1. They didn't. Because ask three people, and they will give you five answers on what exactly PWA support means (every time it's a different set of random APIs)
2. There's Android that holds 70% of world's market share and none of the imagined "killing" that Apple does. Unsurprisingly, there's still not a single mind-bending paradigm-shifting PWA that would show the world just how great PWAs is and just how exactly "Apple is killing PWAs"
Maybe unpopular opinion but PWAs generally just suck compared to their native counterparts. There's always something perceptibly 'wrong' that makes them an inferior user experience, even if only marginally so. I worked on PWAs for a while and users complained endlessly even if they can't articulate exactly why.
Technologists are enticed by the cost and development time savings of PWAs over native, but users resent the diminished user experience that almost always comes with it and repay you with poor ratings/reviews.
Something perceptibly 'wrong': probably the buttons and stuff being different from the native versions. Users can't tell the difference between a React Native app vs pure native one, though.
> But Apple and Google don’t exactly have a huge incentive to do that.
Google is literally the main company behind PWA push. Android doesn't have any of the perceived or real limitations that iOS has. Well, where are these non-sucky PWAs?
I am not the biggest fan of VS Code but it has a lot of fans.
That aside, focusing on the main topic, and now I am answering more seriously.
You claimed PWA that do not suck are a fantasy. My point is it is not such a crazy thought. It is very possible. Now that Apple wants to appear less monopolistic (probably because of Epic court case) they are finally giving more permissions to PWAs.
On top of that the founder of the company expressed this same vision.
Both things, together, make me think that it is not such a fantasy.
I do not have a killer PWA app to share with you, unfortunately, unless you want to check my amazing PWA ios calculator clone https://getcalculator.app/ :) The ipad does not have a calculator.
You claimed it was a fantasy. I disagree. I think you will only accept it is not a fantasy if I show you an amazing PWA. I am happy to accept it is not a fantasy if it is possible (Epic app store court case makes it possible IMO).
To me, a fantasy is something impossible, not only something that does not exist.
We will have to agree to disagree.
PWAs and apps are practically the same. You have some code. It turns into bytecode. It runs on a machine (bare metal or virtual machine).
The only difference is the APIs it has access to.
The reason why PWAs suck is that it has access to some pretty basic APIs.
Who controls the APIs? Apple and Google.
They’re the only people that can make a PWA nice. However, you constantly hear about efforts to make PWAs nice from people other than Apple and Google but these people aren’t in control of anything and honestly don’t matter.
Now Google may have been behind PWAs but from what I see, it’s been mostly to make web apps work better in browsers — apps like Gmail. But they’re not that invested in replacing apps with PWAs because if they were, you’d see them dogfooding their own apps as PWAs. However, they’re not.
So really, neither Apple or Google are invested in replacing apps with PWAs and until the dominant platforms want to, it will never happen.
“This time we can make an app based on web technologies for real!”
- it failed when Palm tried it
- it failed when Microsoft tried it
- it failed when RIM tried it
- the “sweet solution” that Steve Jobs called web apps when the iPhone was introduced was called a “shit sandwich” by potential developers who wanted native apps.
On another note, in the history of computing, all cross platform GUI apps have always sucked.
> “This time we can make an app based on web technologies for real!”
> - it failed when Microsoft tried it
VS Code is one of the most successful open source cross platform GUI apps of all time. Who would have thought that good ol' HTML would finally fulfill the promise of "build once, run everywhere".
VS Code is a great success of Electron-based apps but also has massive memory usage and performance bloat that comes with this style of app, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19144039
Sublime Text is implemented natively (C++) and uses a fraction of the resources to accomplish similar functionality. I know we live in a period of plentiful system resources where RAM usage no longer practically matters, but using 1.5GB RAM for a few files open seems insane, even more so that this is now normalized.
> Sublime Text is implemented natively (C++) and uses a fraction of the resources to accomplish similar functionality.
If VS Code is slower than sublime with the same level of functionality, why does it currently totally dominate the market? Is it because devs just love Microsoft?
VS Code has a quasi-IDE implemented for a bunch of popular languages including a debugger [1]. Sublime is a straight text editor, with limited debugging capability. Sheer usefulness beats performance, so VS Code won the editor war.
Sublime Text is an independent product from a small developer; VS Code is actively pushed and marketed by Microsoft, one of the biggest, best-known companies in the world.
That may or may not be the primary reason for the difference, but I don't think it can be ignored.
