Regarding the conversation around 11:20, as much as it is a **burden** for Apple to have to implement and support these behaviours and how PWAs would work with them, it is definitely a self-inflicted problem. The fact of the matter is that this is a 'fair market' issue since it is about iOS which competes in the OS space. Other operating systems have figured this (PWA thing) out (for the most part) with the obvious one being Android, but also MacOS and Windows as well. All of them are in the OS space and have managed to comply in this aspect. Apple isn't being asked to twist and turn to remain in the EU... They're simply being asked to play fair. Something to remember is that the DMA's goal was always about creating a 'fairer market' by going after these gatekeepers. If the others competing in this space in the EU can reluctantly comply with these regulations, Apple's twisted tantrum here isn't something I can get behind.
Very much this. They’re a trillion dollar company and could easily figure this out. But they don’t want to. So they’re taking the decision to cut support for now and await the results. If it would start to affect sales, they’ll have it re-implemented over night.
@@bomret Definitely agrew with you. Its the whole "it'll be very costly to actually support PWA" argument that I take issue with. This is a manufactured problem for iOS.
I disagree. Apple never wants the web to be a viable alternative to native apps, where they have absolute power and tax. They've been hindering a lot of web support themselves, but now that other browser engines are allowed, Google would 100% try to make PWAs viable. And allowing other browser engines to have PWAs isn't outrageous. Just make iOS itself handle the PWA functionality, and let other browsers use their rendering engine ontop of that
I've been working with PWAs for years. And there have been many blockers to it that have been resolved. Notifications, camera access and GPS are now totally accessible within a web app. But safari continues to be a blocker. And the only thing stopping PWAs from total widespread adoption.
What can Google do in this regard? They basically killed the entire functionality, meaning the apis are not accessible when you have a PWA installed. Push notifications, etc apis are not available which communicate with the hardware device, it's not there. This is not anti-competitive. This is plain old anti consumer Apple. I don't know why people defend Apple. Like theo is defending as if it is a mistake. Everybody who has an ounce of brain working knows that apple hates anything that goes against their walled garden. They deliberately did it.
The EU's tech législation never ended up being better for the consumer. Look at the cookies mess they created and look at how this DMA is already turning out to be before it even went into force. This is going to be disastrous, just watch.
@@filip.a.by that's completely illogical because you can still use them in safari. Web apps are trash and there's not a single one that's better than the native apps. None.
PWAs are overrated because Apple keeps stalling on APIs. It's been depressing to watch how Apple always knee-caps the internet for greed. They absolutely need to be regulated.
This is the reason the EU forced them to allow other web browsers because they are stalling web standards with Safari on purpose to keep web apps from being adopted massively.
And yet if you go on twitter and other tech sites, the comments are litters with "THE EU SUX" and similar. All they see is patriotism or apple fanboyism.
Yeah the EU went this far exactly because Apple is doing everything they can to avoid giving up power. Just look at their ridiculous proposal with regards to alternative app stores and sideloading. The EU made themselves very clear on their expectations, and still Apple tries to come up with this alternative interpretation where they keep holding all the cards. There is no way this will hold. Either the courts will shut it down, or the EC will make an amendment to block Apple's loophole. But once again they're stalling with malicious compliance, holding on to power for as long as they can. Honestly I think they should just ban iPhones from being sold in the EU until they comply, similar to what happened with the Apple Watch in the US. They'll moan and complain and huff and puff, but it'll be days before they have a patch release that fixes the issue at hand. A billion people live in the EU, many of them wealthy. Apple can't afford to leave that market.
I have the same feeling. I developed a flutter app and decided to compile it to iOS. Apple makes it so difficult that I end up buying a new mac mini only because it was cheaper. Some apple users are delusional, selling 3 years old machines by the price of new one, and services that provides virtual machines are so expensive that in a year I would have paid more than a new machine. All apple software is garbage. Their OS is the worst I have ever seen, with some stupid limitations. I did not find any functionality in macOS that is better than Win11. Once again apple users are delusional.
@therealnotanerd After using OS X for 5 years for work I came to the same conclusion. I feel like my productivity is halved when I have to use it. It's nice to have a unix like environment because you're basically using the same tools that linux had for ages. Advantages stop there.
Apple literally is the company that has been turning computers into the equivalent of "consoles" for the past 30+ years, including being the leader of soldered parts and designing ways to force people to buy completely new machines instead of actual upgrades or repairs.
Your noticing the fundamental difference between eu and us lawmaking - eu focuses on laying out the rules up front, us lays out big ideas and waits for companies to sue eachother to define clear rules. I think the result we’ll see is that Apple will either comply, or start disabling more and more and losing more market share thus weakening their position in an area where they already are a minority share of the market.
I agree. To me as a European, the idea that legislators should just pave the way for developers to sue Apple in order to get more freedom seems naive. Considering how much time and money it took Epic, are we sure that Google and Mozilla would care enough to invest so much merely to be allowed to run a custom engine in the EU? Mozilla isn't even that excited right now, given that it's a ton of effort and would still only be of use in the EU. And those are big players, what hope would a small developer have of ever engaging a legal fight with Apple?
@@martenveldthuis the flip side is as an American, it seems wild to be that government would try to write the rules for things it doesn't understand, and which changes faster than legislators have proven themselves capable of acting. We start from broad principles and let the market figure out the details. I guess which approach wins will be determined some day.
@@ItsTheSameCatI understand, just want to clarify that that is percisely the idea - to avoid allowing the corporate interests to define what the boundaries should be - sometimes at the cost of market freedom, which may be a good or a bad thing depending on your perception.
@@ItsTheSameCat usually the government doesn't really write the rules themselves, like with USB-C they where "dear Industry do a single standard" and since not every laptop has lightning now, apple had to cede. Such panels add bureaucratic overhead but reduce technical errors and improve industry acceptance.
I disagree with this on you, The EU has the goal to level the playing field which is really helpful for developers, since they can avoid the fights, which cost a lot of money and time in the first place. Apple is malicious, best example is with Imessage. Their goal is to hold as many and as big monopolies as possible. Now that they're forced to do other things they're unhappy? Yeah it might be a lot of work, but please, its Apple, they are the 2nd biggest company in the world.
I largely agree but there is one flaw, one which the EU didn't even consider. When you put up a road block, people may choose to just go home instead of taking the detour. Don't get me wrong I hate apple with a passion, but what they are doing is right. Governments can't just assume that services will stick around if they choose to block all the roads. Just look at the "The Online Safety Bill" in the UK, do you think apple should comply with that? If not, then how can you justify saying they should comply with the EU DMA?
the whole iMessage discussion is just ridiculous, nobody is forcing you to use iMessage, on iOS other messages work its not a gatekeeper platform like Safarai or the App Store is. iMessage is only a problem in North America. Its such a non issue that the EU just didnt saw iMessage as a gatekeeper platform. iMessage is a self made problem of NA nothing more.
I don’t know man, saying the focus should be enabling “developers to fight” for things seems really naive. Regulation moves hella slow but the legal system isn’t some drag race where things get sorted out quickly. Hopefully people start voting with their wallet on these kinds of issues… Geewhiz… now who’s being naive.
I'll happily go back to avoiding Apple until they get new leadership that demonstrate real good faith to collaborating with the rest of the industry and lawmakers. Great products crippled by asinine policy.
@@Leto2ndAtreides I don't deny the possibility that it really is near-impossible for them to comply in a different way at this stage. They've been building some of these products for decades after all. But that's kind of also the crux of the issue for me. They've been poking the regulatory bear for a very long time and this is just the predictable outcome.
I genuinely feel like this is just to bully companies into using the App Store, I would understand apple’s position if they were against web apps in general, but they’re not, you can just have a wrapper for a web app performing horribly on the App Store, and apple won’t give a damn as long as it’s in the App Store. There could be a point made that apple just doesn’t believe in web apps, and they don’t like the paradigm, and I get it, it doesn’t perform nearly as well as native apps, and it’s just simply not the best experience, but then, if apple really cared about the user’s experience they wouldn’t allow terrible, poorly made wrappers in the App Store, but they do, so to me this is clearly just about getting more developers in the App Store so apple can get their little 30% cut,, and not to incentivize developers to give their users a better experience with native apps. This is just, so scummy
Personally, I really dislike web apps, I really dislike using them, I’m a big advocate for native apps, but I understand that not everyone can build native apps, they simply don’t have the resources to do so. I would side with apple here if they at least were trying to push the industry into making more native apps, instead of web, but their real motive is not to screw developers to move the industry towards native apps, they’re just screwing developers so they can get more money from the App Store and this is just disappointing
@@liamszyou dislike PWAs because safari was the sole reason why it wasn't able to advance the technology. There are so many cool APIs and features that pwa on other platforms support that are just not viable to be used because the 30% safari market hasn't implemented them. The web has a huge potential (still) especially with the recent advancements with wasm and other Apis. Hopefully now that Chrome can actually be chrome, they will find a way to make PWAs decent again. Let there be competition Also you have to realise that there are a shit ton of developers or companies that just cannot afford to develop a native app, oh and not sure if you knew but, on the web you cannot debug a website on safari, and you also cannot develop a native app for safari, unless you have a Mac, and I know 100% that a developer will not spend 2000€ just to appeal Apple's pettyness on trying to get the developer to be an apple user and preaching for them
@@liamszI MUCH prefer PWAs since for the most part, I like my apps to be a bit more restricted, and I like them being small - too many native apps get lazy and are way too huge and bloated, web-apps, while not quite matching in peak performance, seem to be much better in average performance. E.g. google maps I use exclusively as a PWA, since it's MUCH faster and more performant than the app - though it did drop in performance 2 years ago, before that it was even faster to a degree it wasn't even funny anymore, simply because it needed to run on peoples old smartphones in the browser. I don't care if it's missing a few bells and whistles, if the general browsing experience is so much better. Part of that I believe is simply that they also serve as normal webpages, and thus need to load reasonably fast, so they tend to be lighter. The onboarding (or from a users perspective, hurdle to use) is also much lower, there's no "which of these should I use", it's "lets try and see which is best" And finally from a developers side (albeit small hobby dev), it's so nice being able to target mobile and desktop platforms alltogether with one easy platform, yes it's restrictive in many ways, but it's still MUCH better than having to write the same thing 4-6 times over
@@specy_ I dislike them because it's an inferior technology that was only developed become some folks seriously believe we should just ban all languages and have Javascript run everything, everywhere because that's all they know and care to learn
Yeah, this sucks big time. I'm in the EU, and my team and I built a new PWA for a client less than a year ago. Push Notification Support on iOS is crucial for this app, and these changes would kill the mobile experience completely. If this makes it into the final version, we're basically forced to build a native version. The client sure will love to pay Apples 30% cut and a whole lot more in engineering cost..
I wonder how many web apps will just get wrapped in a native app that basically uses a web view and route notifications through the native app back channels
There are plenty of ways to build an app using mobile tech. Just wrap your app like everyone else does. The apple tax sucks for sure, but engineering time should be limited. No reason to go native.
