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Comment by esailija | Hacker News Reader

But that "app" doesn't have any real capabilities so what's the point other than bookmarking websites?

There's no background sync, proper offline, no notifications, no (usable) indexeddb, no rtc, no file system, no media sinks, no media sessions ... these are from the top of my head.

You have a point that long time ago Apple was the one pushing the browser as application platform but today is not the same as the long gone past.

Edit: The can-i-use about "web audio" is misleading about Safari. The web audio is prefixed there with "webkit" is not the same as the standard API.

Edit2: Noticed it's not about "web audio" at all but html5 audio. That's an API from 2010 that doesn't really do anything for apps such as games or audio editors. The newer Web Audio API is used for this and that's what I am referring to.

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>There's no background sync, proper offline, no notifications, no (usable) indexeddb, no rtc, no file system, no media sinks, no media sessions ... these are from the top of my head.

So, more or less just like with the desktop web.

What you describe is not web apps, it's some proprietary hybrid mix allowed inside Safari with hooks to the whole OS.

No, those are web standards implemented by other browsers like Chrome, Firefox and Edge.

That's more than a little misleading:

* background sync is not a web standard, it's experimental chrome tech (though it's been submitted to the WICG)

* I can only assume "proper offline" refers to service workers which is a WD with partial support (in the browsers in which it's implemented, which exclude Edge and webkit), webkit has it listed as "under consideration" and the last spec revision landed around the time of the last major safari update (mid-2015)

* notifications is fair, note that desktop Safari supports and that there's almost no mobile support at this point (also not supported yet in Edge)

* indexeddb is fair wrt current standards, but does not support "apple hates webapps" considering safari supports websql

* rtc is fair, and in development

* filesystem is proprietary chrome tech, dropped from standard track

* media sinks is fair, a WD with incomplete support on chrome

* media session is in development everywhere except edge

All in all, as far as conspiracy theories your comments mostly support you being a chrome shill.

There are probably hundreds of new APIs that have come after 2012 or whatever the year was when the ball was dropped. Those were just "from the top of my head" not something to be nit picked.

I didn't also literally mean that they are currently implemented by all of those browsers today. My point is that I expect them to be implemented browsers other than Safari sooner or later as they have strongly signaled. Safari has not signaled anything about them. Or if they have, provide evidence of it and I will apologize.

> filesystem is proprietary chrome tech, dropped from standard track

That's not the file system API I am even referring to. I am referring to https://w3c.github.io/filesystem-api/ which is edited by Mozilla.

> rtc is fair, and in development

For iOS Safari? WebKit having WebRTC is completely different from iOS safari having it.

>I didn't also literally mean that they are currently implemented by all of those browsers today. My point is that I expect them to be implemented browsers other than Safari sooner or later as they have strongly signaled. Safari has not signaled anything about them. Or if they have, provide evidence of it and I will apologize.

Has Android's mobile Chrome browser signalled anything more?

Because for years it has been even MORE behind Mobil Safari regarding speed and capabilities.

(And let's not even get started on the crap-fest that was Android's default browser).

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