> HTML5 (which is now called Progressive Web Apps / PWA)
This is clear gaslighting and is verifiably false. Progressive Web Apps is a Google thing, coined by a Google engineer[1] and promoted by Google[2]. The HTML living standard does not include a single mention of the term[3].
> Apple has has been recently been rolling out anti-PWA practices [1].
That article is from a year ago and the author's conclusion is more or less "no, Apple isn't trying to kill the web; it's reasonable to have some time limits in place." Safari clears some script-writable storage for a site after 7 days of Safari use without visiting that site, but home-screen installed webapps aren't affected.
"Apple rolling out anti-PWA practices" refers to them clearing local state after 7 days of no use.
How is that going to stop anyone from having a PWA app? Web browsers have to prune their cache all the time, otherwise your entire phone would be just web cache.
Local storage is intended to be cache. Nothing more. If you have something worth preserving beyond 7 days of inactivity, put it on the damn server and reload it when you have to.
For the record, local storage is typically limited to 5MB. Users visit hundreds, often thousands of sites each month. They open links through social media to some random meme all the time. So we never clear those 5MB, what happens?
The essay rather suggests HTML5 as a better alternative to Flash for web development, not app development. Having said that, I haven't read the latest PWA situation on Apple platforms, maybe it is true that they are trying to prevent PWA from getting popular. If that is the case, I hope Google and Microsoft can take advantage of this shortcoming of Apple platforms.
"Progressive Web Apps" means Chrome-only at this point. The framing of this discussion in terms of "Open Web Standards" vs "Apple's walled garden" is just hiding the fact that's Google who're paying the bills and calling the shots on the web "platform".
Sent from my notebook running Chromium (for webapps) alongside with FF for the extant web such as HN.
Wow. I wasn't aware that Steve Jobs wrote essays. Are there more?
I think this part is interesting, because it's still true:
> Our motivation is simple – we want to provide the most advanced and innovative platform to our developers, and we want them to stand directly on the shoulders of this platform and create the best apps the world has ever seen. We want to continually enhance the platform so developers can create even more amazing, powerful, fun and useful applications. Everyone wins – we sell more devices because we have the best apps, developers reach a wider and wider audience and customer base, and users are continually delighted by the best and broadest selection of apps on any platform.
> In the essay [0], Jobs suggested mobile app development on should focus on HTML5
I think you should read that essay again. In the context of the mobile web, it argues for HTML and against Flash. In the context of apps, it argues for native platform technology and against Flash. It doesn’t argue for using HTML for apps.
Edit: Quite confused about why this got downvoted. If you disagree with my reading of the article, could you explain what in the essay suggests focusing on HTML5 for mobile app development?
Or maybe because PWA is a flawed concept? At least that's my take as a consumer and a developer. As the sibling commenter noted PWA is also a Google concept, with corporate strategic interests behind, it's not as simple as it appears.
A bit OT, but can anyone point me to a few PWAs that are worth looking at? I don't means those "these tings are possible in the browser" sites, but real, useful tools.
I just use one: "Brewfather", a fantastic home brewing (beer) app which can even use some Bluetooth API to communicate to local devices (Chrome-only of course). On my iPad, I'm using the app though.
Reading this essay again (via Wayback), I'm struck by Steve's clarity. His writing is concise and simple - my favourite bit:
> Everyone wins – we sell more devices because we have the best apps, developers reach a wider and wider audience and customer base, and users are continually delighted by the best and broadest selection of apps on any platform.
What strikes me is that he simply states Apple's goal - to sell more devices and make more money. He doesn't try and sugar coat it about serving some greater purpose, he just states what everyone knows to be true. It is refreshing, given how many business leaders seem reluctant to publicly admit that their goal is to make money.
Secondly, it clearly broadcasts what problems they are and are not trying to solve, and where their priorities lie. Love it.
I've yet to see an exec with such concise outside communication, from technical details up to the big picture, as Steve Jobs. Interviews with him are a master class in communication skills.
Adobe’s then-CTO Kevin Lynch was a staunch defender of Flash and argued here that Apple's approach to platforms was anti-competitive: https://youtu.be/Z512TwwyRWM. Years later he lead the original Apple Watch software project, and still does to this day.
