Comment by afavour
2 days ago
> It's pretty clear they (and Google, to a lesser extent) don't want web apps to be on the same level as native apps.
Ironically the reality here is backwards: for a very long time iOS apps could _only_ send declarative push alerts. Only since iOS 10 were you able to use a UNNotificationServiceExtension to customize the content on-device. That extension has very strict resource and CPU limits and is terminated if it violates them. Even when you do have this extension you still need to send a declarative payload in case the on-client code fails, exactly the same as Declarative Web Push requires.
> And running _any_ amount of code "expends energy", so it seems silly to even imply that is a problem.
There's a big difference between running some native code and spinning up an entire JS virtual machine and worker environment to (effectively) modify some JSON. In fact, worker boot up speed is a recognized problem to the extent that there's an entire API to handle situations where a network response would load quicker than a Service Worker might:
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/NavigationP...
Years ago I actually tried spinning up a JSContext in a notification extension out of curiosity and the extension was immediately killed for exceeding resource limits. May well not be the case today but the logic still makes sense to me.
Apple is no saint and has done plenty of negative things for web apps. But in this specific instance they're making the right call, IMO: requiring backup notification content for when client-side code fails is sensible.
> Ironically the reality here is backwards:
Maybe you quoted the wrong the thing? but there's no irony here, and it's definitely not backwards in reality: Apple and Google have both severely limited what PWAs can do such that they are vastly inferior to native apps. It would very difficult to argue otherwise.
> There's a big difference between running some native code and spinning up an entire JS virtual machine and worker environment to (effectively) modify some JSON
Presumably React Native apps do something to that extent? Or, if they don't, whatever optimization they use could certainly be applied "under-the-hood" to PWAs.
> Presumably React Native apps do something to that extent?
Not in the background they don't, no.
> Or, if they don't, whatever optimization they use
They don't have one. There is no optimization they can do to run JS in the background. Push notifications in a React Native app either use native code or rely on declarative payloads sent from the server.