TLDR: We did not want to give other browsers too powerful apis to compete with Safari & App Store.
This doesn't sound at all the same as allowing other engines for use inside browsers, based on both apples defense and the take-downs on them.
Is there some flaw in iOS that makes it harder to secure than the desktop?
So... yes, there is apparently a lack of security there, but that's because the layer in question was never intended to be anything but proprietary until this ruling.
They built their PWA support in an anticompetitive manner assuming App Store & WebKit would be a monopoly forever, and now as a result the baby is going out with the bathwater.
I know it's used as an intensifier, but this feels like a particularly bad place to use "literally" that way.
> They acknowledge that 1) Safari already has all the integrations required to support PWA securely
Not really sure how to respond to this. An airliner already has all the controls required for being piloted. Why am I not allowed to pilot my next commercial flight?
But my more serious point:
> 2) they can't be bothered to provide the same API's for third party browsers because it's not "practical".
Why are you glossing over "practical" there and putting it in sarcastic quotes?
This sounds like a huge change in the security model given how tightly Safari is integrated with the rest of iOS. Heavily restricting permissions and sometimes functionality to prevent security threats is very consistent with what I've seen from Apple in the past (and is one of the reasons I prefer them).
Even if they intended to open this stuff up, I can't imagine this is a change which wouldn't require massive changes to iOS and a long review and testing process.
> They built their PWA support in an anticompetitive manner assuming App Store & WebKit would be a monopoly forever, and now as a result the baby is going out with the bathwater.
They built their PWA support for the architecture they've had since the iPhone's release. Why should they have wasted time building affordances for a world in which they were forced to support other browsers?
Flying a plane badly risks the lives of your passengers, the lives of people on other planes, and people in the nearby area.
Doing whatever you want with your phone doesn't risk other people's phones.
What kind of ridiculous "argument" is this? Am I putting hundreds of other people in risk by installing Firefox on my iPhone? The fact remains that the EU in fact does intend to put you in front the airliner's controls. You can of course choose to turn on autopilot and keep using Safari.
> Why should they have wasted time building affordances for a world in which they were forced to support other browsers?
Guess what, "tight integration" of Internet Explorer into Windows for whatever technical reasons was not a favorable argument for Microsoft in front of the European Commission either. Lack of foresight to design open systems is not an excuse in front of the law.
Certainly it’s an extreme example, but yes, giving people the ability to install other browsers and app stores is increasing their risk. This ruling makes it possible for some companies to decide to only allow their app to be installed through an alternate app store, which won’t necessarily restrict malicious code in the same way.
But it is increasing _their_ risk. That's the massive difference from your example. Installing other browsers and app stores is increasing _your_ risk
I cannot see this as anticompetitive. If you want open, you have that choice in Android.
Also, Safari is a non-Chromium-based (though still related) browser which developers are forced to support because it's the only thing allowed on iPhones. Most users aren't going to install Firefox on their iPhone, they're going to install Chrome, which is just going to make Chromium's market dominance worse.
If Apple doesn’t support PWAs then PWAs stop being a viable method of app deployment - killing the platform outright. That’s anticompetitive.
"Hey PWA, don't let the door hit you on the backside, on your way out".
The browser is just about the most vulnerable attack surface on any computer. Using it as a general-purpose application host is nuts, IMHO.
> They built their PWA support in an anticompetitive manner assuming App Store & WebKit would be a monopoly forever, and now as a result the baby is going out with the bathwater.
They built it in such a way that it was sustainable and sensible for the time it was made (iOS 2.0). That's a really long time ago in the software world. More than a dozen versions of the OS have been built on top of this. Saying "they should have just figured it out back then" is completely ignoring the reality of what was offered by the OS and the mobile space entirely at the time.
Now laws have been passed that say "you must provide alternatives." OK. They can choose to spend an ungodly amount of time refactoring the OS to undo 16 revisions of the OS of assumptions for zero benefit for the company, or they can say "Sorry we can't comply with that for your market."
It sucks. But it's a result of reasonable business decisions and their evolutions from a significantly different era.
> They built it in such a way that it was sustainable and sensible for the time it was made (iOS 2.0).
Support for installing progressive web apps was added in iOS 11 [1], released in 2017. This is decade(s) after Microsoft was dragged to court in the US and EU for similar behavior with Internet Explorer. Of course being the authoritarian company they are, Apple would rather dig their heels until the bitter end instead of just doing the right thing.
> Saying "they should have just figured it out back then" is completely ignoring the reality of what was offered by the OS and the mobile space entirely at the time.
Sorry, but the rest of the mobile space did figure it out at the same time. All of the things being debated in this thread simply just work on any Android phone and Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox in a secure manner. I'm so tired of this reality distortion field.
[1] https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/releasenotes/Gen...
And it probably took the space a non trivial amount of time to figure it out whilst apple allocated their time on other features.
Now a regulation says that Apple should figure it out and Apple says they'd prefer to continue to allocate their time on other features.
Apple is not government company, they do not make decision on what makes all users happy, regardless of how small the feature they are building is. They make decision based on how much profit they're expected to make. Apple probably calculated the efforts and possible profits on this and profits would probably be negative on both options to either build pwa support on arbitrary browsers vs remove pwa support on all browsers altogether. Removing support was probably the option that showed lower profit loss across the short term.
In the end, I still think it's a bad move, but why should Apple care about what I think?
I don't use pwas, I don't even use apple products.
They are being rightfully forced to open all their gatekeeping features, in this case, they simply chose to remove the feature as a whole instead of opening it up to everyone. They will take a loss here, but it might be a smaller loss when compared with the effort that they'd have to do if they were to open the feature in the limited time the EU has given them.
Maybe in the future they'll do it, but not now.
I don't see why everyone is getting so worked up about this, apple is in it for the profit, even if it mean losing some in the short term. Why is this so surprising?
I asked because the thing this company said in this particular instance aligned with what I’d heard from other (independent) parties and I wanted to know why this person seemed so sure about that being wrong.