I don't see any conspiracy behind this deletion. Steve Jobs talks strictly about videos and games embedded to "web pages", not "PWAs" (which didn't exist back then anyway). It was and is still compatible with Apple's walled garden approach. He even says:
> And the 250,000 apps on Apple’s App Store proves that Flash isn’t necessary for tens of thousands of developers to create graphically rich applications, including games.
"Standards aren't add-ons to the web. They are the web." - Apple's HTML5 Showcase, 2010
How far they have strayed from that visionary approach to the web. Apple used to lead the pack in promoting advanced web apps. These days they are holding the web hostage to protect their App Store business model.
My intuition is that the answer is "uhh, no." -- is there any secure way to run untrusted javascript on a page? So that we could have those awesome newgrounds style wildwest galleries where people upload their weirdsies again. I've seen some synthetic namespace shenanigans that I've had a hard time breaking out of, but nothing that makes me comfortable.
I know Flash never had a reputation for.. security, but Youtube-for-html5 games seems like it could never exist for my intuition. I'm sure you could get away with it on small scales, but anything beyond a person's ability to curate and we go backwards.
The iframe sandboxing feature is better suited for this. It puts the full strength of the same-origin security policies of the browser between third party content and first party content on a domain. It has “only” been around since IE 10 or so though so it wouldn’t cover all of the golden age of flash.
It’s worth noting that Flash was actually quite hard to contain from interfering with your origin, and the main defense against this was that there were no sensitive APIs, cookies, or local data on the domains the flash was hosted from anyway.
The thing that would guarantee this, isn’t limiting the runtime (because you’ll always miss something, or be incapable of fully masking out something), but rather static analysis of the code to ensure it doesn’t attempt to use any of the dangerous features in the first place.
It’s very hard to static-analyze JavaScript, of course, because it’s all late bound with a reflective runtime — you can get access to anything by building the right identifiers out of strings and then subscripting using them.
WASM doesn’t have that same problem, though. It’s very easy to static-analyze bytecode-encoded WASM (as long as you don’t want “requiring modules from external URLs” to be a part of your Newgrounds-alike platform’s runtime surface.)
It’d be pretty safe to have a site that hosts arbitrary untrusted static-analyzed-subset-of-WASM.
Oh God. I can't read HN comments on Apple anymore. It's mostly just two sides throwing well polished turds on each other. Of course it is better than throwing shit like on other sites but the end result is the same.
Way before this letter, many developers including myself asked Macromedia / Adobe to rather pushing Flash as web browser plugin on mobile, focus on apps with embedded runtime. They realized it too late with AIR framework, but it was too little too late.
It was a flaw with the vision Adobe had with Flash, and they missed an opportunity being leader in mobile development.
Now Apple is kind of doing same for web, they've quietly removed that letter, as it now conflicts with what they preached in past.
Conspiracy or not, can we all at least agree that the open web is still a wonderful thing for all involved?
As developers and technical leaders, it is incumbent upon us to ensure this ecosystem remains sound. The mobile business wants html5 dead yesterday because they can't be the middle man on access.
When someone comes to your desk with a new app idea, maybe steer them towards a website instead of native walled garden apps. Many businesses do not require the capabilities offered by native applications.
Can't wait for the day the DOM will run smoothly on any smartphone. I don't know a lot about webassembly, but I wish browsers are studying the possibility of letting WASM access the DOM.
Or at least, write some js lib that lets WASM have access to the DOM in some JS calls.
not a big deal. random page floating on a site that is clearly a main marketing vehicle. Not to mention Apple's increasing trajectory into being a media/services company and some of the text/concepts discussed in that post are a bit too 'open' for their liking these days.
Will always be available somewhere in an archive/wayback
[+] [-] max_|4 years ago|reply
In the essay [0], Jobs suggested mobile app development on should focus on HTML5 (which is now called Progressive Web Apps / PWA)
Apple has has been recently been rolling out anti-PWA practices [1].
Probably to reinforce their "walled garden".
