Signed - Apple is collectively behaving like a spoilt child throwing a tantrum because the stupid-head EU said that it can't force the app ecosystem on everyone along with the broken webview. Finally we can get some good browser engines on the platform so they decide to pull a unity with the per install charges and pull in-place functionality from PWAs.
One is App Store distribution. The per install license thing is bullshit but it might comply with the law. Keep in mind the DMA was written to privilege companies like Spotify, not to give you a property right to install whatever you want on your own device.
The other issue, which deals with a different DMA rule, is that Apple can’t privilege WebKit over other rendering engines. That means PWAs have to be able to run in any rendering engine installed.
To make that work, they’d have to build out APIs to allow third party rendering engines to do all that WebKit does to render PWAs. Or they could disable PWAs altogether and then nothing is privileged.
Seems like a case study in unintended consequences. If the EU has consulted with anyone who understands technology, this could have been explained beforehand. Or maybe it was. Either way, the WebKit issue might be lazy compliance but it doesn’t strike me as malicious.
The problem for me is that it's yet another thing that allows Apple (and other in the EU soon to be commonly installed app stores) to censor content they don't like. Telegram is forced to censor channels that Apple/Google don't like. There are no porn apps on the app store. No gab.com apps anywhere (there was a massive effort to censor them up to and including banning Mastodon clients when they produced a compatible Mastodon instance)
The effects on political censorship are heavy.
You may install Telegram APK from their website, and there's no censorship there. It will also auto-update faster than Google Play version, for obvious reason.
This is particularly why iPhone users need side loading. Root would be nice too.
There is zero censorship of the websites (and there is only Safari on iOS at the moment). For apps, there is definitely a censorship. Without web apps, it's indeed very impactful.
Also Firefox doesn't really support installing a PWA on the desktop (while it does on mobile). I don't see any clear intention from anybody to make PWA a viable alternative to the various App stores and software repositories in general.
What then? I spoke about Firefox because I am not updated on other browsers' policies. The fact that other browsers do the same does not invalidate my point, but rather reinforces it.
I for one would like to have web apps on my PC, sandboxed, with their own icon in the task bar. No more app stores gate keeping, no useless distribution packages for every OS, no 70mb download just to display a webview, (mostly) shared resources with your favorite browser, instead of consuming twice of the ram because of electron.
Then we really can get even more real value out of WASM, and WASM versions of sqlite and postgres and push the web, and everybody, forward.
Apple's core argument seems to be that building out secure PWA support for 3rd party browser engines is quite onerous. Does that seem credible? Anyone have more insight that can speak to this?
A short term compromise would just be to keep existing PWA support where it's Safari/WebKit only. That seems strictly better.
I’d wager the C Suite at Apple, at most, approved PWA support but it was an engineer-boosted project. In contrast the DMA compliance stuff is definitely driven exclusively by the legal and strategic teams.
The legal team isn’t concerned with gutting PWA feature and PWAs aren’t strategic for the company.
Their real argument (to shareholders etc) is that they want that 30% rake on everything you buy, so they want you to have 900 apps on your phone instead of a web browser than visits 900 websites.
I don't want to pick a fight with anyone about this. Is this not what Apple does? What immediately comes to mind is browsers on iOS, proprietary cables, and locking iMessage to their platform. Apple is a walled gardener and they'll wall their gardens.
You sold your shares on principal, or you think they're about to lose value, because if you think you'll lose money, take a look at the M$ share price.
Neither did the necessity to add cookie collection warnings to all sites that use them. In spite of what some Americans believe, if the EU sneezes, the US catches a cold (and vice versa, for the record)
> While there were early signs that the browser ballot screen was influencing browser usage in the EU, with Mozilla attributing some European Firefox growth to the selection page, long-term trends strongly suggest that it was next to useless. In spite of equally prominent placement on the selection screen, Opera's share even within Europe appears to have declined over the last five years. So too have Firefox and Internet Explorer. Chrome, however, has experienced significant growth.
