Another random app store anecdote: way back when (2010?) Adobe made a feature where you could publish flash content as an iOS app. Like you build a flash game, hit publish, and an .ipa file comes out. So the feature goes into open beta, and a bunch of flash devs make iPhone apps, they work fine, they get accepted into the app store, users are using them, everybody's happy.
Then a few days before the feature was scheduled to leave beta and be formally supported, Apple changed the app store terms to disallow it, by requiring that apps be "originally written" in certain languages like objective-C or C++. Nothing to do with what the app did or how it worked, and no definition for what "originally written" specifically meant. And there were lots of other technologies for building apps by then, so of course they all freaked (though AFAIK Apple never actually enforced the new terms for anything besides flash).
Anyway shortly afterward Adobe reverted the app-publishing feature, and then a few months later Apple quietly reverted the terms to what they were before.
You would think that as the web platform is starting to pick up things like WASM and many new capabilities that there are an extremely large set of apps all of a sudden where you would be insane to think about
- writing it in a different language that only really runs on one operating system
- pay $99/yr for the privilege
- at any point and for any reason you can be cut off from reaching your audience
- you have to pay them 30% of your revenue (not profit) for any money your application makes
- you can’t make updates in a timely manner
- you have close to zero avenues of recourse if you disagree with any of this
- the deal can change at any time and you don’t get a say in it.
Why the fuck would anyone choose that option in 2024 if they didn’t have to? It’s no wonder Apple went out of their way to try and cripple the web for over a decade now, it was only legal action from the EU that forced them to staff Safari properly about two years ago.
And even now, they still take any opportunity they can to make it look unattractive such as hiding the ability to install a PWA deep in a series of unrelated menus.
That’s a hostage taking business. Get out of that ecosystem if you can
> And even now, they still take any opportunity they can to make it look unattractive such as hiding the ability to install a PWA deep in a series of unrelated menus.
That isn’t true. It takes two taps. You tap the share button, then you tap Add to Home Screen. That’s it. That’s not “hidden deep in a series of unrelated menus”. It’s a top-level option.
And don’t complain about the “share” button – that’s just a bad name for what iOS users understand as the “Send/Put/Open this somewhere else” button. It makes total sense if you are an iOS user, don’t be misled by what people call it. People tap it when they want to “do something” with what they are looking at. It’s exactly the button you’d tap if you wanted to add a PWA to your home screen.
> It is absolutely set up in such a way that normal people not only can not do it but don’t even know it’s possible.
Would you say that Apple are deliberately hiding how to bookmark a website and that people are unable to do that? Because you do that the same way too.
How about printing? Does Apple have a secret motive to stop people from printing? Because you do that the same way too.
The share button is the “Send/Put/Open this somewhere else” button. That’s just how iOS works. It’s not a devious plan. It’s a standard platform convention.
> I should be able to trigger an install prompt as a developer at a minimum.
This is not currently part of any web standard. It was implemented unilaterally by Chromium and hasn’t been accepted by any other rendering engine yet. It’s explicitly not on a web standards track:
> Status of This Document
> This specification was published by the Web Platform Incubator Community Group. It is not a W3C Standard nor is it on the W3C Standards Track.
I don’t understand why you’re acting purposely obtuse here.
They have a multi billion dollar incentive here along with a long history of actions all clearly focused on protecting that revenue stream at the expense of the web platform.
I’m making an argument that like any other application delivery platform I should have a clear and standard way for my users to install my software.
The reason we don’t currently have that is largely tied up in Apple yet again with the exact same incentive structure as every other time they pulled shit like this.
> I don’t understand why you’re acting purposely obtuse here.
Do you want to try that reply again in a less insulting way? Perhaps consider the possibility that people can have a legitimate difference of opinion with you without it being a stupid act?
Im not trying to be insulting but this also isn’t a legitimate difference of opinion scenario.
You tried to do a weird gotcha by claiming that the ability to install a web app is no different to print a webpage and implied that I was seeing conspiracies where there were none to be found.
