Given that reversing course here means "Home Screen web apps continue to be built directly on WebKit", this pivot doesn't actually contradict their claim that safely supporting PWAs from other engines was too much engineering work.

My hunch is that the initial change may have been performative, but it was likely performative for the EU regulators and not the customers. This pivot presumably means that the EU has now okayed browser engine lock in for PWAs.

That's a good point

> My hunch is that the initial change may have been performative, but it was likely performative for the EU regulators and not the customers.

Funny I was thinking the exact opposite: they floated it in case PWA removal got people to complain about the EU.

This is not a reversal. They are allowing PWAs built on webkit, not other browser engines. Their argument was that they cannot reliably make sure that installing a webapp on other browser engines is secure. And that they do not have a way to do so reliably before the deadline, and other important things (with more uses)take priority. On Webkit, they already did it ages ago.

In a few months, once we see newer browser engines on iOS, we will see calls that it is unfair Apple allows for one kind of web apps (on their own browser engine) but not others and that is self-preferencing.

It's 100% a reversal. Their previous statement was: "we will remove PWA support". Their new statement: "we won't remove PWA support, we will keep PWAs as they were in 17.3".

eh, you're both right. It's a 100% reversal of their decision to remove PWA support, but it's 100% consistent with their previous excuse/reason of it being too hard to support multiple browsers.

And yet you can run any browser engine on MacOS and the world hasn’t ended. This is a cash grab, it’s not about security and I don’t understand why people keep repeating that.

MacOS and iOS have different security architectures and different UX.

Let’s stop pretending any of it makes sense. Why are Mac app devs not charged the “Technology Fee”.

Because they don’t have to sell on the Mac App Store, they can use their own website. That has nothing to do with other browser engines being available.

And they still must pay the 100$ annually to sign and notarize.

Because MacOs is around 10 to 15% market share it make sense to use every incentive available to attract developers to another platform than Windows. There is a hidden technology fee, but it make more sense not to charge for it.

iOS is more like 50 to 55% market share so the goal is more to filter out bad actors and keep a high standard. Also let's milk that cash-cow.

I'm not necessarily agreeing with this approach but I got to admit it makes sense.

It’s NextSTEP all the way down

And they have different attack surfaces and vulnerabilities. In the abstract, our phones are (for better or worse) far more critical to our lives than our laptops. They go with us everywhere, they're increasingly our keys for various physical and digital access. They're off-board brains and backup. Generally speaking, I would say a compromised phone puts the average person in a worse situation than a compromised laptop.

Fine, but where’s the evidence alternate browser engines are such a massive security risk? I see none, but I see many billions of dollars Apple is making from applying a 30% tax on any app I buy. And to be clear, consumers pay that 30%, developers pass it on.

So why can't I benefit from a strong, secure virtualization on my phone, like I do with Qubes OS?

Why downvotes?

On MacOS, there are sandboxed apps, and not-sandboxed apps.

iOS never had a not-sandboxed option.

Wouldn't that make it safer to allow any app or rendering engine on iOS than on macOS then?

It seems like an argument against what Apple is claiming.

MacBook has 100wh battery, iPhone has 12wh. Chrome is notoriously inefficient, easy 2x more battery drain over Safari.

Running an inefficient app is the user's choice, not Apple's.

There's no legitimate choice without education.

The consumer would switch their PWA default engine in one of the half dozen "you have to agree to continue" buttons when Edge and Chrome install themselves and demand every privacy and security toggle be turned off (as Microsoft Teams demands when you try to run it in Safari*), and then all PWAs would be insecure and monitored by the adtech engines.

This weird idea to force Apple to have OS viewports use a foreign engine would not be 99.9% of users' real choice at all, just like the users who installed Avast anti-virus didn't choose to have all their browsing sold to adtech, or the users who chose "Private Browsing" in Chrome didn't choose to have Google recording that activity to the user's profile.

* Note: Because Teams is actually "just" a skin on many different services and the Apple+CloudFlare private browsing confuse the coupling.

> This weird idea to force Apple to have OS viewports use a foreign engine

That is not what people are saying. Nobody cares that MacOS renders half its content using WebKit on Mac. Same goes for iOS - people do care that they can't use a PWA in their browser of choice. It's anticompetitive blockage that will be inevitably brought-up when the compliance deadline rolls around.

