Apple is killing Web?

This is Part Two of the series on Installing Apps on Apple and Why Apple is crippling Web but it shouldn’t. If you want to read about that go visit Part 1.

Apple, over the last few years, has treated Web App as a second or third class citizen. Some of you would blame Google for adding so many features to its browser at breakneck speed and that's partly true but that doesn’t shift the blame from Apple.

Apple recently declined to ship/develop NFC, Bluetooth and 14 other features in name of privacy. Unlike others, I do think they really mean it when they say they aren’t developing something because of privacy reasons. Most of these are really 5% features which only 5% of the Apps need. So let’s ignore it for now.

A lot of these were fixed in the last two years but the destination is still far.

Let’s come to Add To Home Screen button. To access that you need to open the Share Sheet and click Add to Home Screen button. It works on any website. Great right. In theory yes but in practice it isn’t. First your browser address bar and toolbar is hidden. You/your user needs to swipe up(some action like this) to show the toolbar. From there he clicks on the Share icon to open the Share Sheet. Next, you need to hunt/swipe through the icons to find Add to Home Screen. Unless you are a developer or a tech enthusiast you won’t have any clue which icon is that. Now that you have found it, click on it. And voila you have installed the Web App. As long as you have added the right meta tags your users won’t know its in a browser. Although he will pretty soon encounter one of the above issues and abandon your App.

The process is also cumbersome on Chrome on Android. But Chrome circumvents this by providing an install banner/popup. The great part you can delay this and trigger it when you want. You users wont have to go hunting for where to find the install option. The banner greatly reduces frictions and makes it seamless for user to install your PWA/Web App.

Let’s hope they rectify this situation soon. iOS has the fastest mobile browser, if they fix the handicaps of the web app it will be the best system to use a PWA/Web App.

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