> If VS Code is slower than sublime with the same level of functionality, why does it currently totally dominate the market? Is it because devs just love Microsoft?
Because it only has the same level of functionality when you conveniently ignore how easier it is to write plugins
Sublime Text and VS Code are pretty different, despite looking superficially simmilar. VS Code gets much further along the path to being a full IDE (albeit not completely), where Sublime is more of a pure text editor.
At what cost? VS Code is a trillion dollar company throwing thousands of man-years at the problem and still running into issues like "we can't make the terminal fast enough because of web tech": https://code.visualstudio.com/blogs/2017/10/03/terminal-rend...
It is free! Free as in free beer. So all those trillions are going to very good use, considering it is the most used editor. And its open source too!! What a web tech success story this one...
> and still running into issues like "we can't make the terminal fast enough
Imagine that! A cross-platform code editor with its own configurable integrated terminal that hooks into the apps extension system. But someone wrote a blog post in 2017 explaining some performance improvements, so bring out the pitch-forks and burn it all down!
Yes. Not all discourse has to be literal. It's called a a metaphor. And your "trillion dollar company throwing thousands of man-years" is called a hyperbole. You are talking about the most successful cross platform code editor of all time, so if you want to be taken seriously, use level-headed arguments rather than emotional exaggerations.
> but at this point it's clear you're not interested in discussion beyond low-level trolling.
> Adieu
I wouldn't consider a discussion where someone cites a 6 year old blog post about performance improvements as proof of "throwing thousands of man years" as a serious, or worthwhile discussion. You can go. Don't let the door hit you on the way out.
None of those companies are known for UX. Palm and RIM were so behind in the field to begin with — they needed to catch up before they even thought about reinventing web apps.
As another example, if Google were to say tomorrow that they would release a high performance database, I’d believe it. If they were to say they are going to release an original social media platform, I would laugh.
I remember you from the other thread about Safari where you were claiming there are no problems whatsoever, so I'm not surprised you're pushing the same agenda here. Regardless what people reply to that question at least agree that when support is missing Safari will be the common denominator. For me, it's not even about APIs. My game gets like 1 FPS on Safari iOS and I'm not using any non-standard features.
> where you were claiming there are no problems whatsoever
Of course I was claiming no such thing
> Regardless what people reply to that question at least agree that when support is missing Safari will be the common denominator
No, you cannot disregard what people reply. Because the common denominator is just whining as people are complaining about random things. And when Safari adds another random API that random people randomly whine about, they immediately switch to whining about some other random API that apparently PWAs can't live without.
So what exactly are you asking for here? A list of PWA api's that must be used all the time in every single PWA app? What's the benefit of that? Which application development API has such an asinine requirement in the first place?
> Because of this you will always have people scream "Apple is killing PWAs" because they don't support a yet another random API.
I like the "yet another random API" phrase. It creates the impression that PWA APIs are being generated fast and furious, and apple is trying very hard to keep up with all these "random" new APIs.
Yet, the reality is that apple has for a long time deliberately crippled PWAs on their platform by not supporting just 4, crucial, old and fundamental APIs. I will list these for you:
- Background Sync
- Web Push
- Before Install Prompt and Installation Banner
- Background audio for PWAs
They do not have to implement any "yet another random API". Just those four. Everything else is a bonus, considering this is Apple's Safari (the new IE) we are talking about.
Imagine going 2000 years back with a book and showing it to some caveman. To you they are words, with meaning and purpose. To him, they're just random gibberish scrawled on some leafy stuff. He might even nibble on one of the pages and declare "it doesn't even taste good, what can be its use?"
Imagine having a discourse in good faith. Imagine not resorting to false analogies. Imagine not resorting to low-effort trolling the moment you run out of arguments. Imagine...
Anyway. I bid you adieu in a sibling thread, I'll do the same here.
haha. Seriously though, do you honestly believe that is what you are doing here? You think you are acting in good faith?
> Anyway. I bid you adieu in a sibling thread, I'll do the same here.
> Adieu.
You cannot even keep track of all your "adieus". Are you saying goodbye to a thread, or to an individual? Or is it all just random. lol
FYI: I do not respond to individuals. I respond to comments. Usually asinine comments because they trigger me. So the best way to say goodbye to me, is to think before you post.
2. There's Android that holds 70% of world's market share and none of the imagined "killing" that Apple does. Unsurprisingly, there's still not a single mind-bending paradigm-shifting PWA that would show the world just how great PWAs is and just how exactly "Apple is killing PWAs"