'Apple's Refusal To Support Progressive Web Apps is a Detriment To Future of the Web' (medium.com) 302
From a blog post: Progressive Web Applications (PWAs) are one of the most exciting and innovative things happening in web development right now. PWAs enable you to use JavaScript to create a "Service Worker", which gives you all sorts of great features that you'd normally associate with native apps, like push notifications, offline support, and app loading screens -- but on the web! Awesome. Except for is one major problem -- While Google has embraced the technology and added support for it in Chrome for Android, Apple has abstained from adding support to mobile Safari. All they've done is say that it is "Under Consideration." Seemingly no discussion about it whatsoever.
DO NOT WANT!!!! (Score:4, Insightful)
who the shit would want this?
Re: DO NOT WANT!!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
Nobody. Nobody wants anything "push". Everybody hates loading screens. If sw even have a splash screen, it is TOO SLOW.
Ad people may want push, that drives this. Too bad for them, I turn js off.
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Well one perspective on this might be: if the app takes noticeable time to load on modern hardware to some sort of useful starting point, it's either too bloated or is running on a VM/platform that is too bloated, or it is poorly modularized.
NES games loaded in 1 second (Score:2)
The app is going to take time to load regardless of whether or not there's a splash screen.
Applications for the Family Computer (released as Nintendo Entertainment System outside Japan) loaded in less than 1000 milliseconds, which was more than enough time to decompress 5 KiB of title screen data into video memory. It had a 1.8 MHz processor. Devices nowadays have a processor clocked at closer to 1.8 GHz, which (to slightly oversimplify) is 1000 times as fast as the one in the NES. Why don't applications load in 1 millisecond?
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because the applications are doing different (sometimes actually better) things now and people want shiny shit rather than plain text, but they're not willing to (shudder) pay money for software, so a bunch of ads have to load also, in order to pay for the service, and those are not really cpu-bound but i/o-bound, and really when the value-add is in networking and information exchange why would you expect the CPU to be the bottleneck anyway?
Re: DO NOT WANT!!!! (Score:2)
Indeed. If I want notifications and whatthefucknot, I can install the app. If I am browsing your service in web browser, just take the fucking hint already.
Loading screens. (Score:5, Interesting)
It's 2017 and programs still have a "loading screen".
Idiots, all of you.
Re:Loading screens. (Score:4, Funny)
Dude, apple needs to support this kick ass new technology so that websites can have splash screens. It's the least they can do after they killed off flash, the previous kick ass technology enabling the awesomeness of splash pages!
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Compare: modern application startup time on windows 10 (or 7 if you prefer) 4Ghz processor with SSD and DDR4 memory, vs similar application on windows 95 era pentium 133 with SDRAM and an IDE hard drive.
How the fuck did we get here 2017?
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The correct answer is probably a mix of "high level languages", "OOP", "libraries" and "frameworks".
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Programmers program computers. The other group circle jerks.
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correct, if by "circle jerks", you mean "makes money hand-over-fist giving people what they want".
Re:Loading screens. (Score:5, Insightful)
Bad or lazy developers and designers adding more "features", relying on frameworks on top of frameworks, ignoring critical thinking and not culling what is not needed.
That is how we got here.
You can witness it firsthand year by year on the internet archive by looking at popular web pages. They start with handcrafted html that is byte-level sensitive. Then automated generators and css that add no functionality, on to plugins, php where it isn't needed, endless javascript. Now even the most basic websites need to load scripts from half a dozen domains and relies on layered frameworks. Not to mention the endless threat vectors this brings.
Web pages that were once less that 1KB sans media are now over 10MB and have dozens of single points of failure with no discernible increase in usability or features. Even slashdot became this way.
