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Comment by nazgu1 | Hacker News Reader

I wonder how it is that we, as the users, allow it when iOS started allowing third-party. After that we accepted that macOS is more and more closed platform. And I'm hearing constantly something like "Yes, that's wrong, but at least platform is secure". For me security is less about how much platform is closed and more about how educated users are.

On the side note that is interesting, that when first iOS version was released Apple talked that "PWA" will be the future, and nowadays Apple do everything to suppress PWA ;)

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> I wonder how it is that we, as the users, allow it

It's not like we have a choice. Either allow it or... what? Buy a different computer? With what money? Spend time installing a new OS? With what time? And for most users: with what skills?

So long as businesses make choices about the devices you own, you don't really have a choice about "allowing" it to happen.

What? Obviously we can purchase a different computer, install Linux, etc. Apple doesn’t have anything close to a monopoly market position. I buy Apple because I don’t care about customizing my device, I just want something reliable that works and has a good design. Don’t paternalise me by implying I don’t have a choice here.

In today’s market, you basically have three realistic, working choices I wish they were more, but no one seems to want to do the work, at one time there were many choices in the 1980s thru 1995? most of those vertical companies (OS/Hardware) are gone. Apple is basically the last.

Is macOS more of a closed platform? What is more closed about it?

I totally agree that iOS is too closed down and I would say it’s part of an illegally operated duopoly, but macOS is pretty much the same as it has always been.

Apple objectively went out of their way to make sure you can install other operating systems on their silicon platform on Mac which they really didn’t have to do.

> allow it when iOS started allowing third-party

Did you mean "allowing"? Or "prohibiting"

First iPhone had no App Store: no third-party apps.

People have been saying that Apple was going to require apps to be sold through the Mac App Store since 2010. You can install anything you want on your Mac.

And if only mean old Apple is suppressing PWAs, then why are the same companies who make apps for iOS also making apps for Android instead of telling Android users to use the web?

Second point, Apple could care less about random indie developers using a PWA. It came out in the Epic trial that 90% of App Store revenue came from loot boxes and other in app purchases for pay to win games.

Third point, users no more wish they could have shitty PWAs than Electron apps. It’s just what we are stuck with on the desktop

Steve Jobs' "sweet solution" (web apps) for iOS was derided by developers when he announced it at WWDC 2007. But Apple had included a bunch of useful features (touch controls, native-like widgets, javascript canvas, etc.) in mobile Safari so that web apps could be usable and useful. Apple preferred javascript web apps to flash or java apps, which were seen as power-hungry and sources of security flaws. Fast forward to today and you can have a cloud game streaming client (such as Xbox Cloud Gaming, GeForce Now, or Amazon Luna) running as a web app in Safari.

One reason Apple was cautious about third party apps was the concern (from both Apple and carriers) that iPhone features would be misused or the iPhone itself might become unreliable or unusable. So when the App Store was rolled out the next year, apps required approval from Apple and were restricted to running in a sandboxed environment. (Background execution was also forbidden at first due to concerns relating to responsiveness, memory usage and battery drain, as well as security and privacy.)

I think I misstated efficiency concerns for flash/java/etc. influencing web apps; efficiency was more likely a driver toward statically compiled, native apps in objective-C (at the time) such as Apple's own native apps on the iPhone.

Ironically in 2026 many "native" apps on desktop and mobile are basically wrappers for web apps.

Security is not a fixed state, a closed system is not fundamentally more secure as the most vulnerable component is still within the system. The user.

Closed systems are fundamentally more secure. Principle of least privilege demonstrates this

Educating billions of nontechnical users is far harder than technical fixes. It’s not going to happen at scale, so that’s basically an excuse to do nothing.

Mobile phones are mostly for nontechnical users. There are some accommodations for power users and I’m glad they’re there, but we’re not the primary audience.

As a refugee from the 1980s I remember all of the vertical computer companies that were out there all competing against each other but Wintel won, it is not too late for a new operating system or new hardware and in light of all this money being spent on AI currently it could still be done, but there seems to be no will to do so.

You don’t need Apple, Microsoft or Linux approval if you have the talent and the money you can create your own ecosystem. I would’ve loved to have bought a Next computer or a SGI computer back in the day, but I couldn’t afford it at that time.

Someone talented or a group of someone’s who don’t know any better will get the ball rolling again.

There are plenty of people running Linux. The Framework laptop looks pretty sweet. Raspberry Pis are popular and cheap.

It's not mainstream but it doesn't have to be. You could use an iPhone and another computer for hacking.

> nowadays Apple do everything to suppress PWA ;)

Incorrect, see https://pwascore.com/ for a non-religious take. Nobody cares about PWAs, but that's not Apple's fault.

"nobody cares about PWAs" says commenter in reply to post that seems to care about PWAs

also, I care about PWAs

glad we could make your day by introducing you to something new

I think if it were a viable option on an iphone, a nonzero number of people would choose the more privacy-preserving aspects of a PWA over installing a random app

> also, I care about PWAs / glad we could make your day by introducing you to something new

As the creator of pwascore.com, I'm in your elite club of the teensy percentage of people who care about PWAs.

> I think if it were a viable option on an iphone¹, a nonzero number of people² would choose the more privacy-preserving aspects of a PWA over installing a random app

¹They are, and ²they don't. It'd be nice to blame this on HN's favorite boogeyman, but the reality is that (1) PWAs work fine today (pwa.com), (2) the tech industry is anti-PWA, (3) almost no consumers even know what PWAs are, and (4) consumers who do know also prefer "real" apps.

Lets say you were making an app and had to decide between native or PWA. You don't need much more than push notifications so there shouldn't be a big difference between the two. You do your research and find that you can either have:

a) Native app: publish to App Store, make links on your website directly open the App Store page where the user can install your app

b) PWA: your app is usable directly on your website, but push notifications don't work unless your users add the page to their home screen. You can't have a button on your website to install it - you must instruct the user to navigate some Safari menus to find an option which is hidden *six* taps away

Do you think b) is a viable option? I don't, and I'm sure that's one of the reasons the tech industry is anti-PWA. It also doesn't help that Apple drags its feet with supporting new standards (web push only supported in iOS Safari from 2023, but 2016 in other browsers).

Native apps can't send push notifications without asking for permission on iOS either. If all you need is push notifications, that shouldn't be your deciding factor.

I didn't even cover push notification permission in my comment. The PWA also needs to ask for permission to send push notifications after the user adds it to their home screen, so they're the same.

> If all you need is push notifications, that shouldn't be your deciding factor.

I'm dealing with this right now! Rewriting a React Native app as a PWA because reasons. Current plan is to ship it as a WebView app to avoid Apple's PWA installation hurdle. Everyone else will be able to easily install it as a PWA.

I agree that Apple is hiding the "add to homescreen" option and I think it's despicable.

Still, I count 4 taps ("...", Share, "To home screen", "Add") and one swipe.

Don't get me wrong, I do blame Apple for the fact that people don't know about PWAs.

This is completely illogical. There are a lot more dark pattern tracking that websites can do across websites than native apps without a user’s permission

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