Apple declined to implement 16 Web APIs in Safari due to privacy concerns

Google's developer relations team have done a good job convincing web devs that those APIs are pushed by Google to enable "Amazing PWAs", yet we haven't seen them used by any major app. People are choosing to download native apps for more sophisticated applications.

However Google is pushing those APIs because they know tracking people without cookies in future is a big challenge for them and they need new ways of tracking people.

So sad that Google has taken over the web. From the most used browser (Chrome) to the content hijacking (AMP) to the standards (PWA). All to sell you to advertisers.

Rhe fact that people don't realize PWAs are the next push by Google to regain control is shocking.

The number of hackernews threads calling out Apple for not supporting PWAs is just as insane.

You have to build these APIs before people use them, and a lot of what Google has been building into Chrome is stuff native apps can do, so the use-case is clearly there.

IMO native apps are capable of far more invasive privacy violations than the web is. But for some reason they're given a very free pass by comparison.

I don't really understand: the PWA APIs are W3C APIs, they're not created by one company. Mozilla fully supports them.

They're given a very free pass because it's incredibly easy to block a native app from sending data back or even connecting to the internet at all.

You have a lot more control over something that's running locally than something running serverside that simply using the client to harvest data.

Well, because native apps are intended to be trusted. They do not have a motivation to invade your privacy: proprietary apps are usually paid upfront and risk their future clients, open source can be inspected.

Instead, the overwhelming web business model is "free to use" (akin to f2p in games). That means ads and other monetization side channels become the priority of the app, not the app itself.

And that is for trusted web apps. Let's not even talk about the fact that you are executing random code every time you visit any webpage. That just does not happen with native apps.

That's not true at all! Free native apps abound. Web apps tied to subscriptions are also plentiful.

Open source is neither here nor there: both web sites and native apps can be open source. In fact, the web is unique in allowing you to actually inspect the source that is running on your machine, you have no way of verifying that the code in an open source repo is what actually runs inside your iOS app.

If PWAs die, we will be struck with this duopoly in smartphone OS for foreseeable future as native apps are the ones which help them retain their position.

If we want upcoming pure Linux smartphone OS, Sailfish or any other platform which protect the mobile computing from becoming proprietary; we need web apps & PWAs to grow and capture significant market.

Apple's treatment towards PWAs has been well known as PWAs are the only threat for its Appstore monopoly in iOS.

Native apps are not handling my bank account passwords. They're also not collecting data about my consumer behavior with the goal of displaying more ads. This is a big difference.

Just because they're standards doesn't mean they aren't standards written and promoted chiefly by Google. Mozilla also has pushed back on some of them, despite the fact that... Mozilla supporting them isn't a good argument since most of their revenue also comes from, you guessed it: Google.

Name three PWA apps please. I know I've built two PWA POC some time ago (using service workers and Notification API), but I've never use any PWA in the wild.

> Native apps are not handling my bank account passwords.

You're conflating browsers (Chrome, Firefox, etc) with user applications. User applications are still not handling your bank passwords.

> They're also not collecting data about my consumer behavior with the goal of displaying more ads.

lol? Absolutely wrong here.

> They're also not collecting data about my consumer behavior with the goal of displaying more ads

This is my original point. They 100% absolutely are. Look at some of the ad and tracking frameworks for native apps. Somehow no one cares.

Are you talking specifically about add-to-home-screen / offline capabilities? Because PWA is a very broad term, and most descriptions I've seen consider those features necessary to be a PWA.

Ignoring those two, you get damn near every major web app. All of Google's applications, Facebook, Twitter, etc. etc.

Twitter

Firefox Send

Spotify

On Android you can use web apps in Firefox, with content blocking powered by uBlock Origin and Privacy Badger. This is because Android allows real Firefox, engine and all and Firefox implements the web push API.

This gives you unmatched privacy. As I've said elsewhere too, see this Facebook page listing apps that share data with them via FB's SDK and marvel at how privacy friendly your iOS device really is:

https://www.facebook.com/off_facebook_activity

The notion that Apple is not implementing the web push API for example, for privacy reasons, is stupid.

