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Apple Confirms iOS 17.4 Disables Home Screen Web Apps in the European Union
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No, my beef is with Apple that didn’t allowed them to make such a App in the first place and had to wait by some law by the EU to allow them. If Microsoft is taking their sweet time to making the app now that they can I can’t blame them honestly. And even worse now that Apple removed the PWAs from my system can’t even use the workaround. But again, I can only blame Apple for this.
Your beef now is with Microsoft for refusing to make the app. Petitioning Apple won’t help you get the app.
The goal of the DMA is to give consumers more choice on how they can use their devices by forcing gatekeeper to let competition happening on a level playing field. This is currently not the case. I can't install apps for the iPhone outside Apple's App Store with its sometimes weird rules. Alternative browser have to use the buildin web engine instead of their own. But you have to do any of that.
What makes this for the consumer bad is how Apple decided to implement this rules, instead make that it is safe and sound they make it awful and weird. Apple just shows, they don't care about you. They probably never did and the good and great product of the past were just a show we bought into.
Letting competitors onto the platform is what benefits consumers. You get to chose which browser you actually want to use. You get to decide where your apps should come from. I just hope this will force Apple to innovate again and to make iOS more secure and better. Because now it has to be better, not just good enough. In the last ten years we have seen macOS becoming more like iOS, I hope we see iOS become more like macOS in the future.
My understanding is that PWAs run in WebKit like a webpage does, but that they actually behave more like apps and can make requests to access specific device features (like location, or notifications). Apple forces all apps to specifically ask users for permission to access those things.
Because of changes mandated by the EU, Apple has to allow browsers with alternative rendering engines into the App Store. When you install one of these browser apps your device will ask you to grant the app permission to location, notifications, etc.
If you now use that browser to pin a PWA to your Home Screen, because that’s now a new app, Apple would want it to ask permission to access location/notifications to protect user privacy/security. However, because you’ve already given permission to the browser app to access location/notifications/whatever, the PWA would automatically inherit all the same permissions without you being prompted. This means you could install apps that could access very sensitive data without you being prompted to give that app that permission.
This, I believe, is the problem.
The solution for Apple is to either architect a new approach where PWAs added by 3rd party browsers also ask for permission to access device features, or as they have decided to do, strip out all PWA functionality for all browsers from the device because it’s not worth the time and effort for the small amount of use PWAs get.
Apples current approach to apps/PWAs;
Operating system —> app/PWA.
The approach mandated by the EU is;
Operating system —> browser app —> PWA.
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It’s the developer that gets to chose where you the consumer gets your apps from. The choice of which store to sell the app in is with the developer, not the consumer.
It would be great if the consumer could dictate to the developer which store they wanted to shop at, and the developer was compelled to make their app available in that store. But sadly that’s not what we are getting.
My beef isn't with Microsoft at all because it's not like they tried to develop it before and Apple had to be forced by the EU to allow it. So again, all I can do is to blame Apple.
It's a chicken and egg situation. A platform needs the developers to pick the consumer interests and now in case of iOS they have the consumer interest so the developers need iOS to make profit with their sales. And in this sense Apple has been acting pretty badly lately. It's too bad because, sure developers are now "forced" to develop for iOS, but new platforms like VisionOS are now being hurt by the crappy policies on iOS. You see any Netflix, Spotify or other company App being released in VisionOS? And it wasn't like they didn't have the time to do it, they just choose not to do it. Doubt VisionOS will gain any traction thanks to how Apple behaved in iOS. Even if they now change their attitude, who can trust they won't do it in the future?
Apple now allow game streaming apps in the App Store. If Microsoft chooses not to make one you need to speak to Microsoft about that.
Users can access Netflix and Spotify in the browser on visionOS. I would expect the number of people returning/not buying an AVP because of the lack of Netflix and Spotify apps to be vanishingly small. Consumers goodwill towards Apple and its products is much stronger than consumer goodwill towards Netflix and Spotify; consumers will dump Netflix/Spotify before they dump Apple.
