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Comment by hn_throwaway_99 | Hacker News Reader

> I suspect that developers are simply angry with Apple for not letting them to fiddle with the latest stuff that Google is experimenting with.

That is absolute bullshit. Browser push notifications have been out for years on other browsers (INCLUDING desktop Safari), and they are the one thing that Apple is dragging their feet on the most because they know it's the most important thing that prevents a dev from just doing a PWA and instead has to do a native app.

This is absolutely Apple protecting their App Store monopoly.

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Personally I think Apple holding the line on browser push might be the single greatest thing Apple has done for the web in the past decade.

Meanwhile Google is moving the goalposts of "modern" web development so fast that it's nearly impossible for anyone to keep up. I can't believe the hacker community is so enthusiastic about this—you couldn't get a more canonical example of embrace, extend, extinguish as applied to an open protocol.

It wasn't long ago that we had four or five really strong browser implementations. Microsoft really did try with Edge and then gave up. Now we have just three: Chrome, Safari, and Firefox. And Mozilla isn't looking particularly healthy right now...

Android web browsers have had push notifications for ten years now. This is not shifting the goalpost. It just happens to be the one feature that would make millions of native apps redundant.

Are millions of native apps have become redundant on Android in those 10 years? What's the situation? What iOS users missing out?

Yes. Not having to install another shitty spying marketing-loaded app.

Okay so, what we are missing on iOS? Do you have examples?

Off the top of my head, offsceeen canvas and being able to query for many processors the client device has to use for web workers

Just push notifications.

How is that any different to using the fully modern web app equivalent of this shitty spying marketing-loaded app?

Are you asking how going to a URL is different from installing an app?

With all the features being added to the Chrome Platform recently, given the trajectory Google is heading along with web applications, absolutely yes.

If you want the actual details then it’s best if you just google it. If you’re trying to make a point, I do know the differences, and it’s far off.

> Meanwhile Google is moving the goalposts of "modern" web development so fast that it's nearly impossible for anyone to keep up.

For a second I thought you were talking about Apple’s UI frameworks and languages, with all the different Swift versions over the last couple of years and different UI frameworks like Cocoa, Catalyst, and SwiftUI, deprecation of OpenGL and introduction of their own graphics API, etc.

That's a stretch. If anything, Apple is too conservative.

The UIKit was the only UI framework from 2007-2019. Then SwiftUI came and they both work very well together. As other frameworks come for stuff like graphics or device features, they don't really replace each other but stack up. On desktop, it's a similar situation.

How is the situation with the web technologies? What was the hip tech in 2007? AJAX? JQuery? What about 5 years ago? AngularJS? Meteor? Bootstarp? what about now? Is it ReactJS or Vue? What about tomorrow? Is it Svelte?

They all arrange Div's in the DOM but it's different framework each month.

You can still use jQuery or plain vanilla HTML+CSS+JavaScript, and you still have access to any web technology out there. Websites written in 1999 will continue to render perfectly. Nobody will deprecate WebGL for example. Nobody forces you to learn a new framework, although the documentation for most of those is actually good unlike Apple’s.

Meanwhile for example you can’t use the latest iOS 15 API (SharePlay) without using Swift, and you need to learn a new half-baked declarative UI API called SwiftUI to write your own widgets. And let’s not talk about trying to run a 1999 executable today.

They all arrange pixels on the screen but it’s a different framework each month.

It's more like every decede but fair enough. If you really want, you can simply use C.

What has the choice of a framework got to do with browsers?

No one is forcing you to use them. HTML and CSS still work perfectly fine, let the people with curiosity and energy experiment. Nothing is stopping you from using browser APIs with any code you want.

Uh, what? The UI framework story is pretty simple.

There used to be frameworks specific to each platform (AppKit, UIKit, WatchKit...). SwiftUI replaces those with a cross-platform solution, but it's not all there yet.

Catalyst is basically a sort of stop-gap to let devs easily convert Cocoa Touch apps for Mac.

Long-term, SwiftUI is the only thing that will matter.

This is a personal opinion, but I'm actually really glad Apple are dragging their feet on this.

I absolutely despise presumptious software that feels entitled to my attention as and when it chooses. I have my browser set up to wholesale reject all push notifications, I don't let the vast majority of my apps send me push notifications, and any application that feels entitled to pollute my inbox (email already has an awful signal/noise ratio as a communications medium) with useless email alerts gets uninstalled or unsubcribed from immediately. Frankly browser notifications should never have been a thing, it's just another varient of the spamdemic that plagues the modern software landscape. I'll look at your software when I choose, and if the software starts dictating that it gets removed or silenced without exception. I honestly don't understand how most people stay sane with their phones and laptops pinging and flashing away like a pinball machine all day.