@@claasdev If you built a PWA using Blazor, for doing what you said it is very simple. Just wrap it in a MAUI Blazor app. You will gain more performance than WASM but will loose the advantages of a Web app (easy deployment)
@@deidyomegaYeah, that's what we're going for when this takes effect. I know those wrappers exist, should have mentioned it explicitly besides native :)
Im glad this is the sentiment technical people go with. im concerned that non technical people will blame the EU and quite honestly: the EU did a great move with the digital markets act
@@ThomasVanhelden hey you follow beaker and a bunch of same channels lol, I can't handle how restricted I felt with apple and at evey corner there was seemingly many more requirements compared to how easy the are to do Android, the apple keyboard and autocorrect are abysmal, it never learned common words or my email after 2 years either, i hated the whole thing how it turned on WiFi or Bluetooth every time I restarted, and it didn't even have just a restart option
@@aroncanapa5796 I get where you’re coming from, and you do raise some valid points. Android just has way more things that frustrate me, and lacks more things I like. It all comes down to preference, I suppose.
@16:00 - doing this properly is a very simple task - launch all PWA's in Safari. EU DMA was about web browsing and freedom of choice of a browser engine. They had no objection to PWAs. So again - Apple is doing a stupid thing, because they want to blame EU, as they have absolutely no respect to any authority and they try to proceed with their rules. Glad we are in EU.. and we can just do a middle finger to Apple - beause no company should be above the law. Above a whole continent. We do care, even if US do not care. They are just showing how stupid and iSheep are they there.
tbh apple already didn't like the idea of PWA's, I suspect this has much less to do with effort and more about them just not liking the paradigm. Considering how long it took to get notifications I just don't buy the overhead was too much. Easily they could have made it so third party engines had to meet specific standards and gone from there. The fact there was no effort I think is pretty damming as far as that goes. I also suspect this isn't the end of EU only features being removed. But time will tell
Browser engines don't even handle push, in fact, there's no way for them to handle it. It would be the easiest thing for them to allow it. Apple just wants to intimidate lawmakers and manipulate voters by spreading lies about the impacts of legislation.
"Easily they could have made it so third party engines had to meet specific standards" Apple's very reasoning is that this isn't easy, that it would take a lot of work and would benefit a small amount of users so therefore impractical in their eyes to devote resources to.
@@BlackAsLight448 This is exactly what I don't believe is true. Every other company with an OS has already done this. Chrome OS has publicly offered millions to anyone who can find these sorts of vulnerabilities, allows PWA's, alternative browser engines, app stores etc, and no one's claimed it yet. This sounds like the same bs apple pulls with repairability, interoperability, and anything where they don't control %100 of user interactions. Google has flutter which uses native apple bindings on IOS already (and is basically a browser engine), but you're telling me it's not possible to expose native bindings via API calls in a more traditional browser engine? If that's so then why not just pass the interactions through whatever security you have for regular apps? I assume you don't just let people do whatever they want with a users device already, right? and if that isn't possible I would want to see a report for why not because I don't believe apple, and they don't deserve the benefit of the doubt with what they pull regularly. If there's a solid technical reason then they can provide solid technical explanations, otherwise I think it's perfectly reasonable to impugn them for pulling the rug out from under people. None of these will ever happen because ultimately it is bs, they just don't want PWA's or other app stores because it ruins their tight grip on people which is what their business model relies on.
I wonder if apple killed pwa because with other browser engines apples loses the control safari would have given them, this means for example Netflix can create a pwa where you can install and use it outside of apple store and handle payments outside of apple, apple looses control to monitize. Their security excuses is sorta sorta flimsy as OSs are generally in charge of process isolation and such. If they were relying on safari (user land app) to secure their system, that says a lot about the security of their os.
Apple's security practices are bad. Their marketing and fanboys will say otherwise but the fact is that Apple didn't allow AV on their iOS. Bitdefender created a proof of concept where they were able to load a trojan horse code after the app was already approved in the store. They just side-loaded their test malware to.compromise the phone after the app being approved. What was Apple's response for being proven insecure by Bitdefender? Did they allow AV? Nope, they warned Bitdefender of banning them from the golden cage that is iOS if they did that or something similar ever again. Bunch of idiots.
@@BlackAsLight448Microsoft used the same argument about internet explorer and Windows more than 10 years ago. Maybe even before the iPhone was around. They had to comply as well with shipping a version of windows without IE. But now, as it was then, it's a moot point. The EU isn't demanding to get rid of the rendering and JS engine completely. If your OS uses it internally, that's absolutely fine. What they are saying is that the APIs that you use internally to make that possible, those must be available for other developers as well, so they're not forced to use your browser engine. And that's also where the security argument fails. It's still just app code doing things inside the context of an app. Whatever security flaw can exist in the browser engine, can also exist in the app itself. Apple can't assume either are secure. That's why OSes have a distinction between privileged and non-privileged execution with sandboxes and a whole bunch of other security features. Sure, it's important for the browser itself to be secure, but if the browser can infect the OS, that's the OS's fault and not the browser.
10:32 Those are not new rules. You might be seeing this as company vs company to be challenged in the courtroom, but on the sidetrack, there are consumer and business protection regulations. If a new technology emerges, that does not mean current regulations have no application. On top of that, UE is very slow in decisions, which means there was a gazillion occasions to comply with regulations instead of proving that something is a loophole when it is not. In the EU, there is a different approach to liberty. Positive liberty in the EU is about creating means to let people reach their goals in opposition to negative liberty, where the role of the government is to not create obstacles to goals.
15:30 uh, sorry but thats all wrong. USB C was forced by the EU. They don't really have much open source stuff. Apple music is available on Android because they make money selling music and Google (unlike Apple) allows competition. Airpods work on every Android because they make money selling them and Google (unlike Apple) allows competition. They don't really have to factor any brand damage into anything. Their fans will take anything they are given as long as the logo is there. But to really destroy your point, they wouldn't allow Google maps until forced, they are actively stopping anybody from making iMessage for Android, they are going to put half of EU developers out of work for spite, they are aggressively hostile to rite to repair. Ugh, I could go on but this is a dumb discussion. I hate defending Google but Apple is an entire different level of anti consumer bs. You can have opinions but please don't make objectively false statements. I don't even care if you like Apple just don't tell me it's raining, I know what it is.
Apple played a large role in the development of the USB-C standard, which was first introduced in 2014. Apple immediately went all in on the new connector: the next year, it released a new 12-inch MacBook that used USB-C and only USB-C. They could have kept it proprietary but didn't? I think that's what Theo is getting at.
15:35 I might be misunderstanding what you're saying, but didn't they add USB-C after another EU regulation to standardize connectors? It's not really an optics thing.
Apple had a huge hand in developing the standard and were in a position to make it proprietary, but they let go of that leverage. That's what Theo is talking about here.
Apple statements are total nonsense. Opening a PWA is the same as opening any website. Browsers already do the sandbox isolation between different domains when it comes to cookies, local storage, cross site scripts, etc. There is nothing to do to implement it because web browsers run the web app just like they execute a regular website. A PWA is just a website that behaves like a native app in terms of looks. Technically, it's the same as a website, running the code and the same web technology. This is why it works in all operating systems because they don't have to do anything except implement a shortcut from the desktop and allow notifications. No different from having a shortcut to opening a website. Just imagine the nonsense of Apple's statement. Having a shortcut on your home screen that opens a website is something challenging they can't implement for security reasons? This is laughable. In particular, when it already works, and they are just removing existing features that work today. The real reason? European developers and startups are moving towards progressive apps to escape Apple's Draconian app store rules. Developers started to boycott Apple for their new malicious complaint with the DMA legislation in Europe that goes in effect in Match. In the developers' community, it was basically, just don't do native apps, go with the PWA approach. Apple is so afraid of this boycott that they decided to go nuclear and cripple PWA's entirely. It's their way to disrupt and kill web apps entirely, so developers have no choice but to code natively for iOS or don't release anything for iPhone users. Apple acting as the gateway keeper they are. Apple is the worst tech company that has ever existed. Not even Microsoft went this far. It seems Apple has absolutely no moral or respect towards its customers and will go to any length to remove features on devices they already paid so they can show the middle finger to EU legislators. Since the Internet exists, I don't think any company tried to kill the web with such violence. Android 15 is adding more features for web apps, such as being able to stick web apps to memory for faster loading, and meanwhile, Apple is downgrading iOS by removing web app support. What a difference, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, everyone is on board advancing web technologies and Apple is going the opposite way. Don't keep buying products from a company with this behavior. They don't deserve your preference, just imagine what else they can remove in the future with some software update.
This is the real issue with apple, there is no choice, you do what they want you to do. I don't understand how people didn't see this before too, everything on iOS is "no you can't do that" because it would hurt their pockets. No other engines, would go against safari, no PWAs, would go against the app store, no sideload, it would go against the app store, and all the rest... It's really sad that the reason why apple products are so good is that they have this sort of behaviour, but their morale is really unacceptable and I will never buy something from them. I've been developing web apps for 3 years now, I've made some pretty complex things, and safari was the sole trouble maker, 100% (yes all) bugs I've found in the app were reported by people on iOS, and they are such dumb and nonsense bugs too. Now I will have to notify every iOS user that uses my apps to backup their storage before they update to iOS 17.4...
Apple's reasoning: if there is a bug in the alternative engine it would open up a security risk that would allow the PWA to escape its isolation and access things without the users consent. The current interface for PWA does not provide enough security for alternative engines and developing a new interface, according to apple, would take a lot of work for a few people and therefore isn't practical in their eyes.
