Users don’t want crappy PWAs, they want something that follows the platform UI conventions. It’s good that Apple care enough about about UX to actually enforce this.
Actually I believe you're wrong: if people actually preferred Apple's way of doing it, Apple would have no reason to restrict other ways.
They restrict it because people prefer the other way, and that would harm Apple's profits.
You're saying this like there isn't any trash on the Apple App Store? Come on... Beyond the top lists or other discovery models, the Apple App Store contains bunch of things that will never even be downloaded by anyone...
It was more exclusive in the beginning, I give you that. But today, it has as much trash as any other app store.
And that's one of the values of Apple: this vertical integration that makes the overall thing look more polished (and probably easier to use to some extent).
Of course, they are happy to keep the restriction because they can take 30% commission on the paid apps, I'm not saying they are perfect and that there is nothing to improve. But I am not completely convinced that forcing them to lower their standards of integration (by allowing any kind of apps) is necessarily beneficial for the users.
After all, why do developers want PWAs? Probably mostly because it is cheaper for them, not because it's better for their users, right?
Wrong, PWAs can provide better services for users, and the lack of PWAs and enforcement of the App Store monopoly can hurt them[1]:
> The fact that Apple refuses to implement basic features in mobile Safari that Firefox and Chrome have had for years now, and the fact that they refuse to allow other browser engines on iOS is the reason why we can't have nice things like progressive web apps.
> I recently worked on a health app related to the COVID pandemic. The most common use case would be served really well by a PWA, and as such, there's no reason users would need to install an app on their phones to access the web app's full set of features.
> Despite the web app working perfectly on Android and across Windows, Linux and macOS without native integration, we now must dedicate time and resources to develop an additional iOS app just so iOS users, which over half of Americans are, aren't left out.
> This is an expensive endeavor time-wise and money-wise, during a pandemic where time is of the essence and resources are stretched thin. It shouldn't be this way, but it is.
Seems like you do confirm my points.
I am not saying that users can never benefit from PWAs. I am saying that globally, I am not convinced that PWAs will improve the life of iOS users. Just like I don't feel like Electron is improving my life. Slack would maybe have to make a proper app if they did not have Electron, it's not like Salesforce doesn't have the money. I could even go further: if it was actually expensive for such companies to write apps for the platforms they need to support, maybe they would open their APIs. Slack/Discord are glorified IRC messengers, I would love to have a lightweight client to use them (instead of getting a full copy of Chromium for each).
A yet there are a ton of low effort and literal fart apps on the App Store[1].
They don’t even see difference between PWA and apps.
If everything becomes PWA, there is no transparency for the apps. No indication what data they collect. No control for the quality of the apps. No moderation over malicious apps.
PWAs need more permissions to provide the functionality people need, it is not just website.
The point is the experience, not the name of it.
The problem with statements like that, aside from the loftiness, is that you end up with a world where people who think they know better get to decide. I worked in the public sector digitalisation, and while I’m a programmer we were bundled with the rest of IT so I experienced what the supporters had to deal with. This included a lot of employees who genuinely couldn’t tell if the device they needed help for was an iOS or Android device without some guidance. So I’m not going to dispute the claims you make about how it’s nice to protect the “average person” from themselves, but I don’t think any of us will like the what that sort of thinking creates. Well, maybe some people will, but a lot won’t.
I recently wanted something for my two-factor keys and the best all I could find was for Android but not iOS. I ended up filming over a few $ for a Bitwarden subscription, but there are just a lot of little stories like that. I mean, I’m not in the audience for Fortnite, but I’m sure a lot of people were sad when it left iOS. A of which can be avoided if we stop giving all the power to the tech companies.
I’m not sure Apple really has anything to fear from it either in terms of security or usability. Part of the reason they sell so well, at least to me, is that they have the ease of use and tech that works out of the box. It’s very rare that I need side loading. I’m not a huge fan of the Safari enforcement, but it doesn’t really bother me either as I can still use FireFox and the sync. I think Google might have more to fear from it, since they need to peddle commercials inside apps like YouTube, and you can block that if they allow you to side-load app blockers, but for Apple I think almost everyone will just keep on trucking. It will of course hurt their control over payments, like the original poster points out, but that’s not really “my” or the “average persons” problem.
Sideloading will hit hard for Apple's pro-privacy brand.
You lose transparency and quality control for the apps. They don't need to tell you about their data collection practices. They don't have to do actually anything at all, since you can't ban those apps anymore.
