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Apple Confirms iOS 17.4 Disables Home Screen Web Apps in the European Union
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So they buy in the UK then. Oh wait... the iPhone price there is already at a nice surplus as compared to the US, right?Looks like fining Apple is the new cash cow for the EU to milk. I will assume that Apple simply factors this into the pricing of their other products in the region (assuming it isn’t already).
Comparing this to other unnamed markets where Apple bends backwards to comply, it's obvious that Apple has become just a spoiled child trying to rebel against rules that apply to everyone, and punish their own customers for their inability to cooperate and simply follow house rules.
This is getting better and better by the day. One might actually make a tv show out of Apple's legal adventures.
Let’s start with the one where Apple completely and utterly wiped the floor with Epic.
Epic won the same identical lawsuit against Google's Play Store, so I guess this won't be the last of it.Let’s start with the one where Apple completely and utterly wiped the floor with Epic.
I have elaborated on this before. Google lost because they had a fundamentally different business model than Apple’s, and because they were caught engaging in shady dealings with other companies.
You can read my response here.
Post in thread 'Epic Games Wins Antitrust Lawsuit Against Google Play Store' https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...ainst-google-play-store.2413470/post-32787626
Epic is free to try and bring their lawsuit against Apple as many times as they want. The outcome will still be the same.
@Abazigal , as far as I understand Apple App Store policies are yet to comply with the Epic vs Apple 2021 ruling. Appeals by both companies were denied.
As for your justification about Google loosing the case … well Google does not hold a monopoly on Android phones either which seams to be the basis of your argument.
As for your justification about Google loosing the case … well Google does not hold a monopoly on Android phones either which seams to be the basis of your argument.
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Here's a snipped from a story from CNET about Phil Schiller's response to the claim that game streams are as safe as videos. At the time, Schiller was still Sr. VP of Worldwide Marketing.
From CNET:
Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers also focused on a frequent argument against Apple, asking why the company treats game streaming differently than Netflix.
Epic and Apple have been fighting over Fornite and the App Store since August of last year.
Schiller said that in addition to the reasons he described above, Netflix has one account and privacy policy. People don't sign in to individual movies to watch in the same way they might sign into the latest Assassin's Creed historic fiction adventure game from Ubisoft to keep track of their progress and connect with friends. "These are interactive games," Schiller said. "It's something that requires you they do (sic) much more than just play video."
As I said, believe them or not. But he is correct that streaming games are interactive. There is zero doubt about this. You can argue the degree of risk, but Schiller is on point. You say it's safer than downloading the actual game binary. I don't disagree with you, but you're also leaving out that it's still more dangerous than playing a video, whereas people here are trying the same old argument about movies that is demonstrably false. The alternative is no vetting whatsoever. If you're fine with that, that's your opinion. Millions of others disagree. That doesn't make my point a bad one since someone called my use of Apple's actual argument in court as a laughably bad take.
I'd point out that quote from Schiller is take from a court case between Epic Games and Apple where the judge didn't understand the issue and asked Apple why movies are different than streaming games. Keep in mind Apple won that case against Epic, who had tried to make the same argument as people here had made. No, movies are not the same as game streams.
Nobody said anything about the review process being infallible, but a review process is better than no process, which is what you'd have otherwise. Microsoft may have a vetting process, but we don't know. Also why would Apple blindly trust a competitor to vet things for them? There are always stories about the review process going bad. Just recently there was a story about an app in disguise that provided free TV channels that Apple failed to catch initially, but then removed. Basically your argument is that because Apple isn't infallible, there should be no review. How does that make any sense?
So how is this relevant to the argument by saying someone is scamming using legitimate apps? There are horror stories about Craigs List and all sorts of other places, but are things impossible to catch before they happen. What does this have to do with potentially bad acting games? Once more, just because bad things happen with good apps doesn't mean there should be no vetting of potentially bad apps.
Again, relevance? I simply don't think any of your arguments have a thing to do with vetting potentially badly behaving apps. Did you want Apple to extend their vetting even further to unethical, but legal actions? You can do that, but it is irrelevant to the discussion. From what I can tell, your argument seems to be that people can do bad things with perfectly fine apps and therefore no vetting should occur. Huh?
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Who is arguing that remote gaming / stream games aren't more interactive than videos?
I argued is that from a security stand point game stream behave the same as video stream. Apps run locally, have local access and so on, so do Web Apps ... game streams do not. They run remotely. So a game stream is actually more secured than both an App and an Web App.
