Comment by thayne
5 years ago
There may be some legitimate fingerprinting concenrs. But given the list of API's it's hard not to see this as Apple crippling PWAs to prevent them from replacing native iOS apps (and hurting Apple's revenue from the Apple tax).
And maybe I'm missing something, but wouldn't the fingerprinting concern be mitigated by the fact the app has to ask for permission before using the API? If an app that doesn't have to do with MIDI asks for permission to use my MIDI device, I'm going to be instantly suspicious.
Exactly. This is about making sure web apps are not as powerful as native apps.
One thing is the revenue generated by the App Store but suppose JavaScript web apps were just as powerful and well integrated as native apps; then why use native apps at all? Why have an App Store at all? Why have a Mac or an iPhone if any device with a modern web browser would do?
When Huawei tried to create their alternative to Android. The big thing missing wasn't the hardware or the operation system. It was the App Store with your map app, your banking app, your scooter app and so on.
The App Store and the proprietary development platforms for Android and Apple has become a way to keep their duopoly in place.
I like having apps that work and feel the same. I can bring my knowledge from one app to another. I can develop expertise on a platform. The web is culturally unable to do that.
Look at a sophisticated web app, like Google Docs. This has a menu bar, which is a bad copy of the native Mac menu bar. Web apps are copying native app conventions, to try to be more familiar. But they're also eroding those conventions.
Eventually only click and swipe will be left. And this problem is not going to be solved by Web MIDI or whatever.
I think you’re trying to say that Mac OS or Windows native apps have pretty much the same UI/UX conventions which makes it easy to use any app on that platform. And that Web Apps have UI/UX that is less consistent than apps across OS’s.
I can’t say I agree with this. There are a ton of MacOs apps that implement fully custom GUI (first one that comes to mind is Jira native Mac app which looks nothing like a Mac app I’ve seen before)
I agree web apps are likely eroding OS conventions though. The Jira app is an example of that (they decided to make their native app look and behave the same as the Jira Web App instead of using standard MacOS GUI conventions.
It’s a tough trade off.
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Android supports PWA and let's you install apps without their app store, not the same as apple at all
Isn't Google the one implementing all these APIs though?
But for google, the benefits of having richer web apps on which they can show you ads and have app developers pay google for ads may be more valuable than any revenue they lose from the app store.
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No. This is about privacy.
Why have native apps at all?
Because web apps are crap, excuse my Swahili.
Do you honestly think that Apple would lose enough money by implementing Web MIDI for Safari on iOS that this would be even the most remote consideration? Like, the Safari team was in a meeting about Web MIDI and some manager said "but think of the impact on our stock options!" and they all went "oooooh" and scrapped it?
Or is it that Tim Cook was looking at Apple's balance sheet and decided that they couldn't afford to lose the 30% cut of all the MIDI-capable iOS/iPadOS apps that could be completely replaced by a web app?
The reality is that the real cost of this feature to them would be developer time; it would be a colossal waste of their limited WebKit/Safari developer resources to implement Web MIDI rather than something that would actually be used by more than a scant sliver of a percentage of Safari users.
apple fanboys will accept anything from apple. No headphone jack? it's an improvement! w3 spec not implemented? they are working on more important features! antenna stops working if you hold the phone wrong? I like it that way!
I wished they implemented the Fullscreen API for iPhones...
> If an app that doesn't have to do with MIDI asks for permission to use my MIDI device, I'm going to be instantly suspicious.
Sure, you'll be suspicious, but I seriously doubt you're the average user. I bet a very large proportion of Safari users have no idea what a MIDI device is and some significant portion of them wouldn't think twice about granting those permissions.
I'd assume the small percentage with a midi device who are going to music app websites would be more likely to know
Anyone can request MIDI permissions.
The parent comment implies a bad actor using the API for something like fingerprinting, and a common user who may have never even heard of MIDI, let alone have a device.
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Are you all serious about this ask for permission thing? Good luck explaining MIDI, HID, NFC and so on to the average Joe, in a small popup. We already have enough “I agree” buttons popping over the screen. Web should be built for everybody, it’s not the nineties anymore.
Sorry, but Average Joe needs to learn this one thing to adapt to the modern web:
Say no.
Average Joe doesn't need to learn what all these things are. In the unlikely event he knows what the thing is and knows that he wants it, he can answer yes. But his default response needs to be no.
>Web should be built for everybody
Exactly. That's why Average Joe needs to adapt.