[0]: https://web.archive.org/web/20170615060422/https://www.apple...
[1]: https://ionicframework.com/blog/is-apple-trying-to-kill-pwas...
[+] [-] waon|4 years ago|reply
This is clear gaslighting and is verifiably false. Progressive Web Apps is a Google thing, coined by a Google engineer[1] and promoted by Google[2]. The HTML living standard does not include a single mention of the term[3].
[1]: https://infrequently.org/2015/06/progressive-apps-escaping-t...
[2]: https://web.dev/progressive-web-apps/
[3]: https://github.com/whatwg/html/search?q=progressive+web+app&...
[+] [-] re|4 years ago|reply
That article is from a year ago and the author's conclusion is more or less "no, Apple isn't trying to kill the web; it's reasonable to have some time limits in place." Safari clears some script-writable storage for a site after 7 days of Safari use without visiting that site, but home-screen installed webapps aren't affected.
[+] [-] slver|4 years ago|reply
"Apple rolling out anti-PWA practices" refers to them clearing local state after 7 days of no use.
How is that going to stop anyone from having a PWA app? Web browsers have to prune their cache all the time, otherwise your entire phone would be just web cache.
Local storage is intended to be cache. Nothing more. If you have something worth preserving beyond 7 days of inactivity, put it on the damn server and reload it when you have to.
For the record, local storage is typically limited to 5MB. Users visit hundreds, often thousands of sites each month. They open links through social media to some random meme all the time. So we never clear those 5MB, what happens?
Month 1: 5GB of local storage...
Month 2: 10GB of local storage...
Month 3: 15GB of local storage...
[+] [-] ZuLuuuuuu|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tannhaeuser|4 years ago|reply
"Progressive Web Apps" means Chrome-only at this point. The framing of this discussion in terms of "Open Web Standards" vs "Apple's walled garden" is just hiding the fact that's Google who're paying the bills and calling the shots on the web "platform".
Sent from my notebook running Chromium (for webapps) alongside with FF for the extant web such as HN.
[+] [-] shoto_io|4 years ago|reply
I think this part is interesting, because it's still true:
> Our motivation is simple – we want to provide the most advanced and innovative platform to our developers, and we want them to stand directly on the shoulders of this platform and create the best apps the world has ever seen. We want to continually enhance the platform so developers can create even more amazing, powerful, fun and useful applications. Everyone wins – we sell more devices because we have the best apps, developers reach a wider and wider audience and customer base, and users are continually delighted by the best and broadest selection of apps on any platform.
[+] [-] tobr|4 years ago|reply
I think you should read that essay again. In the context of the mobile web, it argues for HTML and against Flash. In the context of apps, it argues for native platform technology and against Flash. It doesn’t argue for using HTML for apps.
Edit: Quite confused about why this got downvoted. If you disagree with my reading of the article, could you explain what in the essay suggests focusing on HTML5 for mobile app development?
[+] [-] tarsinge|4 years ago|reply
Or maybe because PWA is a flawed concept? At least that's my take as a consumer and a developer. As the sibling commenter noted PWA is also a Google concept, with corporate strategic interests behind, it's not as simple as it appears.
[+] [-] maram|4 years ago|reply
Apple deleted the essay exactly a week before they stopped supporting Adobe flash.
Thanks for HackerNews it's all saved here =)
HN submission: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23652461
My comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23654011
Another user comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23655374
[+] [-] planb|4 years ago|reply
I just use one: "Brewfather", a fantastic home brewing (beer) app which can even use some Bluetooth API to communicate to local devices (Chrome-only of course). On my iPad, I'm using the app though.
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] EvilEy3|4 years ago|reply
Since when HTML5 became PWA?
[+] [-] emdowling|4 years ago|reply
> Everyone wins – we sell more devices because we have the best apps, developers reach a wider and wider audience and customer base, and users are continually delighted by the best and broadest selection of apps on any platform.
What strikes me is that he simply states Apple's goal - to sell more devices and make more money. He doesn't try and sugar coat it about serving some greater purpose, he just states what everyone knows to be true. It is refreshing, given how many business leaders seem reluctant to publicly admit that their goal is to make money.
