Yes.

Google's strategy is simple:

1. The web should be able to control everything (i.e. PWA features not normally found in a browser).

2. Google should control the web (they can index it, track, monetize it, but it has to be on the web).

3. Profit.

Do you think Apple users are super excited at the prospect of most apps turning into battery-draining non-native shitty experiences, instead of using the iOS frameworks? No, they're not.

And push notifications on iOS work as a service, to avoid battery drain, they all go through Apple on a single connection. This is free for all native apps. It can't be implemented for web apps both for technical reasons and because web apps can't be curated, so it'll just be abused like there's no tomorrow.

Have you noticed on the desktop that EVERY SITE asks you for push notifications? This is super annoying and bless your soul if you ever clicked "YES" on any of those. They'll spam you until you die, or eventually ask your nephew to reset your permissions.

EVERY single feature not in Safari, has a reason not to be there. And I'm sick of everyone eating up Google's propaganda and becoming their tools in this. I don't mind Google at all, they should fight for their PoV on all this, and they have a right to expand their business.

But not at the expense of Apple or Apple's users. F that.

Long-time iOS developer here who does not want cross-platform dreck to become the standard. UIKit and SwiftUI are deep frameworks that let you build really great user experiences (if you're willing to put in the work to learn them), and Apple spends a ton of time and money making sure they can work together and build an iOS app that looks and feels like an iOS app, not someone's crappy "web site in a native wrapper" or "several extra layers of abstraction to hide an API and god help you if you need to debug an API problem" approach.

I'm honestly glad to see one dev who cares about their craft and not just "I wanna spit some HTML and boom, it's on all phones".

HN is mostly frequented by developers, and it's so frustrating to see how many of them are outright lazy and don't think about UX but rather about how to get quickest from point A to point B.

Rest assured most phone users are with you all the way. But again, we wouldn't know it reading developer forums.

What you are ignoring (and in a pretty condescending way if I may say so) is that the best allocation of limited resources in the interest of users is not always to create scores of native client apps and device integrations. It's not all laziness.

No, it isn't always laziness.

Sometimes it's politics (I had a colleague leave a job because the new director of development mandated they rewrite their flagship enterprise apps in React Native because he got a song and dance from a React Native trainer/consultant and wouldn't listen to the people who knew what they were talking about).

Sometimes it's different priorities (a meetup buddy of mine some years ago had to write apps in PhoneGap because "We're in the oil bidness, not the app badness").

It isn't always "the best allocation of limited resources", either. Apart from having to do extra work to make the UX close to native (which isn't trivial), using a "cross platform" solution means you've just included a giant third party dependency that you don't control or maintain. Call it FUD if you want to, but in the forty-odd years I've done programming/development that's never been a good bet. If resources are really limited, the best bet is to have a decent design and very clear (reasonable) expectations and pay someone good to execute them.

I still mourn the loss of Windows Phone (aka one of three mobile OS choices) because of the "app gap". Small developers wouldn't invest the time or money into porting their app to the small marketshare. Even worse though, large companies would let their apps flounder, if they had one at all; the Bank of America app was simply disabled rather than being updated.

If the PWA concept had caught on, users on all platforms would have an equally good UX, increasing user choice.

Do most phone users really want to install apps for Reddit, Imgur, etc.?

I think this is a really great point. PWAs are not a threat to native apps - they are a great in-between that adapts to different use cases.

Installation, push notifications, etc... are all optional and can be mixed and matched based on what users actually want.

An example would be individual forums are a great use case for PWAs.

If you visit a site a lot, you want to install an icon for it. If you're willing to install an icon for it, you prefer the quality and speed of a native experience. That's just common sense.

Funny enough I couldn't find a decent native app for HN, so I just placed a link to the site in my folder with social apps. That site is the worst thing in that folder.

I know a couple people who dislike Reddit's degraded web experience to drive users to their app. I haven't installed the app myself. Maybe it's a minority opinion. But supposedly Reddit has 1.6 billion unique visitors per month, and about 120 million app installs.

Judging by their non-degraded desktop site experience, thank god we have the app. Honestly, Reddit is one of those sites that make me think the world has collectively forgotten how to make a sane site. It takes seconds to load, and almost everything you go means looking at animated placeholders for a time, until something happens.

I have a workstation that deals with 3D rendering and huge Photoshop files, or compiling sizable projects with no problem, and my CPU is still pegged to 100% when I browse Reddit.

I shudder at the thought of those same people being in charge of my mobile experience. I don't feel like having to replace my phone battery every 3 months, thanks.

I would rather have the choice, myself.

The web push notification restriction is exactly what makes people create quick and dirty websites in a native wrapper.

Let websites be websites. If you cripple them without a good technical reason then they become exactly the sort of app you're complaining about.

> apps turning into battery-draining non-native shitty experiences

There is no reason why non-native apps should be a shitty experience that drains the battery. That is just a tooling/feature issue.

> Have you noticed on the desktop that EVERY SITE asks you for push notifications? This is super annoying and bless your soul if you ever clicked "YES" on any of those. They'll spam you until you die, or eventually ask your nephew to reset your permissions.

The spam for installing the native app is 10x worse when using a mobile browser.

Why can I play 3D games in every browser except Safari on iOS? What is the technical reason for that?

Have you not noticed that EVERY APP asks for push notifications and uses them as a marketing funnel?

I don’t know about “only Google”, but Apple feels that web push in its current form doesn’t benefit the user (at least, how most browsers currently implement it where every page can ask you for notification privileges). They could gate the functionality behind PWA install, but right now they don’t.

I don't see how this restriction benefits anyone but Apple. What this restriction does is replace an annoyance that doesn't benefit Apple with one that does.

Instead of websites asking to send notifications, they are now nagging us to install useless apps that ask to send notifications and clutter our screens. An honest curator would never even allow these apps into their app store.

This is purely a business decision on Apple's part, nothing to do with user interests at all.

So you're annoyed by a few dozen apps you've installed sending notifications that "clutter your screen", and the solution is to allow the thousands of sites you visit do the same.

Okay.

No, you don't understand. What annoys me is that Apple has created an additional incentive for companies to clutter my screen with useless apps that wouldn't have any reason to be apps if it wasn't for push notifications.

These "apps" should never be allowed in the app store. They should be websites that get to ask me exactly once whether I want to receive their notifications. Instead they keep pushing and nagging me to install their apps and Apple's policies are encouraging this behaviour.

In some cases, the notifications are useful, but there is no other reason for them to be apps installed on my device.

Apps do also ask you exactly once if you want notifications.

And you don't have to install any apps. Use the sites if it's the same for you.

I want some sites to send me notifications just like I want some apps to send me notifications. I don't want websites to turn themselves into otherwise useless apps just to be able to send me notifications.

But they'll nag you forever to install their app if you use the website. Like Reddit's constant stream of dark pattern pop-ups and ads for their app.

Well you can't send push notifications without a Firebase account ... https://stackoverflow.com/a/41829063