> Name three PWA apps please

Fastmail, Facebook, Twitter.

None of them work on iOS due to lacking web push notifications. All of them can work on Android as PWAs and as PWAs they are more secure and privacy friendly (not only due to less permissions granted, but also because you can protect yourself with uBlock Origin et all).

Keep in mind that your personal experience is an anecdote.

> In fact, the web is unique in allowing you to actually inspect the source that is running on your machine

To be fair, this is changing with WASM. On the other hand, there are tons of obfuscation opportunities with native executables that don't exist for WASM.

I love that firefox send is on this list. Thank you.

From a developer's point of view, I can see the value in PWAs (for them), but as an end user, I really don't see the benefit of PWAs over native apps. The UX is almost always severely degraded when compared to their native counterparts (even if the feature set is ostensibly identical). Why would I use a Twitter PWA, when the native app provides a much better UX?

Not sure which region you're from, so I've included the filter for you[1]. These are from famous companies, every major apps uses PWA in some part of their app.

[1]https://developers.google.com/web/showcase/region

Interesting thought. I wonder if there's a genuine threat of google "AMP-ifying" PWAs. And by that, I essentially mean Google using their properties to exert control over PWAs, just as they have with web articles and other content. Given Google's virtual stronghold over the web, I'd assume so.

This is a good question.

You can enable add-to-home-screen for websites with a single meta tag,

   <meta name="mobile-web-app-capable" content="yes">

e.g. Here's one of my website with that tag[1], Ironically this feature was introduced by Apple and is considered part of PWA specs.

But for the sake of this discussion, let's consider PWAs to be one which uses app manifest[2] and uses some high level device features.

[1]https://needgap.com

[2]https://web.dev/what-are-pwas/

Why would I use the Twitter app, when I can get the same out of the PWA and not have to download a hundred meg update every week for "bug fixes and improvements"?

Nah people can just program in Java again.

My last employer (a business to business company) exclusively went down the web app route, with some minimal PWA features, because their clients genuinely preferred not having to go through the app store to install it on their (often personal) phones. Whether they bookmarked the website or "installed" it to their home screen or only used it from their laptop / desktop was entirely up to them, and they never had to deal with the app upgrade hassle.

Tastes vary, I suppose.

> From a developer's point of view, I can see the value in PWAs (for them), but as an end user, I really don't see the benefit of PWAs over native apps.

I suspect the bigger demand for PWAs is for non-consumer apps. If you are selling to businesses or building internal apps for a business, often delivering a multi-platform + web app with decent performance/ UX, often a PWA or PWA + Web platform is the way to go.

> Why would I use a Twitter PWA, when the native app provides a much better UX?

This is why I think vertical/ internal apps make a lot more sense for PWAs. If consumers have a choice on what they use, they are going to opt for the faster/ better integrated app and PWAs can't compete. For a purchasing manager, the difference between a cross platform PWA and delivering 2 native mobile apps plus a web app can easily be tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars in development costs.

(FWIW, I work on a large SAAS web app/ PWA which obviously colors my perceptions)

The advantage of a PWA might be that it exists compared to the native equivalent that doesn't.

I'm interested in the many quirky apps and niche experiments made by people who won't or can't make cross platform native apps.

It's this stuff I care about. I don't care about whether you faang of choice chooses to go native or not.

PWA's or web experiences are "good enough".

I would never use a social network native app, ever, as the category has a history of abusing privacy, poorly utilizing resources or any number of other things.

For business, it's a much easier decision. If I can do what I need to do in a PWA, why futz around with iOS, Windows variants, and multiple versions of Android apps? App Stores are a much bigger PITA than shipping web code, and I don't have the time, budget or care to make a polished user experience for employees.

Or just use Tweeetbot, it weighs in at 7.2MB and the last update was 8 months ago.