When it comes to social engineering and user input the level of protection is like any App in the App Store or Web App.
If security was actually at the center of Apple policy decision, then would not advise splitting game stream services in apps (harming their users and implode their service on smartphones) or service them through the web browser. I use this tactic with my kids ... when they want something I don't want to give them, I say you can have yet I index it to something they dislike even more ... the illusion of option, they usually back off.
The idea that Microsoft, Sony, Google, Amazon, GForce, Epic or whatever would agree to publish each game stream as an App is hilarious as requiring Spotify to publish each music as an app. Not only it is not at all user friendly, would give Apple veto ability directly at the heart of their business at Apple discretion. It would totally implode game streaming innovation on mobile smartphones.
So Ubisoft cannot be trusted when the game is streamed by an XBOX Cloud App, Playstation App, GForce Now App ... only if the game stream has a dedicated App in the App Store. Is that it?
According to Phill it seams being a user of the App Store one faces a lot more risks than otherwise because everyone is using these company services at many levels, including Apple personnel. In practice his argument does not make sense
Now what about Facebook and Cambridge Analytics scandal yet it is still on the App Store. It seams that user interaction is no longer a high risk business when it comes to some flagship Apps on the App Store.
All apps are legitimate, only business practices might not be. The relevance of my examples is that when it comes to security the main benefit of the App Store is that apps are reviewed against viruses, malware and excessive resource consumption. Not much else. In practice when it comes to other means of exploitation the App Store does not provide much more if anything than say a Web Browser ... if you have an issue talk with the App supplier, that is the rule, not happy, you may return the good in some time interval (money back guaranteed)... like any retailer on the planet.
For Payment most users feel as safe with Apple as with PayPal, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Spotify and many other services that are blocked by Apple, lets not talk about other services that aren't block ... you know people live not only of Apps ... they buy clothes, groceries, pay for insurance so on and so forth. Apple as a rhetoric of a distopyan security world were all peoples needs are covered by the App Store because its much better, when in effect its just like any retail business with absolute control over peoples devices.
The crux of the matter is that Apple simply made up new policies that in practice have little security basis, given the inconsistency of the arguments, to keep out game streaming services of the ecosystem in order to protect their future and present gaming interests, in particular Apple Arcade, and once again enforce the practice that users need to indirectly pay Apple to consume and interact any kind of content on their device, Web Browser exempted. Much like they did for eBooks and Music. Remember, they came with the reader app idean when faced with lawsuits ... well kind off it did not work that well as a measure of protection for iBook and Apple Music. On the first, excluding Apple, 2 players survived Amazon and some other, Music also 2, when it came to video was not really enough to keep the major ones out. So for game streaming, because it wasn't- really enough to keep them out they raised the policy, each game stream need to have their own App om the App Store (you can imagine what would that do to video or music streaming back than, you would find no Netflix or Spotify on the App Store, only Apple Music and Apple TV+)
Anyway, don't really have more time to this issue and I am sure not Phill $hiller. There are people being payed to sort of thing.
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You are by saying they’re as safe as a movie stream. The downstream portion is likely safe, but the upstream portion is not. What Schiller says is accurate. There is a ton of data going back to the game company servers besides play, pause, fast forward, rewind, skip. People create accounts on these and put in all sorts of personal information. It’s that kind of data that Schiller is talking about. These games can ask you for anything and nobody would be the wiser if they weren’t vetted. There IS a higher security risk when all that data is going back to game company servers.
Security is WHY Apple asked to split the apps separately so each can be vetted separately. Without a separate app, it’s impossible for Apple to vet any of them. Or if Microsoft got approved for the store and then added a bunch of new games that are security risks. Those can’t be vetted either.
I think you don’t see the danger in upstream traffic. Enter your name, birthday, social security number, credit card number, etc. People should be wary what you give game companies from your personal information. You can say no company would ask for personal information. Sorry, all of them do. Some are shadier than others and may ask for things they shouldn’t. Or if you send other data back that may seem innocuous, they may figure out a way to piggyback data you wouldn’t want to send them, like your device ID or other security info from your smart phone. While the game video is streamed, the stuff going back isn’t, and that’s the potential problem.
