You don’t really know if they’re even telling the truth … iOS is closed source so you cant know if they’re solution wouldn’t support other engines just fine.
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Apple Confirms iOS 17.4 Disables Home Screen Web Apps in the European Union
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Apple probably boasting about how much money they pump into iOS development and then 95% of that one ends up in the emoji and Vision Pro personas departments.
No wonder there is no one looking at the OS itself. Especially since the DMA was released on such short notice and no one informed Apple, who is the victim of a witch hunt!
No wonder there is no one looking at the OS itself. Especially since the DMA was released on such short notice and no one informed Apple, who is the victim of a witch hunt!
To reiterate, after all the fanfare about finally supporting the Web Push API on iOS 16.4, Apple has now killed that functionality entirely for users in the EU.
Push notifications are not supported in Safari, they were only available to homescreen web apps.
Push notifications are not supported in Safari, they were only available to homescreen web apps.
Safari uses deep private API to wrap these links into being treated as apps consisting of a WebKit runner, which gives them isolated storage and permissions. They aren’t prepared to a third party, let alone dozens of third party browsers, have this capability. So by law they have to disable it from Safari.
iOS does this by creating new apps that run a WebKit runner. The EU has put limits both on the ability to prefer a particular browser and to have the platform browser use private API.
So they can only ship the current feature if they allow third party browsers to install new executables as apps on the home screen.
Let me answer with one of my previous comments which addresses this "easily" thing:
Apple Confirms iOS 17.4 Disables Home Screen Web Apps in the European Union
I agree "easily" is subjective term. If this word triggers you, just remove it. My point stands. One of the biggest companies of the world should be able to implement appropriate APIs within the time frame of two years - which is the period the DMA form has been out. I understand they don't...
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This is incorrect.
By law they have to offer possibility to use third party browsers/browser engines. Nothing in the DMA states they have to disable it. The DMA intended they add the support for 3rd party browsers.
(does not matter how many of them there are, they may have offered universal API and it would be on the devs of 3rd party browsers to use this API if wanted; DMA form has been around for two years, quite some time to add this API)
The EU has crafted laws to play robin hood. It’s interesting you use the hyperbolic word stealing when literally if iPhones were to disappear, people will still have air to breathe and food to eat and money to spend. And I like how you speak for the EU. 👍/s
EU Is ruining this for everybody: when you are building a globally used product, PWA it's not an option anymore.
Not the EU fault that Apple made their OS insecure from web browsers and not properly sandboxing web browsers.
This is if Apple says is true is poor security practices by Apple.
It will be interesting to see how Safari will be responding to the inevitable competition where the other browsers will support push notifications and Safari won't.
On a serious note: is PWA really a thing today? Do you use it? For which sites?
Maybe it's just me, but I really did not came across PWA for quite some time. Seems like blast from past to me.
Again Apple choose to make an insurer os part and is choosing not to fix the issue to properly sand back web browsers instead being petty
I don’t remember the last time I used one. If there isn’t a native app for something I’m not wasting my time on it.
What is a PWA? I am being serious! I really do not know what it is? And I think most people do not know either!
You have always had a choice of browsers on iPhone. They may all have the same underlying web engine, but they are all completely different apps with different features and detriments. Chrome has a horrendous record for security and resource hogging and data stealing, no matter what browser engine it's using. I have no problems if people want to use other browsers. I have problems with government dictating things to companies and forcing them to change things for no good reason all in the name of making things "equal" by taking away their competitive advantages.
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Correct me if I'm wrong here but... doesn't the fact that non-WebKit browsers are allowed now mean that any other browser app can effectively implement Web Apps? Any App can save a shortcut to the home screen (unless I'm mistaken), and it can see that you launched it via the home screen, and it can use that to give you the version of the app with full permissions vs the ordinary web version where it can't use as much storage space and whatnot?
IDK, persistent web apps are so niche I kind of doubt even most MacRumors readers know much about them...
IDK, persistent web apps are so niche I kind of doubt even most MacRumors readers know much about them...
And did it in the most anti-competitive/consumer way possible!
PWA (which stands for "Progressive Web App") is a website that can be saved or installed and behave as if it were a standalone application. This includes things like launching full-screen with no web browser UI elements, appearing with a custom icon on the home screen, and support for things like push notifications, badging, geolocation, media streaming, and video/microphone access. Google's requirements for a PWA to be installable is that it includes code to properly handle offline modes, so that the web app can launch successfully (but maybe not "work") even when not connected to the internet.
Apple has never used the term "PWA", preferring instead of refer to the various web technologies individually. Some of those technologies have been supported in Safari since the very early days of iOS (such as geolocation support), and some of those have only recently been introduced (such as push notifications and badging).
The idea of "progressive" in PWA is that it can work normally as a website in a browser, but you can get some deeper system integration by installing or saving it. On desktop, this means that it launches is its own window and shows up as its own icon in the Dock. On iOS, this built on the (long-existing) add to home screen functionality, but recently started only exposing some functionality to web apps that had been saved.
I use PWAs for some social media sites, where I don't want to install an app that has full access to my device for tracking and advertising purposes, but I want something that can notify me when people mention me in a post.
Correct, but they can't protect a web app via a 3rd party browser from accessing other data or your hardware i.e. camera, mic, speakers, etc. Since it would have access to it just like Safari would. Just that you wouldn't get notified (Potentially). And Apple couldn't stop that from happening. So, just removed the feature. Also, it's not used much so no sense in fixing it for a small portion of users.