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Comment by randyrand | Hacker News Reader

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randyrand

- Web Bluetooth.

- Web USB

- Web NFC

- Web Notifications

- Web Midi

- Offline Storage

- Gryo, Accelerometer, Magneto, Proximity

- Vibration feedback

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I seriously doubt Apple will ever allow web browsers direct control of their hardware.

The web browser is just an app (possibly side loaded). Apps already have all of this.

What if it's my hardware?

You don't own Apple products, they own you.

A lot of that is already exposed to developers.

Yes, but each app is approved by Apple before being put on the App store. Direct BLE and NFC control have lots of spoofing "dangers" and privacy issues.

Chrome-only non-standards that even Mozilla is against.

Oh. And Web Midi? The moment Firefox implemented it they discovered its used for fingerprinting, and Chrome allows it by default: https://twitter.com/denschub/status/1582730985778556931

And on the downside a malicious browser could ignore same origin policy and other security measures.

Just write an app, Jesus.

Just give Apple 30% of your money for something that's essentially just a website, great idea!

Good lord people really don't get how Apple makes money. Have you ever wondered why apps like Jira, Github, or Notion aren't loudly complaining about the 30% App Store fees? It's because they don't pay them. How? By not actually selling the service in the app.

If all you want is an app for your users to use, you won't pay a dime outside of the developer fee. If you want people to discover your app in the app store, download it, and then pay you then it's a 30% cut.

Why if you can do that in a browser? Isn't much simpler? I don't want to install an app for every stupid thing. It's just simper to open the browser at a particular URL. The browser is a runtime environment capable (with PWA, that are not supported on iOS) of doing 95% of things a native app can do with decent performance without needing the user to install anything at all.

Anyway nowadays apps are even built with web technologies (such as React Native), would just be simpler to have only the web version, a single codebase that can be used with an iOS device, an Android device, a PC, a smartwatch, a TV, whatever. Distributing an app is a pain, especially for iOS, you have to submit it for review, Apple has to approve it, you cannot do certain things, why? I get that on Android is simpler, just install the APK and done, but unfortunately there are a ton of iOS devices out there.

Many native apps are better. Of course web people like to use web tech for everything. I like native mobile (kotlin/swift) a lot better for mobile dev.

And buy Apple devices to build, release, and test? That's expensive considering I can just open Epiphany in a mobile-sized window to see how WebKit renders.

You can write Web apps. The Web is a fully capable platform.

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