6 ms·

It’s a shame the web was so slow to adapt to this new mobile world. When it all started things like offline capabilities were very difficult to do on the web an

by afavour 19d ago

It’s a shame the web was so slow to adapt to this new mobile world. When it all started things like offline capabilities were very difficult to do on the web and native development felt necessary. These days the web can actually do a lot… but it’s too late. People expect to find something in the App Store, pinning a web site to their Home Screen is just not something they know they can do. So a lot of people waste an enormous amount of money on three different implementations for, often, simple CRUD operations.

goosejuice 19d ago
I think the web did fine. People can't pin a web app because Apple made it difficult for them to do exactly that.
- tpmoney 19d ago
  Burger menu -> share -> add to home screen is difficult? How do you pin a web app in Android then?
  - bel8 19d ago
    How is "share" intuitive here? I want to pin the app, not share. That seems purposefully misplaced. As usual with malicious compliance. In Android: Menu > Install and create shortcut. Much cleaner, intentional, and visible with a single click for me.
    - tpmoney 19d ago
      It’s intuitive in as much as anything on smart phones is, because the share menu is the OS mechanism for sending data from any iOS app to somewhere else. You use the same menu to save a file to Dropbox, put a photo into a note, add a bookmark etc. Effectively if you want to take something that lives in an app and have it live somewhere else, you use the share menu.
      - bel8 19d ago
        You're not sending any "data" though, much less sharing anything. I just asked my colleague and they had no clue how to do it in their iPhone. I guess a win for Apple.
        tpmoney 19d ago
        Did your colleague even know that such a thing was possible at all, because it’s been in the share menu pretty much since day one. Sure it could be put somewhere else but it’s also been in a consistent spot for generations of iPhones, and the built in help app/manual will tell you how to do it if you don’t know how. If you want to argue the menu should be renamed, you won’t get any argument from me. But a poorly named menu is bad for initial discovery, but it does nothing to make the actual process any more difficult. The claim wasn’t that Apple put it in a poorly named menu, or that the share menu is bad UX in general. The claim was that iOS users can’t pin web apps because Apple made it “exceedingly difficult” to do so. A 3 click navigation through the standard menus that has been consistent for multiple generations and is documented in the on-device help doesn’t qualify as “exceedingly difficult”
    - isleyaardvark 19d ago
      It’s been under “Share” since before the term “Progressive Web App” was coined.
  - afavour 19d ago
    There’s a whole API that the browser provides to prompt users to install: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Window/beforeinstallprompt_event https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Window/befo...
    - tpmoney 19d ago
      I’m not sure one can say Apple is intentionally making it difficult to install a web app to the Home Screen because they haven’t implemented a draft proposal to the w3c working group that proposes a spec only chrome has implemented and no other browser except chrome and its derivatives supports.
      - goosejuice 19d ago
        https://mashable.com/article/apple-reverses-decision-home-screen-web-apps-pwa-eu https://mashable.com/article/apple-reverses-decision-home-sc... Yes one can. They got greedy. https://williamkennedy.ninja/apple/2024/01/30/steve-jobs-introduces-the-pwa-progressive-web-app/ https://williamkennedy.ninja/apple/2024/01/30/steve-jobs-int...
        indidjdjendk 19d ago