Not effective implies you believe users would have chosen other browsers when offered a choice. The fact that they chose their preferred browser, regardless of the reason for their preference, shows that it was effective.
Yes, because if Safari was as good at supporting PWAs as Android and Chrome you would see developers abandoning the App Store in droves for PWAs like how they decide not to create apps for Android and just use PWAs…
This is especially true for the pay to win games where 90% of App Store revenue comes from. That’s why most game app developers choose to use PWAs to avoid the “Google tax”.
Wait…none of that is true today. The year of the PWA is the new “year of Linux on the desktop”.
No user is asking for web apps anymore than they are clamoring for the next great Electron app on the desktop
Electron is a useful hack with the same resource problems as Chrome rather than an ideal solution.
More the point though, PWAs are part of the existing web ecosystem. Apple has dragged its heels bringing Safari and their Webview up to spec on anything that might damage the AppStore ecosystem for years. They've also forced browser developers to use their webview instead of the browser's engines and has kept the API broken for functionality which they support in Safari - I mean try running a webrtc application in both safari and either chrome or firefox on iOS and see the problems.
By enforcing the Webview on everyone they also ensure that all web developers need to have a mac to debug Safari specific issues that happen on a level unseen since IE7.
The EU is simply telling Apple they can't leverage this anti-competitive behaviour, just like they rightly did for Microsoft in the 90s and Apple are just trying to salt the earth in the EU. It's a joke
And you still didn’t dispute anything I said. If it’s only Apple keeping the wonderful world of PWAs back, why are the same companies that create iOS apps creating Android apps instead of just creating a PWA?
> The year of the PWA is the new “year of Linux on the desktop”.
Because Apple, a large part of the market, are actively fighting to stop it.
> No user is asking for web apps
And they shouldn't. They should not have to care if their app is a PWA or not. Developers need to care so they use the right tool for the job (native if they need the benefits offered by that, such as a performance boost or device wide access, PWA in most other cases where cross-platform concerns are more important than that) but the user shouldn't have to clamour for either.
Firstly, I said absolutely nothing about any “Google Tax”. If companies are creating PWAs to avoid appstore tax are doing it to avoid Apple Tax as well as Google Tax. I ignored that straw man in your previous post.
The problem is developers who want to easily create cross-platform apps and games, who are finding it harder to do so because Apple won't let them, because the tool they want to use might reduce Apple's ability to unfairly tax developers.
Apple tax is the why. Apple potentially inconveniencing everyone by breaking existing features in a hissy-fit is the how.
It’s not a straw man at all. The main motivation according to people on HN is creating a PWA helps avoid the “Apple tax”.
If PWAs are good enough on Android, why wouldn’t developers be motivated to avoid the “Google tax” even if they couldn’t avoid the Apple tax?
On that same note, since most companies create a website anyway, why not just tell Android users to use a web app instead of also creating an Android app?
And as far as games, most game makers make money from in app purchases of loot boxes and coins for pay to win games (this came out in the various Epic vs Apple trials). As much as they whine about the “Apple tax” they love having direct access to whale’s wallets via in app purchases.
And no they aren’t just going to get users to fork over their credit cards to random sites and there are plenty of people especially kids who have access to the in app purchasing mechanism who don’t have access to credit cards.
What point are you actually trying to make? That because some people might not want to create PWAs you think it is OK for Apple to break the existing functionality for everybody in order to flip the bird at the EU?
It’s not just “some” people. Given a choice, to the first approximation, no one is leaving the Google Play store in favor of PWAs even though theoretically PWAs are so great on Android and that developers could avoid creating apps for the web and Android and avoid the “Google tax”.
Apple is not going to lose revenue even if did have perfect PWA support since most of its money from the App Store comes from pay to win games that wouldn’t monetize nearly as well.
Apple doesn’t care enough about PWAs because users don’t care.
And even with Chrome, much of the support is behind flags.
As far as universal platform - if you’re that old, you should know how much “universal platforms” for GUI apps have sucked since Java Swing.
