Hacker News Reader

Comment by jb1991 | Hacker News Reader

jb1991

I am certainly not surprised that Apple is employing a lot of legal tricky to work around judgments. But what does surprise me is that there’s a very common attitude in forums that somehow Apple is the only company doing this, or they’re doing it worse than any other company.

View on HN

For me personally they seem to be more expensive than competitors and have a more aggressive stance on openness (ex: compare PWA support on Android vs iOS, not to mention the multiple other things like no multiple stores, the browser engine discussion, etc). So, I am not amazed that people think "on top of all the other things that you annoy us with you also try to avoid the law?!".

While I hate Apple's anti-consumer practices as much as anyone, the PWA platform is a system set up by Google first and foremost. Take-up has been limited outside of Google Chrome. I wouldn't say Apple's PWA approach is necessarily an example of Apple's fuckery.

This wouldn't be much of an issue, of course, if Chrome would just run on iOS like it does on any other OS, so Google can implement PWAs themselves.

> This wouldn't be much of an issue, of course, if Chrome would just run on iOS like it does on any other OS, so Google can implement PWAs themselves.

You do understand that the reason it doesn't is because Apple won't let it, not that Google don't want to?

This is a fantasy. No customer wants PWAs. They exist to make developers' lives easier, not consumers' lives.

Developer efficiencies can be translated to customer wins.

Then allowing Apple the efficiency of not implementing yet another way to build a GUI also is a customer win.

Apple already implement everything needed. They just decided that they can clear client-side storage for PWAs whenever they like (deleting user data), making them useless for anything that needs to store data and isn't synced to the cloud.

The goalposts move every time Apple resolves some bug that PWA advocates promise is the one issue holding them back from taking over the world with crappy web apps.

Apple hasn’t resolved any of the main issues.

Install and discoverability is still hidden. Push is gated behind install. Safari’s scroll bugs haven’t been fixed despite us extensively documenting them, emailing to Safari’s leadership and raising them every year as the number one bug.

The number one thing we’ve asked for is third party browser engines on iOS.

What goalposts do you think have moved?

Nope, it's been push notifications and persistent storage for a decade.

I would also add: - Install Prompts / Discoverability - Bugs (like https://github.com/web-platform-tests/interop/issues/84) which likely would only get fixed if Safari has heavy competition on iOS (it's a funding issue)

Certainly in theory, almost never in practice. The enterprise slop shop that chooses web technologies because the consultants are cheaper is not trying to make anything lasting or delightful.

The consumer doesn't care which method is used to serve an application. PWAs could easily be presented to the end user like a native App.

The problem is rather that PWAs would prove a viable path for universal cross-platform applications, taking away the gatekeeper role the OS-vendors have.

Paradoxically PWA-support is also part of the "we're no gatekeeper" narrative, so it's in the OS-vendor interest to keep it maintained as a hampered alternative to native apps.

> The consumer doesn't care which method is used to serve an application. PWAs could easily be presented to the end user like a native App.

No it can't. The web will never support what's necessary for parity with native apps. Imagine trying to implement Liquid Glass in CSS.

First, you're mixing up capabilities of PWA vs native apps (no one stated they're equal) and how an OS presents Apps differently from PWAs (which was my point).

Second (even though it's completely beside the point), especially Liquid Glass could be implemented in PWA, because it's a rendering effect the OS could put on top of appropriately tagged elements of the application. And voila, the same webapp could render in Liquid Glass in IOS26 and in less-gaudy Liquid Glass in IOS28, and meanwhile in no Liquid Glass at all on devices that don't have it...

PWAs are the primary way for small busineses to have internal private apps for running staff services on local devices. Apples App Store has way too many hoops to jump through and has far too high a wait time to publish for businesses to move fast and update internal apps with bugfixes and new services etc.

Android accomplishes this by allowing devices to connect to private app stores and repos, which enable companies to issue their own apps on their own terms. As Apple plays hard ball on this front, the only way is to use a PWA.

Custom apps published for internal use by companies with fewer than 100 employees who aren't eligible for enterprise app distribution sounds like a niche of a niche use case, so it's pretty consistent with my view that they're more developer catnip and not a serious technology.

Thats a lot of assumptions to back up your own point.

Your point was PWAs are necessary for small businesses to distribute apps. I just spelled out what that meant, since businesses with >100 employees can just use enterprise app distribution on iOS.