That is still true for allowing current browsers to work with iOS as well. What a happy coincidence, they are not concerned about this when it comes to websites! For example, if Firefox has a bug like you claimed, it means any website can escape its local storage as well and access data from any other website! That is worse than just some web app because people browse more different websites in a day than apps they have installed on their phone. What current interface for PWA do you mean? There is no interface made by Apple or iOS, the PWA opens and runs in the browser just like a website, the HTML, CSS, JavaScript code runs on the default web browser just as if someone decides to use Firefox or Chrome to open a website on their phone. It's basically a browser in full screen with some GUI parts removed to give the user a better experience since they are just going to stay on that specific domain (web app), if they click on an external link it opens the browser in normal mode (leave the app). There is nothing for Apple to fix or maintain here. All the PWA code runs in the browser of the users' choice. Apple has to allow third-party browsers, which means they are technically allowing PWA code to run, Apple is just removing the visual stuff to make PWA's behave like websites, not native apps in iOS. Apple is removing the option to pin to the home screen, which has nothing to do with security, they are disabling notifications, which again has nothing to do with apps storage or security & privacy either. They are basically just making a PWA to open like a regular website to make sure people don't experience the app as they should. This would be like Apple claiming, "we can't allow third-party browsers to open websites in full-screen mode because it is a security risk for users in iOS and other apps". This has nothing to do with security, none. Your comment is similar to other people that don't understand what PWA's are. It's just a marketing name, it's like cloud, call it hosting, call it someone else's computer... The term is irrelevant. The name PWA is just so developers can differentiate in terms of how the code works in terms of the user experience, it's still a website but instead of designing it like with traditional pages, we design it to have a GUI similar to a native app. This is just all visual, it's still the same code as a normal website and can't do anything outside the browser. A PWA can work offline? So can a website. Can it access local storage like indexDB? So can a website. Can it access your camera or use notifications? Therefore, a website can as well. Even this TH-camr somehow looked up on Google to see what PWA's do differently than websites because he either does not understand how PWA works entirely. For the last time, a PWA is just a website designed to run in such a way that behaves like if it's a native app, it is nothing technical but a visual trick on the user to give him a better experience. It is not native code that runs in the operating system, it's simply web content running in your browser. Apple claiming it is a security risk is Apple claiming people using other browsers to access websites is a security risk. This is why it is laughable. And does not fly.@@BlackAsLight448
@@Netz0 apple disabling pinning to home screen and notifications is not for security. It's because they're no longer supporting PWAs. The website is no longer a PWA on the iPhone in the EU so it makes no sense for it to have access to that anymore. And according to Apple while a PWA and a normal website can access things like the camera, their claim is that the proper interface to support alternative browsers does not protect against un-consensual access of said camera and creating said interface is not worth it in their eyes, unlike for the alternative engines which they're forced to allow. Also unless you've seen and worked on the iOS, your claims about how there is no security risk is nothing but assumptions. And while things can be described in simple terms how they work under the hood can be widely different.
They are not assumptions. Apple is blatantly lying. A PWA is a website. It is opened by your web browser just like clicking a regular website. Otherwise, please explain to us how a PWA puts the user at risk more than the same domain opening as a regular website? I guess you won't because even Apple can't come with such mental gymnastics. @@BlackAsLight448
A far better option would be pressuring Apple to support an "add to home screen" feature directly from within the web page itself. Today this feature is well hidden within the browser settings. As a result, the vast majority of users are not even aware that this feature exists. The low PWA adoption is an issue with inaccessibility of the "add to homepage" button, and not the inferior UX of PWAs. Now EU is shooting themselves (all devs based out of Europe) in the foot by going too far. Apple's hand is being forced. The European Commission must have looked at this only through the lens of ideology to come up with this howler of a decision. This is completely absurd.
This is so deeply disappointing. As a developer this makes me consider wanting to no longer support Apple as a business. This is so obviously punitive that it’s upsetting. 😢
I don't think legislation should just allow the companies to sue for anti-competitive behavior, because small apps and startups won't have the resources to sue. It's better to try be pro-active about it. I very often disagree with how the EU forces regulation, but I think in this case they're getting it more right than wrong. And Apple is of course maliciously complying, instead of stopping their anti-competitive practices.
I sure hope the EU fights this, as PWAs are an amazing option for apps. The addition of notifications seemed like such a great step towards better support on iOS, and then they do a power move like this..
Why the heck do people like iPhones and Apple so much. Try Android, there are hundreds of different options. I'm absolutely loving what EU is doing with Apple
If it’s a startup or a smaller size company, this might be difficult and expensive to do. But it’s Apple, a 2.8 trillion dollar company, they have enough resources to do it properly.
PWA's are not overrated. They're just not meant for gaming or whatever, but they work wonderfully for other types of non-intensive apps. Also, making PWA's are another way to make apps for iOS that don't require an Apple OS computer.
also if Apple wouldn't be so slow adopting WebGL or now WebGPU gaming would be a possibility. PWAs are "bad" because of Apple, they actively hindered the standard and other standards to be developed.. WebKit sucks ass, it so far behind its not even funny, its Internet Explorer all over again
I’m confused. How come operating systems like windows android and Linux able to support all the web engines even with web apps but somehow Apple can’t make it work? It’s costly? Nah this is just unacceptable. They say they provide the best experience without making everything work like they should? I use so many websites as web apps cause most social media apps are too big and bloated in size for no reason. So many apps have unreasonably unoptimised app sizes on install which makes the web apps the best alternative to rely on.
One criticism, if you are saying Apple has just become anti user then you are just telling me how long you have actually been looking. This isn't new but I'm glad more people are actually looking at these issues.
They need to "factor in the brand damage to the actual cost of implementation"... Which basically Apple interprets as - as long as there are Apple fanboys who will use it no matter what, we don't need to pour money into complying with universal directives and other standards since people will buy from us anyways... But if a company like Apple cannot afford this, who could? And it seems obvious to me that they could, but do not want to.
Yes, The cost of PWAs becoming a thing that developers can use without getting taxed by Apple, is too high for apple. So they accept the brand damage instead.
Apple's stance did change from "web apps are safer" to "apps are safer" and back, but that shift was driven by the introduction of apps in iOS 2 and their hardening of Webkit on iOS 8, where they introduced process isolation in addition to several other Webkit improvements. iOS engineers will remember the latter as the UIWebView to WKWebView migration that was pretty painful to go through, but well worth it.
Tim Cook only seems to know how to be an MBA. Steve Jobs was a gifted product guy/entrepreneur and Steve Wozniak a gifted engineer. Tim is handy with spreadsheets.
This level of breaking changes by apple, if done on purpose, should really raise some world class lawsuits against apple, mostly from startups that invested in PWAs since 16.4 and just got side fucked. What’s sad is that non-developers and regular folks, really believe iOS/mac experiences are the de facto best, when in reality they are just using trying to create a monopoly.
The root problem is that Apple started with a very profitable business model of 30% comision on apps, which was extremely lucrative and became priced into the value of its shares; now they have no choice but to hold onto that model for dear life or face a crash on their stock. On the other side, the EU is trying to break up on that dominant position by inventing new rules, which Apple can't comply with without a fight. Just accepting those new rules and complying in good faith would result in similar legislation passed in the US. However, it does feel like Apple is punishing the users and this is a loosing battle for Apple, as the EU will pass even clearer legislation to close down the loop holes and then they'll have to comply either way, but not before pissing off its users.
They could have just gone to the EU and made their case to make PWA's Safari exclusive until they ironed out the API's for other browsers. If they would've gotten a "no", then their case would be much better and they could have settled on "We are trying to figure this out with the other browser developers, sorry." This looks like they did it out of spite. I'm getting the impression Apple doesn't give a damn anymore about optics. I also don't like it when people try to smear the EU for passing legislation that just tries to tilt the freedoms we have on mobile phones to be similar to the ones we have on desktops already. It's not overreach, it's common sense.
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They should get the IE treatment. Once developers stop caring about the Apple's ecosystem and their users, and providing a subpar experience to that, they'll be forced to change.
I'm on the side of Apple. I like how they do things and though it presents limitations, things generally work better/easier and are more secure. If people don't like it, buy a different product. That is how capitalism works.
I'm not sure if the DMA is supposed to be protecting/helping developers like you say, but rather the end user. The end user should be able to choose their browser and app store of their choice. They should act the same. Granted, that broad goal causes other problems and would have been better to make things more flexible, introduce a range of time frames that better meet developer needs etc but I don't think the EU's targeted audience was developers so it's not so that they failed developers, they just didn't try. If that makes sense.
I still can't wrap my head around chrome on ios being safari, cause I have a specific web app I run on my phone that runs absolute ass on safari, but is totally fine on chrome. i have no idea why.
Apple apps are miles beyond any web application. As a developer of both, I always tell clients to build native apps. In terms of ease of development and functionality, native trumps any alternative. After 10 years of building apps, I hope apple clamps down on the rubbish of PWAs and other such alternative cross platform rubbish options. Cross platform apps cost so much more to maintain.
@@AngryApple absolutely, the hinder any cross platform system that tries to have developers use a different system to theirs. I think they should keep doing it, cross platform is a Frankenstein, prefer 100% native tools, especially apple tools
There is a lot of out of date information on what web apps can do. Notifications, gps and camera access are possible from webapps. Just have to grant permission.
Much like what happens when you submit to the App Store, Apple is doing all of this without knowing what the response of the EU will be. Developers are already lobbying to let the EU know how this endangers investments made in recent years just as PWAs seemed to have a chance on iOS.
I'm not convinced that the technical challenges are what's keeping Apple from implementing this. My reasoning is that they are going to implement alternative app stores. This will allow 3rd party apps to add new apps to the system, with their own sandbox and access to hardware and everything. Browsers could use that same implementation to add PWAs to the system as separate apps, with all the security guarantees. Of course it's not trivial, but that seems to be solution that wouldn't add a lot of technical complexity and would address all concerns about security.
Developers are aware that is the real reason. They want to stop companies and startups from going the PWA approach and skipping their app store entirely because it means Apple has no control over them to charge them fees and put them under their gateway control.
And yet you’ll continue to give them your money. Imagine defending a company as evil as Apple, and not even getting paid for it. Fanboys are the worst. Remember this when Theo talks about anything. He’s shown he can’t be objective. And criticizing this isn’t being objective. Apple has done far worse for years.
It's important to remember that most of Europe follows the Civil Law system, which is quite different to the Common Law legal system that America inherited from the UK. A key grossly over simplified difference is that civil law requires legislation to explicitly state what is required, whereas common law can rely on precident to fill in the blanks, which results in broader rules that have room for a 'reasonable' interpretation (that can be further clarrified by later adding to case law, if required). I have no opinion on the specific legislation here, but imagine it would be a challenge when handling very technical topics to get it perfected.
Apple could also just have enabled the PWA support for Safari amd disabled it for others. That _is allowed_ within the regulations. The fact that Apple doesn't do this is solely on Apple. Microsoft does the same in Windows: use Edge, you get full support. Use anything else? You're at the hands of what the browser can do.
I don't think they can, it would violate the norms as it would appear as though Apple is restricting the functionality of the other browsers compared to Safari, which still makes the whole monopolistic argument the EU filed against them valid. Maybe this particular law doesn't block them from doing that, but it would be Apple dancing around the issue as the point of the law is all browsers should be the same from a permissions standpoint, users can pick any that they desire and use it everywhere. In short if you still NEED Safari to run something, Apple is still being prejudiced against third-party browsers and this still violates the principles of the EU's arguments
@@liquidsnake6879 No, it would not... Apple and others are most certainly allowed to do this, as long as they a) warn users about it and b) implement a solution to make other browsers 'level' as quickly as possible. Doing it this way would have given Apple ample time to erect a framework for this for release in iOS 18. Like I said, Microsoft is doing it this way on Windows, too (Windows is _much_ more cordoned off than you realise at first sight, mind you). If you use Edge and make a website shortcut, supported websites will be allowed to use any and all features to work as stand-alone apps. In other browsers, you're at the mercy of what those support. Chrome supports almost everything, so you won't notice the difference so much. Firefox has some work to do to get there. It would also be perfectly legal for Apple to do this: a user, upon creating a 'Home screen Bookmark' for a site that is a PWA, would get a choice: "[Site Name] is a [PWA]. In order to allow this [PWA] to use all features, it is recommended to open it in WebKit. Do you want to allow this? If you select No, the [PWA] will open as a web site in your current default browser. Note that, in my second paragraph, I deliberately used the term WebKit instead of Safari. This is because that is what PWA's use at the moment anyway. They don't _use_ Safari, they use a process called WebViewUI, which is part of the OS itself. If Apple would allow users to _choose_ whether they want this, for _each and every app,_ then that would be perfectly legal. In short: Apple chose a solution which they didn't have to choose to comply with the legislation. Some people classify this as _malicious compliance,_ and with regards to this specific issue I can most certainly see where they come from. If anything, I wouldn't be at all amazed if the EU itself is thinking along those lines, which would then force Apple to come up with a better solution than to just rip out an entire framework of code.
