On Android I can log into Facebook's website, and receive push notifications via the web-browser. On iOS my choices are either the native iOS app (which has substantially more data hooks) or nothing at all.
Essentially browser Push Notifications increase my privacy.
PS - I am sympathetic to complaints about push notification request spam, but that feels like a solvable issue without throwing the dishes out with the bathwater. You shouldn't need an "app" just for notifications.
PWAs would increase security all around compared to native apps, but that might cut into App Store revenue.
Are you joking? https://www.macrumors.com/2022/02/03/facebook-10-billion-in-...
[1] https://developer.apple.com/app-store/user-privacy-and-data-..., “Asking Permission to Track”
I don't understand why that's unexpected when a core idea of the App Store model is that Apple can better protect its customers against bad actors.
> PWAs from the beginning would have prevented Facebook from collecting data for the last decade in the first place…
I'm not sure how you arrived at that conclusion. My assumption is that a rounding error's percentage of Facebook users choose the PWA over the native app on platforms which support both, like Android. If you have actual data on this, I'd appreciate hearing about it.
I don't really see how % of users plays into it. I mean it's great the App Store is finally on board with being more strict on blocking user tracking after a decade of business but as long as more than 0 wanted to fix it before and couldn't because of the PWA and/or app sources policies then then policy around not-allowing those is based on protecting the App Store regardless how often privacy is brought up as the reason.
I mean it's great they protect it for the customers that fall towards the default option now don't get me wrong but while nice that doesn't really have anything to do with why all users were forced through the App Store before or after the policy change.
My suspicion is that they internally treat it as their own third party browser - e.g. they don't want to give it more entitlements/capabilities than a Firefox or Chrome browser would have from the iOS app store.
My suspicion also is that they have had a bit more wood behind the arrow to get media APIs working lately due to pushing large third-party cloud game subscription services to use the browser, and the regulatory scrutiny that likely brought on.
> Web App Manifest improvements include ensuring the browser always fetches the manifest file during page load instead of when the user chooses to “Add to Home Screen” from the Share menu.
If you mean html/css prompts rather than actual browser prompts: they already do that.
They could use their differential privacy to only allow for sites that have a reasonable opt in rate, and global opt out.
It’s pretty annoying.
- the dialog is model
- it’s small, and drops down from the top (a “reverse toast”?)
- I frequently use screen zoom So am typically unable to see the top of any window because I’m reading content
- I click a link, the page loads, the “toast” drops down but I don’t see it, suddenly nothing on the page works
For 99% of sites which ask for permission the answer is “no”. So that’s a lot of annoying web sites.
Is it really going to mean that much to web apps? I’m assuming it will work pretty much like push notifications on desktop, which is an awful UX.
To provide just one example, I released a turn-based word game as a PWA two years ago. With no option for native push notifications on iOS, I decided to email players to notify them each time it was their turn in a game.
Despite my domain having full support for DKIM, SPF, and DMARC, the usual problems of email were still a huge pain: Some domains (I'm looking at you hotmail.com) considered everything spam. In some email clients, the design of the emails looked totally wrong. Some of the more active players complained (rightfully so) that their inbox was filling up with these emails.
Sadly, the overwhelming majority of games never got past one or two moves, in part because one of the two players didn't see the email that it was their turn.
So yes, it would really, really help small businesses like mine if Safari would catch up here!
[0] eg, https://www.macworld.com/article/610673/ios-15-4-safari-push...
It’ll probably be officially announced at Apple’s World Wide Developers Conference in June.
Agreed.
Not being on by default likely means it's also buggy and incomplete.
... I assume WebKit has had support for this for a long time, since Safari on macOS has long supported push notifications.
Safari on macOS does not support the web Push API[1]. Apple has a proprietary Safari Push Notification service that requires all notifications to go through Apple's servers first[2].
[1] https://caniuse.com/push-api
[2] https://developer.apple.com/notifications/safari-push-notifi...
I've completely given up any kind of hope for iOS.
I hoped for years iOS would do reasonable things like allowing side loading or multitasking or push notifications. Apple knows these things would improve the platform, they don't do them because it would cut into their profits. If these features are ever added to the platform they will be handicapped in some way that makes them almost useless.
[0] https://www.forbes.com/sites/siladityaray/2021/08/27/apple-a...
I was really hoping this announcement would include support for push notifications for PWAs. I've been trying to build a few Discourse forums and they work very well as PWAs except for the fact that iOS doesn't support PWAs sending push notifications.
So here's to hoping the next iteration will.