Go to slashdot.org, it tries to load from:
fsdn.com
pro-market.net
slashdotmedia.com
stacksocial.com
janrain.com
taboola.com
truste.com
multiple subdomains of cloudfront.net
ml314.com
rpxnow.com
google-analytics.com
crsspxl.com
There are one or more scripts running from each, I don't know how many, I block them. Just to get slashdot to render properly 2,524 CSS rules must be loaded. Why is there a 123KB "app.css" file of 1204 rules that must load?
What a mess. We ought to be following best-practices, saying "No" more often to marketing, vendors, pr, sales, and the army of people in IT that don't have the talent need to get the boot.
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Of all that crap, fsdn.com is the only one that's not strictly harmful. These days, "deny by default" is not only a security measure, it also means less work telling ads from non-ads.
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that's not laziness. that's how "free" services get funded nowadays. most of that has nothing to do with rendering the actual content; it's to farm statistics and show ads, which is where the vast majority of the money comes from.
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We ought to be following best-practices, saying "No" more often to marketing, vendors, pr, sales
They're the ones who get to say 'no' and show you the door, because they're the ones who pony up the money that it takes to do anything.
Re:Loading screens. (Score:5, Informative)
Jon Blow talks about this -- Why does it take Photoshop about 7 seconds to display your image on a modern computer???
Jonathan Blow "Making Game Programming Less Terrible" Talk at Reboot Develop 2017 [youtu.be]
> How the fuck did we get here 2017?
Lazy programmers who don't giving a fuck about the user experience. i.e. Bloated C++ and OOP as opposed to DOD (Data Orientated Design.)
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sure, user experience is great, as long as it doesn't add even 1% overhead to the timetable or budget. it's provably more efficient (i.e. more short-term profit) to just shovel shit faster than the other guy.
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My hypothesis is that the so-called Java Generation was taught from their individual beginnings to always go further from "low-level" code. Subsequently the definition of "low level" has changed so that e.g. setting parameters in a template engine to generate HTML on server side is considered "low level" and beneath the programmer (or, more likely, too scary to get into).
They fear the computer. So they resort to bloat in order to make it less frightening. In truth we've had MMUs in every computer since the
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the truly l337 and browser-tech agnostic way of having app loading screens is to implement them as animated GIFS.
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Yes, it really does.
Re:Loading screens. (Score:5, Insightful)
I do not want web apps to be "first class" citizens. We got rid of Flash precisely because of the security issues giving unknown apps system-level access entailed...
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> Sandbox everything 100%, FTW.
This is a pretty nice ideal until you gotta feed a program something that another program output. Like a PDF file generated by dvipdfmx (or some such), to a PDF reader (like mupdf).
Unless each program is intended to be its own little fiefdom, dealing in at most persistent application state. But those are knick-knacks and games at best.
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Your shell application would request the generated PDF from dvipdfmx's space and send it to mupdf's space.
Re:Loading screens. (Score:5, Insightful)
Fuck web apps as 'first class' citizens. If you want that level of control over the user's machine, then the user should have that level of control over access and use of the software. The last thing I'd want is a 'web app' having control of my system's layout/rendering layer.
Currently, users understand web sites as ephemeral, as any services they provide can disappear at any time, and like users, developers see them as something they can change at any time. This is very different from conventional standalone programs, where users see them as something they have control over (and can thus trust more), and developers see them as for-pay version upgrades. Blurring this line is consumer hostile.
Re:Loading screens. (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah. Time to switch back to safari.
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Currently, users understand web sites as ephemeral, as any services they provide can disappear at any time...
Bless your dear sweet little heart.
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Back to bed grandpa
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Whatever you say, great grandpa.
Only a Mac can run all applications (Score:2)
Currently, users understand web sites as ephemeral, as any services they provide can disappear at any time, and like users, developers see them as something they can change at any time. This is very different from conventional standalone programs, where users see them as something they have control over (and can thus trust more), and developers see them as for-pay version upgrades.
