<story><title>Apple broke iPhone web apps in the EU for anticompetitive reasons – Tim Sweeney</title><url>https://techcrunch.com/2024/02/16/epic-games-ceo-suggests-apple-broke-iphone-web-apps-in-the-eu-for-anticompetitive-reasons/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>cybrox</author><text>People don&amp;#x27;t care because Apple has made sure they don&amp;#x27;t care. They have crippled web app adoption for years to push the app store and now argue that &amp;quot;well, only a few people use that anyways&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;How many apps in the app store are just webviews? I myself have paid apple to publish webview wrappers around pages because they strictly raise users to expect these, instead of the web apps they have no control over (and cannot take 30% of every transaction).</text></item><item><author>dubcanada</author><text>As much as I would love to agree, the general population really does not care about features like &amp;quot;home screen web apps&amp;quot;. Nobody outside of HN even knows what they are.&lt;p&gt;Everyone just goes on the app store and downloads random website app. Even if it is just a browser app that renders a website.&lt;p&gt;Apple would have to eliminate something that people actually care about for any boycott Apple to happen.</text></item><item><author>Gareth321</author><text>He&amp;#x27;s right. Apple has been strangling web app progress on iOS for many years. They wanted to ensure that web apps could never compete with native apps on the App Store, because they can extract their 30% fee. Now that Apple are forced to permit third party browser engines, web apps would suddenly be a lot more powerful. Apple just won&amp;#x27;t have that, so they&amp;#x27;re disabling a useful feature for everyone.&lt;p&gt;I think this will backfire on them. Downgrading their own feature offerings to spite the competition is only going to fuel more animosity by everyone: users, businesses, developers, and legislators. I feel quite firmly that their proposal to comply with the Digital Markets Act is non-compliant. The DMA requires &lt;i&gt;free&lt;/i&gt; interoperability, and Apple has imposed a very anti-competitive fee. Once this is eliminated, developers will be free to distribute whatever native apps they wish, and at this stage there are a lot of developers who will jump to any other app store.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>roenxi</author><text>I want my mother to have as safe a phone as possible with a bare minimum of ways she can accidentally get hacked. Ideally with a gatekeeper between her and anything she is going to install that has permission to use phone features; like cameras. She would very much concur, insofar as she understands the issues.&lt;p&gt;She&amp;#x27;s using an iPhone specifically because Apple doesn&amp;#x27;t go for shenanigans like multiple ways to get apps on the phone. The point is to have an App store and funnel everything through it. There is enough sensitive stuff on a phone that I&amp;#x27;m not even sure running a full web browser is a good idea for her. &amp;quot;Limited capability&amp;quot; really is the name of the game here.&lt;p&gt;It isn&amp;#x27;t just we don&amp;#x27;t care because Apple doesn&amp;#x27;t support it. We are in fact grateful to Apple for not supporting it. This is value-add by Apple. The &amp;quot;App for Everything&amp;quot; model of interacting with iPhones is&amp;#x2F;was a brief golden age for unsophisticated users where Apple was more than earning its commission. Android phones are technically fine, if people wanted this sort of thing they would go buy Android.</text></comment>
<story><title>Apple broke iPhone web apps in the EU for anticompetitive reasons – Tim Sweeney</title><url>https://techcrunch.com/2024/02/16/epic-games-ceo-suggests-apple-broke-iphone-web-apps-in-the-eu-for-anticompetitive-reasons/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>cybrox</author><text>People don&amp;#x27;t care because Apple has made sure they don&amp;#x27;t care. They have crippled web app adoption for years to push the app store and now argue that &amp;quot;well, only a few people use that anyways&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;How many apps in the app store are just webviews? I myself have paid apple to publish webview wrappers around pages because they strictly raise users to expect these, instead of the web apps they have no control over (and cannot take 30% of every transaction).</text></item><item><author>dubcanada</author><text>As much as I would love to agree, the general population really does not care about features like &amp;quot;home screen web apps&amp;quot;. Nobody outside of HN even knows what they are.&lt;p&gt;Everyone just goes on the app store and downloads random website app. Even if it is just a browser app that renders a website.&lt;p&gt;Apple would have to eliminate something that people actually care about for any boycott Apple to happen.</text></item><item><author>Gareth321</author><text>He&amp;#x27;s right. Apple has been strangling web app progress on iOS for many years. They wanted to ensure that web apps could never compete with native apps on the App Store, because they can extract their 30% fee. Now that Apple are forced to permit third party browser engines, web apps would suddenly be a lot more powerful. Apple just won&amp;#x27;t have that, so they&amp;#x27;re disabling a useful feature for everyone.&lt;p&gt;I think this will backfire on them. Downgrading their own feature offerings to spite the competition is only going to fuel more animosity by everyone: users, businesses, developers, and legislators. I feel quite firmly that their proposal to comply with the Digital Markets Act is non-compliant. The DMA requires &lt;i&gt;free&lt;/i&gt; interoperability, and Apple has imposed a very anti-competitive fee. Once this is eliminated, developers will be free to distribute whatever native apps they wish, and at this stage there are a lot of developers who will jump to any other app store.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>throwaway11460</author><text>How many people use them on Android? Nobody around me... The Add to home prompt is &amp;quot;that thing you always click no or you get ads&amp;quot;.</text></comment>