> However Google is pushing those APIs because they know tracking people without cookies in future is a big challenge for them and they need new ways of tracking people.

Why would it be? They have the search data, they know what you clicked on, they have GA on 60-80% of sites, they have plenty of information, tracking and profiling users isn't the issue. Tracking and profiling users legally is what's hard.

Why on earth would I use a native app for twitter? It's all static content browsing, this has been solved decades ago with the web.

The occasional tweet I may send is just an input field and a file upload maybe.

>Fastmail, Facebook, Twitter.

I don't Android, so I really don't know - but are those PWAs the only or primary options for most users on the Android platform?

If not, they're really just "native apps which are also available as PWAs", and without data on relative adoption rates it's not really very useful information.

> Free native apps abound.

Yes? I haven't claimed there aren't free native apps.

> Web apps tied to subscriptions are also plentiful.

Fair, but most of the ones I know are usually technical apps or they offer something else that is not about software (for instance, storage more than the app).

> the web is unique in allowing you to actually inspect the source that is running on your machine

That is not unique, nor true.

Uniqueness: you have apps made in scripting languages everywhere. Even for compiled languages it is a decision not to give you the code, not a technical one.

Truthness: many webs are obfuscated on purpose like native apps are.

> you have no way of verifying that the code in an open source repo is what actually runs inside your iOS app.

False, you can definitely verify that a binary matches the source code in deterministic builds and even provide debugging symbols etc. The fact that many projects don't care about that does not mean there is "no way", it just means the overwhelming majority of users do not care.

This is a perfect example of a HN reader being out of touch with what the vast majority of users actually want. There are plenty of reasons people want a native twitter app: state restoration, integration with system services, push notifications, better user experience, better accessibility, fewer ways to track the user, better permission model, ...

Native apps are hard to develop and publish through app stores compared to PWAs, and many users don't have access to Play store.

Web apps are also more strongly sandboxed which is important considering how much of Android install base is running on devices without security updates. (Android devices notoriously stop getting them after only couple of years after device launch, or even sooner)

You think native apps have fewer ways to track the user? Then why does every social site push users to their native app? Just so they can get less info? Seems unlikely to me.

What about Facebook? A native app, free, tied to a business and utterly motivated to violate your privacy.

> False: you can definitely verify that a binary matches the source code in deterministic builds

If I want to check an app I have installed from the iOS App Store matches the code provided in an open repo, how would I go about doing that?

>Truthness: many webs are obfuscated on purpose like native apps are.

True. But their underlying behaviour, i.e., what data they send and where they send it, is viewable and blockable by browser extensions.

Vast majority of users go back home and browse on their laptops because a big screen is better than a credit card

Vast majority of users will use whatever you throw at them, especially if they're friction free (no account needed, no credit card, no updates, no space occupied, immediately available, even on slow networks, etc. etc.)

But a billion+ users do Android on a 99$ phone

Maybe in the case of Twitter it makes sense (I'm not using Twitter myself), but in general, as the OP notes, the UX is worse with PWAs than it is with native apps. So, to rephrase your comment to reflect this

> Why would I use the app, when I can get /something worse but workable/ out of the PWA and not have to download a hundred meg update every week

And then the answer might be --- because your phone has 128 gigs of memory, your home wi-fi has unlimited bandwidth, and the updates all get downloaded automatically while you're sleeping, you might decide to go for the better UX in exchange for nothing at all.

I don't have to go full PWA to make useful apps

And don't have to go through an app store, creating an account, paying Apple, waiting for their opaque reviews and giving them 30% of whatever amount I make through my app.

Android has Firefox, thanks to Apple iOS doesn't.

Downloading a PWA isn’t smaller and it also needs updates just like a native app. And the answer to your question is the comment you replied to.

What is state restoration? All I want is to go back to where I was, a normal website does that ( e.g. HN). Integration with what? I literally just wanna browse twitter, like, retweet, and occasionally compose one. Push notifications, they work on every system except iOS. Better UX is using URLs that I can open and share. Better accessibility is HTML that blind users can use. Native apps track you much, much more than websites and can't be uBlocked. Permission model is as good as native, if not better because users blindly give native apps all permissions (see Instagram).