Tbh, I doubt PWAs were in the scope of the regulation. If Apple truly wanted to avoid the bad optics, they could've given the internal API to Google and Firefox, manually whitelist their browser engines to access them, and argue they didn't need a clean API with a proper documentation to comply with the regulation. This would make a chromium PWA some kind or Frankenstein monster, but that'd be something. They didn't even try to argue about the native part of PWAs being outside the scope of browser engines, when nothing would've stopped them from forcing alternative engines to use the sandboxed frame of safari, with just their own rendering engine on top of it. After all, so long as the alternative engine is the one doing the display, computing, and javascript interpretation, isn't it just fine? There are no requirements for native features support.
Well no, the DMA specifically states that third-party software features must not be restricted by "the gatekeeper" (i.e. Apple) and should be fully interoperable with the gatekeeper's system as was it the gatekeeper's own software. No special treatment. That means they cannot provide special or restricted access to and for specific companies or apps they seem fit, because that would be the literal definition of gatekeeping. "The gatekeeper shall not restrict technically or otherwise the ability of end users to switch between, and subscribe to, different software applications and services that are accessed using the core platform services of the gatekeeper, including as regards the choice of Internet access services for end users." - Article 6(6) "The gatekeeper shall allow providers of services and providers of hardware, free of charge, effective interoperability with, and access for the purposes of interoperability to, the same hardware and software features accessed or controlled via the operating system or virtual assistant listed in the designation decision pursuant to Article 3(9) as are available to services or hardware provided by the gatekeeper. Furthermore, the gatekeeper shall allow business users and alternative providers of services provided together with, or in support of, core platform services, free of charge, effective interoperability with, and access for the purposes of interoperability to, the same operating system, hardware or software features, regardless of whether those features are part of the operating system, as are available to, or used by, that gatekeeper when providing such services." - Article 6(7) No lee ways. They need to accept all or nothing.
What exactly is the problem of running all PWAs on one engine (webkit), no matter where they were added from and just allowing browser apps to use different engines? That totally invalidates their point. I hope somehow this whole thing backfires on them 🙂
The EU is forced to legislate because Apple is greedy, and because the US has refused to legislate. Legislation is always a very blunt instrument. The good, and even smart, way to work is to not force their hand.
> I don't know… I feel like government shouldn't be writing law about murder and manslaughter and whatnot directly. I think it would be much better if they just laid out the rule of "Don't hurt each other unless it was necessary" and let the survivors or surviving family members sue each other until we know where we stand. Or maybe clear rules is the better idea here; it removes a lot of loopholes as well. Saul Goodman can argue less about "You must allow users to use their own hardware to install things they want to have on there" than he would "You should like totally not be abusive with your platform, bucko".
16:40 i have an solution for this: EU should change the rule, so that users can chose what browsers will run each pwa, once configured, it will open on it by default without asking wich browser should be used, but the user can always go to the setings on his phone to change it. the pwa can inform what is the ideal browser to run it, for example: "tested against firefox, works best on chrome, deployed/tested on safari, we recomend opera" or something like that. so any bug the user faces he knows that he might solve by changing the browser. finally apple should allow users to togle permissions for each app , just like android does. so an app might ask users to use the browser x,y,z because this browser would allow the app to use the camera without the user know its using the camera... but this permission is denied at an OS level anyway, so the app cant do cheat. the user will be protected so long as those OS sandbox really work, the developers will be satisfied because they only have to test against one of the most popular browsers to ensure it will work on the end user device. the only issue is that users will need to learn a bit about security in order to properly set their devices.
Why just not add another option to the share menu: "Add a shortcut to the home screen" AND "Install as PWA to the home screen"? The first one will make a shortcut that would open in a default browser and the second one will add an icon for the PWA which will work in the same way it did before via Safari.
Basically a browser with PWA support is an alternative OS sitting next to IOS (since it installs apps and manages permissions) and apple cant support that without completely forfeiting all security. allowing only safari to behave that way would be monopolistic by EU regulations.
The current problem with video pro users is that we are forced to use safari for most things, so this decision drastically reduces the total value of the Vision Pro.
They were marked as gatekeeper late last year at September 6th 2023. So it’s more almost 6 months. Though they have many developers and idk if time is part of it in this factor for PWA. They could just specify what browser engine to use for PWA apps. Idk how integrated webkit is into iOS though for that.
It still baffles me that Apple excusers exist when they pull shit like this exists. Like it is so obvious what they are trying to pull. They on purpose took forever to implement push notifications and still refuse to implement many other APIs that would allow PWAs to replace a good chunk of "native" Apps - even tough many are webview wrappers anyway. But Apple just can't get enough of that Appstore money.
I think it's more-so that they cannot protect users when e.g. hardware, etc are accessed using another engine that isn't integrated into the OS's privacy setup.
Couldn’t you just make the way a pwa works open source? Or couldn’t they make a local state api for the pwa on other browsers to call safari to get the info thus making is “safe” and usable?
Personally I don't like web apps but not for any technology reason I just think websites should stay websites, I hate when I visit a website on my phone and it trys to make me use it's app
That's annoying regardless, you don't hate the system because there are some people abusing it, just look at figma, that's the perfect example of a PWA, or look at retro console emulators, note taking apps, social media apps and many more
As much as I like Apple and I hate web apps this is absolutely ridiculous and I cannot justify it in good conscience. I hate saying "this would never happen under Steve Jobs" because really nobody but the man knows what he would have done but I can't help but feel the guy who said "We are removing DRM from the iTunes store and you're all gonna deal with it" to the music industry AND PULLED IT OFF wouldn't do this kind of nonsense and ruin the user experience just to be petty. I understand locking down the iPhone more than the Mac, I really do, but there's no convincing argument other than "we want to make more money" that we can't take responsibility for our own actions and just sideload things on our phones. If Google can do it with Android Apple can absolutely do it, just make it abundantly clear you're on your own and be done with it, 99% of people will never sideload an IPA but that 1% will absolutely love being able to and will be incredibly satisfied with your product. It's really that easy and it's infuriating.
Theo your mic in this vid is sorta maxing out a bit, just letting you know (which you prolly already discovered when making the vid but anyway just in case...) Cheers.
Probably it uses whatever default browser is. Since on android you can have any possibly browser engine under the sun (TM) you don't have such issue like in apple case :)
I suppose, one way to look at it is that if Apple was developing the products properly and had months to think through stuff, they might come up with a refined solution. But because it's a forced change that has to be done fast, they're not thinking it through.
It all boils down to: Do you want to be free to do what you want with YOUR DEVICE that you have paid YOUR MONEY for. OR do you want that company that sold it to you to force you to do what they want you to do with it.
10:48 - All software is using operating system API. UE doesn't want to control that API, but it have to due how Apple oses are build for exclusion. 11:19 - I disagree. That kind of legislation prevents monopolistic wrongdoings now and in future without any suing. In EU barely no one is stupid enough to sue a corporation because a single person have no time or money for that and corporations can refer to "above country law" institutions. That also prevents widespread corruption.
PWA adoption in iOS was low because it's a pain in the ass guiding user how to click share > add to home screen ... though multiple version of safari and now multiple regions. A lot of scenarios to handle instead of simply adding a manifest json file
Apple are playing victims here. I agree that implementing APIs for other browsers to support PWA would take effort (based on how Safari-centric everything is), but it isn't like DMA happened overnight. Apple could've pointed this PWA problem ages ago. It's like with other EU regulations, like car emissions -- manufacturers have time to prepare and comply (and in some cases push back). I think in the end this actually drives innovation (at the expense of corporate profits).
Regarding the conversation around 11:20, as much as it is a **burden** for Apple to have to implement and support these behaviours and how PWAs would work with them, it is definitely a self-inflicted problem.
The fact of the matter is that this is a 'fair market' issue since it is about iOS which competes in the OS space.
Other operating systems have figured this (PWA thing) out (for the most part) with the obvious one being Android, but also MacOS and Windows as well. All of them are in the OS space and have managed to comply in this aspect.
Apple isn't being asked to twist and turn to remain in the EU... They're simply being asked to play fair.
Something to remember is that the DMA's goal was always about creating a 'fairer market' by going after these gatekeepers. If the others competing in this space in the EU can reluctantly comply with these regulations, Apple's twisted tantrum here isn't something I can get behind.
Very much this. They’re a trillion dollar company and could easily figure this out. But they don’t want to. So they’re taking the decision to cut support for now and await the results. If it would start to affect sales, they’ll have it re-implemented over night.
@@bomret Definitely agrew with you. Its the whole "it'll be very costly to actually support PWA" argument that I take issue with. This is a manufactured problem for iOS.
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I disagree. Apple never wants the web to be a viable alternative to native apps, where they have absolute power and tax. They've been hindering a lot of web support themselves, but now that other browser engines are allowed, Google would 100% try to make PWAs viable.
And allowing other browser engines to have PWAs isn't outrageous. Just make iOS itself handle the PWA functionality, and let other browsers use their rendering engine ontop of that
facts... at the end of the day it all comes back to them killing competition for web apps because they cant tax it.
I've been working with PWAs for years. And there have been many blockers to it that have been resolved. Notifications, camera access and GPS are now totally accessible within a web app. But safari continues to be a blocker. And the only thing stopping PWAs from total widespread adoption.
What can Google do in this regard? They basically killed the entire functionality, meaning the apis are not accessible when you have a PWA installed. Push notifications, etc apis are not available which communicate with the hardware device, it's not there. This is not anti-competitive. This is plain old anti consumer Apple. I don't know why people defend Apple. Like theo is defending as if it is a mistake. Everybody who has an ounce of brain working knows that apple hates anything that goes against their walled garden. They deliberately did it.
The EU's tech législation never ended up being better for the consumer. Look at the cookies mess they created and look at how this DMA is already turning out to be before it even went into force. This is going to be disastrous, just watch.
@@filip.a.by that's completely illogical because you can still use them in safari. Web apps are trash and there's not a single one that's better than the native apps. None.
PWAs are overrated because Apple keeps stalling on APIs. It's been depressing to watch how Apple always knee-caps the internet for greed. They absolutely need to be regulated.
This is the reason the EU forced them to allow other web browsers because they are stalling web standards with Safari on purpose to keep web apps from being adopted massively.