Which in turn require for-pay platform upgrades. Want to run this application? Buy a Windows license. Want to run that application? Buy a Mac and put it on a KVM with your existing computer. Want to run all desktop applications without having to carry multiple computers around with you? A MacBook with a Windows 10 license in a virtual machine and GNU/Linux in another virtual machine is your only (legal) option, as only a Mac runs macOS applications.
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Look, even Safari shouldn't take more than 1/60 of a second to start. It's a web browser that starts to a blank page; it shouldn't spend two seconds figuring out which part is elbow and which is arse.
Two seconds is like, 4 billion clock cycles on a single ARM core. On desktops it's far more. Multicore programs can spend cycles on other cores as well. And it shouldn't fucking take a hundred million clocks to fucking start a fucking program to its fucking first empty screen.
Progressive Web Applications? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Progressive Web Applications? (Score:4, Funny)
What about alt-web applications?
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What about alt-web applications?
Too fake for my tastes.
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Don't you mean alt parameters?
Conservative web applications (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm more in favor of Conservative Web Applications.
If by "conservative" you mean limited in scope, efficient in their use of resources, and cautious in their assumptions - security and otherwise - then I'm right there with you.
Social conservative applications (Score:2)
In at least the United States, "conservative" also encompasses social conservatism, which tends to entail being opinionated in a discriminatory way. A conservative application may not support character sets other than US ASCII or user interfaces other than English, discriminating against users from minority cultures. A conservative application may not support screen readers, discriminating against users with vision disabilities.
Not a detriment (Score:5, Insightful)
which gives you all sorts of great features that you'd normally associate with native apps, like push notifications
There you have it. Push notifications are not great features. They are evil, distracting, manipulating, crud that leads to more and more advertising.
Let's hope Apple at least has the sense to contain this disaster.
--
Happy happy oh my friend
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Personally, I think push notifications should only be used for things that require an immediate time sensitive response. I.e. incoming phone call or teleconference
Fortunately, the specification lets users set up their notifications as you describe. When a domain asks to push notifications, the user checks whether it's a domain associated with real-time messaging, such as discordapp.com or skype.com, and chooses whether to allow or block notifications based on that.
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I think that's just one potential problem, as an example of a larger issue: It's not clear that we all want web browsers to enable web apps to be more like native applications.
I wouldn't say that web developers have earned enough trust that I want them to have more power over how my computer behaves. Aside from all the malware, there are ongoing issues with advertising and pop-ups. I don't want websites to be able to access my location. I don't want websites to be able to decide to store things on my co
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It's not clear that we all want web browsers to enable web apps to be more like native applications.
I think it's clear that plenty of people don't have a desire for this. And plenty of people (or at least me), actively want for this not to happen.
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It's not clear that we all want web browsers to enable web apps to be more like native applications.
plenty of people (or at least me), actively want for this not to happen.
Would you prefer not to have access to most applications at all because they are made for the desktop computing platform other than the one you use daily?
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If my choice is limited to just between those two, then yes.
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I don't know what are the implications of mobile. I do know that google will adopt any technology that allows it to monotize end users because it is an ad agency and that is what ad agencies do. OTOH, Apple charges for services, so the end users matter so things like wasting time and security matter.
We j ow in the w
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When you're thinking of it on your own volition & interest?
See, there's the problem; Individual volition is what marketers, corporations, and governments want to train people to give up and forget. They want people to let others think and make choices for them.
Strat
Apple is in the right (Score:5, Insightful)
Google's test bed for developers might be ok to put this to play around with. But the real world USES are very little if any. These things are beyond fucking annoying. I've blocked every single request for a page or site to send me updates. It's not needed or wanted.
I view this functionality as a gaping security hole and a resource hog. It's not needed. Who the fuck wants this other than the site owner to push more ads?
Re:Apple is in the right (Score:5, Insightful)
... I've blocked every single request for a page or site to send me updates. It's not needed or wanted....
It is wanted by someone --- the advertisers whose ads will ride piggy-back on every push notification you see.
