1. I invest loads of time and effort developing an app
2. Apple rejects it
-or-
2. Apple approves it
3. I ship a new update
4. Apple rejects the update and now decides my app should have been rejected retroactively.
I'm especially concerned about what happened to Hey and others but my customers are demanding smartphone apps and there are still limits to what can be done with a mobile web browser.
Apple gets all the headlines, and certainly gets more chatter on HN, but they aren’t alone in this bullshit. As an example... Fortnite was also banned by Google.
Without push notifications, PWAs are not really viable and Apple knows it. Apple wants developers to use the App Store and be subject to their fees and review process.
At least Google supports push notifications for PWAs, making them a legitimate alternative on Android.
As do I, an end-user of Apple's platforms.
Safari PWAs protect your privacy better than native apps, because Safari trusts no one. The App Store review process is trying to find a malicious needle in a haystack because iOS by default trusts native apps more than it should, due to the existence of that nebulous review process. Apple is slowly locking down native apps with each successive iOS version... but PWAs have always been extremely private, and they're still the gold standard as far as I've seen.
PWAs are actually completely isolated from each other and from the rest of Safari, so there is no cross-contamination for tracking purposes.
If you don’t want more choice and more privacy... that’s up to you. I really don’t know what to tell you.
PWAs aren't the "wild west" that sideloading apps would be, yet you're trying to use the classic anti-sideloading argument against PWAs, and that argument simply doesn't work here. Apple has supported PWAs since before there was even an Apple App Store for native apps!
PWAs already exist, and PWAs are already extremely private. Apple just needs to give PWAs push notification support. Users would still have complete control over notifications, just like any native app.
Apple heavily pushes native apps because of the profit they get from it, not because of concerns about user privacy. They have already built Safari to protect your privacy on the open web.
If I never release it for iOS at all, you're also not welcome to buy it through the App Store! See how that works? The developer/publisher obviously does get a say in what happens to their app... this is not even slightly shocking. Apple can't force me to develop and release an app for the App Store, which is what you seem to be hoping?
However, there are many publishers competing for your attention. You have a choice, and many of those developers will always choose to use the App Store, since a lot of users browse the App Store. Users vote with their wallets, and developers who don't publish on the App Store would be keenly aware of the uphill battle they might have in convincing users to download their PWA.
> It enables publisher choice and creates this loop where publishers who have a customer bases just move to the store with the fewest restrictions and fees. It's a race to the bottom where the user loses.
Android has supported both sideloading and PWAs with push notifications for many years. Ever notice how the Google Play Store isn't a ghost town? Most Android users still only download apps through the Google Play Store. This is fine -- the users have made their choice, and that's the important thing.
Your doomsday, slippery slope hypothesis of developers vacating the Play Store en masse never occurred on Android. It seems equally unlikely to occur on iOS, unless Apple seriously mismanages their App Store. Still, users and developers should have the choice for meaningful apps to be distributed as PWAs, which essentially requires push notification support.