And yet if you go on twitter and other tech sites, the comments are litters with "THE EU SUX" and similar. All they see is patriotism or apple fanboyism.
Just buy another brand or download the freaking app you're trying to use. This level of entitlement is crazy...
@@JaceKeller what is crazy is your level of ignorance. Why even comment on a dev centric video if you don‘t understand what the issue is?
Yeah the EU went this far exactly because Apple is doing everything they can to avoid giving up power. Just look at their ridiculous proposal with regards to alternative app stores and sideloading. The EU made themselves very clear on their expectations, and still Apple tries to come up with this alternative interpretation where they keep holding all the cards. There is no way this will hold. Either the courts will shut it down, or the EC will make an amendment to block Apple's loophole. But once again they're stalling with malicious compliance, holding on to power for as long as they can.
Honestly I think they should just ban iPhones from being sold in the EU until they comply, similar to what happened with the Apple Watch in the US. They'll moan and complain and huff and puff, but it'll be days before they have a patch release that fixes the issue at hand. A billion people live in the EU, many of them wealthy. Apple can't afford to leave that market.
I've never been a big fan of Apple, but after I became a developer that maintains an iOS app at work, I now hate Apple with a passion
I have the same feeling. I developed a flutter app and decided to compile it to iOS. Apple makes it so difficult that I end up buying a new mac mini only because it was cheaper. Some apple users are delusional, selling 3 years old machines by the price of new one, and services that provides virtual machines are so expensive that in a year I would have paid more than a new machine. All apple software is garbage. Their OS is the worst I have ever seen, with some stupid limitations.
I did not find any functionality in macOS that is better than Win11. Once again apple users are delusional.
@therealnotanerd After using OS X for 5 years for work I came to the same conclusion. I feel like my productivity is halved when I have to use it. It's nice to have a unix like environment because you're basically using the same tools that linux had for ages. Advantages stop there.
@@fearmear WSL2 works like magic in Windows.
At some size, companies slow down and become bullies defending their territory rather than innovating. They've become PC-era Microsoft.
Apple literally is the company that has been turning computers into the equivalent of "consoles" for the past 30+ years, including being the leader of soldered parts and designing ways to force people to buy completely new machines instead of actual upgrades or repairs.
Preach! I actually don't know how they've gotten away with this behavior for so long. Microsoft lost when trying to gatekeep the internet
Yeah, like PC-era Microsoft, their software is crap. Exhibit 1: On MacOS two-thirds of users employ Safari to download Chrome and never use it again.
Your noticing the fundamental difference between eu and us lawmaking - eu focuses on laying out the rules up front, us lays out big ideas and waits for companies to sue eachother to define clear rules. I think the result we’ll see is that Apple will either comply, or start disabling more and more and losing more market share thus weakening their position in an area where they already are a minority share of the market.
Agreed. As an aussie, it seems weird & expensive for a gov to "support" companies to sue each other.
I agree. To me as a European, the idea that legislators should just pave the way for developers to sue Apple in order to get more freedom seems naive. Considering how much time and money it took Epic, are we sure that Google and Mozilla would care enough to invest so much merely to be allowed to run a custom engine in the EU? Mozilla isn't even that excited right now, given that it's a ton of effort and would still only be of use in the EU.
And those are big players, what hope would a small developer have of ever engaging a legal fight with Apple?
@@martenveldthuis the flip side is as an American, it seems wild to be that government would try to write the rules for things it doesn't understand, and which changes faster than legislators have proven themselves capable of acting. We start from broad principles and let the market figure out the details. I guess which approach wins will be determined some day.
@@ItsTheSameCatI understand, just want to clarify that that is percisely the idea - to avoid allowing the corporate interests to define what the boundaries should be - sometimes at the cost of market freedom, which may be a good or a bad thing depending on your perception.
@@ItsTheSameCat usually the government doesn't really write the rules themselves, like with USB-C they where "dear Industry do a single standard" and since not every laptop has lightning now, apple had to cede.
Such panels add bureaucratic overhead but reduce technical errors and improve industry acceptance.
I disagree with this on you, The EU has the goal to level the playing field which is really helpful for developers, since they can avoid the fights, which cost a lot of money and time in the first place. Apple is malicious, best example is with Imessage. Their goal is to hold as many and as big monopolies as possible. Now that they're forced to do other things they're unhappy? Yeah it might be a lot of work, but please, its Apple, they are the 2nd biggest company in the world.
There is no eu. The whole world is one masonic open air work prison and meat store).
I largely agree but there is one flaw, one which the EU didn't even consider. When you put up a road block, people may choose to just go home instead of taking the detour. Don't get me wrong I hate apple with a passion, but what they are doing is right. Governments can't just assume that services will stick around if they choose to block all the roads. Just look at the "The Online Safety Bill" in the UK, do you think apple should comply with that? If not, then how can you justify saying they should comply with the EU DMA?
@@PaulBrunt online safety bill is silence bill, if you expose criminals - jail time.
the whole iMessage discussion is just ridiculous, nobody is forcing you to use iMessage, on iOS other messages work its not a gatekeeper platform like Safarai or the App Store is. iMessage is only a problem in North America.
Its such a non issue that the EU just didnt saw iMessage as a gatekeeper platform. iMessage is a self made problem of NA nothing more.
I don’t know man, saying the focus should be enabling “developers to fight” for things seems really naive. Regulation moves hella slow but the legal system isn’t some drag race where things get sorted out quickly.
Hopefully people start voting with their wallet on these kinds of issues… Geewhiz… now who’s being naive.
I'll happily go back to avoiding Apple until they get new leadership that demonstrate real good faith to collaborating with the rest of the industry and lawmakers. Great products crippled by asinine policy.
It may be more a result of legally forced deadlines not working well with Apple's process of slowly refining product ideas.
Someone should make that last phrase a t-shirt.
@@Leto2ndAtreides I don't deny the possibility that it really is near-impossible for them to comply in a different way at this stage. They've been building some of these products for decades after all. But that's kind of also the crux of the issue for me. They've been poking the regulatory bear for a very long time and this is just the predictable outcome.
they aren't the 2nd most valuable company by being nice.
I genuinely feel like this is just to bully companies into using the App Store, I would understand apple’s position if they were against web apps in general, but they’re not, you can just have a wrapper for a web app performing horribly on the App Store, and apple won’t give a damn as long as it’s in the App Store.
There could be a point made that apple just doesn’t believe in web apps, and they don’t like the paradigm, and I get it, it doesn’t perform nearly as well as native apps, and it’s just simply not the best experience, but then, if apple really cared about the user’s experience they wouldn’t allow terrible, poorly made wrappers in the App Store, but they do, so to me this is clearly just about getting more developers in the App Store so apple can get their little 30% cut,, and not to incentivize developers to give their users a better experience with native apps.
This is just, so scummy
Personally, I really dislike web apps, I really dislike using them, I’m a big advocate for native apps, but I understand that not everyone can build native apps, they simply don’t have the resources to do so.
I would side with apple here if they at least were trying to push the industry into making more native apps, instead of web, but their real motive is not to screw developers to move the industry towards native apps, they’re just screwing developers so they can get more money from the App Store and this is just disappointing
@@liamszyou dislike PWAs because safari was the sole reason why it wasn't able to advance the technology. There are so many cool APIs and features that pwa on other platforms support that are just not viable to be used because the 30% safari market hasn't implemented them. The web has a huge potential (still) especially with the recent advancements with wasm and other Apis. Hopefully now that Chrome can actually be chrome, they will find a way to make PWAs decent again. Let there be competition
Also you have to realise that there are a shit ton of developers or companies that just cannot afford to develop a native app, oh and not sure if you knew but, on the web you cannot debug a website on safari, and you also cannot develop a native app for safari, unless you have a Mac, and I know 100% that a developer will not spend 2000€ just to appeal Apple's pettyness on trying to get the developer to be an apple user and preaching for them
Not only does Apple believe in web apps - Steve Jobs literally excitedly announced the concept of PWAs in 2007. Just look for the video in TH-cam!
@@liamszI MUCH prefer PWAs since for the most part, I like my apps to be a bit more restricted, and I like them being small - too many native apps get lazy and are way too huge and bloated, web-apps, while not quite matching in peak performance, seem to be much better in average performance. E.g. google maps I use exclusively as a PWA, since it's MUCH faster and more performant than the app - though it did drop in performance 2 years ago, before that it was even faster to a degree it wasn't even funny anymore, simply because it needed to run on peoples old smartphones in the browser. I don't care if it's missing a few bells and whistles, if the general browsing experience is so much better.
Part of that I believe is simply that they also serve as normal webpages, and thus need to load reasonably fast, so they tend to be lighter.
The onboarding (or from a users perspective, hurdle to use) is also much lower, there's no "which of these should I use", it's "lets try and see which is best"
And finally from a developers side (albeit small hobby dev), it's so nice being able to target mobile and desktop platforms alltogether with one easy platform, yes it's restrictive in many ways, but it's still MUCH better than having to write the same thing 4-6 times over
@@specy_ I dislike them because it's an inferior technology that was only developed become some folks seriously believe we should just ban all languages and have Javascript run everything, everywhere because that's all they know and care to learn
Yeah, this sucks big time. I'm in the EU, and my team and I built a new PWA for a client less than a year ago. Push Notification Support on iOS is crucial for this app, and these changes would kill the mobile experience completely. If this makes it into the final version, we're basically forced to build a native version. The client sure will love to pay Apples 30% cut and a whole lot more in engineering cost..
I wonder how many web apps will just get wrapped in a native app that basically uses a web view and route notifications through the native app back channels
There are plenty of ways to build an app using mobile tech. Just wrap your app like everyone else does. The apple tax sucks for sure, but engineering time should be limited. No reason to go native.
@@claasdev If you built a PWA using Blazor, for doing what you said it is very simple. Just wrap it in a MAUI Blazor app. You will gain more performance than WASM but will loose the advantages of a Web app (easy deployment)
@@claasdev Does Apple allow to wrap a website?
@@deidyomegaYeah, that's what we're going for when this takes effect. I know those wrappers exist, should have mentioned it explicitly besides native :)
Im on day 1 of an iphone detox, after 2 years using iphone im back on Android, never touching an apple product again
Im glad this is the sentiment technical people go with. im concerned that non technical people will blame the EU and quite honestly: the EU did a great move with the digital markets act
If you're happy with that decision, good for you. I, myself, am never touching an Android or Microsoft product again (except for my gaming rig).
@@ThomasVanhelden hey you follow beaker and a bunch of same channels lol, I can't handle how restricted I felt with apple and at evey corner there was seemingly many more requirements compared to how easy the are to do Android, the apple keyboard and autocorrect are abysmal, it never learned common words or my email after 2 years either, i hated the whole thing how it turned on WiFi or Bluetooth every time I restarted, and it didn't even have just a restart option
@@aroncanapa5796 I get where you’re coming from, and you do raise some valid points. Android just has way more things that frustrate me, and lacks more things I like.
It all comes down to preference, I suppose.
