Apple drops PWA support on iOS for EU users

https://twitter.com/firt/status/1755406923485122615

by franky47 • 2 years ago

104 90 2 years ago

twitter.com

malermeister4• 2 years ago

I see Apple is trying the "self harm as a threat" tactic. We'll see how that goes for them.

cranberryturkey3• 2 years ago

apple is quietly laying off engineers now anyway.

aitchnyu• 2 years ago

Source?

mtomweb8• 2 years ago

in Safari/webkit or more broadly?

JumpCrisscross• 2 years ago

I suppose this will yield a real-world test of the EC's enforcement powers. To my understanding, they have little unilateral power--their legislative powers are limited to initiative (not a paltry power, but not a unilateral one either) and its enforcement power seems to consist of taking cases to the ECJ.

Does the ECJ grant the EC injunctions?

jsnell• 2 years ago

As far as I know, the EC is the prosecution, jury and judge. They investigate the case, decide on the guilt, and decide the penalty.

The court systems do exist as an appeals mechanism, but my impression is that they pretty much never overrule the EC on competition issues.

malermeister4• 2 years ago

Yup, the EC can do pretty much what it sees fit when it comes to competition issues. It's not a good idea to challenge them, as Facebook and Google have already learned. Guess it's Apple's turn next.

borisjabes• 2 years ago

This might be a misunderstanding. The following tweet implies they’ve just tightened the standard for how sites are supposed to be configured as PWAs.

https://x.com/jamesrlandrum/status/1755411290107863429

viraptor• 2 years ago

Both can be true. If what you did before doesn't work now and potentially drops your storage, the explanation doesn't matter. It could be a planned improvement in theory. It still broke things for people - literally dropped support for some PWA that mattered to people.

mtomweb8• 2 years ago

This person is incorrect and doesn’t know what he’s talking about. You need to look at the full video of it action to realize the difference in behavior from 17.3 and 17.4 beta 1 and beta 2

spense• 2 years ago

It's not true. According to a follow-up tweet:

Sites that had some PWA information provided - such as an iOS icon - would be added as PWAs even though they weren’t. They have tightened up things so that only sites that are explicitly configured as PWAs will be added as such.

https://x.com/JamesRLandrum/status/1755411290107863429?s=20

mtomweb8• 2 years ago

We’ve had more than 10 people test it, and it completely breaks all PWAs. Why are you trusting some randoms tweet as a credible source?

kalleboo• 2 years ago

You're just some random commenter on Hacker News, why should I trust you?

underdeserver• 2 years ago

If you want to disprove the claim, the tweet needs to say, "I live in the EU, have the update installed on my phone, and I just successfully installed this PWA."

This is thoughts and prayers, not a counterexample.

19h• 2 years ago

All of the PWAs on my iPhone running 17.4 will now open in Safari instead of in fullscreen, and iOS itself warned me the first time I opened a PWA from the home screen after installing 17.4 that iOS will now open all „linked websites“ in the „configured default browser“.

They’re obviously trying to prevent companies from bypassing their extortion proposal in response to DMA by simply offering a PWA to users that can work around the „core tech fee“..

lozenge• 2 years ago

I have never seen a normal person use or install a PWA so this seems like pointlessly picking a fight on Apple's part.

WA• 2 years ago

Such a backwards viewpoint. Just because normal people don't know about it yet, doesn't mean it can't work in the future. Needs a bit of re-training and possibly a couple bigger apps going full PWA.

jckahn• 2 years ago

I’m as big of a PWA advocate as any, and even I don’t think this will ever happen. PWAs are the most user-centric app platform, but it’s not conceptually intuitive to the average user. For that to change, PWAs need a strong marketing push. I don’t see anyone stepping up to do that.

mo_422• 2 years ago

I'm a long-term Linux user and started buying Apple products long ago. I still keep my iPhone 4S around because I think it's a piece of art. I think the hardware and physical design of Apple products is really great.

When I heard about this new EU regulation, I started to consider retiring my iPhone. I developed my own iOS app, but I'm unable to run it permanently because I need to get it approved by Apple to install it on my own device. PWAs are an alternative I was considering, and I'm also using some from others.

If this is true. I'll switch to Android. The only device I'd keep using actively is the M1 MacBook because it's running Asahi Linux and I haven't booted into MacOS for months now.

malermeister4• 2 years ago

How's Asahi on the M1 macbook? I'm considering switching, too.

mo_422• 2 years ago

Feels like it's constantly improving. I'm running it since 1.5 years. Battery life is much better now. It even supports TLP (with the AUR version).

Hard to tell what I'm missing currently. But I'm using rather basic tools in the command line and all these work fine. Of course Firefox works. Inkscape, Darktable, TexLive, too.

siquick• 2 years ago

I developed my own iOS app, but I'm unable to run it permanently because I need to get it approved by Apple to install it on my own device.

This isn’t the case anymore. If using Expo you can also do it through EAS Build.

https://developer.apple.com/help/account/manage-profiles/cre...

https://docs.expo.dev/build/internal-distribution/#22-config...

foverzar3• 2 years ago

Aren't you still required to have a paid dev account?

bathtub365• 2 years ago

This just looks like either ad hoc or enterprise distribution, which has nothing to do with Expo and has existed for years.

