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Comment by throwGuardian | Hacker News Reader

How will they force you into the $99/annum developer program, shaft you a cool 30%, play judge and jury to your ios, macOs app store submissions and reject your work at the first hint of competition, if all the useful PWA features just work on iOS? Lest you dream of software freedom on Apple devices, their sycophants and overzealous employees will gaslight you into believing it's all for user experience and security, and any incidental monopolistic/anti-competitive byproducts are wholly acceptable collateral damage when the betterment of iKind, ahem, mankind is at stake.

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You need to understand that many of us like Apple's approach.

We aren't looking for software "freedom" on our phones. We just want apps that are safe, curated, respectful of battery life and do not infringe on our privacy or user experience. Apple's approach gives us that.

So by all means complain about app store submissions but as a developer I don't have sympathy for other developers who play loose and fast with the rules.

I really disagree with this viewpoint. There's no reason Apple can't simultaneously embrace open standards while providing implementations that enforce privacy and battery life and all that. They could even push to improve those standards. What you have instead is the push for an isolated platform to enforce a monopoly and exclusion. Many of us may like it, but count me out.

Even though you’re happy with the way Apple is handling the user rights you’ve abrogated to their control right now, make sure you’re still going to be comfortable with that indefinitely because the tighter you’re locked into their ecosystem the harder it’s going to be to escape if different leadership with different priorities or incentives comes into power and starts making changes you don’t like.

Enlightened despotism is the ideal government in many ways. The fatal flaw is guaranteeing succession of another enlightened despot instead of an ordinary tyrant. This is why preserving choice, however messy, is so important.

Yep - opening up W3C PWA standards on iOS may really threaten "safe, curated, respectful of battery life and do not infringe on our privacy or user experience"

That's just science, and not a regurgitation of Apple's excuses, ahem, P.R. on the matter. I mean, just look at the devestation unleashed by chrome (which supports all PWA features) on MacOs.

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