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Apple broke web apps in iOS 17 beta and hasn't fixed them
(www.theregister.com)
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this post was submitted on 09 Feb 2024
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oops they did it again.
Imagine a webview integration in performance and api on par of app-niveau.
Imagine every app could be as easily opened/reached/surfed-to as a website.
The crippling of the Webview Engine on Mobile spawned the success of the AppStore/PlayStore.
They didn't had an AppStore. But they realized the potential. They went for it. Apple promoted HTML5 (Draft 2007, Initial release 2008) as the new technology for everything UI, killed Flash with it, and were left with a free path for a marketplace with binary applications vending with advanced performance and permission structures than the browser market was able to create. HTML5 lays in a ditch with a knife in its back, idling of its latest 5.2 release (2017). Look at this table (wiki). Is this what a sprawling, innovative, free and healthy release tree looks like for a 16 year periode where millions of developers create stunning HTML5 Applications that are on par with Apps? No. And Apple wanted it like that since they knew what they had in their Hands in 2006 with their first mobile-internet-touchscreen-prototypes that later became the iPhone. They were part of the HTML5 Development (2009 Article) and even brought their own Webkit Engine to the table. They knew they need Applications on a mobile device. But as soon they found out after the release, that the AppStore is a viable way to have a walled garden and saw the revenue estimations, they stabbed HTML5 in the back and even took protectorate approaches to not let the webview alternative strive, even tho it was their own creation they helped to build up and now had to constrain in a cage.
They crippled the Webview and therefore the web and what people were able (or allowed) to do on a mobile web or make out of a mobile web. And the key to keeping it in check, was not allowing any other engine on the phone, other than their own (caged) webkit engine, to clamp down on limiting what a mobile webview experience was able to deliver.
Bastards.
You don’t develop webapps in HTML5, though? You use a combination of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript (or any of a number of other technologies that reduce to the same thing, or to WebAssembly, etc), to build apps. Of those three, JavaScript does the heavy lifting and its development hasn’t stagnated. Even the spec is still undergoing heavy development - https://github.com/tc39/ecma402 - with annual releases every year in June since 2015.
That said, Apple’s PWAs have historically been behind the curve and Safari frequently lacks features that other browsers have. I’m still glad Safari exists and has a significant market share thanks to iPhones, because Firefox’s < 5% market share isn’t enough to keep us from a completely Chrome-dominated internet. I want Apple to do better but I also don’t want Google to be more free to do worse. And this isn’t an example of Apple doing “worse” unless it actually gets released to a non-Beta branch.