You haven't made a single point, on the contrary, web wins on ALL of them.

The one single point you can make but you didn't, is that native apps often (but not always) feel smoother or more responsive. Which shouldn't be an issue on browsing static content.

Woops! I left off the word "don't" in regards to those features being necessary to be considered PWAs!

The problem with having an Android phone is that then you have to actually use the damn thing.

On a more serious note though, in iOS 14 app developers are responsible for any SDK's their app uses including data egress.

"Out of touch" is an unfair characterization. Not everyone wants what you think they want.

I specifically do not want push notifications from Twitter or almost any other app aside from calendars and alarms. Having Twitter notify me about every stupid online interaction was causing my life to be buried in constant distraction. Without a doubt, my life is better without it, and I don't think that's an unusual perspective.

Also, I would be curious about your reasoning that running an app gives fewer ways to track the user. I would tend to believe the opposite.

*Edit: 1 minor typo

"Your off-Facebook activity is currently turned off."

Seems fine to me?

Every time I load the page for a tweet in their PWA on iOS it gives me an error, and then I reload the page and it works fine.

Why would I use the Twitter website, when I can get the same out of the app, it loads faster, and it actually works consistently? Plus I don't have to log in in app webviews all the time.

I agree app stores need to face antitrust scrutiny... but websites having crazy types of permissions isn't the answer.

Web apps by default talk to an outside server, native apps by default do not. Native apps will always be the more private by default option.

Never trust what they say, Google is known to offer so called "free" services for your good, ultimately people realize they are paying with their private data.

So you're invoking popularity, but I don't understand what that has to do with it.

I use web apps all the time, even on mobile. And I'm sure I'm not alone.

Speaking of which Fastmail's Android and iOS apps are just the web app packaged in a native shell ;-) and they are not alone. For them clearly it was cost efective to work on that web app.

As for why they bothered to package their web app in a native shell? Maybe that's were the problem is.

> Web apps by default talk to an outside server, native apps by default do not.

Huh? There is no permission prompt for native apps to be able to access the internet. By default they can (and definitely do!) talk to outside servers for analytics etc. It’s just that you can’t see them they way you do on the web.

It's even easier to block a web app - just don't visit its web address.

A native app sits on your device, executing all kinds of code, sometimes without your knowledge. With PWAs, the code is more or less open source - all the JS is there for you to inspect - even after obfuscation, you can see the network requests being made in the dev tools of any browser.

Actually, most app sandboxes have to request network access as a permission. Unfortunately most mobile OSes don't let you deny it at present. However, you have a lot of options for using network devices or inspection software to intervene and block requests on local machines. Meanwhile, once data is on a remote server, you have no control of it.

Furthermore, native apps can be retained and often installed after they're no longer supported by their developer. Web apps vanish into the night, and leave you with nothing.

> However, you have a lot of options for using network devices or inspection software to intervene and block requests on local machines.

Do you? What would the average user install on their iPhone to allow such intervention? What’s the native equivalent of incognito mode?

I won’t argue with you in the retention point but that’s not really related to the privacy discussion at hand.

As a developer who has tried to love PWAs a number of times I don't see the value. Users simply do not like them and for good reason.

Just this last month I have been building an app to manage my pantry (keep track of expiration dates) using QR codes I stick on everything. I built the "app" in VueJS (wanted to sharpen those skills) and did the whole thing in the browser. Scanning QR's and scanning UPCs (to track items) was all done using browser apis. I then tried to use it on my phone and hated dealing with the loss of space to the browser UI and it hiding/showing as I scrolled. It was a terrible experience.