Apple has always hated the web and actively uses Safari and iOS to make the web worse
@16:00 - doing this properly is a very simple task - launch all PWA's in Safari. EU DMA was about web browsing and freedom of choice of a browser engine. They had no objection to PWAs. So again - Apple is doing a stupid thing, because they want to blame EU, as they have absolutely no respect to any authority and they try to proceed with their rules. Glad we are in EU.. and we can just do a middle finger to Apple - beause no company should be above the law. Above a whole continent. We do care, even if US do not care. They are just showing how stupid and iSheep are they there.
Apple 2007: Everything will be a web app
Apple 2024: Nothing will be a web app
tbh apple already didn't like the idea of PWA's, I suspect this has much less to do with effort and more about them just not liking the paradigm. Considering how long it took to get notifications I just don't buy the overhead was too much. Easily they could have made it so third party engines had to meet specific standards and gone from there. The fact there was no effort I think is pretty damming as far as that goes. I also suspect this isn't the end of EU only features being removed. But time will tell
Browser engines don't even handle push, in fact, there's no way for them to handle it. It would be the easiest thing for them to allow it. Apple just wants to intimidate lawmakers and manipulate voters by spreading lies about the impacts of legislation.
"Easily they could have made it so third party engines had to meet specific standards" Apple's very reasoning is that this isn't easy, that it would take a lot of work and would benefit a small amount of users so therefore impractical in their eyes to devote resources to.
@@BlackAsLight448 This is exactly what I don't believe is true. Every other company with an OS has already done this. Chrome OS has publicly offered millions to anyone who can find these sorts of vulnerabilities, allows PWA's, alternative browser engines, app stores etc, and no one's claimed it yet. This sounds like the same bs apple pulls with repairability, interoperability, and anything where they don't control %100 of user interactions.
Google has flutter which uses native apple bindings on IOS already (and is basically a browser engine), but you're telling me it's not possible to expose native bindings via API calls in a more traditional browser engine? If that's so then why not just pass the interactions through whatever security you have for regular apps? I assume you don't just let people do whatever they want with a users device already, right? and if that isn't possible I would want to see a report for why not because I don't believe apple, and they don't deserve the benefit of the doubt with what they pull regularly. If there's a solid technical reason then they can provide solid technical explanations, otherwise I think it's perfectly reasonable to impugn them for pulling the rug out from under people. None of these will ever happen because ultimately it is bs, they just don't want PWA's or other app stores because it ruins their tight grip on people which is what their business model relies on.
@@BlackAsLight448 obviously, web apps aren’t popular on android or iOS. Always worse compared to native
I wonder if apple killed pwa because with other browser engines apples loses the control safari would have given them, this means for example Netflix can create a pwa where you can install and use it outside of apple store and handle payments outside of apple, apple looses control to monitize. Their security excuses is sorta sorta flimsy as OSs are generally in charge of process isolation and such. If they were relying on safari (user land app) to secure their system, that says a lot about the security of their os.
Safari, specifically the web kit engine is built into the OS with its security. Other browser engines would not.
Apple's security practices are bad. Their marketing and fanboys will say otherwise but the fact is that Apple didn't allow AV on their iOS. Bitdefender created a proof of concept where they were able to load a trojan horse code after the app was already approved in the store. They just side-loaded their test malware to.compromise the phone after the app being approved.
What was Apple's response for being proven insecure by Bitdefender? Did they allow AV? Nope, they warned Bitdefender of banning them from the golden cage that is iOS if they did that or something similar ever again.
Bunch of idiots.
@@BlackAsLight448Microsoft used the same argument about internet explorer and Windows more than 10 years ago. Maybe even before the iPhone was around. They had to comply as well with shipping a version of windows without IE.
But now, as it was then, it's a moot point. The EU isn't demanding to get rid of the rendering and JS engine completely. If your OS uses it internally, that's absolutely fine.
What they are saying is that the APIs that you use internally to make that possible, those must be available for other developers as well, so they're not forced to use your browser engine.
And that's also where the security argument fails. It's still just app code doing things inside the context of an app. Whatever security flaw can exist in the browser engine, can also exist in the app itself. Apple can't assume either are secure. That's why OSes have a distinction between privileged and non-privileged execution with sandboxes and a whole bunch of other security features. Sure, it's important for the browser itself to be secure, but if the browser can infect the OS, that's the OS's fault and not the browser.
I'm from the EU and I'm very pissed off. Bring back PWA please
10:32 Those are not new rules. You might be seeing this as company vs company to be challenged in the courtroom, but on the sidetrack, there are consumer and business protection regulations. If a new technology emerges, that does not mean current regulations have no application. On top of that, UE is very slow in decisions, which means there was a gazillion occasions to comply with regulations instead of proving that something is a loophole when it is not.
In the EU, there is a different approach to liberty. Positive liberty in the EU is about creating means to let people reach their goals in opposition to negative liberty, where the role of the government is to not create obstacles to goals.
15:30 uh, sorry but thats all wrong.
USB C was forced by the EU.
They don't really have much open source stuff.
Apple music is available on Android because they make money selling music and Google (unlike Apple) allows competition.
Airpods work on every Android because they make money selling them and Google (unlike Apple) allows competition.
They don't really have to factor any brand damage into anything. Their fans will take anything they are given as long as the logo is there.
But to really destroy your point, they wouldn't allow Google maps until forced, they are actively stopping anybody from making iMessage for Android, they are going to put half of EU developers out of work for spite, they are aggressively hostile to rite to repair. Ugh, I could go on but this is a dumb discussion.
I hate defending Google but Apple is an entire different level of anti consumer bs. You can have opinions but please don't make objectively false statements. I don't even care if you like Apple just don't tell me it's raining, I know what it is.
They mostly open sourced their desktop kernel and host original CUPS printing server, but other than that - their OSS efforts are not that great.
Well said, Google is pretty scummy but they don't even come close to Apple's level.
Apple played a large role in the development of the USB-C standard, which was first introduced in 2014. Apple immediately went all in on the new connector: the next year, it released a new 12-inch MacBook that used USB-C and only USB-C. They could have kept it proprietary but didn't? I think that's what Theo is getting at.
@@xingzhexin8843 because they had no other option if they wanted their device to work well when it came to transfer speeds vs their archaic lightning.
@@xingzhexin8843 yet they still insisted on using inferior lightning on iPhones instead of usb-c
15:35 I might be misunderstanding what you're saying, but didn't they add USB-C after another EU regulation to standardize connectors? It's not really an optics thing.
Apple had a huge hand in developing the standard and were in a position to make it proprietary, but they let go of that leverage. That's what Theo is talking about here.
If it weren't for EU, Apple would have never switched to usb c on iPhones because of the fees lol
android ftw
Apple statements are total nonsense. Opening a PWA is the same as opening any website. Browsers already do the sandbox isolation between different domains when it comes to cookies, local storage, cross site scripts, etc. There is nothing to do to implement it because web browsers run the web app just like they execute a regular website. A PWA is just a website that behaves like a native app in terms of looks. Technically, it's the same as a website, running the code and the same web technology. This is why it works in all operating systems because they don't have to do anything except implement a shortcut from the desktop and allow notifications. No different from having a shortcut to opening a website.
Just imagine the nonsense of Apple's statement. Having a shortcut on your home screen that opens a website is something challenging they can't implement for security reasons? This is laughable. In particular, when it already works, and they are just removing existing features that work today.
The real reason? European developers and startups are moving towards progressive apps to escape Apple's Draconian app store rules. Developers started to boycott Apple for their new malicious complaint with the DMA legislation in Europe that goes in effect in Match. In the developers' community, it was basically, just don't do native apps, go with the PWA approach. Apple is so afraid of this boycott that they decided to go nuclear and cripple PWA's entirely.
It's their way to disrupt and kill web apps entirely, so developers have no choice but to code natively for iOS or don't release anything for iPhone users. Apple acting as the gateway keeper they are. Apple is the worst tech company that has ever existed. Not even Microsoft went this far. It seems Apple has absolutely no moral or respect towards its customers and will go to any length to remove features on devices they already paid so they can show the middle finger to EU legislators. Since the Internet exists, I don't think any company tried to kill the web with such violence.
Android 15 is adding more features for web apps, such as being able to stick web apps to memory for faster loading, and meanwhile, Apple is downgrading iOS by removing web app support. What a difference, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, everyone is on board advancing web technologies and Apple is going the opposite way. Don't keep buying products from a company with this behavior. They don't deserve your preference, just imagine what else they can remove in the future with some software update.
This is the real issue with apple, there is no choice, you do what they want you to do. I don't understand how people didn't see this before too, everything on iOS is "no you can't do that" because it would hurt their pockets. No other engines, would go against safari, no PWAs, would go against the app store, no sideload, it would go against the app store, and all the rest...
It's really sad that the reason why apple products are so good is that they have this sort of behaviour, but their morale is really unacceptable and I will never buy something from them.
I've been developing web apps for 3 years now, I've made some pretty complex things, and safari was the sole trouble maker, 100% (yes all) bugs I've found in the app were reported by people on iOS, and they are such dumb and nonsense bugs too. Now I will have to notify every iOS user that uses my apps to backup their storage before they update to iOS 17.4...
Apple's reasoning: if there is a bug in the alternative engine it would open up a security risk that would allow the PWA to escape its isolation and access things without the users consent. The current interface for PWA does not provide enough security for alternative engines and developing a new interface, according to apple, would take a lot of work for a few people and therefore isn't practical in their eyes.
That is still true for allowing current browsers to work with iOS as well. What a happy coincidence, they are not concerned about this when it comes to websites!
For example, if Firefox has a bug like you claimed, it means any website can escape its local storage as well and access data from any other website! That is worse than just some web app because people browse more different websites in a day than apps they have installed on their phone.
What current interface for PWA do you mean? There is no interface made by Apple or iOS, the PWA opens and runs in the browser just like a website, the HTML, CSS, JavaScript code runs on the default web browser just as if someone decides to use Firefox or Chrome to open a website on their phone. It's basically a browser in full screen with some GUI parts removed to give the user a better experience since they are just going to stay on that specific domain (web app), if they click on an external link it opens the browser in normal mode (leave the app).
There is nothing for Apple to fix or maintain here. All the PWA code runs in the browser of the users' choice. Apple has to allow third-party browsers, which means they are technically allowing PWA code to run, Apple is just removing the visual stuff to make PWA's behave like websites, not native apps in iOS.
Apple is removing the option to pin to the home screen, which has nothing to do with security, they are disabling notifications, which again has nothing to do with apps storage or security & privacy either. They are basically just making a PWA to open like a regular website to make sure people don't experience the app as they should.
This would be like Apple claiming, "we can't allow third-party browsers to open websites in full-screen mode because it is a security risk for users in iOS and other apps". This has nothing to do with security, none.
