[prophesi]

Found the article they linked[0] much more interesting / problematic:

> Now, when a user in Europe taps a web app icon, they will see a system message asking if they wish to open it in Safari or cancel. The message adds that the web app "will open in your default browser from now on." When opened in Safari, the web app opens like a bookmark, with no dedicated windowing, notifications, or long-term local storage. Users have seen issues with existing web apps such as data loss, since the Safari version can no longer access local data, as well as broken notifications.

[0] https://www.macrumors.com/2024/02/08/ios-17-4-nerfs-web-apps...

[deergomoo]

I expect this is because they have to provide equal standing to other browsers in both user choice and rendering engine, but they don’t have to and have not provided a way to use an alternative browser in the full-screen PWA mode.

Of course, there are numerous ways this could be addressed, such as not changing anything at all if the user chose Safari as their default browser anyway. But it seems quite clear Apple is willing to drag everyone down with them in their malicious compliance of the DMA.

[freedomben]

I'm guessing they were only doing the little they did for PWAs to stave off anti-trust attention by being able to say "we're not gatekeepers. You can use the web," but now that the EU forced them allow alternative app stores, they don't want anybody using PWAs and they have no need for them anymore, so they're killing them.

[shuckles]

Apple announced web apps on macOS as keynote feature last year where they have no anti-trust scrutiny. This theory has holes.

[freedomben]

macOS seems like a very different beast than iOS. I don't think you can draw conclusions from that any more than you could conclude that on iOS you can sideload because Apple allows that on macOS.

[andix]

I think this is going to be just a temporary issue. They ran out of time and had to comply ASAP, as the DMA is going to take effect in a few weeks.

The DMA didn't come by surprise, but I guess they tried to play all their cards to get around it, or even get it pushed last minute. Maybe they were close to achieving that and in the end it didn't work out.

Like mentioned in another post there might be some alternative solutions via third party app stores, but my knowledge doesn't go deep enough into the iOS API and what options third party browsers are going to have.

I could imagine a "PWA Shell" app that can host multiple PWAs inside. The only limitation I see for now is that there will be only one app icon and it can only show up once in the task switcher on the iPhone. For the iPad multi-windows apps are possible.

[hmottestad]

That sucks. I use PWAs a lot for my own dev stuff. Let’s hope Apple roles back this change.