I would personally say that the barrier to entry for Apple enterprise app distribution is very very high, and requires so many hoops to be jumped through that it would take a much larger company than 100 staff to warrant that

https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/deployment/depce7cefc4...

Of course, Apple is sabotaging Chrome and has been for years, and that's a much bigger problem than PWAs. The Safari team shouldn't need to implement PWAs against their will, Apple should instead let Google bring out a browser that does PWAs and then let the users decide if they want to use PWAs or not.

Google does something quite similar, though; Chrome can install applications into Android's app drawer, but that requires privileges other browsers can't attain, needing to resort to things like widgets instead. Firefox doesn't care about PWAs and Apple doesn't care about any platform but their own, so it's not as obvious a problem, but Android is full of "you must be the manufacturer or Google to compete" permissions. Android is just a lot better at fair competition than iOS, to the point you'd barely notice.

Mobile web apps that can be installed on device were invented by Apple.

This was the way developers were supposed to develop apps for the iPhone when it was released, before Apple introduced the App Store.

I don’t think that’s true. Apple said web sites were the way to add functionality to the first iPhone, but “can be installed on device”?

Jobs framed it that way, but IIRC, all you could do is create bookmarks. Creating an icon on the Home Screen? Impossible. Reliably storing data on-device? Impossible. Backing up your on-device data? Impossible. Accessing your on-device contacts, photos? Impossible.

Also, Jobs made a vision statement about web apps in June 2007, but Apple announced a SDK only four months later (in October 2007) and shipped it in March 2008.

⇒ I’m fairly sure he knew about that SDK when he made that statement.

The ability to install web apps that open as standalone apps, and not in Safari, was introduced by Apple with iOS 2.1 in 2008. Well before this ability was added to Android.

Apple invented installable mobile web apps.

Link about the needed metatag: https://www.mobilejoomla.com/forum/4-feature-requests/330-ip...

Steve Jobs introducing web apps as the way to develop apps for the iPhone in 2007: https://williamkennedy.ninja/apple/2024/01/30/steve-jobs-int...

Another Apple myth, Symbian had a Web runtime before anyone at Apple came up with the idea.

Also that was precisely the idea behind Windows 9x Active Desktop apps.

IMHO. Apple were the first to make it useful. Because the iPhone was always online and the browser window was limited. Active Desktop aimed for the technological stars and was just buggy and slow as a result, it was cool but too flaky to be used.

Symbian I just never had an Phone expensive enough to use like that.

In the end none of them really worked out I guess.

Mobile web apps were what Apple wanted developers to use, but they weren't new, let alone invented by Apple.

I didn't say Apple invented mobile web apps. I said Apple invented the ability to install mobile web apps on device.

I'm not 100% sure no other mobile OS allowed this before to be honest, but I'm pretty iOS is the one that popularized it.

Microsoft promoted PWAs pretty heavily back in Win8 days. That was the reason why HTML/JS was one of the "first class" (alongside with C++ and .NET) development stacks introduced there - the idea being that people would write cross-plat PWAs to target iOS and Android, but then they would already have something that's 90% of its way to a native Win8 app.

Openness is not a concern for the people who buy Apple devices, and probably not for the public at large. It certainly is no concern to me, I need a machine which works so I can get stuff done. For a MacBook that means opening the lid. For a Windows laptop that means plugging it in, opening the lid, waiting for half an hour for the system to update while it is unusable and hogging all the bandwidth at this time, etc.

Smart phones took over from personal computers, because people want something which works and they hate having to fiddle with their device, trouble shoot and fix things. They don't care that they can't install an Arch Linux terminal on it or download torrents. And if they need something more pro, they go for an iPad or a Macbook when they can choose. Openness is only important for programmers and people who love to mess with their device, not for the public at large.

> But what does surprise me is that there’s a very common attitude in forums that somehow Apple is the only company doing this, or they’re doing it worse than any other company.

Apple creates vertically integrated devices. For many people, Apple dictates their entire digital life - far more so than any megacorporation on the mere level of, say Google, could ever hope to, considering Apple owns the hardware, software, and everything in between. So they are in a position shared by no other company - they are entirely unique in this. You cannot buy a device with entirely Google-designed hardware and software - Pixels with Android come close, Chromebooks come close, but nothing reaches Apple, even without custom silicon. I would say the closest company that exists in terms of vertical integration is Oxide Computer, but those aren't consumer devices.

So it's not that Apple is the only company doing this. It's also not that they're "doing it worse than any other company". It's that when they do this it affects people on a level not shared by any other company. It has a much larger impact than anybody else ever could.

