Maximiliano Firtman

PWAs can be bundled up for the Play store: https://medium.com/@firt/google-play-store-now-open-for-progressive-we…

https://medium.com/@firt/progressive-web-apps-on-ios-are-here-d00430de… One can always build a hybrid app from a pwa...

Apple does not have his shit together yet on PWA. https://medium.com/@firt/pwas-on-ios-12-2-beta-the-good-the-bad-and-th…

Yes, see here: https://medium.com/@firt/iphone-11-ipados-and-ios-13-for-pwas-and-web-…

Mobile Safari supports PWAs and quite a bit of infra like service workers. Last time I looked it didn't work well in the background (reloads page on resume) but seems like they have most of the building blocks. EDIT: This post [1] says background switching should be working in iOS 13. [1] https://medium.com/@firt/iphone-11-ipados-and-ios-13-for-pwas-and-web-…

This article might be helpful. https://medium.com/@firt/progressive-web-apps-on-ios-are-here-d00430de…

Isn't Apple the main holdup for this though? They only recently allowed some things, but look at the list of things you can do on android vs ios when it comes to PWA's [1]. Things like not even notifying the user that they can install it as a PWA, and no push notification functionality are 2 pretty big barriers to having it actually work well. From what I've read, v12 didn't add any new capabilities over 11.3, which only fairly recently introduced very limited PWA functionality. I don't really see Apple doing much more on this front than they have. It makes no financial sense for them as some smallish percentage of appstore apps could be replaced with PWA's. What's their incentive? They will lose some revenue. [1] https://medium.com/@firt/progressive-web-apps-on-ios-are-here-d00430de…

even on iOS? I thought Apple is not really thrilled about the whole PWA initiative. Most of their effort has been half-hearted [1], since it bypasses their App Store (which generates a big portion of their revenue). [1] https://medium.com/@firt/progressive-web-apps-on-ios-are-here-d00430de…

PWAs are broken on iOS. Push notifications are not supported, and in general the experience is pretty bad. See this article for more details: https://medium.com/@firt/progressive-web-apps-on-ios-are-here-d00430de… The worst is that if you are in a PWA, say in a page like /my/sub/page and navigate out of the PWA, like go to a different website or go to another app, and then come back to the PWA, it will reload and go to the / home page, destroying all state and routing.

Also note Apple has added PWA support in iOS 11.3 https://medium.com/@firt/progressive-web-apps-on-ios-are-here-d00430de…

Also, this article captures the essence for AppCache vs ServiceWorkers comparisons: https://medium.com/@firt/service-workers-replacing-appcache-a-sledgeha… Namely: 'I don’t think we need a “Service Worker’s jQuery”. We need to use Vanilla AppCache code.' Same goes for a ton of other things on the web platform. Replace "Service Worker" with "Web Components", and the sentence will still remain true.

In fact, Steve Job’s WWDC 2007 launch, his “one more thing” for iPhone was that you could develop and distribute apps, web apps with icons using iPhone APIs: Web 2.0 + AJAX, integrate w/ iPhone services, instant distribution, easy to update, secure ... Apple originally intended the iPhone to be open in this way, for HTML5 apps you’d get from anywhere. Similar to Palm Pre, and other devices of the time. There was no “app store”. For a while after the app store, even the “native” apps toyed with being really just HTML5 apps in a wrapper (e.g. Facebook famously went that way before eventually going back). Those HTML5 app features have gotten better, not worse, but its almost as though devs haven’t ever seen or tried this approach. This 2018 Medium article talks about how really “It’s been PWA all along”. Note that as time passes, more native API access is brought through securely, not less: As of 2018: https://medium.com/@firt/progressive-web-apps-on-ios-are-here-d00430de… And as of 2021: https://firt.dev/pwa-2021/ That’s a somewhat anti-Apple take. Going back to the beginning, you can already see Apple struggling with implications of native API vs. openness. See this October 2007 open letter from Steve Jobs: “[We] were trying to do two diametrically opposed things at once — provide an advanced and open platform to developers while at the same time protect iPhone users from viruses, malware, privacy attacks, etc. This is no easy task. Some claim that viruses and…

tl;dr PWAs are on the brink of being a "thing": technical abilities are accumulating, but it's not clear if the political will to "commit to the web" exists. If you have experience developing native apps, just do that. There's no reason to jump ship and make a PWA because it's not clear if they're going to take off or not. Google has shown some investment in PWAs on Android with the development of "WebAPKs", a way to manage the installation of progressive web apps through the Play store. However, this mechanism is not entirely public: Chrome for Android will create a WebAPK when asked to add a PWA to the home screen, but currently you cannot create a WebAPK yourself and list it in the Play Store. The point I'm trying to make is that while PWAs are slowly gaining technical abilities, Google hasn't yet gone "all in" wrt PWAs being a true form of "app". It's not clear where exactly they're headed; there are some indications that there is a kind of "cold war" between the Chrome and Android teams.[0] Microsoft has shown much more commitment to PWAs by making them available in the Windows app store. I believe Firefox has some support, and I'm only aware of Safari recently starting development of Service Workers, a necessary component for PWAs. As far as adoption in the wild: - Google has created a PWA version of Maps, Maps Go, available in the Play Store. This shows that PWAs are technically capable, but still not "blessed", in that you couldn't make a PWA and list it in the…