Push notifications allow me to spend less time on my phone/PC.

Without them, I would have to regularly check the app of interest for any important updates, losing both time and mental space with another thing to keep in the back of my mind.

Thanks to push notifications, I can defer interacting with the app to when it's actually relevant.

Also as I argued in another comment [1], web notifications are simply better than native app ones. Push notifications are here to stay, the choice is in the implementation, not whether they'll become culturally accepted or not (they already are, iOS users simple are nagged to install native apps to have them).

What updates are actually important though? A good 80% of notifications I'd get before I started systematically disabling them by default weren't important at all, they were just pointless nagware trying to get me to engage with the software more frequently so some analytics manager can justify why they shouldn't be sacked that quarter. It doesn't matter to these people that most of the extra clicks and presses are people telling them to piss off so they can get on with actually important work, they only care that engagement is going up. Proper tail wagging the dog bullshit.

Excessive notifications are a dark pattern which needs to be resisted, not encouraged. I'll continue blocking every single one of them and looking at apps on my own schedule, I will not allow random software to interrupt my flow because it thinks it has a right to my attention. Littering is culturally accepted too, but that doesn't mean either littering or its digital equivalent should be.

I agree and am of the same opinion, i’m glad Safari is playing by a slower tune and it definitely it isn’t google’s tune.

You don't want to be given the choice? Nobody is saying notifications should be silently accepted.

If google could move as fast as they could they'd serve their own interest at the expense of others and we know where that leads us. I'm glad that they can't move as fast and it takes a while for things to get accepted.

You're not wrong, there's real upsides to push notifications. For example the thing I love about the iWatch is how it lets me never check my phone because anything relevent is pushed to the watch.

But I think you are really underselling the downsides of push notifications. They are easily the most heavily abused feature of the modern web anywhere they exist. If every single app responsibly used push notifications then sure, it would be great. Here in reality push notifications aren't some personal majordomo making sure only important issues are brought to our attention, push notifications feel more like walking down the Vegas strip having leaflets constantly shoved in your face.

I think its premature to say that we have the answer and just maybe Apple dragging their feet on this will help us find a solution that is better than the advertiser friendly free for all that Google is pushing.

> push notifications feel more like walking down the Vegas strip having leaflets constantly shoved in your face.

Strong agreement here.

There's a significant (single digit %) of sites I run into that ask me to accept push notifications or ask for my email before any of the content loads. I usually close the tab when that happens.

I guess there’s a benefit of not having to take out your phone to check notifications but in the end they do compete for your attention and microdisrupt you anyway. And how many notifications on average are you willing to take in? I personally want as little as possible, the most important contacts and critical alerts are enough for me, the rest can wait till I check for them myself.

Yep and this is where it gets wierd. Maybe I should be allowed to assign priorities to different notifications and then have my phone automatically proritize what makes a "ding" based on the time of day or my geographic location. Maybe notifications should be throttled in some way so that every 30 minutes I receive a digest of notifications if there are any. Maybe they should be aggrigated till I have 5 accoumulated. Or maybe these are all terrible ideas because they require configuration and users aren't going to spend the time configuring their notifications.

This whole thing really goes to the different mindsets of Apple/iOS and Google/Android fans. The Apple camp is fine waiting for functionality to get something that is decently thought out, the Google camp wants everything now and will deal with the consequences later. We've seen this repeated with copy/paste and with background processes on both platforms. Android got there first, but the earliest Android implementations had serious limitations and issues.

I simply solve that problem by having most notifications be silent. Only urgent ones (calls, text messages from a select group of people) are effectively "push" notifications. The rest buffers until I get to looking at my phone.

This is where Apple's paternalistic view takes over. I think Apple's design view is that you the user shouldn't have to take action to protect yourself from sties abusing this feature, the Google view is that it's a free for all. There are merits to both approach and I wish users of both platforms would understand that.

> This is where Apple's paternalistic view takes over. … There are merits to both approach…

Isn’t it generally accepted by both small children and adults that having a Dad is better than not?

Sure, teenagers rebel for a while against anyone caring about them, but they tend to grow back out of that as soon as they have to parent too.

Notifications on all Android browsers I've tried are opt-in.

On the subject of notifications in general, Apple lets their users be spammed more by not adding granular notification categories like on Android.

Your comment doesn't reflect reality. If Apple took notification curation seriously like you imply, I would seriously consider switching to their smartphones, but they don't.

I think you need to take a look at iOS15 features. Not on par but a great start.

