Apple cites security concerns for killing PWAs in europe. I mean they could‘ve made changes to the system to allow running PWAs in other browser engines by offering an API in which other applications could hook themselves into, akin to how Android did it with the web activity that is used by other apps.
But then that would mean conceding to the EU and we can‘t have that, can we?
Can't harvest data from a PWA like you can an app.
For other people's benefit and my own:
PWA: Progressive Web App
I was wondering... passwords with attitude?
Mine are pretty sassy
um... what kind of person uses an acronym over and over through a long ass article without ever stating what the fuck that acronym stands for?
Its in the embedded tweet
Stands for progressive web app which is an app which uses web technologies. Can be both a web page and a mobile app on a phone. Can be added as an app to your phone through a browser rather than downloading it from an app store
And here was I thinking only Microsoft did that.
It's also not that uncommon of an acronym in web tech, all the first results when searching "PWA" are consistent and it's a very common way to refer to that technology. The term PWA has made the news in tech channels a few times before (like when Firefox discontinued support for PWA on desktop).
Even if they said "Progressive Web Apps" it would not have been immediatelly clear what that means for anyone who is not familiar with what PWA is. It's also not the only acronym they use in the article without explaining it (eg. "API", or "iOS" which is also an acronym on itself), it just so happens that it's likely not a well known one in this particular lemmy community where the article was posted. The author advertises himself as a writer dedicated to web technologies (PWA and Web Component in particular), so it would be silly if he has to explain what those are on every of his posts.
No, what's silly is to not follow the correct grammar of spelling out an acronym in full the first time. Microsoft does this all the time and you're left not being able to use the document because you have no idea what they're talking about, and they haven't linked to anything about it either. e.g. try Googling COM and let me know how you go with finding out what it means. You should never assume the reader knows what it is. It's gate-keeping.
Boo paywall
Freedium.cfd
EU users will be able to continue accessing websites directly from their Home Screen through a bookmark with minimal impact to their functionality.
We expect this change to affect a small number of users. Still, we regret any impact this change — that was made as part of the work to comply with the DMA — may have on developers of Home Screen web apps and our users.from: https://mashable.com/article/apple-kills-home-screen-web-apps-pwas-in-eu-dma
I understood it as a technical limitation imposed by the changes Europe are demanding. They now have to allow different browser engines, so they can't just use Safari under the hood for PWAs. They will need some UI and the technical underpinning to allow the browser engine to be selected.
They aren't killing PWAs. They're simply removing them from the home screen. Nothing about this will interfere with the ability to load and operate PWAs.
Except stuff like push notifications, that requires the pwa to be added to home screen.
That’s the social engineering aspect of insecurity on pwas.
I’m genuinely baffled by this comment section.
Apple's implementation of other PWA standards requires an app to be opened from the home screen. A user can't access features of the app if they can't add it to the homescreen.
Yeah, ok. So now I have the ammunition to convince my friends to avoid apple. Thanks apple. :)
You think that's going to convince them? Plenty of people consider Apple as the second coming of the messiah. They would cheer if Apple dropped a bucket load of crap on their desk.
I agree that there are addicts and these need therapy indeed. I'm talking about the others. Those who actually think apple does a good job.
No, it will kill PWAs. And since Apple dictates what everyone else does, this also automatically means PWAs are dead on Android, too. It'll probably get prevented system-side in the future no matter which browser you use, they'll find a way.
Why would they be dead on Android?
Same reason NFC payments on Android were super niche for years before Apple finally implemented it. Or why so many apps don't use Android features that would improve them because iOS doesn't offer that feature. For whatever reason, Apple has an outsized mind share and are able to use that to hold back competing platforms because people don't want the iPhone version of their apps to be less capable.
Of course, the biggest loser in all this isn't Android. It's smaller platforms that want to compete with both Android and iOS.
The title appears to be quite the reach. If Apple wanted to kill PWA’s, they would have done so worldwide. There is absolutely nothing preventing them from disabling them in the US and Canada (and much of the rest of the world) today, but they haven’t — they’re only disabling them in the EU.
Arbitrarily and suddenly destroying all apps built with a certain tech stack, throughout all of Europe will have a knock on effect for that tech stack that will drive less investment in it for every single European company and every multinational that even sometimes operates there.
Apple is being an absolute piece of shit
if they go through with this, I will never buy one of their products againif they do. They're a trillion dollar company acting like a petulent child because they were forced to be ever so slightly less monopolistic, they're acting like huge pieces of shit.Arbitrarily and suddenly destroying all apps built with a certain tech stack…
Except they aren’t. Sure, PWAs may be slightly more disadvantaged on iOS/iPadOS than they are now, but they haven’t been “destroyed”. And they continue to work exactly as they did with the prior iOS/iPadOS release in all the rest of the world.
Everyone seems to think Apple is playing some sort of 4D Chess to kill off PWAs — but if Apple wanted to kill off PWAs they could just disable the functionality completely globally tomorrow, and they’d likely face no repercussions for doing so. They don’t even need an excuse to do so.
I’m not claiming that Apple is acting honourably here; merely that if they actually wanted to kill PWAs it wouldn’t require some sort of Rube Goldberg machine-style planning to do it. There is no conspiracy here.