> would not be 99.9% of users' real choice at all

No reasonable person can claim that. Alternative browser engines aren't even allowed yet, you don't know that.

> just like the users who installed Avast anti-virus didn't choose to have all their browsing sold to adtech, or the users who chose "Private Browsing" in Chrome didn't choose to have Google recording that activity to the user's profile.

Or the people who left notifications on and got their iPhone information slurped up by the NSA. Pobody's nerfect, right? Get the strawmen out of here before they start a fire.

> Nobody cares that MacOS renders half its content using WebKit on Mac. Same goes for iOS - people do care that they can't use a PWA in their browser of choice.

What does it mean to "use a PWA in their browser"? That's the opposite of what the PWA experience is supposed to be. You're not supposed to be aware you're in a browser -- and "people" defined as normals, not HN users, do are not.

The "reasonability" of my view about what consumers care about is informed by building both enterprise and mass market web, and later app, products since the 90s, helping countless clients study their users' actual preferences in depth.

Our, and well known, studies show the "man on the street" has zero comprehension of what a browser engine is much less how a PWA or even Electron works. In general, their priority is everything just working and tech being out of their way.

HN is among the least representative forums for recognizing "normal" user interests I've seen, almost to the point of parody.

> Get the strawmen out of here

Avast and Google debacles are first party software provider exploitations of user trust, not targeted surveillance or dragnet by a government. Lockdown mode shows the length to which Apple takes this class of problem seriously as well.

> What does it mean to "use a PWA in their browser"? That's the opposite of what the PWA experience is supposed to be.

What does it mean to use a PWA without a browser? It's impossible to operate without an HTML engine and accompanying logic.

Even playing by your logic, there should be an equal and fair opportunity for third-parties to make the same experience. That's what the DMA and DSA are all about, when you boil them down. If Apple has a button that lets you open PWAs in their engine, others should get the same opportunity. Web apps are portable, this is the design of the web as a whole. Apple can make it a problem in their browser or a problem in their OS, but it remains a problem all the same.

> Our, and well known, studies show the "man on the street" has zero comprehension of what a browser engine is much less how a PWA or even Electron works.

> HN is among the least representative forums for recognizing "normal" user interests I've seen, almost to the point of parody.

Then why bring up the users at all? Let's discuss these solutions on their technical merit, since we're on a technical forum. Apple's defense is paper-thin here, and your "runtime" rationalization doesn't work for any other platform, let alone the open web.

> Avast and Google debacles are first party software provider exploitations of user trust

So... your defense of Apple's failure is that they provide Lockdown mode? Shit, I might as well cite GDPR and Google Takeout if I had any interest in defending the sycophants.

Apple's debacles are an example of first-party exploitation of trust. If their definition of local security and individual privacy is subject to third-party demands, then they are fundamentally compromised. You're utterly detached if you think Apple's got a humanitarian heart for the Chinese citizens they help implicate. Lockdown Mode won't save them.

> The consumer would switch their PWA default engine in one of the half dozen "you have to agree to continue" buttons when Edge and Chrome install themselves and demand every privacy and security toggle be turned off (as Microsoft Teams demands when you try to run it in Safari), and then all PWAs would be insecure and monitored by the adtech engines.*

I suggest Apple takes inspiration from Android then, since that doesn't happen on Android. Maybe Android's security model is better.

This is solely about Apple getting a cut of App Store sales. They’ve been in cahoots with Google for years, as evidenced by the recent DoJ monopoly trial - “privacy” and “security” are marketing terms at Apple. Nothing more.

Source: Trust me bro, I've just made it up

> we will see calls that it is unfair Apple allows for one kind of web apps (on their own browser engine) but not others and that is self-preferencing.

We have been seeing people say that for years. And mostly, they've been right; Apple's treatment of WebKit and Safari was anti-PWA for years. Even today, Apple has zero competitors who could meaningfully encourage them to adopt new PWA features or change Safari on iPhone.

Exactly, the Safari team has been openly hostile to PWA for a decade.