You should also know how every mobile platform has said at one point that you can “build great apps with web technologies” - Rim, Palm, Microsoft, Android and even Apple - and they have all failed and sucked.
You seem very determined to make this matter of Apple breaking existing features and accepted standards, into an issue about Google…
Again you have failed to state what relevance one set of devs not wanting to use PWAs has on anyone else who might want to use them, you've just restated your previous case that some people don't want to use them.
> Apple doesn’t care enough about PWAs because users don’t care.
As already stated in response to your previous statement about users not caring: the users shouldn't need to care if the developers are free to choose the right tool for their task (native application or PWA) and platforms implement those options well.
Apple should care about PWAs if it cares at all about providing a standards compliant environment. It certainly seems to care enough to try to derail them as a petty consequence of being told to do something they don't want to do.
It’s not an issue for Google at all. It’s an issue that as I said to a first approximation no one cares about PWAs. If PWAs were so compelling and if it were only Apple holding adoption back, why aren’t they more popular on Android - 70% of the market?
If absolutely no one cares about PWAs, is this entirely thread, and those elsewhere, a figment of my imagination?
> as I said to a first approximation no one cares about PWAs
What you said was that no users care. That is fine: users shouldn't need to care. Users don't need to care about such implementation details if developers are free to choose the best tool for the job.
> why aren’t they more popular on Android - 70% of the market?
Largely because the apps have already been developed and there is no point rewriting for new tech just for its own sake. And for things like games (the main thing that has been mentioned here as not being done as PWAs ATM) a PWA might not be the best tool for the job as native can give better performance in some areas.
PWAs are more attractive for new projects, and those that don't need to take advantage of being closer to the hardware.
Apple is attempting to leverage its position as a platform holder, as it always has, by threatening the open web. It's APIs to support the web platform are shockingly, even purposely, terrible and it uses it's app developer licence to ensure that open development cannot happen on its closed OS. Worse, it doesn't even play on an even playing field, as it ensures that the WebView that developers are required to use is less up to date than the already poor Safari browser on iOS. This is anti-competitive and is the way Apple has always operated.
The EU has enacted its laws to protect users and developers working with the platform from these limitations. PWAs are just a part of it (see per install charges, WebView limitations, Apple malicious compliance). It's pretty obvious that Apple will not allow its AppStore cash cow to be tampered with so they will need to be strongarmed.
Well, first it came out in the Epic trial that 90% of App Store revenue comes from games and in app purchases. Those companies aren’t going to move to the web because they want the direct access to users wallets that they get from the in app purchase mechanisms.
People aren’t as willing to put their credit card on random sites and people have access to pay via in app purchases that don’t have access to credit cards.
But you still didn’t answer the question, if it were just Apple, then why aren’t companies abandoning the Google Plau Store in droves and just creating PWAs that will work on Android devices and PCs and avoid the “Google tax”?
It isn't about abandoning the app stores, it's about offering reasonable alternatives, whether they be alternative app stores or first class web apps. There's definitely reasons to create native apps, which is why Apple created the AppStore in the first place (we all know that when the iPhone launched, it was only web apps), heavy graphics games being a big one, but simply removing existing functionality in response to being forced to allow these alternatives is just Apple throwing the dummy out of the pram.
For the record, Google has always allowed alternative app stores, browser engines and PWAs and has not suffered much in terms of financial loss but they are used to playing on the open web whereas Apple's financial model is more like Microsoft's (at least in software)
Well, there is an existence proof by the lack of PWA adoption on Android and that companies aren’t forgoing the expense of creating native Android apps, that PWAs aren’t a “reasonable alternative” today on either platform.
So you are going to compare “every person you know” to the fact that hardly any company or app developer is exclusively creating an iOS app and telling Android users just use the web since PWA support is so good?
You really don't get how the human emotion plays into this, huh?
Happy to break it down.
iOS user installs your service's app. Android user wants to then install one-click Google Play Store, feels like a second-class citizen if they're instead directed to find a URL to log in, forced to create their own bookmark....