Schiller is specifically calling out account creation that practically every app asks a player to do. Movies don’t ask for that, which is why Schiller specifically pointed out Netflix has only the Netflix account and not one account per movie. They can screen the Netflix app to see what personal data Netflix is gathering. Movies don’t gather information and send it upstream. Games do, and they all do it differently, which is why they need to be individually vetted.
Music, like movies, do not have any of your personal data going upstream. You still don’t understand the fallacy of what you’re saying. Movies and music are not the same as a streaming game. You simply refuse to see it. You claimed in your first statement above that who was arguing they aren’t the same? Then you come to this part and say they’re exactly the same. The upstream data as part of the interactivity IS the dangerous part, one that people want to ignore because they don’t want to see it.
So why does Apple vet Microsoft apps, or Google apps, or anyone else’s apps in the App Store? You don’t ever know when someone tries to break the rules and slip something by you. When you are on the hook for lawsuits on security breaches, you don’t trust anyone outside your own company. I’m sure Microsoft does its own vetting of every game that comes onto XCloud. But Apple’s not going to trust anyone but themselves. Office apps are on virtually every App Store, yet Apple still does a security screen of those apps. Note again how Microsoft does split Office Suite into its component parts due to Apple’s rules rather than selling it as a single subscription unit or a single super app.
Relevance? You’re confusing badly behaving apps with apps that can be abused but are perfectly fine otherwise. Say you have Venmo, or something like that. That can be part of a criminal payoff, but there’s no way to distinguish a good payoff versus a bad one. Apple’s vetting process looks for bad behavior by the app maker, not the user. An example of that is if a payment app takes more money from you than it says it will. That is something Apple can detect and ban. If you ask for a payment and the right amount goes through, it passes, regardless of the motives or reason behind the payment. See the difference?
If Facebook has a serious problem, for instance, they aren’t kicked. They’re forced to fix it, such as when Apple severely curtailed what data Facebook can gather from your device. Facebook sued Apple to allow it to collect data unfettered, but Apple said no. Facebook then followed the rules and they’re still there. If they continued to gather data without user permission, they’d be kicked. There are multiple ways to deal with security. Facebook decided to play ball to keep themselves in the store. Microsoft said no. Even when they got their own way, Microsoft is still saying no. That is their choice, not Apple’s.
No, not all apps are legitimate. That’s why Apple screens every single app that gets submitted to the store. You cannot assume it, even when submitted by normally legitimate companies. Facebook is one of those examples. They want to steal your data unfettered. Apple won’t let them. Comply or be kicked off the store. Facebook complied, so they remain.
Nonsense. Its as throughly explained its mainly about controlling the third game stream business to protect Apple interests in the field as well as allowing Apple to clearly charge for each game stream.
Are you saying Spotify or Apple Music does not track what you are listening? The ability for specific game stream offer a for to engage in further communication is ruled by the game stream service, much like the App Store. Are you saying that say Microsoft is not competent to do that job? Oh dear, the Lala land.
Ask Apple. What I do know is the likes of App Stores and other Gaterkeeping artifacts are being regulated due to practices considered anti-competitive. Also, it seams that Apple culture is the most bothered with it, with e vengeance kind of attitude toward democratic governamental organizations.
I think an ecosystem whose policies foster predatory price practices against ill informed people under the umbrella of security is sick. I gave an example amongst many, the wallpaper apps example.
There is something very odd when the average cost of an App is say 4 euros in the context where there are say X apps available. And in a couple of years later, come subscriptions, 10000xX number of Apps available and the average cost is 100 euros a year. Added to this, development costs going down due to the advancement of frameworks and technologies in general.
A market where prices go up as products are less scarce and less costly to build ... is just counter intuitive as far as the standard laws of demand and supply go. These kinds of massive price jumps, do not happen on a market driven by competition. Its more akin to policy and cloaking leverages practices.
Im not against retailers screening every product their sell, case in case Apple Store or any other retailer of any kind. Its normal and its a good practice. That is not the issue.
Look man as I side note.
I can see you really admire Apple to the point that you cannot the company doing anything unhealthy or wrong. I too admire the company history, its boldness and technical irreverence. Between both of us. probably I use more Apple products and services than you do, including my kids and wife. The difference is that I do see some things going on against us customers that aren't really healthy. But most of all I feel that the company moved from being irreverent and bold, brining disruptive innovation improving humanity to fostering a dystopian and dysfunctional future if it has its way. The company was able to disrupt and effectively awe without much effort when it had way less money.