If anything, the constant whining by Spotify and Epic, in particular, must have significantly dented the consumer goodwill toward them. They need to keep a low profile for a while so that consumers don’t find a reason to dump them for another service.
That's really not a problem. People are tapping on fishing links in iMessage all the time. That's a lot easier to harvest data than to make up some PWA, market it, have people download it and then get scammed.
PWA on iOS is Flash game all over again. They gimmped it from the get go citing stupid, unreasonable reasons and people were once again buying it. 70% of the Appstore apps could function as PWA cause that's exactly what they are, wrapped HTML.
As someone who has spent a lot of time fine-tuning PWA apps, I take this as a spit in the face. Apple has never been thrilled with PWAs, because how else can they explain why we waited so long for webpush support, and this is exactly the perfect excuse to get rid of PWAs. If Apple had really supported PWAs from the start, people would have used them a lot more often. Many iOS apps you use are just compiled webapps.
Just that developers currently don't have a choice in that matter and neither have consumers. That is the problem the DMA wants to change. On macOS many distribute their software in the Mac App Store and via their own channels. So consumers can decide where to buy or even both. I bought my Affinity license on their website but I use the version from the App Store.
And of those 70% could probably just be a responsive website.
I use them loads. Selfhosted apps mainly, for which the feature is indispensable. Also for apps which don’t wish to go into app stores, such as crypt.ee. Also for apps which aren’t allowed in the AppStore due to apples misplaced moral policing. Also for apps which I in no way shape or form would tolerate the official app, like most social media. And finally for the freedom of choice to do what I want to do with my device without the dude who I bought it from dictating the experience.
You think that the amount of people firstly, buying AVP to watch content and secondly, accepting that the content on one of the biggest content providers will be regulated to a browser experience- is a vanishingly small percentage ? I really don’t agree. Arguably one of the biggest draws of an immersive headset like the AVP is the movie and gaming experience, of which Netflix offer both and is vastly popular inside and indeed outside of Apple.
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No. just like alternative app stores and side loading will not be available in the UK
This is factually wrong - the EU is not part of the Five Eyes Alliance - that's the UK, US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
Well said. Ever since the Bean Counter-In-Chief took the reigns Apple's soul has been slowly picked away. Apple used to be about great products that worked. Now they're just another soulless megacorp, nickle & diming the Golden Goose with products that are buggy, often unreliable & made with asinine design choices.
Sad really.
So you think Apple Vision Pro users will not care if they don't have a Netflix app to watch content? Which is one of the main points Apple has been advertising? They literally have a person "watching TV" in their product website, and you're telling me people won't be bothered by the lack of Netflix and other streaming apps?
Ok, I just have two questions:
For Apple - if security is your primary concern, why not keep it for Safari and its WebKit engine as before, disabling it in other browsers not using WebKit?
For the rest - is this a big deal? Can somebody come with a good current use example for PWAs?
For Apple - if security is your primary concern, why not keep it for Safari and its WebKit engine as before, disabling it in other browsers not using WebKit?
For the rest - is this a big deal? Can somebody come with a good current use example for PWAs?
Apple's main point is that EU might force them to use PWAs in other engines.
PWAs:
http://web.telegram.org/
https://phtn.app/
And many other websites may work as a PWA. Eg the main fear with Telegram would be if Apple would remove the app from the AppStore (they've done it before), users would still be able to use Telegram as a native app.
I've been a mac user for over 20 years, and an iPhone user since the iPhone 3gs. This is the first time ever, I've thought about buying an Android for my next phone, and it's all because of this **** that Apple is trying to pull. It's time that smart phones are treated like laptops.
I really don't understand this sentiment about the DMA. What do you have to lose when Apple is forced to open up their platform? I think it is embarrassing how Apple implements these features and communicates them. Apple did a lot of good thing to implement the GDPR to protect its users but here they are failing their users completely.
IOS has the strictest privacy API and security models of all mobile platforms. In fact I think it's Apple who has sort of invented all of the nagging pop-ups about access to geolocation, camera, bluetooth, photos etc.. All this is not going away. There is no mandate to weaken these security measures.