> In the European Union, developers can also distribute notarized iOS and iPadOS apps from alternative app marketplaces and directly from their website.
Well, this was only possible because the EU had pushed hard toward this openness otherwise, we wouldn't expect Apple to do this.
> For everything else there is always the open Internet. If the App Store model and guidelines or alternative app marketplaces and Notarization for iOS and iPadOS apps are not best for your app or business idea that’s okay, we provide Safari for a great web experience too.
IMO, Safari on iOS do not have a great experience for web devs who are willing to distribute their apps as PWAs, especially when there is no alternative browser that provides additional capabilities, they are all skinned Safaris. Take for instance the Vibration API [1], it has been supported since a long time in Chrome mobile but not in Safari. I believe it does an excellent job in giving a PWA some native-feeling when being used. Still though, I still miss that haptic feedback is not yet supported by Chrome. Bluetooth [2] is yet another missing API in Safari.
Of course, for these (and other) web APIs to be abused by developers, I encourage browser vendors to disable them by default when requested from a website and enable them ONLY on user consent. On the other hand, when a user installs the PWA, these privileges should be granted automatically with the ability to disable them by the user.
To finalize, another excellent API that facilitate the installation of PWAs by triggering an install prompt [3] is not supported in iOS Safari, which does really makes me wonder: "How Safari provides a great web experience?"
Well, this was only possible because the EU had pushed hard toward this openness otherwise, we wouldn't expect Apple to do this.
> For everything else there is always the open Internet. If the App Store model and guidelines or alternative app marketplaces and Notarization for iOS and iPadOS apps are not best for your app or business idea that’s okay, we provide Safari for a great web experience too.
IMO, Safari on iOS do not have a great experience for web devs who are willing to distribute their apps as PWAs, especially when there is no alternative browser that provides additional capabilities, they are all skinned Safaris. Take for instance the Vibration API [1], it has been supported since a long time in Chrome mobile but not in Safari. I believe it does an excellent job in giving a PWA some native-feeling when being used. Still though, I still miss that haptic feedback is not yet supported by Chrome. Bluetooth [2] is yet another missing API in Safari.
Of course, for these (and other) web APIs to be abused by developers, I encourage browser vendors to disable them by default when requested from a website and enable them ONLY on user consent. On the other hand, when a user installs the PWA, these privileges should be granted automatically with the ability to disable them by the user.
To finalize, another excellent API that facilitate the installation of PWAs by triggering an install prompt [3] is not supported in iOS Safari, which does really makes me wonder: "How Safari provides a great web experience?"
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1. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Vibration_A...
2. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Web_Bluetoo...
3. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Progressive_web...