I've been thinking about this and I think Apple has two motivations.

1. The DMA is striking at the heart of their revenue model by targeting the app store. Tim Cook testified before Congress and said that Apple would be "giving up our total return" on their intellectual property if they did not monetize the app store aggressively. So my read is that this move is intended to prevent a shift to PWAs as a way to get around the new policies.

2. Legislation like the DMA, if successful, could spread to other countries, much in the same way the link tax spread from Australia to Canada. I think Apple has an explicit goal to make this legislation as painful as possible, for both the legislators and the citizens, so that other countries do not attempt to pass similar laws.

There was a time between 2007 and 2011 where I bought Apple computers and was a big fan. These days, despite the very cool new processors Apple has released, it's very hard for me to see them as anything other than antagonistic. What a fall from grace.

I dislike how Apple is evolving as an evil corporate, but they seem to have a real security and privacy concern on this issue.

I completely understand that companies will defend their own business interests. But the extent to which Apple has been leaning on spurious security arguments in order to do that is really starting to damage their reputation and in fact the security of their platforms.

Clearly, they're just making a point here, hurting developers and users just to spite a regulator.

What they are signalling to me as a developer is that mobile devices are just not a reliable platform. Better do as much as possible on the server.

I usually do not like these moves from Apple. For example, I strongly dislike all the new guidelines they added to comply with the introduction of alternative payment systems.

However, I'm on their side in this case. I run a business. If having a feature comply with some regulation meant implementing a whole infrastructure I don't have to serve a minority of customers, I would also abandon the feature.

Apple isn't just any business though. They are a multi-trillion platform company. I expect them to prioritise backward compatibility over spiting regulators and over itemised profitability considerations.

They could have implemented this feature securely, but they chose to use the opportunity to make a point instead.

Just like they had when asked to support alternative browser engines, but the DMA formally mandates it, sot they did comply and allowed them.

All other OSes support web app installation from any browser, including macOS. This is a lot more secure than installing any native app.

This is just Apple spreading FUD as an excuse to keep preventing web apps from competing with native apps.

> but they seem to have a real security and privacy concern on this issue

That's always how they spin their FUD. They already have an app sandbox in place for all fo their apps. Sideloaded, PWA, or not.

> I dislike how Apple is evolving as an evil corporate, but they seem to have a real security and privacy concern on this issue

Evil does indeed lead to real security and privacy concerns.