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Comment by swiley | Hacker News Reader

Smartphone app development is a poor investment. Just build a good website.

Unfortunately, Apple refuses to implement basic features into Safari that Chrome and Firefox have supported for a while, and they refuse to allow developers to use browser engines other than the embedded Safari on iOS. This forces developers to release iOS apps if they want to target iOS users.

What we need is some anti-trust litigation with teeth.

What features?

Notifications is the big one. Only way to push a notification to a user on iOS is to have an app (even through Safari on desktop supports notifications).

Web notifications aren’t power efficient the way APNS notifications are.

That’s why it’s easy to build support for it on Desktop safari but not iOS.

I except they’ll support Web notifications on iOS once the technology is mature enough to meet the power budget.

web notifications work exactly the same way APNS do. If OS vendors are reasonable and expose the APIs needed to use them efficently that is.

This is not correct. Web push notifications rely on running a persistent service worker in a JavaScript runtime, which is not anything at all like how they are received by native iOS Apps.

Additionally with iOS apps, Apple can and does work directly with developers whose apps are overusing the notification system and draining power, which they cannot do with arbitrary web apps.

> What we need is some anti-trust litigation with teeth.

Indeed. We need big tech to divest some of their eye watering profits into actual user support. With so much depending on tech, kicking out users at a whimsical ML bit flip can be super damaging.

That brings up a question I've had -- so many web sites seem to work better as an app. Is that because app development is easier, or is there some things that you can do with an app that you can't do through web standards? Specifically what types of items can't be [easily] done as a web app but are easy as a smartphone app?

Push notifications. One of the primary reasons why companies haven't switched to PWA for simple apps.

Then what is that popup I get all the time visiting sites that says "Allow site xyz to send notifications"? Is that different than push notifications?

Doesn't work on Safari / iOS.

App push notifications can be silent, but web based notifications can't. That means you can push updated content without disturbing the user in an app, but not for a webpage.

I would rather just get an email at this point.

Mostly its just about user data and money. It's AOL all over again. Only this time, they just might win.

Apple refuses to implement standards that make web applications usable on mobile devices, even though Chrome and Firefox have supported them for ages.

It's because the web was developed as a means for delivering documents and app development has been bolted on as an afterthought.

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