I’m saying that the thing I’m talking about has a very clear difference when it comes to incentive structures and I know you’re aware of it because we are in the middle of a discussion about it.
So I don’t know what other conclusion to draw here other than you’re pretending to not understand the difference.
> Im not trying to be insulting but this also isn’t a legitimate difference of opinion scenario.
You are claiming that it’s literally impossible to honestly disagree with you; that the only possibility is that I’m deliberately acting the fool? Do you really believe that?
I feel like you’re getting more worked up here than the situation requires.
If you took offence at the original comment where I said you appeared to be playing games by ignoring something I’m sorry.
I am however asking that you present some kind of rebuttal rather than trying to make this a thing about polite discourse on the internet.
I made specific points, you came in talking about unrelated points, I pointed out that your reasoning had a major hole in it and now we are in a conversation nobody wants to be a part of.
Let’s just say we both understand why an install prompt and printing a web page aren’t the same thing because I think we covered that ground already.
To get it back on track, I’m saying that they don’t belong together and that when you listed all that other random set of actions people could do that appear in the same screen that this illustrates the point I’ve been trying to make from the start.
If the argument is “oh that’s just iOS, it’s totally innocent and how could you ever seen anything nefarious there” then make that argument but as discussed, it has major holes.
> I feel like you’re getting more worked up here than the situation requires.
I’m not getting worked up, I’m refusing to accept direct insults. It’s possible to do that without getting worked up. This place is supposed to be better than this and you’re falling short. If people don’t push back on behaviour like yours this place will be dragged down into the muck. Insults should not be tolerated here.
And telling people they are getting worked up when they complain about you insulting them, in itself, additionally insulting and inflammatory. Don’t do that.
> If you took offence at the original comment where I said you appeared to be playing games by ignoring something I’m sorry.
You didn’t accuse me of playing games, you accused me of “acting purposely obtuse”. You’re saying that I’m pretending to be a moron because my argument is far too stupid for anybody to really believe. You don’t get to put me in the catch-22 of either taking your insults without complaint or getting accused of being worked up. It’s entirely reasonable to reject your replies calmly until you stop being insulting.
> I am however asking that you present some kind of rebuttal
I already did that. You called it a “weird gotcha” and ignored it. I suspect you missed the point because you were so sure I was pretending to be an idiot. You are free to go back and read it again. If you still don’t understand it a second time, ask for clarification instead of throwing insults around.
Just to be clear… your argument is or isn’t “That’s just iOS and there’s clearly nothing nefarious about it”?
That’s my good faith understanding of the point you’re making at the moment so I will try one final time…
Do you care to address the incredibly specific point I’ve made repeatedly that that line of reasoning has a huge hole in it which you seem to be ignoring no matter how often I ask you to acknowledge it.
> which you seem to be ignoring no matter how often I ask you to acknowledge it.
I wasn’t ignoring it. I was refusing to respond to replies with insults. I have been very clear about that.
> Just to be clear… your argument is or isn’t “That’s just iOS and there’s clearly nothing nefarious about it”?
No.
Your argument is:
> they still take any opportunity they can to make it look unattractive such as hiding the ability to install a PWA deep in a series of unrelated menus.
Let’s deconstruct that to three assertions:
- It’s deep in a series of menus
- It’s in an unrelated menu
- It’s being purposefully hidden by Apple.
I have pointed out several things:
- It’s a top-level item in a very commonly used menu.
- It belongs in that menu.
- Other items in that menu are also there for the same purpose.
- Apple has no incentive to hide those other items.
So right away, we can get rid of the first assertion. It’s not deep in a series of menus. That’s just plainly false, as anybody who has an iPhone near them can verify. It’s a top-level item in a primary menu. It’s a single tap away.
Next we move on to whether it belongs there or not. As I repeatedly point out, the “share” button actually exposes a whole lot more than just sharing. I’m not even certain “share button” is its official name, I think it might be called “action button” or something. You can consider it the “put this somewhere else button” because that’s what it actually means, even if the name doesn’t roll off the tongue. That’s the platform convention. That’s how iOS users perceive it.
