An anonymous reader shared a report. Apple has long maintained that developers who don't want to follow the rules of native iOS apps can always create web apps. We've done so in platform guidelines, in Congressional testimony, and in court. Web developers, for their part, argue that Safari and its underlying WebKit engine still lack technical features that would allow web apps to compete with native apps on his iOS hardware. To date, Fruit Cart's push notification implementation has been slow and still claimed to be substandard.
It was hoped that the implementation of Europe's Digital Markets Act would change the situation by boosting competition that has been stifled by gatekeepers. But Apple appears to be putting web apps at a further disadvantage under the guise of complying with European law, in a policy change that critics call “bad compliance.” The second beta release of iOS 17.4, which incorporates code to comply with the European Digital Markets Act, demotes progressive web apps (PWAs) from standalone apps that take up the entire screen to shortcuts that open within the default browser. I did. This appears to only affect users within the European Union, but your mileage may vary. Concerns about this demotion of his PWA surfaced earlier this month with the release of the early beta of iOS 17.4. As noted by Open Web Advocacy, an organization that works to improve the functionality of web platforms, “sites installed on the home screen cannot be launched in their own top-level activity and instead open in Safari. ”