Comment by chii
12 hours ago
They could opt out - by sticking to web platforms.
Apple cannot charge for that. However, apple does attempt to gimp the web platforms on mobile to "subtly" push for apps.
12 hours ago
They could opt out - by sticking to web platforms.
Apple cannot charge for that. However, apple does attempt to gimp the web platforms on mobile to "subtly" push for apps.
The whole Epic vs Apple was about Apple blocking this. Before being slapped by regulators, Apple had anti-steering policies forbidding iOS apps from even mentioning that purchasing elsewhere is possible.
Even after EU DSA told them to allow purchases via Web, Apple literally demanded a 27% cut from purchases happening outside of App Store (and then a bunch of other arrogantly greedy fee structures that keeps them in courts).
Apple knows how hard is not to be in the duopoly of app stores. They keep web apps half-assed, won't direct users to them, but allow knock-off apps to use your trademarks in their search keywords.
They do and it’s awful. I’m making a browser based game and it works great on desktop browsers but Apple refuses to allow css filters on canvas forcing you to build your own filters and apply them to image data. The web audio api is also a pain to get working properly on iOS safari and a bunch of other arbitrary but feels like they’re intentional obstacles found only on iOS. I’m almost considering just using webgl instead of a 2d context but who knows what obstacles apple is hiding there also it will make everything so much more verbose for no real gain.
Not even in the days of IE was I ever this frustrated.
> Not even in the days of IE was I ever this frustrated.
I've been web devving since the days of IE as well and this reeks of hyperbole. Maybe things are different for browser games, but for me, everything has vastly improved since those days.
To be fair, he's completely right. I have a lot of experience with IE6 and safari on iOS, and while IE6 was bad and did weird shit, Safari is much worse. It's amazing that things can work in any browser, without ever even thinking about it, but then on Safari you get weird behaviour, straight up rendering bugs because of some weird race conditions with the engine or even crashes.
The latest issue that I've noticed yesterday is the button nav bar on the screen when running PWAs. The button is over the bottom navbar of the PWA, and despite apple themselves coming up with the API to inform the browser about safe display areas, it doesn't work in PWAs on iOS. PWA mode on iOS != non PWA on iOS. They often behave completely different and you often have to use JS for basic things to work, like clicking a link(yup, this was a thing for years).
Well maybe we are doing different things. Back in those days Javascript and CSS were much simpler people would cry about the position of elements and easy stuff like that. However I have to manually manage web audio api memory because if you don't release the buffers and other things the memory won't get released until the tab in closed, so it's easy for a tab to inexpertly take up 6gigs plus of ram (1min of audio is ~80mb), it's impossible to know that, that is happening unless you know, so you have this missive memory leak that even refreshing the tab won't fix and you have no idea why it happening, that is true frustration. You have to manage memory in canvas too especially if you are using bitmaps and if you are on iOS because it will crash the page because you looked at it wrong. I don't know anything that would have crashed the page in IE back in the day. So no, it is not hyperbole :)
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I tried something similar a couple years back, and fully agree. Safari is atrocious for trying to create a good mobile experience. It almost feels intentional.
Why could Apple not charge a percentage for any user using their mobile device? Why would it be limited to app store?
Because they don't control those. Apple could choose to only allow users to access websites that pay them a bit 30% fee, but users would notice the web was turned off on their device. They don't notice when the app store does it.
I don't think people would notice if Apple just made the website behind a paywall. Most people are not going to be aware that they can access the same content without paying a fee to Apple. They may only even have an Apple device to access the internet, so they'd just see it as normal
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