Secondly, it clearly broadcasts what problems they are and are not trying to solve, and where their priorities lie. Love it.
[+] [-] m_mueller|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hutzlibu|4 years ago|reply
But I am not sure, if it is really honest or true.
"Everyone wins – we sell more devices because we have the best apps"
Apple having the best apps meaning apple only has the best apps, meaning walled garden. Not PWA's that run on any good device for example.
It is a very huge Apple boost, when some awesome apps are apple only - Apple wins there, but not everyone.
[+] [-] high_byte|4 years ago|reply
Deleted between June 14-16, 2020
[+] [-] Austin_Conlon|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DonHopkins|4 years ago|reply
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UnjkM5TwTzM&ab_channel=C-Mur...
Stay strapped cause the ghetto is so wicked now.
[+] [-] oblio|4 years ago|reply
People will say what helps their paycheck.
[+] [-] dang|4 years ago|reply
Thoughts on Flash - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1304310 - April 2010 (505 comments)
also:
Ex-Adobe Engineers on Thoughts on Flash - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1308788 - April 2010 (56 comments)
[+] [-] selcuka|4 years ago|reply
> And the 250,000 apps on Apple’s App Store proves that Flash isn’t necessary for tens of thousands of developers to create graphically rich applications, including games.
[+] [-] spurgu|4 years ago|reply
> Apple already provides some amazing documentation and tutorials for making offline-capable mobile web apps
Sounds like a PWA to me, even though it probably wasn't called that back then.
[+] [-] robgibbons|4 years ago|reply
How far they have strayed from that visionary approach to the web. Apple used to lead the pack in promoting advanced web apps. These days they are holding the web hostage to protect their App Store business model.
[+] [-] MrLeap|4 years ago|reply
I know Flash never had a reputation for.. security, but Youtube-for-html5 games seems like it could never exist for my intuition. I'm sure you could get away with it on small scales, but anything beyond a person's ability to curate and we go backwards.
[+] [-] johncolanduoni|4 years ago|reply
It’s worth noting that Flash was actually quite hard to contain from interfering with your origin, and the main defense against this was that there were no sensitive APIs, cookies, or local data on the domains the flash was hosted from anyway.
[+] [-] currysausage|4 years ago|reply
There's also Caja by Google [3], but that is abandoned too.
[1] https://www.crockford.com/adsafe/index.html
[2] https://github.com/douglascrockford/ADsafe
[3] https://developers.google.com/caja
[+] [-] derefr|4 years ago|reply
It’s very hard to static-analyze JavaScript, of course, because it’s all late bound with a reflective runtime — you can get access to anything by building the right identifiers out of strings and then subscripting using them.
WASM doesn’t have that same problem, though. It’s very easy to static-analyze bytecode-encoded WASM (as long as you don’t want “requiring modules from external URLs” to be a part of your Newgrounds-alike platform’s runtime surface.)
It’d be pretty safe to have a site that hosts arbitrary untrusted static-analyzed-subset-of-WASM.
[+] [-] red_trumpet|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Lammy|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ksec|4 years ago|reply
Appel dont delete their Press Release. Why do they delete these blog/post then? It is still part of the company communications.
[+] [-] Dah00n|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chall3ng3r|4 years ago|reply
It was a flaw with the vision Adobe had with Flash, and they missed an opportunity being leader in mobile development.
Now Apple is kind of doing same for web, they've quietly removed that letter, as it now conflicts with what they preached in past.
[+] [-] bob1029|4 years ago|reply
As developers and technical leaders, it is incumbent upon us to ensure this ecosystem remains sound. The mobile business wants html5 dead yesterday because they can't be the middle man on access.
When someone comes to your desk with a new app idea, maybe steer them towards a website instead of native walled garden apps. Many businesses do not require the capabilities offered by native applications.
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] auggierose|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] jokoon|4 years ago|reply
Or at least, write some js lib that lets WASM have access to the DOM in some JS calls.
[+] [-] Solstinox|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ChrisArchitect|4 years ago|reply
Will always be available somewhere in an archive/wayback
[+] [-] Nekorosu|4 years ago|reply