I was expecting an Apple, a company that rose from bankruptcy becoming the most rich and profitable company in the world though sheer disruptive innovation, that once it got it come out with even more disruptive creation and technologies for the advancement of humanity, But it looks like Microsoft of the 2000s. Maybe it's just a phase, but I can't hide my disappointment regarding all this situation. Being a cold hearted analytical person, between the Big Tech, probably the company that would have the least disupritve impact if it simply vanished, would be Apple. Hospitals would keep working as well, universities and schools, governamental institutions, 99% of the companies, families ... would keep on living in the next day much like nothing had happened. Unlikes say, if a company like Microsoft. Even though I dislike Microsoft products and approaches, its impact on humanity is way way way bigger, touches much more world. Not just Major cities and a bunch of "Californian" startups and all millionaire from one day to the other culture. For me this is a disappoint fact.
But hey, Apple for me still does make the best devices in the world and Mac OS is the best personal OS there is. If not for the App Store dependency, iOS would be just up there for me too. I just stopped sharing the vision of the company for the future. Today I see their vision for the future closer to the rich society of Hunger Game rather than to Jean Luck Picard, Startreck. The SJ words looked to be the second. Now TC? ... says nothing to me.
Cheers.
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The original post had this:
“Don't install any 3rd party app store and don't sideload any 3rd party app. And everything will be as it is now. That Apple removes PWA from iOS 17.4 is Apple's fault of not doing their home work. Because Apple proves that it can be done.”
The whole thread is about Apple removing PWA’s , not side loading in general. PWA’s run on web engines other than safari are considered a security risk by Apple. There are technical reasons for this that I explained earlier.
My stance on this whole “Walmart can’t be the only shop” is really borne out by the absolute success of the App Store over the last 15yrs or so. Customers are absolutely satisfied with this product otherwise they wouldn’t buy it. They have a choice, there are tons of other companies selling phones. Apple is by nowhere near a monopoly.
I find it ridiculous that if I invent something and I decide how things should work on it I should be forced to change things so that other businesses can make money. It seems to escape everyone’s attention but the first iPhone didn’t even have an App Store or an sdk. Apple weren’t even going to open the iPhone to third parties. They only did it because people were jail breaking the thing and kind of forced their hand. And then unlike Nokia, BlackBerry and OG windows phone they provided provision for free apps that cost just the 99 dollar fee to app devs because they had to make a maintain the sdk.
And the whole point of the 30% was that it subsidised the free apps! And no one had a problem with it then. They all jumped on it. If they didn’t like it how come the iPhone App Store became so successful then? Android was out at the same time yet devs wanted to develop for iPhone and it’s terrible 30% fee. Strange!
Then when they added In app purchases those lovely angelic devs were happy to get free distribution and then charge for basic features within the app themselves. Trying to get more money and break the subsidy plan that Apple initiated to encourage devs to develop software.
Then companies like Spotify wanted piggy back off the installed network of iOS users to further their business by getting Apple to distribute the app for free and circumvent any payment to Apple, again breaking the subsidy model and also not recognising that building that user base cost Apple money to do in the first place!
To cut to the chase, this whole thing is about B2B (business to business) companies trying to make more money out of each other. And it has nothing to do with consumers as when was the last time you saw a company pass extra profits to consumers it doesn’t need to? None of these are charities. Yet they have you thinking they’re helping you the consumer. They are not.
Explained by whom? They publicly said it was for two reasons: 1) track game metrics so people can see who’s playing what (something Apple does for all App Store games right now), and 2) security. As I said earlier, Apple wouldn’t earn a penny from breaking out games into separate apps since Microsoft wouldn’t charge anything for each game app. They wouldn’t charge for the main app either. If you do all your business on MS’s website, Apple wouldn’t ever see a penny from XCloud at all, ever. All they would end up doing is to make more work for themselves. But to them, security is more important than minimizing the vetting effort.
That is done at server side, as I said earlier. This is not sent to servers by the song. The second the parent app makes a request for the song, that’s how the server knows what you are listening to. The song itself is non-interactive and sends back nothing. Apple vets the parent app to make sure it doesn’t send back anything other than play, pause, rewind, fast forward, skip, stop. They know without you giving a single input what you’re listening to. What Apple is concerned about is what personal information is going out through having to create accounts and other potential data that can be collected and returned to the server from your personal device when data is sent back upstream through a game.
