this post was submitted on 22 Feb 2024

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Apple Is Trying to Kill the Open Internet! (mastodon.social)

submitted 8 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

11 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Apple Is Trying to Kill the Open Internet!

https://youtu.be/up-zUEFNMww

@technology

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

As a user, I don't really get the argument of either side.

Apple's killing WPAs because they can't allow 3rd party web engines to do that... That doesn't make sense to me because Apple is still going to allow these browsers to open these WPAs as normal websites anyway.

Now, how is it an attack to the openness of the web, though? Maybe these websites lose convenient access to users? But what do the users lose here? Especially given that they can distribute their apps through third party app stores. I don't really understand the problem.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I think they fear someone will make a browser that makes native apps less desirable.

Google could wrap all the iOS widget, expose them to WASM and basically let people bypass the AppStore entirely and install everything as Chrome "apps".

Safari conveniently lacks a lot of the features that would compete with native apps in features, like refusing to implement WebPush until very recently.

They don't want web apps to even have a chance to compete with their AppStore. With Safari being the only allowed browser, they could make sure the browser is always less desirable than downloading the app.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago (2 children)

But they are going to allow 3rd party app stores in EU, right? Then those chrome-based web apps wouldn't be a bigger threat. Maybe I'm missing something.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

They're still going to charge app developers releasing on 3rd party app stores, so Apple will still make money through this route. https://www.theverge.com/2024/1/26/24051823/apple-third-party-app-stores-50-cent-fee

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

Oof. Can they just let me run my own app on my phone?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago

The apple third party App Store solution should be in a list under the title: Notable Examples in Malicious Compliance

[–] [email protected] 7 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

"Kill the Open Internet" by... allowing people to choose a non-Safari browser to run PWAs...?

What?

The whining about getting cut off from push notifications, looks like a particularly funny one in light of this: (25 Jan 2024)

Privacy Concerns about Apple Push Notifications

TL;DR: data-hungry apps use push notifications as a trigger to send app analytics and device information to their remote servers, even if the apps aren't running at all on your iPhone. Such apps include TikTok, Facebook, FB Messenger, Instagram, Threads, X, and many more.

https://twitter.com/mysk_co/status/1750502700112916504

[–] [email protected] 21 points 8 months ago

Is there a non-video source for this information?

[–] [email protected] 32 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Wat? Is this just about pwas? Firefox does that too. Rage baiting hard here.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 8 months ago (1 children)

News doesn't become rage bait just because it is against your beloved Apple. The video does discuss very relevant points about how abusive this move from Apple is. In fact, this news has been discussed seriously for two weeks now.

Firefox does that too

Firefox is just a browser and has nothing to do with PWAs that require OS support. This is about PWAs as an alternative to app side loading, which Apple doesn't allow. You're needlessly misconstruing the issue.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Firefox is just a browser and has nothing to do with PWAs that require OS support.

It does. PWAs are browser installed apps. On Android, they show up as independent icons with the Firefox logo on it:

Lemmy icon as a Firefox PWA

Those behave like independent apps, they have their own icon, their own entry in the app switcher, they're full screen with no browser UI elements. Just a full screen web page. This has been possible for a long time on iOS too with Safari.

It has nothing to do with sideloading. PWAs were a way to make web apps feel as close as possible to real apps as possible. Things like https://vger.app feels almost like native apps.

Apple's decided they'd rather get rid of it than let third party browsers be able to do that, as they can't control how much those apps can do. Chrome can just make WASM really good and make native apps less necessary, and make the AppStore tax more avoidable, and they won't let that happen.

And Firefox does indeed also kinda suck in the PWA department, and have kind of soft-abandonned them, and they're buggy. On Chrome, a good PWA can feel as good as native.