It is baffling how some random people will come to Apple's defense from the most unimaginable angles. "Safari is lacking but should be enough for 95% of the apps". Why do we even have the App Store then? For the rest 5%?
No. We have AppStore for the hundreds of thousands of apps that cannot be implemented using web tech. And for hundreds of thousands of apps that people could implement using web tech, but don't want to for various reasons, both big (too many workarounds) to small (abysmal performance for the simplest tasks)
These are not disconnected, though. The web COULD be made to support more of these use cases, but Apple wouldn't be able to collect 30% of the profits. Safari was a laggard for many years while the App Store was being entrenched.
No, it couldn't
> but Apple
Apple has nothing to do with the fact that the web can barely render a page of static text and images without stutter. Almost every single app made with web technologies is a slow bloated abomination barely capable of doing a few primitive things right. And those that aren't have insane amounts of effort poured into them.
If you believe that Apple has something to do with it, why isn't there a flood of amazing smooth native-like apps on Android where none of the real or perceived limitations exist? Why is there a Google Play store with hundreds of thousands of apps?
Note how you addressed nothing I wrote.
Adieu.
Not sure what to address in your post since only your contempt against the web was of especial note. There are more apps in the Android Play Store than the iOS App Store. There are also third party app stores offered by Amazon, Samsung, including OSS ones like F-Droid. So..I am not sure what point you were trying to make, sorry.
But I do think that the situation we are in where any company have to develop an application when the web does it nice enough (and it’s especially true for products such as Patreon) is pretty ridiculous.
Of all the companies around, Patreon is one who could easily avoid this in app fee nonsense just by avoiding having an app in the first place (or at least having an app for subscribers, maybe the app is useful for content creators).
I’d totally prefer a situation where Apple wouldn’t act like dicks but by accepting this situation, Patreon is just legitimizing Apple behavior.
That's the biggest complain of every web app developer but you are saying that Safari is already great for that while excusing Apple's behavior. Wow.
So let me repeat my opinion : yes Safari lacks a lot of features and APIs to be a good application platform. Yes, Apple is a shitty company especially when it comes to app policies. But, in the current state of affairs, Safari is enough for simple applications/websites such as Patreon.