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Now Apple says it won’t disable iPhone web apps in the EU
(www.theverge.com)
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this post was submitted on 01 Mar 2024
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Good. It was a stupid shortsighted decision to begin with. You have to wonder who within Apple came up with the idea to begin with.
It wasn't a shortsighted decision, it was just retaliation.
Web apps are a great way for Apple to cut App Store overhead and poor quality listings. Being able to refuse copycat apps, and things that are obviously just app wrappers around a website by telling the dev to “ship it as a web app instead” gives Apple an out.
It also means they can point to web apps as App Store competition, giving them ammo to fight off “monopoly” claims.
Yes, yet they decided to retaliate against the EU by cutting them.
How was it shortsighted? The only reason they made the decision in the first place was because they felt they were legally obligated to do so? It’s only staying as is because it turns out they’re not.
Edit: I don’t know why people are downvoting. The parent comment and reply to my comment are objectively incorrect.
They were not legally obligated to disable PWAs. They did that as retaliation for having to allow third party browser engines in the EU.
That’s not true, though. The way that PWAs render and run is different from the way they run inside of an app like a browser. Because they were required to allow different browser engines, it seems Apple initially thought that meant they needed to allow PWAs to run via different engines too, hence the initial stance. Based on the law, as written, It’s completely reasonable for them to interpret it that way. Since that’s not the case, they’re not changing the current PWA implementation.
Apple was trying to get rid of PWAs. End of. If you used Safari: no PWAs. If you use Firefox or Edge: no PWAs. Since the PWA rendering engine is part of the OS in the same way that MacOS and Windows include their own web rendering engines separate from the web browsers, they could easily continue use that for PWAs even if Safari was 'uninstalled'. The whole thing was Apple throwing a tantrum at being forced to do something for the benefit of not-Apple.
That is not true. Apple was disabling PWAs because the new EU regs require that they allow other browser engines for browsers and there are considerations that would need to be taken into account for end users. Since PWAs can be run in standalone modes, it is reasonable to expect that they would fall under those regulations as it’s still a browser engine displaying the content but without any window chrome. This changed after it was clarified that it only applies to browsers downloaded from App Stores, known as “dedicated browser applications”.
The idea that Apple was trying to “get rid of PWAs” is ridiculous since the entire reason the App Store didn’t exist on iPhone was that Apple was trying to push PWAs.
One can commit to an idea, not use it anymore, and then try to get rid of it.
Your arguments make splitting hairs seem simple.
At least I made an argument based in reality. You contributed nothing and made no point.