Apple launching web apps? And Maps of all things? Suppose that's the logical order. (Should it have been mail first? Or a search engine?)
What year is it?
What's with the browser restrictions too?
What year is it?
What's with the browser restrictions too?
The browser restrictions are probably because developing hardware accelerated map rendering engines for the web is a bit of a project and the support for things like WASM and Web GPU in Safari is probably requiring dealing with some Apple specific quirks. Maybe they'll get around to that eventually. I think for most web developers, no Firefox support would be a show stopper. There's no point to this strategy unless they address that.
KeyNote, Mail, Numbers, Pages and Photos have been available as web apps for years (and minor ones such as Notes and Reminders)
I think a main reason Keynote, Numbers and Pages web apps exist is for sharing with non-Mac users.
I wouldn't be surprised to see apple try and release some expanded subscription that includes mapping features. Not sure what TBH and there have been no leaks, but they're searching for revenue streams, and the App Store is getting eyed by regulators.
Oh and the browser restriction is probably temporary - MapKit.js works on all major platforms, even Firefox, so its safe to assume this will get there too.
The most annoying part is they CDN from California for UK/EU users. Start playing something not downloaded, hit skip a couple of times and enjoy 10 seconds of buffering.