Want to send it to somebody? Tap the button. Want to open it in a different app? Tap the button. Want to save it somewhere? Tap the button. That’s what the button is for. You are looking at something and you want to put it somewhere.
What else is in that menu? You can save a document to files. You can print it. You can bookmark it. You get a list of other apps you can open it with. You can add it to a note. You can copy it to the pasteboard. These all fit the same theme. You are looking at something and you want to put it somewhere.
Does “I want to put this PWA on my Home Screen” fit there? It absolutely does. That’s exactly where I’d locate the feature. You are looking at a PWA, and you want to put it somewhere. So tap the put it somewhere button.
So no, it’s not in an unrelated menu. So the second assertion goes.
Finally, is Apple purposefully hiding it there? Well, showing that it belongs there should be enough to disprove that, but there’s also more. What else is in that menu? Let’s skip over sharing to eliminate quibbling over “but those belong there”.
Saving a file isn’t sharing. Printing isn’t sharing. Bookmarking isn’t sharing. Opening in another app isn’t sharing. Adding it to a note isn’t sharing. Copying it to the pasteboard isn’t sharing.
Are all of those purposefully being hidden by Apple where users won’t look for them? How does hiding “Add to bookmarks” have a “multi billion dollar incentive” behind it? How does hiding “Copy to pasteboard” “protect Apple’s revenue stream”? Why would Apple even implement these features in the first place only to hide them?
They aren’t being purposefully hidden. They are all there because they all do the same sort of thing – the same thing that Add to Home Screen does. They take what the user is looking at and put it somewhere.
And users use this menu all the time. It’s not some obscure part of Safari you’ve got to dig to find. The average user has probably scrolled past Add to Home Screen thousands and thousands of times.
If Apple were trying to hide this functionality, this is the very last place they’d put it. They’ve put it somewhere that a) is accessible with a single tap, b) makes sense conceptually, and c) will be seen by users all the time. So the final assertion is no good either.
And like cpuguy83 pointed out elsewhere in the thread - this has been how you add a site to your home screen since day one, when Steve Jobs was telling everybody that web apps were the only way to build apps for the iPhone. At that point PWAs didn’t even exist. And that’s the spot they chose for it back then – before native apps were even allowed by Apple, when Apple wanted everybody to build web apps and add them to their home screens. It completely contradicts the idea that this is a hiding place where they don’t want people to see it. That’s where they chose to put it when it’s incontrovertible fact that they wanted people to use it.
So why is it that after this existing for so many years that nobody seems to even know it’s an option or how to do it.
Just to give a bit of context on my own background because it’s relevant here but I spent most of the last ten years running A/B tests for companies and then analysing the results.
One of the core truths in my particular line of work is that default options matter a lot more than people tend to realise.
So when you take an idea such as “I would like to install this app” and you then:
1. Don’t provide a way to ask users if they would like to do that.
2. Put it in a menu that’s cluttered with many other unrelated things.
3. Call it something entirely different “add to home”.
It’s not a mystery what is going to happen here. We are talking the overwhelming MAJORITY of people will have no idea and it won’t get used.
I’m just a random person on the internet so I’m not asking you to take my word for it.
It’s specifically why I mentioned the test before of go and talk to any person with an iPhone and ask them how they can install an app without the App Store. You can prove this to yourself tomorrow by asking ten people.
You can even incentivise them with money. They absolutely can not do it and will look at you like you have two heads.
They have no idea it’s even possible.
So the next logical question that comes to mind is why do you suppose that is?
There’s a few potential options:
1. They somehow have no idea that this is a problem their users struggle with.
2. They are bad a UI design
3. It’s an intentional choice to try and keep people in the dark while still avoiding any legal action for anti competitive behaviour.
I can only find evidence for one of those options but I have a LOT of it. It’s not a coincidence that it happens to align perfectly consistently with all of their other actions towards treating the web as a competitive application platform.
That’s just who they are and how they do business.