So I migrated all my code over into Quasar (a VueJS framework that will let you build for PWA, SSR, regular web, and Cordova/Capacitor. I told myself I wasn't going to use cordova for this, I was going to stick to the browser and try to make it a homescreen icon. It was still shit. It was a pain to get the app to go fullscreen and not pop webkit views on top of my "app". The nail in the coffin was Apple doesn't let you have camera access when the app is running in that mode (it's really just unacceptable IMHO). I spent <10min getting the cordova app running and it's been smooth sailing ever since.

I still do some development on my laptop in the browsers but I would never run a PWA if I had the option of an app (even a cross-platform web app in a cordova wrapper).

Seeing that most revenue on the App Store comes from games, I fail to see how Apple would lose money by suPlotting any of these Apis.

>The nail in the coffin was Apple doesn't let you have camera access when the app is running in that mode (it's really just unacceptable IMHO)

So, who's the culprit here? You were able to create an app which can perfectly run in browser but now apple forces you invest in hundreds if not thousands of dollars in equipment, effort in learning a new programming language(although it's open-source), $99 every year for license and give it 30% cut of your revenue when you earn it just to preserve its monopoly in Appstore?

That's my argument, issue is never been the PWAs it's Apple's support for it. So, is the reason it doesn't allow any other browser engines on iOS as well. Apple has branded 'Privacy' and uses it for weaponising marketing.

Edit: Forgot the yearly license.

> Vast majority of users go back home and browse on their laptops because a big screen is better than a credit card

I used to think this, because I am like this, but living with my wife made me realize that for a lot of people, the phone is the primary internet device. Probably one factor is that she is a nurse, so she works on her feet. Also, she generally does not have a deep relationship with her machines, computers to her are strictly tools, so laptop is basically for word processing and storing photos when the phone gets full.

Another way to look at it is that it's not that browsing the internet is better for her on the phone, it's that sitting down with a laptop is a disruption in her routine that needs to be justified.

I remember when Alan Kay said "The computing revolution is Good Enough."

Business apps: do whatever, who cares. Social networking is its own hell and yeah, sandbox that stuff (for now - doesn't have to be that way).

Apps intended to be tools, to be vehicles for creation - well those are rarefied these days, huh!

It is decidedly not "static content browsing." It's aggressively loading and unloading content as you scroll. This in turn breaks basic interactions like Find.

Frankly Twitter is borderline unusable except for "see what's new," which is by design. A native app designed to empower users is a threat, which is why Twitter decided to kill them.

We almost have a duopoly in browsers as well - you have Firefox, and everything else with market share are forks of WebKit.

Sure, in theory Twitter’s website could be very simple and straightforward, built on tried and true web technologies. In practice, they wrote an entirely bespoke web app that is every bit as complex as a native app but shittily executed and with a terrible UX.

That's a completely fair point and you are 100% right. Apple is the culprit. Unfortunately me making PWA's won't fix that problem and while I agree they are in the wrong here I'm not going to switch to Android or expect my users to do so. I do wish Apple would change but this isn't enough of a thorn in my side to force me switch OS's.

Thankfully I already have another reason for paying for the app store dev program so I am able to leverage that for my own personal apps or ones I might publish.

I appreciate that and maybe didn't make my point as best as I could.

My point was essentially that you can run a native app without internet access most of the time (and can easily block the app making calls out by switching the internet off or blocking the calls its making) but a web app you have absolutely no control over, you just have to not use it.

That's not true with PWAs. You can have PWAs that operate offline. The problem is that not enough web developers know how to build good offline-only PWAs. But trust me, they're coming!

Mobile apps are designed to be used on mobiles. But what about web apps? You need many versions of the app, from smart-watches to desktop monitors and smart TV's. And then they will be crippled by the web chrome/shell, so we are stuck with Electron/NW.js apps if you want it to blend in to the OS. What's nice with web apps though is that they are sand-boxed, compared to Electron/NW.js apps that get full system access. What needs to be done is to give better design/layout possibilities for web apps once they are installed on the "shelf/desktop", for example transparency, able to design the top bar, able to have a window menu. Or maybe the future is UI toolkits like Flutter and React Native ?