Phishing is still a problem of Android and that will become a problem on iOS too. On Android there is still business for anti-virus engines because of the sideloading and Phishing. On Apple devices, there isn't really need for anti-virus but it will become relevant again.
If the sideloading will become very easy, big players who make money with data collection, will leave the platform. You won't find Meta apps soon from the App store. They are so big that people will download these apps regardless.
If that happens, how many fake Instagram apps we will see after that? And you can't ban them from the App store anymore.
So it appears the non-average person doesn't have a clue what's right for the clueless masses either.
Liberty, choice, community and respect. That's all that is needed.
Respect, as you say, is important. Leaf by example.
I was referring into technical implementations and what risks are included. It requires deep undertanding how these things work. Average user does not have it. Many aspects are invisible to the end-users, like the war against malware in App Store.
The end-user knows what they want in terms of end-result. How to to get the job done with a tool (app). They can compare end-results.
Sometimes, however not all results all there to be compared. Because, they don’t understand what kind of tools can be actually created. They are happy with the current one because they think it is the best what can be.
Or, what else the tool can do besides their advertised functionality. Which can be malicious or harmful to user in another way.
Or tools could work in a better way, but are currently hindered for monetary gain.
All this requires specialised knowledge.
If PWA is cheaper to make, companies will go there. Whether or not it's better for the users. Companies want to make money, not help users.
Yea but Apple is a company too…
Gaming on mobile friggen sucks and that is primarily because Apple wants to retain control and the biggest piece of the pie.
Gaming in mobile browsers, in 2023, should be as easily accessible as it were in desktop browser in the Flash days. Apple just won’t come to the table to facilitate a decent gaming experience in Safari.
Let’s also not forget Steve Jobs was all for web standards in his letter against Flash. Apple should make good on what was promised in that letter instead of dragging their feet.
https://newslang.ch/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Thoughts-on-F...
On the other side, if users want standard UI and that's a factor in adoption, wouldn't people making PWAs then just make the apps in such a way - there's nothing stopping them, and there's no lack of UI libraries enabling that.
I'd say look at popular cross-platform frameworks, and tell me if you think that cross-platform apps generally look native. I don't.
A bad native app can require the gps permission, but a bad PWA app will be able to do the same, right?
I really don't think that sandboxing is a good argument in favour of PWAs, honestly.
It should be my choice
Nobody, least of all oneself, knows what one wants (except in the moment; I want some peanuts) so we have to be told. And you certainly do have a choice, so long as it’s the right one.
You have a choice, if you don’t like it buy an Android phone. Or a Sailfish phone, or a KDE phone our one of the other open source phones where the only “apps” are low quality PWA crap. Look how successful they are.
Do you think that's because of PWA UX being inherently crappy and not, say, the fact that those projects don't have billion (or trillion) USD companies behind them? I think you're mistaking the effect for the cause.
PWAs are a way of lowering the barrier of entry for new devs and that's important if you want to achieve any scale.
> You have a choice
It's kind of a like a thug saying that I have a choice between being slapped in the face, kicked in the butt or subscribing to his Twilight fanfic podcast. Yes, I do have a choice, but neither of the choices is really something I'm looking forward to. Betamax vs. VHS comes to mind too.
I think the line of thinking in the parent comment is a bit naive. There's nothing inherently wrong with PWAs from the UX pov if we take monopolies and FUD into account. That's the reason it is harder to build a PWA with really good UX now (harder but not impossible).
It doesn't need Apple to white Knight on behalf of their poor, dim, uninformed users.
Because they're not.
If I don't like PWAs but WhatsApp stops supporting anything else, how can I use WhatsApp without the PWA?
What would be great would be for them to have some kind of API to let people write their own clients. Maybe there are big downsides with that (Loss of control? Having to keep backward compatibility?) but I don't really see them.
Apple is the market here. If people wants to have PWAs they do not buy Apple products.
But in reality "the market decide" is not common sense - that is why we have regulations.
UX isn’t half bad either. It actually feels pretty native most of the time.
Even on your run-off-the-mill desktop web browser, push notifications do not come “for free”. You need a service worker. You need a specific server implementation. It’s not just the Notification API.
(Plus I don't want to actually deal with full Outlook because I have zero interest in accessing my work mail privately, whereas I do need to take a look at my work calendar in order to avoid accidentally double-booking myself.)