Again, movies and music are not at all interactive. Games are very interactive. The strange thing is you admit this, yet can’t see that it is that very interactivity that is the security risk and why games need vetting. As a retired software professional, I can think of all sorts of ways to grab information from your iPhone that I shouldn’t be sending back to the server through an upstream data packet.
Anti-competitive is in the eye of the beholder. As Ronald Reagan said, “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, ‘I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.’” Picking on the company that has a small market share is somehow helping consumers? I think someone said Apple had a 27.8% market share in the EU. Why are regulators going after the small guy? If you knock down the small guy, guess who gets more market share? Yeah, the guy with the 72.2% market share. There are only two players. If Apple loses, Google gains. Is that really in Europe’s best interest? People complain that EU prices far outstrip US prices even when accounting for exchange rates and VAT. Ever wonder why that is? You think Apple actually pays those fines, or do the consumers?
EU and consumers: We got Apple this time and fines Apple 500 million Euro
Apple: Raising prices of iPhone by 100 Euro
Consumers: @#$@%@#$!
Again with the wallpapers. What in the world does this have to do with the price of tea in China? Apple’s not charging anyone $7 for wallpapers. Somebody who submitted an app did that to make money for themselves. Apple’s just hosting the app and taking their usual in-app purchase commission. You don’t think the Play Store has a ton of this stuff? It’s called competition. You let people make apps and sell stuff. Nothing anti-competitive about that. Apple doesn’t sell wallpapers. Every wallpaper they’ve ever made has been free. One YouTube channel I watch, ZoneOfTech based out of the UK, sells a wallpaper app on both iOS and Android for $1.99/month. You mean something like that? Why do you find that wrong? None of the examples you came up with had anything to do with bad apps. They were just apps doing what they were made to do that were usurped by bad users. Somehow this is relevant to the discussion?
I’ll call out Apple when they do something wrong. I was royally pissed off when I bought an iPad 3’rd generation only to have them release a 4’th gen that was superior in every way less than six months later. You want more criticisms? Siri sucks. The Apple Watch is boring, as is the iPhone. I’ve criticized them over and over where they only care about the camera and nothing else ever sees an upgrade. My iPhone is my least used Apple product because it’s useless for anything other than tethering or making calls. There are days I don’t even touch my iPhone.
AirPods Max can’t support lossless audio and requires a flimsy cable just to have a wired connection, and that wire has to be bought from Apple because the cable has a built-in D-to-A converter. The USB-C ports should not be built into the motherboard because they break so easily. I don’t want to pay $800 to repair a single port since that requires a motherboard replacement. I’ve had at least 10 USB-C ports go bad, so this really irritates me.
When they wanted to scan people’s iCloud Photos even for a supposed good cause of fighting bad stuff, that was just wrong and even immoral. I can certainly give you more things I hate about Apple, but that would get me banned. But somehow supporting them on this issue makes us incapable of seeing where they are wrong?
Wanting a secure walled garden is somehow dystopian? This company built its reputation on security. I just love all the people who say in these forums that Apple doesn’t care about security when this company is paranoid about security. That’s why people like Zuckerberg hate Apple.
You contradict yourself. They don’t innovate, yet they make the best devices in the world. You can’t have one without the other. Hey, you can have your opinion, but that still doesn’t make what the EU is doing right. EU regulators know jack about technology and therefore have no clue what their decisions can have in stifling technology. The USB-C decision was reckless and will kill the next great connector because government runs glacially when it comes to changing the standard. Say someone invents a new connector that far outperforms any USB-C standard, but sorry, can’t use it in the EU. While people say it was aimed at Apple, it really wasn’t. Apple’s just the popular whipping boy. If you examined most Home automation products, for instance, very few use USB-C and are far more likely to use cheaper USB-A or micro-USB because USB-C is overkill. In my home, maybe 10% use USB-C. If sold in the EU, all of those would have to change, raising their cost. It’s no coincidence that just about all tech innovation comes out of the United States or South Korea, places where they aren’t burdened by know-nothing regulators.
If you want to take one thing out of all these discussions, Apple wants security. The EU doesn’t want them to have it. People buy Apple because they like the security. Apple suffers, Google gains, despite having nearly 3 times the market share. End of story. Even if they do go after Google for something, it should be for something real or else I’d oppose that, too.