        Yes and no. “Add to Home Screen” living on the share menu is as insane as “Find on Page” living there. Which both do. And I don’t think there’s a master plan behind “find on page” being tucked away bafflingly on the share button. It’s just bad UX. No conspiracy here.
        goosejuice 19d ago
        It's not a conspiracy that they once promoted PWAs as being the future and then reversed course so far as to removing the ability completely.
        tpmoney 19d ago
        They only removed it completely in a jurisdiction where they were being told that they had to open all of their internal APIs around web applications to all comers if they were going to use those APIs in their own applications. They claimed (whether you believe them or not) that doing so would open risks they didn’t want to take and so they removed it in that jurisdiction. If this was some grand plan to stop the few hundred PWAs out there entirely, one would think they would have removed the PWA functionality in other less hostile jurisdictions where no law makers were looking to force a change. I could absolutely believe that the security risks were overblown, but if the assertion is Apple is trying to suppress PWAs, they’re doing a pretty bad job of it given they could just turn it off in the US and no one would blink an eye.
  - goosejuice 19d ago
    Have you ever tried communicating this to consumers of a web app? Our android customers get a nice little install popup or a push of a button.. it's pretty seamless. With TWA it's also trivial to put it on the play store.
davidmurdoch 19d ago
That's not it. It's Apple. They are crippling the web on purpose. We can't even have haptic vibration on Safari. And when we did for a little while earlier this year, it was because of a "bug" that that they promptly fixed. Apple is not interested in making with apps as seamless and integrated as native because: money.
- afavour 19d ago
  I agree that Apple has been awful here. But there are countries deeply dominated by Android that still heavily use apps when they could be using PWAs. I don’t mean to let Apple off the hook but I also don’t think they’re the only ones to blame.
  - nchmy 19d ago
    Again, this is Apple's work. Developers don't make good web apps when they cant work on iOS. https://infrequently.org/series/browser-choice-must-matter/ https://infrequently.org/series/browser-choice-must-matter/
    - jasonmp85 19d ago
      [dead]
- jen20 19d ago
  As an iPhone user: good. There is no good that can come from some dipshit website product manager being able to make my phone vibrate on a website. None at all.
  - afavour 19d ago
    Is there any good that can come from a dipshit mobile product manager being able to make your phone vibrate on an app? Is there actually a meaningful difference?
    - 19d ago
johnxianren 19d ago
The feature shipped in the app. That's the only reason i have it.
thecloud 19d ago
I believe it is more nefarious than that. The web strived for mobile native parity but web standards committees are mostly headed by delegates of companies like google and apple; the same companies that have an interest in crippling native web features to push users to their app stores, where they can extract money via fees. PWAs on iOS are a good example of how this kind of gate-keeping looks like
nunez 19d ago
I miss the mobile-versions of websites for low-bandwidth connections (the ones that started with "m."). They were lightning fast, even on slow networks, and were laser-focused on top-of-funnel user activities. Facebook's implementation was extremely solid (when I used them). Messaging worked as well until they gated that behind full Facebook.
nchmy 19d ago
Apple is almost completely to blame for all of this. https://infrequently.org/series/browser-choice-must-matter/ https://infrequently.org/series/browser-choice-must-matter/