Why would you assume that it’s malicious and not just the result of getting further clarification from lawyers on both ends?

The DMA isn’t an exact set of steps to follow. A lot is left to interpretation

they didn't need to remove a capability they already had, so any lawyer clarification would be on if they would be punished for being anticompetitive by removing the capability

So..you've never written software with a lawyer standing over your shoulder?

Very often legal requirements lead to removal of features that cannot easily comply rather than expansion of the feature to comply. Removal is less rick.

Except they have had to do this multiple times (although usually patents).

Examples include portions of AirPrint functionality on macOS, Bootcamp suspend/resume, and FaceTime peer-to-peer. The latter being the reason that Apple did not open up FaceTime as a broader industry initiative.

In the US we currently have Apple Watch being sold without access to the blood oxygen feature due to an import restriction.

There are also restrictions on showing certain maps in certain countries, as well as whether or not the Taiwan flag emoji displays in China.

Steve Jobs was legendarily spiteful and petty. They just carry over the tradition.

I won't say it is malicious. But I won't give Apple a pass either.

Ultimately, the truth is that a company like Apple doesn't want to deal with DMA. Their whole services business model (whether it be the App Store monopoly or the iMessage monopoly) relies on behavior that is counter to DMA.

It's also clear from their seething press releases about the DMA that they don't want to mince words about how much they don't like it or don't want to do it.

It's always easy for them to give a vague privacy / security argument to justify whatever benefits their monopolistic control. It's no different from the "Think of the children!" style of reasoning that politicians use to get what they want.

I think it's important for users to keep calling them out at every opportunity so they don't get away with it.

Get away with what though?

You’re the one who’s ascribing maliciousness to their actions. But you don’t have that backed up by anything concrete other than your subjective perception.

From what they’ve written they removed it initially to keep all browsers equal, which is what the DMA implies is necessary.

They now brought it back with only WebKit support.

It’s completely logical that their lawyers worked with the EU to clear this exception.

People here ascribe too much in the way of human emotion to corporations.

If they were really trying to kill PWAs they’d have done it everywhere. If they were really trying to stick it to the DMA, PWAs are such an insignificant feature to do it with.

What are the percentage of people who’d be so inconvenienced that the PWA would open in a browser tab instead of a pseudo browser instance?

> It's no different from the "Think of the children!" style of reasoning that politicians use to get what they want.

It is very different. The outcome from “think of the children” is loss of privacy, while Apple’s actions means loss of software functionality. The former is more dangerous for society and freedom of thought.

How can we be certain that Apple's actions don't mean a loss of privacy too? Whenever they're asked about seriously decentralizing their own trust model Apple tends to fall back on the "legal compliance" note, if not directly on think-of-the-children. Their lack of transparency (even the base level that Google provides with the AOSP) isn't very reassuring, at least to me.

Now, one could argue that Apple's decisions are less impactful than politicians. Circumstantially, they may be right, but I think it's appropriate to compare the line of reasoning. After all, Apple employs both.

Regulatory worried?

The EU stated they will investigate this. And somehow Apple decides less than a week later that the feature will return.

Looks like regulators should not be worried about Apple complying in the medium term.

DMA has a catch-all: any circumvention can lead to penalties. You can try to play games like this, but it will just lead to fines.

I would expect a few more U-turns, especially on the fee structure.

I think they’ll keep pushing their luck but it’s not in a vacuum - Microsoft, Google, and Meta have been dealing with EU regulators a lot longer and on a much deeper level. They will see Apple’s missteps and use that towards their own benefit by gaming the refs.

Ironically, Microsoft now has a fairly good argument that Apple is abusing its OS control to stifle competition in web browsers. What a world!

Apple is playing checkers, Brad Smith is playing chess.

> So easily reversed

Yeah. It is easy to reverse committing an "if" statement.

Users have been abused for a decade now. It’s normalized. Unfortunately, not much competition in this space.

OSS has potential to disrupt but needs a significant mover to patch it all together. And $$$ to motivate. Then there’s the hardware aspect.

IMO it would be better to avoid the language of spousal abuse and physical violence when describing what are actually dry business decisions. It kind of cheapens the real physical harm befalls vulnerable people.