Actually, there is a client side component. If you put your phone on airplane mode, for example, you still have access to songs you have downloaded. The app continues to track play, pause, fast forward, rewind, skip, etc. actions and then dutifully reports back on your listening activities when you go online again. In fact, if you have downloaded the songs, the primary mode of tracking your listening activity is client side. After all, it will save Apple bandwidth costs if they don't have to actually stream it every play, and instead only upload the playback activity.
You really know how to get someone interested...
I think they don't go far enough in some cases, particularly on the Mac. (I'd love to have an option to force an app from outside the App Store to use the sandbox, for example. There's plenty of apps that don't want to pay the Apple tax, but the developers also don't care to enable the sandbox if Apple isn't forcing their hand.)
That said, App Store review is rather toothless except for good faith apps, and those are subject to fickle rejections. Bad faith apps can trivially bypass review. Which goes back to the "one app submission per game" thing. Apple should have told Microsoft they need to make the apps' privacy disclosure and age rating be the maximum of all games they stream—done. Besides, each App Store reviewer spends what, 5 minutes on an app? Game Pass has under 500 games per month, and it's not like those are completely changing every month. Compare that to the millions of apps in the App Store and how little time the employees have to review apps. In this specific case, I'd trust Microsoft's vetting more than Apple's vetting. (And it really pains me to say that with how horrid Microsoft is.)
Exactly this. Bingo, we have a winner! Apple _had_ to disable PWA as only webkit supported it. To get PWA working with other browser engines requires software development effort to add new APIs that iOS currently just doesn’t have.
This doesn’t mean Apple won’t do the work in the future, but it does mean that right now - this was the only way for Apple to be compliant in time - by chopping PWA support out from their own webkit based browser engine.
You conveniently left out that Chrome was built on Chromium which is based on Blink which was forked from Apple’s webkit . . .
Mozilla, Google looking ahead to the end of Apple's WebKit
Work on a Gecko-based version of Firefox for iOS is underway, again
To put it another way, enforcing all web browser apps to use webkit meant that Apple had far less work required to make all interactions with browser engines very secure within iOS. Apple may engineer a whole new set of APIs in the future to make PWAs work when webkit is not in the mix - but right now those APIs don’t exist in iOS - so here we are . . .
Obviously you are not listening.
Following Phil reasoning your entire argument is that game streams are inherently unsafer to play than video or music streams because one is technically more interactive than the other. This is akin to saying that a person with two legs is inherently unsafer to interact with than a person with no legs. You know, one has more interaction points than the other. I find this line of reasoning about security absolutely ridiculous.
But it gets worst. The solution you propose in line with Apple is for both the person with two legs and say you, to start using a commission based straight jacket controlled by a a single private entity alone, called App Store. I find this even more insane from a user stand point.
I think any person with their mind in the right place also would.
More, I find this solution to a non problem a security hazard at scale. Case in case any such kind of practice reaching a significant amount of the world wide population is indeed a security hazard, both for persons and capital flow. In abstract terms companies businesses with this kind of influence are called Gatekeepers by the EU. By the way, Samsung, Microsoft, Google ... are in class too, don't see much fuss from them on the matter.
An entire different thing, a digital retailer curating and checking the products they sell, with customers able to opt in and out of its services with minimal to no loss of property totally normal and reasonable. People walk in and out of retailer shops around the streets, whether or digital or physical totally fine. Of course there are issues with such liberty, security can and should be improved but this is not the way.
In that respect I also find macOS approach totally reasonable because it allows precisely the second, unlike the world Apple wants to create with iOS. It allowed at such a scale, many other will follow if the law is to remain consistent.
Is Apple now running China? I thought that it was running the App Store and the service in question is available there, both in the US and EU. Don't know about the App Store in China.
The example amongst many I could use are just an effect of the policy equation paired with a dangerous illusion of safety.
I was also one that was pissed. But I understand that when innovating at high pace entities do and will make mistakes. I think this is one of those cases. But the company pace kind of stopped around then as it started to move to digital services … you know Movies, Music, Digital Gyms, Digital Payment, App Store.
Rolex make the best watches in the world and do not innovate much. I have a couple and like them.
Don't see any data backing this with clarity. Even if there was lack of APIs to make PWA abilities universally available to browser developers why remove the specific feature? There are plenty of iOS features that only Apple software has access to.