WirelessGigabit• 2 years ago

I still need to pay $100 per year, and I need to beg Apple for VPN capabilities in case I want to work on software like Wireguard.

rickstanley• 2 years ago

I bought an iPhone last year. I started regretting it after 3 months of usage. Trivial things are a burden to set up, like:

- custom ringtone;

- emulators;

- lock screen rotation in landscape;

- listen to music from local storage without an Apple subscription;

I could go on and on. Most of them have solutions, but again, a burden to configure compared to an Android device. My next smartphone will be Android, once again. I just wish small smartphones were more common and had battery life comparable to Apple's.

I bought a second hand MacBook Pro 2015 to use Linux on. I'll let Asahi cook a bit more before moving to an M series.

soraminazuki3• 2 years ago

listen to music from local storage without an Apple subscription

That this is a burden to do is straight up false. Playing from local storage works the same as it did since the days of the iPod.

beretguy2• 2 years ago

You can continue using iPhones that don’t downgrade to iOS 17. Unless you want to stick it to the Apple.

sfryxell2• 2 years ago

same. They think they are the only unix in town.

sfryxell2• 2 years ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39299007#39377420

I wanted to flesh this out some more.

fxtentacle• 2 years ago

My guess would be that Apple is trying to blackmail some large software company inside the EU. And after careful consideration, they noticed that threatening to wipe all of their apps data of all Apple devices will do.

If my theory is correct, we will soon see a large EU software company - which deployed PWAs in the past - mysteriously start supporting Apple in their refusal to open up to alternative App Stores in the EU.

They will talk about security and user choice, while completely ignoring that the EU is merely asking Apple to treat them as well as China. In China, Apple has already been allowing 3rd party app stores for some years.

For what it's worth, I used to be a proud Apple user. But recently, I can't help but imagine the financial incentives behind their every move.

ranguna• 2 years ago

A lot of companies in the EU only survive due to government grants, so I'm not sure apple will be successful on this one. They are trying a USA strategy on EU soil.

akmarinov2• 2 years ago

Which one would that be? Nothing comes to mind.

bjw4• 2 years ago

Could it be game streaming? Xbox Xcloud uses a PWA.

youngtaff2• 2 years ago

Can we correct the headline…

This is just Max’s viewpoint and others in the thread who are actually in Europe have confirmed it works for them

judiisis• 2 years ago

No it doesn't work for anyone in the EU for any type of pwa

slau3• 2 years ago

I just saved https://whatpwacando.today/ to my Home Screen and opened it as a PWA from there, was able to launch the camera etc.

I’m in the EU on the latest version of iOS.

youngtaff2• 2 years ago

And yet there are other people in the very same thread for who it works e.g. https://twitter.com/fr3ino/status/1755511944016973873

So your statement isn’t accurate

foverzar3• 2 years ago

Wait, has Web Push ever worked on iOS?

Sominemo• 2 years ago

They added support for it in iOS 16.4, but websites can access it only when they are added to home screen. Thus, no home screen access means no Web Push.

mtomweb8• 2 years ago

It was only as a result of regulatory pressure

Khaine3• 2 years ago

As a user, web push is a terrible idea. It's not something I want. I'm glad its so hard to do on iOS.

jauntywundrkind2• 2 years ago

Such aggressively zero sum thinking.

Maybe you have a fine native calendar app available to you on your platform that you trust. Great, good for you. Maybe you have a messenger app on your native platform that you trust. Good for you, we are happy for you!

To use that to say the web shouldn't have a capability is incredibly cruel. Other users have corporate controlled systems and school laptops and terminals at public library. These users have next to no power, but the web is a common baseline for humanity that does serve & help everyone. It should have this capability, be possible to do this thing.

If this feature annoys you, don't use it. Turn it off. This is the web: get an extension that blocks Web Push requests preemptively. You as a web user have a user agent at your back that is flexible & configurable in how you browse the web. Just telling people they can't have a feature because In Your High Opinion It's Bad takes so much. Other people should have the liberty too. The web should have features, not cater to those who insist on its withdrawal from spaces they carve out.

Alifatisk2• 2 years ago

There is no way to install PWA on FF for iOS anyways.

slau3• 2 years ago

That’s not true.

Burger menu -> Share -> Add to Home Screen

Works fine.

Alifatisk2• 2 years ago

Oh, it was hidden in the share option! I always had to visit the site through Safari.

bunbun69• 2 years ago

all 5 people who use PWAs will be very mad!

sccxy2• 2 years ago

I work in company with 100+ PWA users where we had to buy cheap android phones because iOS PWA support is non-existing and every update makes PWAs worse.

Native app is not possible, app stores rules do now allow to publish our app.

We had "the most powerful and advanced smartphones" (TM) iPhones first, but Safari is always running out of memory.

But now with 150 eur Android phones, there are no more memory issues...

singularity2001• 2 years ago

PWA Progressive web app ?

r-spaghetti• 2 years ago

Relevant info: https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/06/spoil-the-bunch/#dma

kjreact• 2 years ago

I had to look this up: PWA stands for Progressive Web App and according to web.dev is “a webapp that uses progressive enhancement.” On iOS you can install a PWA using the “Add to Home Screen” function.

mob_eng2• 2 years ago

My guess is: DMA asks Apple to allow other browser vendors have the same access as Safari has.

Probably APIs for adding sites to the Home Screen slipped in the development time and is coming later

arendtio• 2 years ago

How many years did it take until Apple accepted USB-C?

Let us count the years until they understand the mess they are creating right now...

Apple drops PWA support on iOS for EU users

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