Yes, absolutely! Just like I'd rather pay for Apple Arcade so that I don't have to wade through the sewage of free-to-play games clicking "no" on in-app purchase requests and hiding spammy notifications. Just like I'd rather pay for streaming services with no ads rather than having to mute commercials on live TV or skip commercials on DVR'd TV.

It's not absurd to me to pay for platforms that attempt to preemptively remove filth rather than need to be on the constant lookout for filth. This is particularly true when most of these entire ecosystems (the web, app stores, video content) seem to be based on sneaking filth in front of your eyes at every available opportunity.

Web notifications are a standard feature, meaning the APIs are in the web standard.

Making an hyperbole here, but wouldn't Mosaic 1993 edition solve every issue then?

Reasonable people can disagree about which features are and are not useful. And those reasonable people can purchase smartphones and computers which best cater to their own views about these features.

True, but reasonable people that know about web notifications API are less than 1% of Apple customers...

That sounds like a great reason to not let every trashy website in the world to spam them asking if they want to enable notifications.

But is it Apple's call?

I mean, removing features of course makes software more secure

I argue that disabling JavaScript would only bring great benefits to humanity

If Apple had a dominant market position in smartphones then one could argue that end customers don't have much of a choice, but Apple only has at most 50% market share in the US and much lower globally. For my own smartphone usage I would much rather Apple choosing which features and APIs that third-party developers (of apps and websites) can use rather than those developers being able to do whatever they want. I think it's pretty clear that developers tends to have a much more hostile relationship with their end users than Apple does with their customers.

The argument is not about market domination, but about money power

Apple market is rich, it is the richest tech company, with the highest market valuation ever, one cannot avoid it

So it's gonna drive adoption no matter what

Like it did for Flash (right or wrong, they did it)

I was writing web applications during the 90s, they were called intranets back then, IE wasn't bad, it was simply unavoidable

And being unavoidable halted competition for more than a decade

On another side: having a platform that doesn't obey to common standards creates tech segregation

I remember seeing japanes phones 20 years ago, they were ahead of time,but unusable outside of Japan

Last but not least, having a flag that says "allow me to shoot myself in the foot of I want to" it's less hostile than "you don't know what you're doing let me handle it for you"

So then write for all browsers, support what you can for each, and don’t promote Chrome anymore? If you continue to promote a one size fits all browser and the market moves that way then we’ll shortly be having this same discussion about Google. If you were writing websites in the 90s you should know this.

> So then write for all browsers, support what you can for each, and don’t promote Chrome anymore?

WOW

That escalated quickly

I never promoted Chrome, in fact I'm an old time Firefox users and in the 90s I owned a Netscape 3 gold license.

I don't write fronted software anymore, but writing for every browser means adhering to the standard

Apple has steered away more than any other vendor lately

So...

> I don't write fronted software anymore, but writing for every browser means adhering to the standard.

Yes, which you’ll find if you do Safari adheres to quite well. Finding examples where it doesn’t is easy, just like on chrome. Which is why we have media queries and poly fills because it’s simply impossible to have a unified platform without one entity owning it. If you found out Chrome doesn’t render the same on linux as it doesn’t on windows, would you call this not adhering to the standard?

> Yes, which you’ll find if you do Safari adheres to quite well

They don' t

Apple refused to implement 16 web API in Safari

> Which is why we have media queries and poly fills because it’s simply impossible to have a unified platform

And that' s why big players like Apple hat control a closed ecosystem shouldn't be allowed to be assholes

At least on Android I can install other browsers and other browser engines

Do you see the difference?

> Chrome doesn’t render the same on linux as it doesn’t on windows

that' s not true

Windows and Linux that have simply different font rendering engines and different native widgets

That's all

> would you call this not adhering to the standard?

absolutely NOT!

In no part of the standard rendering is formalized

It wouldn't make sense

The way things are rendered is standardized, not the way they should look

https://www.w3.org/TR/2014/REC-html5-20141028/rendering.html

> HTML is intended to apply to multiple media (it is a media-independent language). User agent implementors are encouraged to adapt the suggestions in this section to their target media.

> Apple refused to implement 16 web API in Safari

OK and these APIs don’t stop real work.

> And that' s why big players like Apple hat control a closed ecosystem shouldn't be allowed to be assholes

And putting all that power into the hands of a single browser will not end well, so stop promoting Chrome or saying other browsers should be like Chrome. FF isn’t going to win.

> At least on Android I can install other browsers and other browser engines Do you see the difference?

Yes, next question, do I care?

> that' s not true

100% true, read the dev blogs and understand the WM on linux is fundamentally different than windows or mac, therefore rendering is not exactly the same.

Standards help align, they do not force alignment. If safari implemented a p element as a span, then this is not following the spec. Choosing not to implement a portion of a modular spec, is still following the spec.

> But is it Apple's call?

Yes, just like you’re free to never visit an annoying website asking to spam notifications you’re free to take away Apple’s decision making power you grant them by simply not buying an iphone.

> you’re free to take away Apple’s decision making power you grant them by simply not buying an iphone.

That's a very common argument

But it doesn't get any less stupid with time.

I never owned an iPhone.

Because I am an adult homo sapiens that can take decisions for himself.

But you should know that if a standard exists, and the standard has been approved by a consortium, a consortium where Apple is a very important member, they should at least support what they signed for, instead of forcing developers to go through hoops just to support their platform.

When Elon Musk make Teslas he has to put airbags in them, stop lights, front lights, safety belts, they must pass crash tests, because that's the standard, otherwise he couldn't sell them as cars.

So if Apple believe that the standard that they approved is too dangerous, they can make their OS more secure, instead of putting the blame on developers.