For the record, I don't mind Apple's vertical integration, in fact that's one of their main selling points for me. It just gives them the greatest possible leverage to implement these sorts of practices.

> You cannot buy a device with entirely Google-designed hardware and software - Pixels with Android come close

I don’t really understand this distinction. How is eg a Pixel 9 Pro running Android with GMS on a Tensor any less entirely Google-designed than an iPhone 16 is entirely Apple-designed?

You can still install Huawei market place or Fdroid marketplace and sideload all the apps you want. And it's easy to do.

> How is eg a Pixel 9 Pro running Android with GMS on a Tensor any less entirely Google-designed than an iPhone 16 is entirely Apple-designed?

Android is developed by the Open Handset Alliance[0], which is not just Google:

    Its member firms included HTC, Sony, Dell, Intel, Motorola, Qualcomm, Texas Instruments, Samsung Electronics, LG Electronics(formerly), T-Mobile, Nvidia, and Wind River Systems.

Android is more of a collaboration than Apple's entirely in-house. (Technically Apple's current generation of operating systems traces back to NeXTSTEP, which itself traced from some other things, but it's still had much cleaner provenance and been much more tightly controlled than Google's continuous conglomeration.)

I will say though I'd never heard of the Tensor until now, that's very interesting. I guess I am out of date on Pixels.

Apple owns manufacturing and patents for most of the tech they use in their phones (e.g. batteries, biometric sensors, and so on). Google Pixels use third-party suppliers (e.g. their fingerprint sensors are usually from FPC, Goodix or Qualcomm), they follow the same sets of protocols as other Android devices, and they use many of the same drivers provided by the third-party component vendors. For this reason I also wouldn't say the Microsoft Surface is vertically integrated. At best it's designed to work well with the software that's on it, and the software has had some features added for the device. Maybe that's some measure of vertical integration, but not quite to the level of Apple.

Apple certainly doesn't own everything; for example the actual display panel in an iPhone usually is manufactured by Samsung or LG Display. In my opinion though they still own enough to be far more integrated than Pixels are.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Handset_Alliance

I can install apps that Google doesn't approve, and app stores other than Google's on my pixel.

I can get root access to my pixel.

I can replace the operating with an open source fork on my pixel.

Google is not using its monopoly on the hardware to get a monopoly on the software - they're competing on software primarily on its own merits and the convenience of being the default.

No other phone company that I know of even develops their own operating system.

Apple really is unique in their attempt to control the software that runs on the mass market general purpose computing devices that they sell.

> But what does surprise me is that there’s a very common attitude in forums that somehow Apple is the only company doing this, or they’re doing it worse than any other company.

Apart from being irrelevant and whataboutism, this is the narrative Apple is playing, particularly towards its userbase.

The EU regulation doesn't focus on Apple in any way, the purpose of the DMA is to have objective criteria to identify a scaled market of digital goods with an uneven playing field for all players.

The EU DMA has identified that Apple created a closed market of significant size, made themselves the gatekeeper and invited companies to compete there. But Apple participates in the market also as a player, and skews the playing field in their favor.

So it's an unjust market where forces are unable to flow freely, and the EU is attempting to rectify that.

The reasons why Apple is in such public focus on this are #1 because they operate an unusual amount of closed markets and #2 because they WANT this: it is part of Apple's strategy to rally publicly against the regulation and shape a different perception of it.

I wouldn’t argue that Apple is worse than any other company. They’re just the tip of the spear in the fight against EU competition regulation. Other companies would fight just as hard if they had as much to lose by following the rules.

Apple is a very stylish kind of company. Their public perception matters more because when you use an Apple product, it creates an image of you.

If I buy a Google phone, no one is going to comment on it. If I buy an Apple, or a Tesla, or luxury vehicle, people are going to comment on it.

If Apple is known to be scummy and you buy it, it makes you look bad. I think we are seeing that with Tesla now, I doubt too many liberals are buying a cybertruck.

maybe true in some parts of the world. where i live, literally 50% of phones are apple phones. they are commonplace. nobody comments on them.

I’m not sure where you live but this is a rather strange perspective. Apple is a lifestyle company? I think for every person I know that has an android phone, there are three or four with iPhones, where I live. Doesn’t make a very convincing case of some specific kind of a lifestyle niche.

Then, among the developers I know, nearly none of them are actually writing apps for Apple devices, approximately half using MacBooks.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com