Your comment is similar to other people that don't understand what PWA's are. It's just a marketing name, it's like cloud, call it hosting, call it someone else's computer... The term is irrelevant. The name PWA is just so developers can differentiate in terms of how the code works in terms of the user experience, it's still a website but instead of designing it like with traditional pages, we design it to have a GUI similar to a native app. This is just all visual, it's still the same code as a normal website and can't do anything outside the browser. A PWA can work offline? So can a website. Can it access local storage like indexDB? So can a website. Can it access your camera or use notifications? Therefore, a website can as well. Even this TH-camr somehow looked up on Google to see what PWA's do differently than websites because he either does not understand how PWA works entirely.
For the last time, a PWA is just a website designed to run in such a way that behaves like if it's a native app, it is nothing technical but a visual trick on the user to give him a better experience. It is not native code that runs in the operating system, it's simply web content running in your browser. Apple claiming it is a security risk is Apple claiming people using other browsers to access websites is a security risk. This is why it is laughable.
And does not fly.@@BlackAsLight448
@@Netz0 apple disabling pinning to home screen and notifications is not for security. It's because they're no longer supporting PWAs. The website is no longer a PWA on the iPhone in the EU so it makes no sense for it to have access to that anymore. And according to Apple while a PWA and a normal website can access things like the camera, their claim is that the proper interface to support alternative browsers does not protect against un-consensual access of said camera and creating said interface is not worth it in their eyes, unlike for the alternative engines which they're forced to allow.
Also unless you've seen and worked on the iOS, your claims about how there is no security risk is nothing but assumptions. And while things can be described in simple terms how they work under the hood can be widely different.
They are not assumptions. Apple is blatantly lying. A PWA is a website. It is opened by your web browser just like clicking a regular website. Otherwise, please explain to us how a PWA puts the user at risk more than the same domain opening as a regular website? I guess you won't because even Apple can't come with such mental gymnastics. @@BlackAsLight448
A far better option would be pressuring Apple to support an "add to home screen" feature directly from within the web page itself. Today this feature is well hidden within the browser settings. As a result, the vast majority of users are not even aware that this feature exists. The low PWA adoption is an issue with inaccessibility of the "add to homepage" button, and not the inferior UX of PWAs.
Now EU is shooting themselves (all devs based out of Europe) in the foot by going too far. Apple's hand is being forced. The European Commission must have looked at this only through the lens of ideology to come up with this howler of a decision. This is completely absurd.
This is so deeply disappointing. As a developer this makes me consider wanting to no longer support Apple as a business. This is so obviously punitive that it’s upsetting. 😢
I don't think legislation should just allow the companies to sue for anti-competitive behavior, because small apps and startups won't have the resources to sue. It's better to try be pro-active about it.
I very often disagree with how the EU forces regulation, but I think in this case they're getting it more right than wrong. And Apple is of course maliciously complying, instead of stopping their anti-competitive practices.
I sure hope the EU fights this, as PWAs are an amazing option for apps. The addition of notifications seemed like such a great step towards better support on iOS, and then they do a power move like this..
Why the heck do people like iPhones and Apple so much. Try Android, there are hundreds of different options. I'm absolutely loving what EU is doing with Apple
If it’s a startup or a smaller size company, this might be difficult and expensive to do. But it’s Apple, a 2.8 trillion dollar company, they have enough resources to do it properly.
PWA's are not overrated. They're just not meant for gaming or whatever, but they work wonderfully for other types of non-intensive apps. Also, making PWA's are another way to make apps for iOS that don't require an Apple OS computer.
also if Apple wouldn't be so slow adopting WebGL or now WebGPU gaming would be a possibility. PWAs are "bad" because of Apple, they actively hindered the standard and other standards to be developed.. WebKit sucks ass, it so far behind its not even funny, its Internet Explorer all over again
I’m confused. How come operating systems like windows android and Linux able to support all the web engines even with web apps but somehow Apple can’t make it work? It’s costly? Nah this is just unacceptable. They say they provide the best experience without making everything work like they should? I use so many websites as web apps cause most social media apps are too big and bloated in size for no reason. So many apps have unreasonably unoptimised app sizes on install which makes the web apps the best alternative to rely on.
One criticism, if you are saying Apple has just become anti user then you are just telling me how long you have actually been looking. This isn't new but I'm glad more people are actually looking at these issues.
They need to "factor in the brand damage to the actual cost of implementation"... Which basically Apple interprets as - as long as there are Apple fanboys who will use it no matter what, we don't need to pour money into complying with universal directives and other standards since people will buy from us anyways...
But if a company like Apple cannot afford this, who could? And it seems obvious to me that they could, but do not want to.
Down with the Webkit monopoly
They are a trillion dollar company. They could easily support pwa if they wanted too.
Not if they want to stay a trillion dollar company (kinda joke)
So this company can make multiple "revolutionary" technologies but can't support meagre PWAs?
Imagine defending Apple as long as Theo has and then having Apple killing PWAs 😂😮
Yes, The cost of PWAs becoming a thing that developers can use without getting taxed by Apple, is too high for apple. So they accept the brand damage instead.
Apple's stance did change from "web apps are safer" to "apps are safer" and back, but that shift was driven by the introduction of apps in iOS 2 and their hardening of Webkit on iOS 8, where they introduced process isolation in addition to several other Webkit improvements. iOS engineers will remember the latter as the UIWebView to WKWebView migration that was pretty painful to go through, but well worth it.
Thank you Freddy Mercury for clearing things out
Well let V8 roar on Apple's OS. Fuck WebKit.
They deleted the headphone jack so yes this is very apple like
Apple makes me wish, vision pro/spacial computing was done by a some startup that went public and not aquired.
Shocker, apple is not customer first?! The path to hell is paved with... convenience...
I wish the eu would just enforce easy root access without voiding warranty so I could just move on. Let me own this phone I paid for
People should be able to sue sounds weird as an Australian. Is supporting people to sue a US centric thing?
They just don't want alternative web app installations through other browsers.
Tim Cook only seems to know how to be an MBA. Steve Jobs was a gifted product guy/entrepreneur and Steve Wozniak a gifted engineer. Tim is handy with spreadsheets.
This level of breaking changes by apple, if done on purpose, should really raise some world class lawsuits against apple, mostly from startups that invested in PWAs since 16.4 and just got side fucked. What’s sad is that non-developers and regular folks, really believe iOS/mac experiences are the de facto best, when in reality they are just using trying to create a monopoly.
Web apps are a thing
Apple doesn't like that
The root problem is that Apple started with a very profitable business model of 30% comision on apps, which was extremely lucrative and became priced into the value of its shares; now they have no choice but to hold onto that model for dear life or face a crash on their stock.
On the other side, the EU is trying to break up on that dominant position by inventing new rules, which Apple can't comply with without a fight. Just accepting those new rules and complying in good faith would result in similar legislation passed in the US.
However, it does feel like Apple is punishing the users and this is a loosing battle for Apple, as the EU will pass even clearer legislation to close down the loop holes and then they'll have to comply either way, but not before pissing off its users.
They could have just gone to the EU and made their case to make PWA's Safari exclusive until they ironed out the API's for other browsers. If they would've gotten a "no", then their case would be much better and they could have settled on "We are trying to figure this out with the other browser developers, sorry." This looks like they did it out of spite. I'm getting the impression Apple doesn't give a damn anymore about optics.
I also don't like it when people try to smear the EU for passing legislation that just tries to tilt the freedoms we have on mobile phones to be similar to the ones we have on desktops already.
It's not overreach, it's common sense.
They should get the IE treatment. Once developers stop caring about the Apple's ecosystem and their users, and providing a subpar experience to that, they'll be forced to change.
I'm on the side of Apple. I like how they do things and though it presents limitations, things generally work better/easier and are more secure. If people don't like it, buy a different product. That is how capitalism works.
I'm not sure if the DMA is supposed to be protecting/helping developers like you say, but rather the end user. The end user should be able to choose their browser and app store of their choice. They should act the same.
Granted, that broad goal causes other problems and would have been better to make things more flexible, introduce a range of time frames that better meet developer needs etc but I don't think the EU's targeted audience was developers so it's not so that they failed developers, they just didn't try. If that makes sense.
I still can't wrap my head around chrome on ios being safari, cause I have a specific web app I run on my phone that runs absolute ass on safari, but is totally fine on chrome. i have no idea why.
"It's not a bug, it's a feature" is an apple thing now 😂
Apple apps are miles beyond any web application. As a developer of both, I always tell clients to build native apps. In terms of ease of development and functionality, native trumps any alternative.
After 10 years of building apps, I hope apple clamps down on the rubbish of PWAs and other such alternative cross platform rubbish options. Cross platform apps cost so much more to maintain.
native experience is also the best, we just live in a society were people love to cry about anything and everything.
What’s your tech stack lol
Flutter makes it easyy
you know that Apple actively hindered the development of PWAs and other Web Standards? Native is only better because Apple want it that way.
@@AngryApple ppppoffftttttt no
@@AngryApple absolutely, the hinder any cross platform system that tries to have developers use a different system to theirs. I think they should keep doing it, cross platform is a Frankenstein, prefer 100% native tools, especially apple tools
There is a lot of out of date information on what web apps can do. Notifications, gps and camera access are possible from webapps. Just have to grant permission.
Much like what happens when you submit to the App Store, Apple is doing all of this without knowing what the response of the EU will be. Developers are already lobbying to let the EU know how this endangers investments made in recent years just as PWAs seemed to have a chance on iOS.
"I could not imagine Apple just gutting something like this..." Did Theo just sleep over the Catalina update or something?
I'm not convinced that the technical challenges are what's keeping Apple from implementing this. My reasoning is that they are going to implement alternative app stores. This will allow 3rd party apps to add new apps to the system, with their own sandbox and access to hardware and everything. Browsers could use that same implementation to add PWAs to the system as separate apps, with all the security guarantees.
Of course it's not trivial, but that seems to be solution that wouldn't add a lot of technical complexity and would address all concerns about security.
Developers are aware that is the real reason. They want to stop companies and startups from going the PWA approach and skipping their app store entirely because it means Apple has no control over them to charge them fees and put them under their gateway control.
And yet you’ll continue to give them your money. Imagine defending a company as evil as Apple, and not even getting paid for it. Fanboys are the worst.
Remember this when Theo talks about anything. He’s shown he can’t be objective. And criticizing this isn’t being objective. Apple has done far worse for years.
It's important to remember that most of Europe follows the Civil Law system, which is quite different to the Common Law legal system that America inherited from the UK.
A key grossly over simplified difference is that civil law requires legislation to explicitly state what is required, whereas common law can rely on precident to fill in the blanks, which results in broader rules that have room for a 'reasonable' interpretation (that can be further clarrified by later adding to case law, if required).
I have no opinion on the specific legislation here, but imagine it would be a challenge when handling very technical topics to get it perfected.
Apple could also just have enabled the PWA support for Safari amd disabled it for others. That _is allowed_ within the regulations. The fact that Apple doesn't do this is solely on Apple. Microsoft does the same in Windows: use Edge, you get full support. Use anything else? You're at the hands of what the browser can do.