I think they gave you a clear answer to the difference:
The Web Standards Committee has decided the correct way for the web to work is that there is an expectation that a user understands how to bookmark something and can elect to do so if they choose. They don't make a part of any web standard a developer being able to ask a user to add a bookmark. So not just Apple, but on the standard web, developers don't have the install rights you are saying they should have. It's hard to argue it's a conspiracy by Apple when a standards body outside Apple has defined how it works.
Maybe enough users don't know how to bookmark on iOS. Could Apple do more to make sure they know how? Yes. But I don't think we should change the web to allow websites to ask to create bookmarks because Google Chrome thinks its a good idea.
Based on your comment I think there might be some misunderstandings here.
That committee you are talking about isn’t actually independent of Apple. They are a part of it.
Historically Apple have repeatedly used those exact committee bodies as a way to shut down a whole range of things that would bring the web platform closer to iOS in terms of capabilities.
The point about the bookmarking is also a bit hard to follow. I don’t know if this is getting a bit abstract or something so I’ll just restate my main argument.
Apple have repeatedly tried to make sure the web wasn’t able to compete with iOS and actively worked to get as much lock in on their platforms as possible. They have a terrible track record in terms of interoperability and as I stated numerous times in this thread they have an obvious reason for doing so.
The only point I saw them concede any ground towards a more consumer friendly and away from an overtly anti-competitive approach was specifically when serious talk of antitrust litigation emerged from the EU.
At that point they had a miraculously coincidental change of heart and began a hiring spree for Safari so they could try and close some of the more nefarious gaps with interoperability so they could point to it as evidence that they shouldn’t be fined billons of dollars and have new restrictions placed on them.
I am claiming that that looks like the text book definition of a conspiracy and you need to understand the arguments about installability in that wider context and the point you’re making about bookmarks is in no way relevant to what I’m talking about.
> That committee you are talking about isn’t actually independent of Apple. They are a part of it.
> Historically Apple have repeatedly used those exact committee bodies as a way to shut down a whole range of things that would bring the web platform closer to iOS in terms of capabilities.
That’s not what’s happening, neither for this specific case nor in general.
There are three major rendering engines: Blink by Google, WebKit by Apple, and Gecko by Mozilla.
It’s an ongoing theme that Google will write a spec. and implement it in Blink, then Apple and Mozilla will either reject it outright or not express interest, and then people come along and accuse Apple of “holding back the web”. This has happened with Web Bluetooth, with Web USB, and more.
In this particular case, the ability to trigger installation prompts from a PWA was originally part of the manifest spec. But it got removed because nobody was keen on implementing it as-is except for Google. That’s how it ended up in the non-standard manifest-incubations instead.
Now there’s a chance that further work will be done on it in manifest-incubations to the point where Mozilla and Apple think it’s worth implementing. If consensus is reached it could become a web standard in future. But just because Google implemented something by themselves does not mean that “Apple are holding back the web”. Google are not the sole arbiter of what constitutes the web platform and Apple and Mozilla aren’t obligated to implement whatever Google wants. This is a case of Google promoting something by themselves, not Apple holding something back. Mozilla and Apple are in agreement; Google are the ones acting unilaterally.
> Apple have repeatedly tried to make sure the web wasn’t able to compete with iOS and actively worked to get as much lock in on their platforms as possible.
There is no single organisation that has done more to push the mobile web forward than Apple.
That last sentence is truly one of the most deranged things I’ve heard all year.
You’re literally talking to an audience of largely web developers and trying to claim with a straight face something that they all know full well not to be true because they spent the last decade having to deal with Safari’s bullshit and lack of interoperability.
Any web developer seriously asking for yet another web prompt is delusional. The web in general has suffered because prompts enrage and discourage users. We, collectively, need to rein in the ability of websites to bother us. It's what's needed to protect our privacy, and save our sanity.
iOS has "app clips" which websites can (and absolutely do) prompt you to use.
As for how to save a webpage to your Home Screen, that literally hasn't changed except maybe to have it together with other on-device interactions. It has been there since before there was even an App Store.
It's not hidden in any way and never has been.
It was demoed on stage by Steve Jobs.