Sure, but Apple could solve that by requiring a user action to show that popup dialog. Or they could even block everything by default and force you to give permissions manually. That way average Joe is blisfully unaware of anything and completely safe while you just have to suffer a minor inconvenience of whitelisting that one legit website the first time you use it.
I don’t even want these 16 api’s. I want a way to do notifications and a way to store more than 50 mb on ios. Sure, make me and the user jump through hoops to make sure I’m not abusive, but with those two there are a ton of apps which I can build as pwa’s.
The app clips feature they showed? That should have been a qr code triggered pwa with notifications, except everybody had to build it as an app because they couldn’t do notifications, and then apple used the cumbersome nature of those apps as the reason for app clips. It’s the snake eating its own tail, and I’m getting IE6 vibes because microsoft also strategically stopped improving IE for web apps because they wanted to push app developers to native because of the improved user experience. Yeah, the web is worse, but worse is better.
I’m very glad a web page cannot store 50mb data and send notification to me.
You only think from a developer’s perspective. What if you are the user receiving 50 notification requirement a day from a web browser?
What if you are a user receiving 50 notifications a day from an app? You block them. Same with the web app.
People have very strict mental models of what “the web” and “native” should do but they’re not actually based on anything. There’s no actual reason why a web app sending you notifications (which it has to prompt for permission to do) is different to an app doing it. From the non developer perspective the divide makes no sense.
Not to mention the privacy argument by Apple feels disingenuous. The reason people are so outraged by tracking on the web is because they know it’s happening. Meanwhile native apps include bundles from Facebook to implement sign in with Facebook and it does whatever it wants. But because you can’t inspect and check no one talks about it.
Then you tap on the notification and say "turn off" and then it stops happening.
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Despite this, I believe PWAs will eventually win, and Apple will be forced to comply if they wish to stay relevant.
Their browser share dropped a little recently (https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share). If that continues, it'll certainly irk them!
IMO, that won't happen until either Apple gives up their control on browser "engine" choices on iOS or Apple itself becomes irrelevant.
Consider that browser share usage could shift around as device usage shifts around during a pandemic.
I don't disagree, but would you expect such a significant drop in Safari usage?
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Apple is a corporation listed on a US exchange, an entity where the only motivation is to generate profit for shareholders. It helps for corporations to frame business decisions in moral terms. If Apple cares about privacy, it is only because there is alignment with profit. If Apple cares about locking out APIs that disrupt their App Store profit, it doesn't hurt to frame the decision in privacy terms.
Currently my desire for both privacy, convenience, and usability align with Apple's current business decisions, so I choose iPhone. When Apple pivots to a new business model, I'll find the best compromise product.
I disagree strongly. Apple leaves money on the table by not aggressively tracking its users. And their investment in e.g. accessibility is certainly not driven by bottom-line considerations.
Apple is relevant today because they actually are focused on products, not profits. Sometimes it really is that simple.
It's naive to think any company exists for any other purpose than maximizing profit. That's business 101.
Every time I see this argument I have the same question. How many successful web apps are there for Android? Apps that make the most money on the App Store are free to play games with in app purchases of loot boxe, coins, etc. how many of those are feasible on the web?
On the other hand, which apps that make money via in app purchases would be viable and successful as web apps?
I think most would be as successful IF they had an equally frictionless payment system. Big hits like Candy Crush could easily be built as a web app. These are not pushing the boundaries of software, they're just exploiting our psychology.
If PWA support is so good on Android, there should be a lot of successful profitable PWA’s on Android. Chrome supports the Web Payments API that should make payments seamless in the browser.
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counterpoint to that argument: if you want to create an app that runs on both Apple and Android products, and you know that Apple doesn't support the progressive web app specification, why would you waste your time? It makes more sense to use a cross-platform development tool and release on the app store when one of the two big software platforms doesn't support the spec.
Any app that you wrote would also have a web equivalent any way for non mobile environments. So why not just do an iOS app and a web app?
And still waiting for someone to give me an example of an app that makes a lot of money on the App Store through in app purchasing, that could probably make just as much money as a PWA if it weren’t for mobile Safari.
But the implication of this argument is that the benefit of PWAs is to the developer rather than the user, right? If PWAs actually benefited users, then creating one instead of an Android app wouldn’t be waste of time even if you had to create a separate iOS native app in either case.
Yep, seems like apple made another move against the web.
PWA's have always lagged behind Native Capabilities, even when API's exist the performance has been poor for high performance apps so the allegation doesn't quite make sense to me.
Almost certainly an excuse to further suppress PWAs.