1) I don't want to see the prompts to allow push notifications from a webapp, nor to have to go disable them. I just never want them.
2) Generally I'd rather none of the software I use be webtech, so anything that makes it easier to deliver webtech to my phone/tablet is a step the wrong direction. Yes I'm willing to have less total software in exchange. The point is that I don't want apps that are or will be native, to be webtech instead, which may happen as more features are added to webapps. IMO allowing stuff like React Native and Phonegap is something I'd even rather they didn't do (and I've been paid to develop both native and React Native apps, plus worked on a very early and somewhat successful Phonegap-but-more-native solution that ultimately fizzled out). My ideal situation is that if anyone tells me to try out some app or to use some app to communicate or share something with them or whatever, personal or business, it's a webapp 0% of the time. It's either native or it doesn't exist, so no-one can bug me about it or cajole me into using it.
In short, my UX on iOS is better without them even being possible, so why would I prefer they be allowed?
Web notifications are one of the worst things to happen to the modern web. Ever look at your grandma's Samsung phone? She's probably got 5 spam ads saying you won a contest or to claim some offer. Most users are conditioned to just accept whatever popups are shoved in their faces, ESPECIALLY since the EU laws a few years ago that forced every website to tell about their cookies policy. And hell, I've accidentally accepted push notifications from sites throwing a popup in front of me while I was trying to click something else or scroll.
Apple was completely right to not allow web push notifications on iOS. They're 99% abuse. I don't even like them on desktop either.
We're talking about PWA notifications, not pure web notifications.
The P in PWA comes from the word progressive. So, we don't need to enable every native feature immediately for every website.
People who want PWA notifications would be absolutely fine with not being able to send them until the user added the PWA to their home screen and opted into notifications.
> Because not everyone agrees with you and web apps have many advantages over native.
But I don't care about those advantages (to the extent that they exist for users they're secondary effects of webapps being very cheap to make as cross-platform apps, so more likely to be made in the first place if cross-platform is a requirement) and like being able to choose a platform where it's hard to deploy a webapp instead of a native app, forcing the choice of "native app" or "no app at all" on the part of the developer, because I think it leads to fewer total apps but way more native apps than there'd otherwise be.
So why would I prefer PWAs become more capable on the platform? I see why PWA developers and maybe some users would.
> Surely Apple could implement a setting to disable all requests for push notifications?
That’s an option in macOS. Ultimately it doesn’t make the UX any better though, as web developers still present JS-based dialogs asking for notification permissions
> 1) I don't want to see the prompts to allow push notifications from a webapp...
You wouldn't have to get them unless you proactively installed the PWA to your home screen.
> 2) Generally I'd rather none of the software I use be webtech, so anything that makes it easier to deliver webtech to my phone/tablet is a step the wrong direction...so no-one can bug me about it or cajole me into using it.
That's your only reason? Because people ask you to use web apps? Perhaps that's because you want the wrong thing for some reason. You haven't explained what that reason is very well at all.
> In short, my UX on iOS is better without them even being possible...
You have never experienced this, so how could you possibly know? Also, no it wouldn't.
> so why would I prefer they be allowed?
Because you haven't listed any good reasons why you're right, which usually means that you're wrong.
In the early days of iOS, Apple never regulated push notifications. And so I remember many apps using them as a reminder pushing notifications daily and sometimes even multiple times a day. There were also companies selling "notification space" within their apps to third parties for use as an advertising channel.
It was pretty awful and it degraded the overall experience of using the iPhone since notifications appear whilst your using other apps.
Apple was right to regulate them. And I hope Apple continues to look after consumers and not allow PWA to use them.
They said "In short, my UX on iOS is better without them (web notifications) even being possible".
How could they know when Apple never implemented it?
The fact that apps had unregulated push notifications and now they don't pretty much settles the debate in my favor. Apple can regulate push notifications for PWAs in all sorts of ways outside of barring them altogether, just like they did for native apps.
If you find yourself getting sucked into a "no, u" dynamic, the only thing that works is to step away. That's hard in the moment (because it feels like ceding the field to the obviously-wrong, obviously-inappropriate other) but then you win. And we all win.
Certainly when an internet thread becomes so generic as to reach "theory of mind and epistemology", it was time to walk away a long time ago. It's hardly likely that any internet forum will ever generate anything new or valuable to say about such things, and certainly not in the middle of a tit-for-tat activation.
Allow me to make it very simple: You didn't give any reasons for your opinion. You just gave your opinion.
> ...I reckon the most correct response is, "no, u".
If you're used to that sort of argumentation, I suppose that is what you'd reckon.
> It's really incredible how often relatively straightforward conversations on HN end up veering, pointlessly, into theory of the mind and epistemology.
Apple has never enabled notifications for PWAs on iOS. Therefore, you couldn't possibly know that your "UX on iOS is better without them even being possible" because you have nothing to compare to.
What about that speaks to "theory of the mind and epistemology" in your opinion?
Perhaps you're confusing web notifications with PWA notifications. Perhaps you're thinking that Apple couldn't possibly do it any differently from Android where every website can prompt you to give notifications.
Gee, I wonder if your whole problem couldn't just be solved by letting you opt into the whole idea of PWA notifications? Then you could never turn on that switch and happily live your life without ever thinking about them again.
Somehow, you'd rather force everybody else to do it your way instead of giving them a choice and I find that to be rather deplorable.
Because for every useful site, there are 99 abusing the feature for advertising. Same as for location.
A friend the other day thought their laptop had a virus because they had inadvertently turned on notifications for some spammy website. Took me a while to work out how to turn it off.
I've seen an increasing trend of sites showing modal popups immediately upon page load asking for permission to send notifications. This type of behavior is extremely obnoxious.
Being able to approve or reject notifications is not enough - we should take the additional step of not allowing sites to show these kinds of prompts unless the user specifically clicked a button and asked for it.
The problem, to me, is being prompted to approve or reject push notifications on a site by site basis. Unless I can have a blanket "shut off" option that applies to anything in a webview, I'd prefer none at all. It'd also be preferable if that blanket shut off option came shut off by default.
Because the majority of people don't know how to adjust app notifications. And the rest of us don't want to adjust it for every single rogue web site.
Apple vets apps for their use of push notifications and will warn/ban them if they use them excessively or for advertising purposes. Obviously they can't do the same for PWA.
Mixed feelings here, as a developer I would love to send push to iOS, as a user I agree with you, every time I check my parent's android I have to spend a lot of time revoking permissions from websites.
On android these notifications are abused to send shitty content, maybe a change at the OS level to warn the user in a more prominent way? Like these modals that won't allow you click until X secs have passed.
+1, for PWAs to succeed, they need feature parity with native apps for fundamental things like notifications. But outside of PWAs, web notifications are mostly just spam, so requiring installation seems like a good middle ground.