Look I fully understand Apple position. In Phill shoes I would be saying exactly the same thing and see if it catches. But I am not, I am here acting as an individual with a vision of a free and prosper world. A world were people move from digital to physical totally free, more, were both ar intertwined to the point of being indistinguishable, yet we are free and safe as we were in our best years. This can only be assured by the platforms used by the society (technological or not). I find Apples approach and political stance on App Store policies and its vertical integration with the OSs at scale to be in the wrong side of the equation.
Have fun guys.
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Kind of similar story, I came to using Apple gear after making a living developing software for Windows. After moving from Windows to Linux, and then SCO Unix, and then found just how much better Mac OSX / MacOS worked compared to Windows - and best of all its built on top of BSD Unix and NeXTstep - and iOS is built as a forked subset of MacOS - if you know software, you know that Apple has the best engines powering their hardware - nothing comes close.
As it turns out, if you want everybody to be treated the same, it can easily work both ways, and now everybody is treated equally bad. The DMA doesn’t state that safari must support PWAs, and so here we are.
It totally makes sense for Apple to remove this functionality. But not for technical reasons. Support for PWAs was always pretty half-a**ed on iOS in comparison to other platforms. I think it was mostly there as a kind of red herring or fig leaf to distract regulators around the world from their business practices on the App Store.
Now that alternative browser engines will be allowed on iOS, there is a real danger that web apps could become more useful and therefore more popular than they previously were. And that is the reason why Apple now killed them in my opinion.
I don't think they are coming back any time soon.
I don't see that point being accurate at all. The person is stating facts. Not an opinion or something based on feelings.
I would recommend not to assume that. As best I can tell, we are not aware of each other's ages, family status's, or history with the products and services Apple has had over the years.
Apple had to have a hit every single time as it didn't have room for much of any failure. Each hit was met with criticism. Still is.
What is unhealthy is the EU forcing Apple to be like any other company. And to remove choice from consumers. Thankfully, Apple is smarter than even I gave them credit for and came up with a solution that solves both the profit motive of any business. But, also follows the ridiculous law the EU passed. Just be honest and say, I want Apple to do "something", and for free. Even thought we all know they will not. They don't have to exist as a business at all, they are not a charity. So they don't have to make anything specifically the way anyone person wants. If you or anyone doesn't like what they do how they do it or what they stand for. Nothing is forcing anyone to keep buying it.
What? Do we really need a side by side comparison of what Apple has done since the early 2000's to what Microsoft has done in the same time that has changed the world? When did Apple stop being innovative, and disruptive? Where did Microsoft start being innovative and disruptive?
I can't take this seriously. By your own standards below, this makes no sense.
I'm sure there are hospitals out there, not to mention schools and some government institutions that use Apple products. From computers (desktops) to iPhone's and iPads. And I'm sure many families and every day folks would have to make some adjustments if iPhones went away. Bill Gates started Windows OS because of Apple. Apple's impact on humanity IS way bigger than Microsofts is.
Which is it? They are important or are they not? They seem to be to you. And arguably hundreds of millions of people at the least.
Its a very good thing Apple did not think this way.
When someone comes up with a replicator. We can worry about any similarities to Star Trek then. Till then, we deal with business and cultures and societies of the day.
And even if Apple was the one to figure out how to safely convert raw energy into any form of matter by your voice. Would you also say that it isn't very innovative and too expensive?
I find this particular comment to be really odd - Apple IS the same as any other company. It's there to make a profit, just like all the rest (other than the non-profits, of course).
On what legal, moral or other basis should Apple get special treatment?
This issue isn't about special treatment of any kind. Just that Apple is not Google, and is not Microsoft. The EU wants more interoperability between apps and functioning of mobile operating systems. They want it to be more open. Apple has never been one to inter-operate with others unless they wanted to. They innovate just fine on their own with their own technology/IP.
Not asking for special treatment. Just asking they leave them alone. Since there is competition outside of the Apple ecosystem. You can buy Android from many different manufactures. You can have many different stores on those devices, and side load if you wish and know how. We don't need to force Apple to play in that playground when you have it already with plenty of options to pick from. They should be allowed to be the different one and have a closed operating system and hardware if they want to. And you a consumer can pick which works best for you. A Closed system, or a more open one.
The Digital Markets act went into force in November 2022. It's now binding law and only courts could weaken it or change the designtion of Apple's services as a Gatekeeper.
And thankfully Apple figured out a good way to protect the end user, stay in business, and follow the law.