> “Maybe I should be allowed to assign priorities to different notifications and then have my phone automatically proritize what makes a "ding" based on the time of day or my geographic location. Maybe notifications should be throttled in some way so that every 30 minutes I receive a digest of notifications if there are any. Maybe they should be aggrigated till I have 5 accoumulated. Or maybe these are all terrible ideas because they require configuration and users aren't going to spend the time configuring their notifications.”

If you haven’t tried it already, you may be interested in iOS 15’s new “Focus” feature set. Even tackles that last point on set up.

I don't feel like that at all because on all of my devices, notifications are opt-in. I get notifications for services I want to receive notifications from (mostly IM).

The exception to this are services which trick you into accepting their notifications because they are beneficial to the experience while using them (ride hailing and delivery apps), and then use the same channels to spam you with marketing (Uber, ...). For those I simply chose to disable notifications altogether and instead let the drivers call me if I'm ever late.

E-mail fits that description better, because you almost always have to give out your address to register (even with Google SSO & co), which is then used for spam and you have to opt-out after the fact.

> I don't feel like that at all because on all of my devices, notifications are opt-in. I get notifications for services I use (mostly IM).

They aren't granular though, you either opt in to all or you get none. This is particularly annoying when you're using something like LetGo or OfferUp, because you basically need to opt in to receive messages from people interested in buying your second-hand stuff. But once you do, they take the opportunity to spam you with engagement boosting ads querying you if you have anything you want to list or telling you "we've selected these sales for you."

It's an extremely unpleasant design pattern for anyone who values their own time and attention.

>This is a personal opinion, but I'm actually really glad Apple are dragging their feet on this.

>I have my browser set up to wholesale reject all push notifications

I am struggling to understand the reasoning here. You don't like feature X but fortunately there is a configuration to turn it off. But you would still like it taken away from everybody else?

Perhaps I am misrepresenting your position, could you clarify?

I don't want to normalise endless notification spam, which is what having this feature in Google's advertiser-friendly conception of it available ultimately does. I'm already considered a bit strange my by friends for muting all group chats and disallowing notifications for things, we don't need to entrench this appalling social norm any further.

I find the idea that everyone should be instantly available at the click of the fingers to their friends, colleagues, managers, and crapware on their phones absolutely revolting. Push notifications are just interruptions as a service, out of band communications like that should only ever be used for important things but they just get endlessly abused as a form of spam in practice. The advertising industry already has enough tendrils to pry its way into our lives, I'd deprive it of yet another if it were up to me.

There is a huge difference that you can turn off a feature A which might be very useful feature for many and you can't even enable the feature A because money. This case is about the latter..

I think depriving users of that functionality is more than worth it if it also deprives the advertising industry of yet another way to make everyone's life worse.

Isn't that what Apple's iOS notifications already do?

What's the justification for allowing it for a certain class of apps, but disallowing it for another class of apps, where the difference between the 2 categories of apps are just the technical infrastructure on which they are based?

It's a difference in philosophy for the most part. Google are an advertising company first and foremost, they'll do whatever is best for the advertising industry and to Google allowing every Tom, Dick, and Harry on the web to shove notifications in people's faces is great. Apple take a more paternalistic view, they see that push notifications in the browser as a feature that's often abused and so remove it entirely as to protect their user experience from annoying behaviour that's outside of Apple's direct control. Notifications originating from apps in the App Store in theory can be vetted much more closely and removed if they're deemed to be spammy.

Neither is intrinsically right and I think it's good that there's choice, what's winding me up is this idea that everyone should adopt the Google model unquestioningly as though Google are a standard unto themselves. I'm very much in the Apple camp, but it's not out of any love for Apple and more that I don't like the advertising industry and want to keep it as far away from my life as I realistically can. To me push notifications are like popups in the '00s, yes there's legitimate uses in limited cases but abuse is so widespread I'm going to treat every one as guilty until proven innocent.

Thanks for your clarification, I understand your reasoning now

Firefox doesn't allow site for even asking permission to notify you without some good reason. It's only Chrome (as always) that doesn't care about your well being. If you want respect, drop the unrespecting relationships. (And yes, complain the hell out of it and ask for Google's head, because they deserve it, but act too.)

Push notifications are extremely useful for a few niche applications. Do not throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Push notifications are also a terrible feature that I don’t want on any of my browsers including desktop Safari. I don’t want developers to even have the option to show me a prompt to enable them.

I use notifications all the time in Firefox and Chrome. They're very useful for receiving updates about things like replies to comments, new videos from a certain video service and actual notifications from a few web apps.

Terrible websites are no reason not to implement a feature on one platform but not another, just a reason to disable them by default. You can already do that in every decent browser, it'll ddeny access prompts without even bothering you. There's no reason to take the option away from everyone because a few people don't like it, that's what settings are for.

