> 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.

> That last sentence is truly one of the most deranged things I’ve heard all year.

You’ve really got to figure out how to disagree with somebody without being insulting.

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.