Not every app is for all platforms (Score:2)
If I want an app I'll downloads it.
That doesn't help if the application isn't in the App Store because it's only on Google Play Store, with a notice on the developer's website to the effect "Please back our Kickstarter campaign to fund porting this application to iPhone and iPad."
Comment removed (Score:3)
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How many people are willing to buy and carry two phones and pay two phone bills just to run the odd native application that isn't yet ported to iOS or web application that relies on features that Apple has refused to add to Safari?
And who wants this? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why the fuck would I want a website to have push notifications? Or worker threads on my machine? Or use this shit to have even more ads? Or let it access more of my information?
Sorry, but the web is insecure in large part because every asshole web developer thinks the default should be for us to enable everything so their crappy site can work -- which makes us vulnerable to malicious ads, viruses, and all sorts of shit.
I will never trust a fucking web application the way I would a native application, because we have seen time and time again, the web isn't something you can trust.
Boo goddamned fucking hoo ... your new web technology may not be something we want anyway.
I let javascript run on a whitelist basis only. I'm sure as hell not letting arbitrary websites have even more access to my machine.
Fuck you, fuck off.
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You're right, of course. I basically disable push notifications for almost every application I use, web or mobile. All of the noise that those messages generate are distracting, and slow down my ability to get to important alerts like an e-mail from my boss or a text message from my wife.
Re:And who wants this? (Score:5, Interesting)
My website [transsee.ca] does bus arrival predictions, so it would be useful to have notifications so I could tell the user when their bus is about to arrive.
I block a lot of my apps from doing notifications, but there are still lots of situations where notifications are useful.
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It's a cost/benefit thing. There are certain thing for which push notifications can have some value. But I have yet to see that value exceed the cost of push notifications.
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I will never trust a fucking web application the way I would a native application, because we have seen time and time again, the web isn't something you can trust.
While there are plenty of native application developers who can't be trusted, I think you're right. The web seems to have a MUCH larger number of them. Like you, I have a much lower trust of anything web (or cloud) based by default.
Experience has taught me that this is entirely justified.
PWA is a "Crock of Shit" (Score:5, Insightful)
You can tell that the entire concept is bullshit just on how they are marketing it ... "Progressive Web App" -- who are you trying to fool? HTML5 was progressive, they didn't need to call it "PHTML" to sell us on it because it proved its own merrit.
If you're trying to do something complicated that requires native binaries, but you're using Javascript instead, you're doing it wrong. Period.
(And regular old javascript can run offline already ... PWA is utter nonsense.)
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So that sounds pretty cool that android will let me completely bypass their store to get those features and even distribute say, an enterprise "app" without needing Google Play or any other marketplace.
You have that right now. Android allows you to install apps without a marketplace being involved in any way.
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I actually think of both of those as upsides, not down. Perhaps not for the average user, but personally I like being able to switch side-loading on and off (it helps to prevent accidents), and I don't like automatic updates.
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So "progressive" is just a fancy way of saying "not broken" then?
Who would not want this? (Score:5, Funny)
Is this a way to bring back the features of IE6 and ActiveX controls, only now they can install themselves more easily?
Who would not want this?
Comment removed (Score:4, Funny)
detriment to what? (Score:3)
Translation: Their way of making money is a detriment to the way you make your living, or wish you could make a living? There are many ways to do each of the things you list without doing PWAs; no one has to share your infatuation with PWA
And lose 30%? (Score:2, Insightful)
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Chrome on mobile already fixed that by throttling any tab not in the user's foreground.
Nice (Score:5, Insightful)
A slashvertisement for push-marketing software that's also a marketing attack piece aimed at an industry holdout.
Who voted for this dreck while in the firehose, or did it simply get "inserted"?
Strat
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Who
Same shit birds that saluted when this crap appeared earlier; "With the current administration's attitude toward transparency and catering only to the largest corporate donors herp derp."
