Re:Safari is now probably the influential wild card browser ...
by hakfoo on Sunday March 21, 2021 @05:30PM
(#26534274)
It's interesting that the sites that you'd expect to use notifications tend to not be the ones actually offering them. Webmail? Reddit? HN? Obvious notification cases. Legitimate ecommerce? I could see prompting for "let us send order update notifications after purchase." Don't see it there though.
Instead, I see a lot of "enable notifications to prove you're not a robot" scam fake-CAPTCHAs and a lot of newspaper/TV/media sites asking for it. Just because I want to read one article doesn't mean I'm naturally after an update every time you post anything else.
> The app experience is almost always better
Strong disagree. Even on iOS native apps are more invasive and have fewer privacy controls than a website does. That's why all of these websites want you to install apps. Facebook isn't asking you to install their app because it'll be a better experience for you, they're asking you to install their app because then they can request contact permissions.
> 0) [...] 1) [...] 2) [...] etc...
This is just nonsense. You're arguing that configuring a browser to default-deny permission prompts is a worse experience than getting badgered to install a completely separate application every single time you visit Reddit.
And to your point on advertising, this is a good reason to have an app environment that supports competent adblocking. Neither Safari nor iOS provides APIs to do that for websites or for native apps.
This all kind of boils down to, you have an environment with less sandboxing, less privacy, less granular permissions, and a longer install process (visit a site, switch apps, download and install a new app, switch apps again, then uninstall and clean up when you're done); but it's OK because the process of building an app is so cumbersome that a lot of businesses won't bother? This may not be the persuasive argument you think it is.
I mean, you can tell me all you want that notification prompts are worse than the current system of websites constantly asking to exit the website and install a new thing that gives them native file access to my phone, but... I browse the mobile web. I know what the mobile web is like from day-to-day experience, notification prompts are not the reason that the mobile Reddit website is annoying to use.