The App Store is a scam, for sure. But Apple has not been crippling the web... at least not in the way you claim here (only one browser on the platform is sucky, but that's a different discussion).
Well, they definitely drag their feet on keeping Safari up to date, not unlike what Microsoft did with Internet Explorer 20 years ago.
IIRC, there are also some limitations in what web apps launched from the home screen can actually do, which are not in regular Safari - but I've not looked at this in a long time so I could be wrong.
What I do remember very clearly is that the common consensus, as reflected in data from app developers, is that people just don't know (or don't want to use) the "pin to home screen" feature. One could argue that Apple should, maybe, sprinkle on that feature a bit of the effort they lavishly pour on emojis, so that more people could be enticed to use PWAs. That would go some way towards reassuring developers that they are not slaves to the AppStore.
> Well, they definitely drag their feet on keeping Safari up to date, not unlike what Microsoft did with Internet Explorer 20 years ago.
It’s entirely different. After Microsoft killed the competition and gained >90% market share, they disbanded the Internet Explorer developer team for five entire years.
Apple releases a new major version of Safari every year like clockwork and pushes people hard to update.
> What I do remember very clearly is that the common consensus, as reflected in data from app developers, is that people just don't know (or don't want to use) the "pin to home screen" feature.
What data? The internal data I’ve seen across ~500 community apps is that when given a choice, two thirds of people use the iOS app, a quarter of people use the Android app, and about 10% use the PWA. And that’s across all users, including desktop.
“Don’t know” and “don’t want to use” are two entirely different things.
If people preferred PWAs and it was just down to Apple holding them back, there wouldn’t be any such thing as an Android app; people would just use PWAs on that platform instead. People don’t install PWAs because they don’t want to.
> Apple releases a new major version of Safari every year like clockwork and pushes people hard to update.
That's largely a byproduct of their attempt to keep support costs low by forcing yearly upgrades of the entire OS. Other browser makers release 10 times more often (literally!). When you're 10 times slower than everyone else (while being 10 times wealthier...), I think it's legitimate to say you're dragging your feet. The fact that they're not as atrociously bad as Microsoft was at its worst, doesn't mean they are not bad.
> “Don’t know” and “don’t want to use” are two entirely different things.
Come on now - discoverability and education are things. If Apple wanted to, they would make that feature so easy and promote it so heavily, that everyone would do it or at least know how to do it.
> If people preferred PWAs and it was just down to Apple holding them back
Don't strawman me, I never said that. I said that Apple is not making any effort to change a status quo where consumers are not keen on the feature, which tallies with your experience. There is nothing stopping them from aiming their reality distortion field at the feature, as a service to developers.
> The fact that they're not as atrociously bad as Microsoft was at its worst, doesn't mean they are not bad.
Your exact words were: “they definitely drag their feet on keeping Safari up to date, not unlike what Microsoft did with Internet Explorer 20 years ago” and my point is that it’s very unlike that.
They picked up the slack only after they were shamed multiple times, including by websites like https://issafarithenewie.com/ (which now reflects their progress, very honestly). A brief look at items from the last several years will return lots of pretty bad press.
> They aren’t ten times slower than everybody else.
Just to mention one, WebRTC took 7 years to go from the first Firefox implementation to Safari. Chrome had it less than 2 years after FF, so I guess not 10x but 3x-4x - still a very significant lag, which is definitely not explainable by lack of resources.
But that’s just it – you are just mentioning one. No mention of the many, many improvements that were made. Safari has been advancing steadily every single year since it was first released. Which makes it an entirely different situation to Internet Explorer, which held the web at an absolute standstill for five straight years.
Sorry, no, not an absolute standstill. Windows XP Service Pack 2 tweaked how an HTTP header was handled. That was the most significant movement in the front-end development world in a five year period. Because of Internet Explorer.
Compare Safari 12 to Safari 17. Now imagine we were still stuck with Safari 12. That’s what it would be like if Safari “dragged their feet” like Microsoft did with Internet Explorer. They aren’t the same thing, not even remotely close. Anybody saying that “Safari is the new IE” clearly does not remember what Internet Explorer did to the industry, especially if they are saying it because of things like Safari won’t let websites vibrate your phone.
