from Hacker News

Apple appears to be breaking iPhone web apps in the EU

by agust on 2/14/24, 3:40 PM with 39 comments

  • by sfryxell on 2/14/24, 11:02 PM

    Here we are, being monopoly fucked right in the face.

    https://realness.online is my PWA only application, So, I've got a front row seat to apple's monopoly fulcrum killing all desenters.

    if you install https://whatpwacando.today/ on a phone or ipad today you can see how they already barely support standards.

    Only basic things work. filesystem access is only halfway. no Contact picker, no background sync. They will destroy the user experience for everyone in order to disable other browsers more robust implementations of the spec.

    They have been monopoly gaming us for years The EU is forcing them to go out in the open with it

  • by SllX on 2/14/24, 7:41 PM

    There is a chance that this is still a “disabled for now” feature.

    My understanding of the third-party browser requirements in the DMA is they have to be able to do anything Apple’s Safari can do if they want to, and while Apple’s built out a bunch of entitlements for browsers and other DMA requirements, they haven’t done the same work for PWAs. Yet?

    So given that, it would actually violate the DMA if Safari supported them but Chrome and Firefox couldn’t, and they’re not going to allow that until they’ve taken the time to figure out how they want to proceed, if at all, with allowing it for third-party browsers.

  • by cqqxo4zV46cp on 2/14/24, 8:00 PM

    Sigh. This is really the perfect storm, because the “this has happened because Apple is evil” blog posts really write themselves after this change dropped. But really, let’s not forget that this is beta software. Apple routinely ships betas with features half-complete. The people that regularly use Apple betas know that. Drive-by drama bloggers don’t. If the final version ships with this change, I’ll be right there next to presumably everyone else railing against the ridiculousness of the change. For now though, I’m not, and I see absolutely zero point in anyone else doing so.

  • by zamadatix on 2/14/24, 10:58 PM

  • by spywaregorilla on 2/14/24, 11:47 PM

    Is this "Just" in the EU?

  • by vdaea on 2/14/24, 7:20 PM

    Now that alternative stores can be used I guess there's not much point to PWAs.

  • by moi2388 on 2/15/24, 7:18 AM

    Being able to have thirdparty stores and sidelining is horrible. I can no longer trust any app because it could now come from any source with no way of knowing its privacy or security settings. All I know is it isn’t being checked by Apple anymore.