By focusing marketing on the App Store, and "Apps", which led to those goofy badges (App Store, Play Store, now Samsung/Amazon App Store sometimes), Apple made native apps "the thing". If you don't have those badges on your site or in your ad, you're not signaling you're "real".
But it's just a social trend, at the end of the day.
We can make the app's functionality the same, or better, wherever we want. Even in Safari gulp.
Link, bookmark, and to home screen not needed.
Pwas can be installed from the store... Native has zero arguments except if ya really need something the web can't do or if you're a bad dev.
They'll only learn their lesson if we keep applying pressure so that the European Commission takes this seriously and enforces their right to fine up to 10% of global revenues ($30bn) if Apple doesn't get in line
As an industry we need to try to make sure that if this holds anything back it is Apple users not everyone else. The platform being deliberately broken in a childish hissy fit should not be allowed to be an inconvenience to users of other platforms.
Instead of not implementing features because they won't work on iOS state that your stuff works on standards compliant browsers, if the user has a system that is deliberately standing in the way of standard features then some things may not work as well as expected and they should contact their system vendor, not the app vendor, for resolution.
Unfortunately this will be difficult because iDevice users tend to be a mix of cultishly supportive of their platform¹ and/or bully like in demanding what they want from people that are not Apple, so this stance might be hard for those with commercial interests to take.
Away from DayJob I have the luxury of being able to declare Apple platforms to be at best a third-class citizen³, maybe forth³ or worse, when it comes to support in anything⁴ I do, but we'd not get away with that in DayJob.
I'll be adding to all my personal online output a statement to the effect “As Apple have a record of not properly implementing standards in a timely manner, and even retroactively breaking features when they have a hissy fit with regulators who try to stop them bullying developers, I can not guarantee that this site/app/other will work on Apple operating systems.”.
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[1] If <something> doesn't work on the platform <something> must be broken or just a <something> that no one would ever want, it isn't the platform's fault.
[2] If <something> doesn't work on iDevices then its name will be beaten up until it gives in and hands Apple its lunch money.
[3] 1st class is “if it anything doesn't work, this is a serious problem to be addressed ASAP, how did this shit go live?”, 2nd class is “everything should work, if it doesn't then I'll look into it quickly, maybe less quickly if it is just a display/UX issue rather than broken functionality”, 3rd class is “it should work as it is compliant with relevant standards (official or generally accepted), if it doesn't I'll try to resolve as soon as practical”, 4th class is “I think it might work, if it does work for you then great, if it doesn't then rest assured that I don't actually care”. 5th is “I do not intend this to work for you, instead telling me if I won't make it work you'll go somewhere else, skip a step and just go away immediately”.
[4] even things that don't depend on features currently known to be broken by Apple – if they will deliberately break an existing feature now what is to say they won't do the same to others in future?
I've signed it, and passed it around, but I really think it'll have no effect.
If they are willing to be a bag of dicks like this to thumb their nose at the whole EU, they aren't going to care about a polite open letter. What needs to be done it to make sure that people know anything broken by this (and Safari being slow to adopt other standards) is Apple's fault.
Most likely me refusing to support Apple anything won't affect them either, but at least I'll feel better not supporting such tactics.
I don't know why people are shocked by Apple anymore. We know exactly what to expect from them.
If you want to support a terrible company, then you can endure the terrible results.
What are we trying to achieve here? A u-turn on a terrible decision so that we can keep using Apples devices in complete ignorance for yet another decade or until their next disgusting move? How about we let them be terrible and go elsewhere?
No way I'm signing this, you've all made your bed now lie in it.
Your attitude is not helpful. Even if you choose to not use an Apple device, as a developer you do not get to choose the devices of your audience, and dropping every Apple user is a tough sell. Apple is also correct in that few people use PWAs, so they will get away with it, unless pressured otherwise.
Weird how they claim the undersigned “end users” and “business users” but Cory Doctorow seems to be the only actual end user involved. I would have expected a lot more people to be up in arms over this.