The difference is simply a function of smarter leadership and experience.
Of course nobody, today, would act exactly like MS did - that would make it trivial for people to see their game. Instead, Apple gives you something to show they're trying, "honest, guv" - but in ebbs and flows, only when pushed, and slower than everyone else despite being the most profitable company on the block.
To be honest, nobody would really care how many releases they push or how many features they push, if only they let other browsers compete on iOS. But they don't; so they carry a responsibility to be at the forefront of standards and look absolutely beyond reproach - which, at the moment, is not the case.
> The difference is simply a function of smarter leadership and experience.
Look, the difference is glaringly obvious: Microsoft brought front-end development to a standstill for five long years. Apple has not. Apple has continued to add features, standards support, and interoperability bug fixes year after year like clockwork.
This isn’t a matter of nuance. This isn’t Apple being “smarter”. Apple fundamentally has not done what Microsoft did in any way, shape, or form. The two situations are extremely dissimilar.
You’re replying to me here suggesting that they don’t cripple the web by providing an example of another proprietary thing that they control and has zero interoperability with any other devices.
I don’t know what to do with that argument other than to use that exact same set of facts to support my own point.
Also, that’s a nice historical fact that Steve Jobs once did a demo on stage years ago but my point was that nobody knows how to do it in real life or that it’s possible.
I’m explicitly making the argument that this isn’t a coincidence but is very much on purpose.
So you are saying they are crippling the web because they don't allow websites to add themselves to your home screen through a button on the page.
OK.
I'll cede this is to drive people to the App Store where they can get their cut.
I just want to be clear here that when I made that claim it was in no way just because of that but was a decade of actions (or largely inaction) where they made sure that the web platform would be missing lots of functionality that app developers would require to consider the web as a viable option for their software business.
That’s very interesting but we aren’t designing the web around your personal set of preferences so I don’t know if it’s particularly relevant to the conversation.
I’m sure when it arrives like other APIs that require certain permissions you will be able to disable it and live in peace.
How did we get from “I think app install prompts should be a thing so the web is on a level playing field with operating systems” to me somehow being responsible for the ills of capitalism?
I literally said you should have an option to opt out and your response was an impassioned speech about “the will of the people”.
It's not just my preference. People would want a nice and easy button to install a webapp to their homescreen. People would not want alert boxes from every website they visit. The latter will happen along with the former.
I cannot disable these things when Apple has a profit incentive. I haven't been able to make the dumb Game Center thing permanently quit appearing. I guess they don't have a profit incentive, here, huh? So the result is that people who understand how to turn it off, will turn it off. Most everyone else will be trained to hit no instantly. A few people will have hundreds of webapps on their home screens like the browser bars of yore.
For the record; I completely agree that side loading should be possible with minimal barrier and it would be nice if web apps were more discoverable and integrated. But preventing websites from nagging people with a system-level iOS prompt is a feature.
> You do understand that the main thrust of my argument here is that it doesn’t have to be like that correct?
No, I don't
> I should be able to prompt the user to install and it would just work.
No, you shouldn't. Not until you prove that you can actually make proper prompts and not turn the web into what it is today: a collection of in your face modals, calls to action, popups etc.
This was the topic of Steve Jobs' infamous "Thoughts on Flash" memo, which was essentially a blueorint for the coming iOS App Store walled garden strategy.
Then a few days before the feature was scheduled to leave beta and be formally supported, Apple changed the app store terms to disallow it, by requiring that apps be "originally written" in certain languages like objective-C or C++. Nothing to do with what the app did or how it worked, and no definition for what "originally written" specifically meant. And there were lots of other technologies for building apps by then, so of course they all freaked (though AFAIK Apple never actually enforced the new terms for anything besides flash).
Anyway shortly afterward Adobe reverted the app-publishing feature, and then a few months later Apple quietly reverted the terms to what they were before.