on to the TV. Or YouTube's even other
approach of YouTube TV involving, IIRC, typing codes into your console/TV box
from your YouTube website.

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WWLink
I agree, it would be nice if there was some kind of token handoff between web
browser and app - and this would be the ideal way of handling it. I really,
really dislike webviews in iOS apps because they're almost always clearly a
webview - but they don't usually have all the same functionality.

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pbreit
The article basically answers the question: webviews on a TV interface would
be horrific. I don't think Apple is shooting for the Wild West here.
Video/audio publishers will mostly use the pre-existing templates. Netflix, et
al will port their UIs. Games will get as close to the metal as possible.

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jimmcslim
Possibly good news for React and React Native however? The absence of Webviews
is somewhat mitigated if an application's web presence is already powered by
React, some similar concepts (even components themselves... to some degree)
could be re-used in a React Native targeting tvOS?

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chenglou
Already done: [https://github.com/facebook/react-
native/issues/2618#issueco...](https://github.com/facebook/react-
native/issues/2618#issuecomment-139682888)

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ronotono
Security can be one of the reasons as well. It would easily become a
nightmare.