Discussions are taking place (Score:3)
Apple is having discussions. You're not invited.
Progressive Web Applications aren't that Great (Score:3)
If you boil a PWS down it's just a website/webpage that has a manifest and icon in its root folder. Just about everything else is preexisting technology. The only real advantage is that you wrap a browser window around the site and make it work more like a desktop app... like what Chrome Apps use to be. Ever wonder why Google / Alphabet abandoned that technology?
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The only real advantage is that you wrap a browser window around the site and make it work more like a desktop app... like what Chrome Apps use to be.
That's basically what Electron is, isn't it?
Ever wonder why Google / Alphabet abandoned that technology?
I'm actually curious about this, yes. Could you please give me your take on it?
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No Electron and it's parent project Node Webkit (aka NW.JS) are complete stacks for building desktop applications with a NodeJS engine integrated in. Chrome Apps had a much more restrictive sandbox and ask for permission to do things.
Sure my take comes down two main reasons for no continuing support for Chrome Apps:
1. Maintaining Chrome App's sandb
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The problem with Electron, and PhoneGap/Cordova, is adding all that weight. Yeah, I can package my app in those two services and get it to work and be deployed in web stores and app stores...but then I'm bundling in it a bunch of stuff that the browser already has done for me.
The problem with Chrome apps is that we had all these nice HTML5 standard features (local storage, history which is html-*3*) and threw them away and made you use proprietary APIs. That made for UNportable code (the hackery I had to d
Don't need it (Score:5, Insightful)
Push notifications are evil. I have one iphone app that I turned them on for, then turned them off, and they still come through any way from time to time. Now I'm starting to see more and more websites that want to send them. I don't need offline support. Who does? And what are "app loading screens" and why do I supposedly need them? All this post has done is make me very grateful to Apple.
wut? (Score:2)
You lost me at "push notifications". "App loading screens" sounds like "Ads I don't want".
Pass.
Apple Used To Innovate (Score:2)
They used to innovate, but as they have grown larger, they are becoming less likely to innovate (think large cellphone screens). they prefer their users in a walled garden and not free to make too many choices. For many people, that's just fine.
Re: Apple Used To Innovate (Score:2)
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What of banks that notify you of suspicious transactions without installing a 100 mb app on your phone?
You mean email or SMS notifications they send? Maybe you need to rethink whom you bank with.
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Pokemon Go users with maps implement notifications to indicate if a desired creature is available
Then I recommend that both of you install Chrome and use that. Problem solved
What of banks that notify you of suspicious transactions without installing a 100 mb app on your phone?
I might be a bit of a Luddite, but my bank uses two different types of technology for that. The first is a phone call, and the second is an SMS notification. Both work in those rare instances when I don't have data. SMS works when I don't even have enough signal to have a phone conversation. Furthermore, I trust my banking institution a lot more than I trust some random website on the internet. If I did not trust my bank, or
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Real Applications (Score:5, Insightful)
...which gives you all sorts of great features that you'd normally associate with native apps, like push notifications, offline support, and app loading screens -- but on the web! Awesome.
Here we go again. Web devs trying to pretend they're making native apps. Folks, there are so many reasons why you would not want that. Native and web are two separate disciplines with two very different roles. You're screwdrivers not hammers. Quite trying to turn nails.
Paradigm shift? (Score:3)
In college as an intern I remember talking to the experienced engineers about this interesting video I saw about a guy talking about the concept of a "paradigm shift". The response was something like, "Oh, you mean that guy that couldn't sell his funny looking bicycle seat?" Apparently this guy had already developed a reputation.
The video was about a funny looking bicycle seat, and it was interesting from an engineering perspective. What was wrong though was the product he was trying to sell was crap. I remembered the video and as someone that then rode a bicycle regularly I'd see people start to use bicycle seats with features he mentioned in his video, but the idea he was trying to sell was not a great idea.