I don't think they can, it would violate the norms as it would appear as though Apple is restricting the functionality of the other browsers compared to Safari, which still makes the whole monopolistic argument the EU filed against them valid. Maybe this particular law doesn't block them from doing that, but it would be Apple dancing around the issue as the point of the law is all browsers should be the same from a permissions standpoint, users can pick any that they desire and use it everywhere.
In short if you still NEED Safari to run something, Apple is still being prejudiced against third-party browsers and this still violates the principles of the EU's arguments
@@liquidsnake6879 No, it would not... Apple and others are most certainly allowed to do this, as long as they a) warn users about it and b) implement a solution to make other browsers 'level' as quickly as possible. Doing it this way would have given Apple ample time to erect a framework for this for release in iOS 18. Like I said, Microsoft is doing it this way on Windows, too (Windows is _much_ more cordoned off than you realise at first sight, mind you). If you use Edge and make a website shortcut, supported websites will be allowed to use any and all features to work as stand-alone apps. In other browsers, you're at the mercy of what those support. Chrome supports almost everything, so you won't notice the difference so much. Firefox has some work to do to get there.
It would also be perfectly legal for Apple to do this: a user, upon creating a 'Home screen Bookmark' for a site that is a PWA, would get a choice: "[Site Name] is a [PWA]. In order to allow this [PWA] to use all features, it is recommended to open it in WebKit. Do you want to allow this? If you select No, the [PWA] will open as a web site in your current default browser.
Note that, in my second paragraph, I deliberately used the term WebKit instead of Safari. This is because that is what PWA's use at the moment anyway. They don't _use_ Safari, they use a process called WebViewUI, which is part of the OS itself. If Apple would allow users to _choose_ whether they want this, for _each and every app,_ then that would be perfectly legal. In short: Apple chose a solution which they didn't have to choose to comply with the legislation. Some people classify this as _malicious compliance,_ and with regards to this specific issue I can most certainly see where they come from. If anything, I wouldn't be at all amazed if the EU itself is thinking along those lines, which would then force Apple to come up with a better solution than to just rip out an entire framework of code.
Tbh, I doubt PWAs were in the scope of the regulation. If Apple truly wanted to avoid the bad optics, they could've given the internal API to Google and Firefox, manually whitelist their browser engines to access them, and argue they didn't need a clean API with a proper documentation to comply with the regulation. This would make a chromium PWA some kind or Frankenstein monster, but that'd be something. They didn't even try to argue about the native part of PWAs being outside the scope of browser engines, when nothing would've stopped them from forcing alternative engines to use the sandboxed frame of safari, with just their own rendering engine on top of it. After all, so long as the alternative engine is the one doing the display, computing, and javascript interpretation, isn't it just fine? There are no requirements for native features support.
Well no, the DMA specifically states that third-party software features must not be restricted by "the gatekeeper" (i.e. Apple) and should be fully interoperable with the gatekeeper's system as was it the gatekeeper's own software. No special treatment. That means they cannot provide special or restricted access to and for specific companies or apps they seem fit, because that would be the literal definition of gatekeeping.
"The gatekeeper shall not restrict technically or otherwise the ability of end users to switch between, and subscribe to, different software applications and services that are accessed using the core platform services of the gatekeeper, including as regards the choice of Internet access services for end users." - Article 6(6)
"The gatekeeper shall allow providers of services and providers of hardware, free of charge, effective interoperability with, and access for the purposes of interoperability to, the same hardware and software features accessed or controlled via the operating system or virtual assistant listed in the designation decision pursuant to Article 3(9) as are available to services or hardware provided by the gatekeeper. Furthermore, the gatekeeper shall allow business users and alternative providers of
services provided together with, or in support of, core platform services, free of charge, effective interoperability with, and access for the purposes of interoperability to, the same operating system, hardware or software features, regardless of whether those features are part of the operating system, as are available to, or used by, that gatekeeper when providing such services." - Article 6(7)
No lee ways. They need to accept all or nothing.
What exactly is the problem of running all PWAs on one engine (webkit), no matter where they were added from and just allowing browser apps to use different engines? That totally invalidates their point.
I hope somehow this whole thing backfires on them 🙂
The EU is forced to legislate because Apple is greedy, and because the US has refused to legislate. Legislation is always a very blunt instrument. The good, and even smart, way to work is to not force their hand.
> I don't know… I feel like government shouldn't be writing law about murder and manslaughter and whatnot directly. I think it would be much better if they just laid out the rule of "Don't hurt each other unless it was necessary" and let the survivors or surviving family members sue each other until we know where we stand.
Or maybe clear rules is the better idea here; it removes a lot of loopholes as well. Saul Goodman can argue less about "You must allow users to use their own hardware to install things they want to have on there" than he would "You should like totally not be abusive with your platform, bucko".
16:40 i have an solution for this:
EU should change the rule, so that users can chose what browsers will run each pwa, once configured, it will open on it by default without asking wich browser should be used, but the user can always go to the setings on his phone to change it.
the pwa can inform what is the ideal browser to run it, for example: "tested against firefox, works best on chrome, deployed/tested on safari, we recomend opera" or something like that.
so any bug the user faces he knows that he might solve by changing the browser.
finally apple should allow users to togle permissions for each app , just like android does.
so an app might ask users to use the browser x,y,z because this browser would allow the app to use the camera without the user know its using the camera... but this permission is denied at an OS level anyway, so the app cant do cheat.
the user will be protected so long as those OS sandbox really work, the developers will be satisfied because they only have to test against one of the most popular browsers to ensure it will work on the end user device.
the only issue is that users will need to learn a bit about security in order to properly set their devices.
Is making PWAs WebKit only is against DMA? I thought it was only talking about websites, PWAs can be treated as native apps.
Why just not add another option to the share menu: "Add a shortcut to the home screen" AND "Install as PWA to the home screen"? The first one will make a shortcut that would open in a default browser and the second one will add an icon for the PWA which will work in the same way it did before via Safari.
Basically a browser with PWA support is an alternative OS sitting next to IOS (since it installs apps and manages permissions) and apple cant support that without completely forfeiting all security. allowing only safari to behave that way would be monopolistic by EU regulations.
The current problem with video pro users is that we are forced to use safari for most things, so this decision drastically reduces the total value of the Vision Pro.
"we didn't have timeeeeeee" no excuses, it was a year ago
They were marked as gatekeeper late last year at September 6th 2023. So it’s more almost 6 months. Though they have many developers and idk if time is part of it in this factor for PWA. They could just specify what browser engine to use for PWA apps. Idk how integrated webkit is into iOS though for that.
@@speedracer123222 for some reason they integrate webkit in the OS itself, for example you can't update the engine without an os update
It still baffles me that Apple excusers exist when they pull shit like this exists. Like it is so obvious what they are trying to pull. They on purpose took forever to implement push notifications and still refuse to implement many other APIs that would allow PWAs to replace a good chunk of "native" Apps - even tough many are webview wrappers anyway. But Apple just can't get enough of that Appstore money.
I think it's more-so that they cannot protect users when e.g. hardware, etc are accessed using another engine that isn't integrated into the OS's privacy setup.
Couldn’t you just make the way a pwa works open source? Or couldn’t they make a local state api for the pwa on other browsers to call safari to get the info thus making is “safe” and usable?
Personally I don't like web apps but not for any technology reason I just think websites should stay websites, I hate when I visit a website on my phone and it trys to make me use it's app
That's annoying regardless, you don't hate the system because there are some people abusing it, just look at figma, that's the perfect example of a PWA, or look at retro console emulators, note taking apps, social media apps and many more
Reasonable analysis and take, here.
“So unbelievable”
I saw an ad promising free electricity at the beginning
I believe a better way to go about this would be to use the same browser PWA has been installed on as any switch would cause a data loss
As much as I like Apple and I hate web apps this is absolutely ridiculous and I cannot justify it in good conscience.
I hate saying "this would never happen under Steve Jobs" because really nobody but the man knows what he would have done but I can't help but feel the guy who said "We are removing DRM from the iTunes store and you're all gonna deal with it" to the music industry AND PULLED IT OFF wouldn't do this kind of nonsense and ruin the user experience just to be petty.
I understand locking down the iPhone more than the Mac, I really do, but there's no convincing argument other than "we want to make more money" that we can't take responsibility for our own actions and just sideload things on our phones.
If Google can do it with Android Apple can absolutely do it, just make it abundantly clear you're on your own and be done with it, 99% of people will never sideload an IPA but that 1% will absolutely love being able to and will be incredibly satisfied with your product.
It's really that easy and it's infuriating.
the us government would love apple to fully support PWA.
8:02 - Well, there are a lot of anti-user things Apple does in general as has been noted by the right-to-repair crowd, first and foremost!
Theo your mic in this vid is sorta maxing out a bit, just letting you know (which you prolly already discovered when making the vid but anyway just in case...) Cheers.
1:46 - Wrong, all of these are available for sites, with caveats.
I’m not an Android user, but how do PWAs work there? Does it let you pick a browser engine?
Probably it uses whatever default browser is. Since on android you can have any possibly browser engine under the sun (TM) you don't have such issue like in apple case :)
You can add a PWA from any installed browser (that supports it) and the app will use the browser's rendering engine.
yep the PWA uses the engine from which browser you created the PWA.
So created in Chrome irs using Blink, created in Firefox it uses Quantum.
I don’t understand why I”m supposed to use Chrome on IOS. I”m required to use it on my work Mac, and find it clunky, even after using it for 10 years
I suppose, one way to look at it is that if Apple was developing the products properly and had months to think through stuff, they might come up with a refined solution.
But because it's a forced change that has to be done fast, they're not thinking it through.
It all boils down to: Do you want to be free to do what you want with YOUR DEVICE that you have paid YOUR MONEY for. OR do you want that company that sold it to you to force you to do what they want you to do with it.
It is a price for increase project dependencies(in current case Apple and PWA)
Stop defending Apple!
10:48 - All software is using operating system API. UE doesn't want to control that API, but it have to due how Apple oses are build for exclusion.
11:19 - I disagree. That kind of legislation prevents monopolistic wrongdoings now and in future without any suing. In EU barely no one is stupid enough to sue a corporation because a single person have no time or money for that and corporations can refer to "above country law" institutions. That also prevents widespread corruption.
PWA adoption in iOS was low because it's a pain in the ass guiding user how to click share > add to home screen ... though multiple version of safari and now multiple regions. A lot of scenarios to handle instead of simply adding a manifest json file
Whatever happened to “don’t break user space”?
7:56
Most things Apple does has been anti user for quite some time.
I hear they are not broken on ipados 17.4. How is that possible?
Every web browser for android has a PWA installer. Even Firefox
You are completely right ❤
Apple are playing victims here. I agree that implementing APIs for other browsers to support PWA would take effort (based on how Safari-centric everything is), but it isn't like DMA happened overnight. Apple could've pointed this PWA problem ages ago. It's like with other EU regulations, like car emissions -- manufacturers have time to prepare and comply (and in some cases push back). I think in the end this actually drives innovation (at the expense of corporate profits).