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Comment by makeitdouble | Hacker News Reader

> they don't want an OS in a web browser running on their OS.

IMHO that ship has sailed.

With the current state of the web, what JS needs to do and what it needs access to, any mainstream web browser needs to become an OS in all shape and form. Managing Skype or Zoom on the web is so far away from displaying Craiglist 20 years ago, and users sure want to be able to open a link and interact with the service without having to download an app.

And this acceleration in web "pages" becoming full fledge apps is of course partly caused by Apple and its control on what can and cannot be distributed in the AppStore and middlemanning all payments. And god forbid to have multiple versions of the same app with different users for instance.

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Sure, but I don't want a web-app to be able to send me push notifications (all I've ever seen it used by is stupid websites sending what amounts to SPAM), or vibrate my device, or use the accelerometer.

~80% of web usage is looking at web-sites, and most of them are already a bloated mess of JS. If anything, the web would be much better if more sites were like craigslist. That ~20% is not worth the cost in terms of privacy, security, complexity, battery usage. I would rather a native app, or use a competing service that provides one.

You don't want that, but people are looking at gmail or google calendar on the web, and notifications are a huge QOL. Getting access to the accelerometer feels niche, but accessing the NFC chip, phone contacts, the camera or real time locations would be more common.

Dealing with the security and privacy aspects of those would be enough to get near the complexity of an OS. And to note...looking at the facebook app for instance, being native doesn't seem to be a protection from bloat, it will there either way.

On the web as a static thing, sure 80% of the web is fine as a static information. The 20% on the other hand are things we care a lot about, and I personally hate the "why don't you install our app?" prompt on every damn site. Reddit is the poster child of this, and god no I don't want their native app.

To each their own I guess.

> You don't want that, but people are looking at gmail or google calendar on the web, and notifications are a huge QOL.

I look at the emails/calendar on the web _because_ I do not want notifications and other junk/distractions. I do not think it is big deal for people to have an email client app on their phone if they want their functionality.

The whole point it to give people options to get the feature they want.

I totally get that you prefer notification on your apps and no notification on the web, the same way people enjoy notifications on their watch and not on their phone, or only read their mail and calendar on their laptop and keep nothing on their phones, etc.

There is an infinite number of combinations of what people want, the whole purpose of these rulings is to let users manage the state they want instead of Apple dictating what is allowed or not solely based on their business interests, even if it those can align with your preferences for instance.

It is not about "infinite number of combinations", it is about browsers having some specific functionality as of now (not just in iOS), people preferring using web versions of apps on them because of that instead of installing apps, and app developers seeing that people use the web versions and saying "oh people are using the web versions, maybe we should give these the same functionality as the apps", disregarding that people _choose_ not to install their (crappy) apps exactly because of these "features" and "functionality", which usually mostly are about sucking your data and spamming you with ads.

All this apple-related HN web-browser drama is not about what _users_ want, it is only about what app developers and companies want.

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