Developers are not jumping through hoops to support their platform. I’m a full stack dev, I understand what it takes to support safari and a majority of the time is actually Chrome being fast and loose with the standard, not Apple. Is it a partial implementation, sure. But the features lacking don’t stop meaningful work at all. Just like hearing my statement is old, so is yours.

> Developers are not jumping through hoops to support their platform

They are

> I’m a full stack dev, I understand what it takes to support safari and a majority of the time is actually Chrome being fast and loose with the standard

I am as well, I understand a closed platform when I see one.

> But the features lacking don’t stop meaningful work at all.

If only it was true...

It' s not lacking, it has been removed on purpose.

The web engine Safari is built from already supports those features.

I can play this game too, Nope.

Nope, apparently you can't play the game.

You don't even understand the rules.

Sorry.

Notification APIs are in Webkit, the open source implementation of Safari.

proof: https://github.com/WebKit/webkit/blob/89c28d471fae35f1788a0f...

Can you prove that Apple didn't remove standard APIs from their browser?

So this somehow keeps other HTML from rendering and CSS just doesn’t display correctly right? Look around, you’ll find very little care for that API except from sites trying to spam devices, something apple is against. So again, no, safari is following the spec just fine.

Yes. I don’t want to press the “no” button for a 100 times.

I can relate.

Every time I pickup an old iOS device the stupid thing is nags me to update it, 100 times. And you can't just click no you have to click multiple things to get it to fuck off.

So, in practice, Apple vetting process doesn't even do what they say it does and still grabs 30% from developers?

You should lobby W3C to remove the API from the standard then.

Or ask browser vendors to have a global allow/deny flag for every Web API

I don't know if you're being sarcastic or not, but here's the thing:

I don't want websites asking me to enable notifications. 99.9% of the time, the answer is no.

I don't want websites asking me to enable location access. 99.9% of the time, the answer is NO.

Nor do I want them asking for permissions to install to my Home Screen (the answer is no), or to track me (the answer is NO).

>Or ask browser vendors to have a global allow/deny flag for every Web API

When possible, I've carefully configured my browser to automatically reject these requests, but instead of respecting that, these websites, with all their hubris, have chosen to circumvent my preferences by presenting shitty JS-based permission requests (as opposed to using the permissions UI built into the browser).

Each one of these new web APIs have significantly degraded my experience as an end user, by presenting a million permission dialogs whenever I'm visiting webpages, without providing me with any features of value (again, because I'm not ever, ever gonna trust some random website with these permissions).

Users don't care to pontificate about the virtues of the open web, they just want their stuff to work. And until the open web can provide a better user experience, of course users are going to flock to various walled gardens (App Stores, Facebook, etc...). Until we find a way to implement web standards elegantly, without degrading the user experience, the open web is always going to face an uphill battle over the relative safety of walled gardens.

I think nobody wants web notifications, but the API is in the standard.

I know I don't want them.

Apple is in the committee.

https://www.w3.org/Consortium/Member/List

Along with every time I have to press OK to the “we used cookies” dialog, using the web is already like a “punch the monkey” game.

These modern web APIs have a massive user experience problem, and if we want the web to be truly competitive with native, we'd be foolish to ignore that.

Beyond the "punch the monkey" game you mention, another massive problem is that web push notifications have just become another vector to deliver spam to users. If you look at devices belonging to "normal" users, you'll often see dozens of spammy web notifications (pornographic content, "30% off, BUY NOW", etc...). And because these are average users, they don't necessarily understand how to configure their devices to reduce or eliminate the spam.

Web push notifications needs a way to proactively filter out those that abuse the API, otherwise its doomed to become just another vector for spam that pisses off end users.

I'm angry at Firefox because it was the only browser that I trust that allowed me to have extensions to solve my problems with bad websites on mobile and they removed them.

But bad websites are not something we are going to get rid of using only iPhones...

The difference is that notification spam on the web is allowed to escape the sandbox. Because of the punch the monkey nature of the web, I inadvertently clicked “allow notifications” on both PCWorld and Tom’s Hardware on different occasions - they both spammed me at least once a day. But not enough to figure out how to disable it.

To get rid of the cookie notifications, I can at least set web pages I go to default to reader view.

I never accept web notifications, not even on slack.

The problem is that if Apple singlehandedly decide what's right and what isn't we are back to IE.

There is a middle ground I would be okay with. A website is only allowed to ask you if want notifications if you added it to your home screen. If you delete the web page from your home screen, it automatically disabled the notification. It falls within the same paradigm that people are accustomed to.

AFAIK this is not the way Safari works and it's not the main motivation for Apple

They just don't want web apps to rival with the native ones skipping the whole store experience and fee

But that's just speculation on my side, I have no data to back it up

This makes no sense. As I said in another reply. If PWAs are so great, why aren’t companies bypassing creating Android apps and just telling Android users to use web apps?

On top of that, how many apps are really just surfacing server hosted services where there are no in app purchases?

According to the data I found, PWAs make 50% of the Android market.

Among the most popular there are

- Uber

- Pinterest

- Telegram

- Trivago

- Tinder

- Google maps Go

- AliExpress

Yet most of those companies decided to make native apps. If PWA’s were good enough, why bother writing native apps for Android?

Do you have a citation?

> PWA’s were good enough, why bother writing native apps for Android?

same reason people write native apps on iOS

It's easier to track users, especially those users rich enough to buy high end phones and that will probably spend more money and the ROI is higher.

They also make PWAS to gain user base on low end phones and emerging markets.

And because making them is quite cheap.

So most companies aren’t using PWAs to save money on Android and probably wouldn’t on iOS either....

Do you propose that Apple makes Safari more able to invade privacy?

If the only purpose of PWAs for Android is to make it easier to run on low end cheap phones - that’s really not a good argument is it with iOS is it? Even the 6s from 2015 is more performant than many mid range new Android phones.