The Pursuit of Appiness (2020)

What a great writeup underscoring so many of the problems with the current mobile ecosystem as well as highlighting the possibilities that we already have available to us for the future.

The gap between what web applications and native applications can offer in both features, ease of use, security, and performance is closing and in some cases even been flipped. For example, web apps entirely skip the need for installation and can provide transparent updates without user intervention, and the promise of new tech like WebGPU may actually make it more of an appealing target for games.

The biggest piece that I see missing is users understanding + embracing the web app pattern and developers adopting its patterns by default rather than trying to force native experiences into a web app format. I've built websites that offer identical experiences on mobile and desktop and had users come with feedback of "can you make this an app?" Even with it configured with PWA capabilities making it installable with a custom icon etc., there was still a disconnect in users' minds between what it and a native app were.

I really hope (and believe) that the open Web will prevail here. If more viral web apps that present a web app-first or web app-only experience gain mass popularity, the balances will start to tip regardless of Apple's obstinate efforts to keep users stuck using its neutered Safari browser.

As is typical, the blog post correctly identifies issues with iOS and Safari, but in many cases presents misleading, inflammatory, or just plain incorrect information.

Here are some things that are correct:

1. Apple would prefer that you write native apps.

2. WebKit on iOS is missing many features that natives apps have.

3. Allowing third-party rendering engines is not a security vulnerability, contrary to Apple's claims. In many cases it actually improves security for users.

4. Apple's rhetoric around anything to do with the App Store is generally self-contradictory and embarrassing.

Here's what's wrong:

1. Apple underinvests in their browser: they most decidedly do not. They do choose to work on things they want to work on, but WebKit is not lacking on engineering talent.

2. "Native apps" are somehow ambiguous and hard to define: they are not, it's been pretty clear that you are using the blessed OS framework and language to create them. The only confusion has been from people wrapping up various shims in minimal native glue and calling it "native", sowing confusion.

3. Apple's choices in what to implement are done without regards to user experience: it's fairly clear that this is not true. The web platform has shown that poorly thought out features come back to be privacy nightmares, and it is important to consider additions before including them in a browser. There are features that could ostensibly be added in a way that helps resolve these concerns, but it is not fair to discuss them as being trivial to implement or privacy posturing–even if they happen to benefit the native app ecosystem.

The rest of the piece is much of the same with cherry-picked links and thinly-veiled agenda, so I'm not going to spend too much time going over all of it, but I think it's pretty obvious that Alex Russell has a pretty clear position he wants to push (get native APIs into web apps on iOS) because of his current employment (Project Fugu for Chrome). He correctly identifies many failures in the iOS web ecosystem but in the pursuit of pushing his point fails to address multiple major issues, including actual privacy concerns in the APIs he pushes and the internal contradiction of "the web is safe and sandboxed, so let's put a bunch more API surface in it to make it like native apps, which are security nightmares". It's a nuanced issue and this post lacks much.

What a sad vision. Per the article, the most important thing about software is that it is safe. The role of an OS is to protect against abuse. The web is inherently safe; therefore we should use web apps instead of native apps. This is profound technological pessimism.

A different vision: computers empower people. An OS provides APIs and UI conventions, and apps can use them to build upon each other, so that users can bring their knowledge from one app to another. Users invest in learning advanced techniques because it's worth it, because all our software participates (think keyboard shortcuts or Unix pipes).

The web has none of this. Websites are not cultivating a new UI vocabulary. Most websites don't support even basic interactions beyond click and tap. They may even actively parasitize the old: Google Docs supports cmd-Z but not Edit->Undo; we are being taught to distrust our UI, the OS itself is being eroded.

> users who cannot perceive or experience the web delivering great experiences

Then build those great experiences and Apple will change its tune. Seriously.

> The web was a lifeboat away from native apps for Windows XP users. That lifeboat won't come for iPhone owners because Apple won't allow it.

iPhone owners are happy and Apple knows it. On the iPhone, web apps are not a lifeboat; instead the web is displacing high-quality native apps with alien-feeling lowest-common-denominator stuff. No thanks.