Progressive web apps sounds like just another funny looking bicycle seat. There's some good ideas there but the product they want to sell as a "paradigm shift" is crap. The article even spells out the problems, like needing a constant internet connection to work. Data still costs money even if it's real cheap, and people might not be fond of constantly getting charged for using "too much" data on their cell plan.
Progressive web apps are stupid. Apple is smart to be reluctant to support them. Maybe they have some good ideas here that will find their way into future products and services but this just sounds stupid.
Apple's Right to be Cautious (Score:5, Interesting)
This sounds to me like the latest exploit-vector.
I DO NOT WANT "worker processes" being shoved onto my computer, regardless of Sandboxing.
Just wait. There WILL be an exploit or hundred that use this.
And I will sit back and laugh.
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It doesn't need an exploit to be bad. The basic concept of allowing websites to use your resources while you're not actually viewing the website is troublesome. Seems sure to result in memory leaks and degraded performance which will be very hard for most people to track down the source of.
Google's just angry (Score:2)
that there STILL is a web that doesn't care for Google.
I mean, take a web server, and a database and a couple billion of browers and you have something. Add Google and you have what? More ads! What if you don't need them? THIS is the thought that Google can't stand.
Great features... (Score:2)
Good for Apple (Score:2)
As someone who blocks Javascript by default, the fewer sites doing the PWA thing, the better.
More to PWA than notifications... (Score:2, Insightful)
A LOT more.
The heart of is that people want an "app" experience on a phone/tablet. You could say it is just a browser page, but it isn't. They don't like running shit in browsers. Browsers are for reading crap that apps redirect them to. They aren't for, say, music players, video players, or games.
Yet html5/javascript can do all that.
PWA, through the manifest, is a way to package the html5 application so that it doesn't need the heavyweight crap that a Cordova/PhoneGap packaged app carries. You like this a
Apple users should demand Progressive web apps! (Score:2)
I would think, given the typical Apple user profile, that they would demand Progressive web apps! Except Apple, by nature, is non-PC, so there is already a problem.
Push Notifications can suck my $%& (Score:2)
Push notifications on web pages? No way in hell would I trust that, are you crazy? Kudos to Apple for avoiding it. Just like Apple helped kill Flash, I hope they help kill this new invader.
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I believe that Chrome on iOS is still using the same underlying technologies of Safari, not 100% certain that it is a completely separate code base there. More like a skinning.
Lots of people use Safari. More than use Firefox. (Score:2, Informative)
Despite being a relatively minor product from Apple, and one that these days only really runs on macOS or iOS, it turns out that a lot of people use Safari.
According to recent browser stats [caniuse.com], iOS Safari has about 10% of the browser market.
This is well above Firefox for Android's 0.03% (yes, that's right, it's way less than even just 1%!) share of the market.
macOS Safari has about 2% to 3% of the market.
To put that into perspective, macOS Safari has more users than Edge does (which has about 1.5% of the marke
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You've also got to read between the lines to see what's really going on here. PWA isn't some global internet standard, it's something Google made up. The complaint is that Apple isn't supporting Google's pet cool idea of the week. Nor, by the looks of it, is anyone other than Google. Because it's Google's pet idea of the week, and it's nearly the end of the week. There'll be a new pet idea appearing on Monday.
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It's possible to make JavaScript that's not as bloated as the scripts deployed on some popular websites. But if you deem all JavaScript to be bloat by definition, would you rather have JavaScript or "This native application is available for platforms X, Y, and Z, but not the platform you are using"?
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In PWAs, service workers allow you to store data on your device - so that the next time you load the page, the last information you saw is there again without loading time.
You mean like cookies?
Here's an honest question: I don't see a single reason why, as a user, PWAs are in any way beneficial, and I can think of several downsides to them. Can you tell me why I would want such things to run on my devices?
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Thank you for your thoughtful reply. I really do appreciate it.