[boomskats]

The number of apologists and distractors in this comments section honestly makes me feel like it's been brigaded. I'm amazed, given how well informed this crowd typically is.

As for the topic being discussed - Apple have gone out of their way for the last _decade_ to avoid implementing things like ServiceWorkers properly. I remember having this same conversation back in 2015. It is a real shame, as things like the proposed w3c sensors api would totally eliminate the pain of deploying private/internal/enterprise apps to a fleet of employees, for example. There is so much that this enables for private apps. I won't be surprised if their decade+ old viewport meta tag reference documentation for home screen icons and status bar styling in full screen mode stops working at some point too - it's been neglected for years. It'll be a weird, heartbreaking example of corporate revisionism, especially considering Steve Jobs' original vision for apps on the iphone.

I'm not a huge fan of the big G either, but I honestly hope they take advantage of this with some clever (non-developer) product-centric marketing. PWAs are a very well thought out approach to 90% of what modern apps are. We absolutely should be sandboxing private browser instances per PWA, not shipping entire separate webkit wrappers for every app every time an app is updated. It's almost literally the same difference as shipping layered container images as updates instead of giant VM blobs. Such a huge loss.

[mrmanner]

Some of these changes by Apple are clearly user hostile. There's a consumer protection debate to be had about removing software features after selling a hardware + software package like this.

I think at least some of the "apologism" and "distraction" comes from more honest ideological differences though - like what should the role of the state be, what is a free market, should business be fair, how much consumer protection is the right amount...

[93po]

HN as a general crowd is pretty poorly informed. It does attract the odd subject matter expert on some topics but I feel like half the comments I read on any subject are really off the mark, which I am sure mine are too

[meibo]

Most of the people on this site have either worked for Apple before or hold Apple stock. Regulation is directly reaching into their pockets.

Also obvious by how this post is already on 14th place after 2 hours, with more than 200 votes. (Edit: now 31, 3 hours in)

[ffsm8]

Apple has fostered an incredibly fanatic userbase.

Most of them unironically call themselves "apple users".

They don't use a device, they've made the device part of their identity, and even implying that it's not the best thing ever created consequently becomes a personal insult.

Google and Microsoft tried to replicate that kind of brand love but were thankfully unsuccessful for the most part, so you'll always get an incredible amount of comments on anything related to Apple.

[WA]

5 hours in, place 65. It doesn't even have the typical flamewar indicators such as # of comments > # of upvotes.

[SSLy]

it's probably saged by people flagging it

[joshstrange]

> Most of the people on this site have either worked for Apple before or hold Apple stock

Is this supposed to be a joke? _Most_, so over 50% of the people on HN work/worked for Apple or hold Apple stock? That’s absurd.

[layer8]

And even if you hold Apple stock, that’s no reason to agree with their policies.

[93po]

Agreed

[aragilar]

The issue is things that would make sense in a workplace setting (which should be on work devices, but that ship has sailed), have real social and privacy issues (see MDMs being used as stalkerware). I worked on an app which really did need as much sensor data as possible (field notebooks for academics), but you really wouldn't want to give that level of access without oversight. The more information you can collect without needing some kind of review (which I totally agree is rarely sufficient), the more this is an issue. Ideally there are different levels (e.g. business, personal, and locked down), and you need to do the setup in person so as to reduce harm.

[chillfox]

I have yet to try an “installed” PWA on any device that actually worked correctly when I needed it most, so I will take a shitty electron or web view wrapper app over a PWA any day.