okay so the scene as it stands is: - apple and google want to keep users locked into the app ecosystem - progressive web apps are a threat to native apps because they can run in any browser, via open apis and so on and they’re much more lightweight and generally better - apple have ensured that safari has really bad support for pwas, or other appy-like webpages, and ensured that all other mobile browsers have to use their engine “for security reasons” - the eu recently said to stop that - apple are going to sabotage it some other way okay. that’s from my memory, let’s see what this piece is about.
the dma (digital marketing authority) has said apple have to allow other app stores, and allow other browser engines in their app store. so apple want to geofence browser choice (only give it to people in the eu). but they’re being even sneakier! the dma have said that any features available in the safari engine also have to be allowed in other browsers’ engines by a certain date, so apple are removing lots of features from the safari engine before that date, and then boom – they can comply and the other browsers are less functional.
specifically, they are targetting precisely those features that allow you to use web pages as app-like programs. stuff like notifications on icons if you have unread messages and so on. their interpretation is that features not available on the deadline don’t have to be shared with competitors, and it doesn’t want to share webapps.
plus do everything so close to the deadlines that nobody can do anything about it!
okay the rest of this is like wayyyy too techie and a point-by-point refutal of apples’ material so im gonna skip it because it’s not worth my time.
“a web Apple can’t sandbag and degrade [and tax] is one it can’t abide”