> They're very useful for receiving updates about things like replies to comments, new videos from a certain video service and actual notifications from a few web apps.

The service formerly known as RSS/Atom.

I like having them for certain sites, but in Firefox at least, you can block sites from even requesting them if you really never want to use them.

That notifications are annoying is a myth.

The next advancement after the some of the first web-browsers was pop up blockers.

So, at the very least; someone was annoyed at “notifications”.

I’ve been using Android for some years, and notifications are a non-issue. Yet it always comes up from safari apologists.

Don’t you think that notifications and all the associated things are what pushing people to iOS?

Not at all. On Android you've had the ability to mute notifications by type for some time now. Every app that spams me gets its "ad group" notification group muted. I hear that iOS 15 is going to include something similar.

Novice users do not even know what it means to approve a notification. I look at their devices and often see a ton of web notifications that are objectively spam (eg, "tap here to meet hot singles"). The web notification spam is a huge issue.

Speak for yourself, sharing an open office with a person whose phone resembles a casino with all the pinging and flashing is profoundly irritating, as is having to sort through a Sisyphean list of pointless alerts to the point actually important things get missed.

I disable all notifications for everything by default, I'll look at your software on my schedule and nobody else's.

I hope they never implement them on mobile Safari, those things are a pain in the backside on the desktop.

In what way?

I see you are new here, would you like to receive notifications from us? You need to decide on it before even looking at out offerings.

Okay, what about signing up to our newsletter?

Okay, we will track you now all over the internet but if you like you can manage that.

JUST GO AWAY

Okay, btw to see the rest of the article or any of the pictures you need to create an account first.

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Web technologist are clueless about what the Web has become. Please let browsers remain HTML and CSS viewing tools and make an app that I can review on the App Store page before committing to install it.

I hope Apple never implements website notifications on mobile.

You could just disable the notifications? You can do this in pretty much any browser.

https://support.apple.com/guide/safari/customize-website-not...

That doesn't mean that the website wont ask. Because they have single chance, the API is called after they receive your consent through an HTML dialog that looks similar to the native one.

If you disable them, they are not visible. If a website shows you a modal that looks like a notification consent prompt, I hardly see what that has to do with a browser vendor, which is the subject of this thread.

Because right now, they don't render that modal on Mobile Safari since there's no notification support. If they add notification support, we'll start getting those popups.

You could then use Brave which blocks in-website ads and annoyances even on iOS.

I agree that those patterns are annoying but installing an app is at least as many clicks and in fact I may have to search through a few apps to make sure I am installing the right one and not some ripoff that Apple tries to lure me towards with their broken search.

PWA's could be allowed to use things like the push API only if added to the home screen and this problem would be completely solved. You don't like browsers becoming app platforms but I am sorry to say that that ship has sailed on desktop and while Apple is fighting it on mobile, it's a fight they will lose eventually.

Installing an app gives you a chance to consider the option first, with websites you are required to download and install it to take a look and see what is it all about.

On the other hand I wouldn't have a problem with the model where PWA's notifications and other functionalities are limited to apps added to the home screen and the options to manage those is exactly the same with native apps. I don't advocate that all apps must go through the App Store.

Would you like to be notified about meetings in your calendar?

Yes

Would you like notifications when someone mentions or DMs you in your work chat?

Yes

Would you like to know when you get emails?

Yes

Also only one of the things you mentioned has anything to do with notifications.

We could have had passwordless internet if people behaved nicely. Instead of signing in into Gmail with a password and 2FA code, typing your e-mail address would have been enough to see your e-mails if everyone was honest and never misuse this power.

We wouldn't need authentication then...

The nice thing about open standards like web push notifications vs. proprietary apps' arbitrary logic is that the open standard version puts users in control.

The browser is free to refuse every notification request AND make websites believe the notifications have been enabled. Unless smartphone OS vendors are kind enough, you can't do that with app notifications.

It seems you're arguing against the concept of push notifications itself, not whether the native or web app implementation is better.

No No No

Meetings in my calendar, maybe, but I don't need them in the browser because I use a native app because I care about resource usage.

The rest of them, definitely not. Interruptions are extraordinarily costly. I'll respond within a few hours and when I message you about something, I have the same expectations.

As one of the rare Safari desktop users: the most useful key-bind I made was command-shift-r to bring up reader mode. A lot of the "growth hacking" metrics have made the web near-unusable, but reader mode goes a long way towards making it tolerable.

The thought of websites sending me notifications is reason enough for me to want either an app so that I can easily control it’s notifications, or to just not use the service at all.

A magazine article doesn't need to be able to send push notifications.

This is it.

This is the single most user-hostile restriction I’ve seen on iOS.

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