by afavour 19d ago

goosejuice 19d ago

I think the web did fine. People can't pin a web app because Apple made it difficult for them to do exactly that.

tpmoney 19d ago
Burger menu -> share -> add to home screen is difficult? How do you pin a web app in Android then?
- bel8 19d ago
  How is "share" intuitive here? I want to pin the app, not share. That seems purposefully misplaced. As usual with malicious compliance. In Android: Menu > Install and create shortcut. Much cleaner, intentional, and visible with a single click for me.
  - tpmoney 19d ago
    It’s intuitive in as much as anything on smart phones is, because the share menu is the OS mechanism for sending data from any iOS app to somewhere else. You use the same menu to save a file to Dropbox, put a photo into a note, add a bookmark etc. Effectively if you want to take something that lives in an app and have it live somewhere else, you use the share menu.
    - bel8 19d ago
      You're not sending any "data" though, much less sharing anything. I just asked my colleague and they had no clue how to do it in their iPhone. I guess a win for Apple.
      - tpmoney 19d ago
        Did your colleague even know that such a thing was possible at all, because it’s been in the share menu pretty much since day one. Sure it could be put somewhere else but it’s also been in a consistent spot for generations of iPhones, and the built in help app/manual will tell you how to do it if you don’t know how. If you want to argue the menu should be renamed, you won’t get any argument from me. But a poorly named menu is bad for initial discovery, but it does nothing to make the actual process any more difficult. The claim wasn’t that Apple put it in a poorly named menu, or that the share menu is bad UX in general. The claim was that iOS users can’t pin web apps because Apple made it “exceedingly difficult” to do so. A 3 click navigation through the standard menus that has been consistent for multiple generations and is documented in the on-device help doesn’t qualify as “exceedingly difficult”
  - isleyaardvark 19d ago
    It’s been under “Share” since before the term “Progressive Web App” was coined.
- afavour 19d ago
  There’s a whole API that the browser provides to prompt users to install: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Window/beforeinstallprompt_event https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Window/befo...
  - tpmoney 19d ago
    I’m not sure one can say Apple is intentionally making it difficult to install a web app to the Home Screen because they haven’t implemented a draft proposal to the w3c working group that proposes a spec only chrome has implemented and no other browser except chrome and its derivatives supports.
    - goosejuice 19d ago
      https://mashable.com/article/apple-reverses-decision-home-screen-web-apps-pwa-eu https://mashable.com/article/apple-reverses-decision-home-sc... Yes one can. They got greedy. https://williamkennedy.ninja/apple/2024/01/30/steve-jobs-introduces-the-pwa-progressive-web-app/ https://williamkennedy.ninja/apple/2024/01/30/steve-jobs-int...
      - indidjdjendk 19d ago
        Yes and no. “Add to Home Screen” living on the share menu is as insane as “Find on Page” living there. Which both do. And I don’t think there’s a master plan behind “find on page” being tucked away bafflingly on the share button. It’s just bad UX. No conspiracy here.
        goosejuice 19d ago
        It's not a conspiracy that they once promoted PWAs as being the future and then reversed course so far as to removing the ability completely.
        tpmoney 19d ago
        They only removed it completely in a jurisdiction where they were being told that they had to open all of their internal APIs around web applications to all comers if they were going to use those APIs in their own applications. They claimed (whether you believe them or not) that doing so would open risks they didn’t want to take and so they removed it in that jurisdiction. If this was some grand plan to stop the few hundred PWAs out there entirely, one would think they would have removed the PWA functionality in other less hostile jurisdictions where no law makers were looking to force a change. I could absolutely believe that the security risks were overblown, but if the assertion is Apple is trying to suppress PWAs, they’re doing a pretty bad job of it given they could just turn it off in the US and no one would blink an eye.
- goosejuice 19d ago
  Have you ever tried communicating this to consumers of a web app? Our android customers get a nice little install popup or a push of a button.. it's pretty seamless. With TWA it's also trivial to put it on the play store.

davidmurdoch 19d ago

That's not it. It's Apple. They are crippling the web on purpose. We can't even have haptic vibration on Safari. And when we did for a little while earlier this year, it was because of a "bug" that that they promptly fixed. Apple is not interested in making with apps as seamless and integrated as native because: money.

afavour 19d ago
I agree that Apple has been awful here. But there are countries deeply dominated by Android that still heavily use apps when they could be using PWAs. I don’t mean to let Apple off the hook but I also don’t think they’re the only ones to blame.
- nchmy 19d ago
  Again, this is Apple's work. Developers don't make good web apps when they cant work on iOS. https://infrequently.org/series/browser-choice-must-matter/ https://infrequently.org/series/browser-choice-must-matter/
  - jasonmp85 19d ago
    [dead]
jen20 19d ago
As an iPhone user: good. There is no good that can come from some dipshit website product manager being able to make my phone vibrate on a website. None at all.
- afavour 19d ago
  Is there any good that can come from a dipshit mobile product manager being able to make your phone vibrate on an app? Is there actually a meaningful difference?
  - 19d ago

johnxianren 19d ago

The feature shipped in the app. That's the only reason i have it.

thecloud 19d ago

I believe it is more nefarious than that. The web strived for mobile native parity but web standards committees are mostly headed by delegates of companies like google and apple; the same companies that have an interest in crippling native web features to push users to their app stores, where they can extract money via fees. PWAs on iOS are a good example of how this kind of gate-keeping looks like

nunez 19d ago

I miss the mobile-versions of websites for low-bandwidth connections (the ones that started with "m."). They were lightning fast, even on slow networks, and were laser-focused on top-of-funnel user activities. Facebook's implementation was extremely solid (when I used them). Messaging worked as well until they gated that behind full Facebook.

nchmy 19d ago

Apple is almost completely to blame for all of this. https://infrequently.org/series/browser-choice-must-matter/ https://infrequently.org/series/browser-choice-must-matter/