When Apple first launched the iPhone in 2007, it did so with many limitations. One of them is almost forgotten, There was no App Store. At that time, Steve Jobs did not even think that the smartphone would replace the PC.

The mobile phone had several native apps (phone, email, Safari, music, messages, camera or photos) but if someone wanted to “install” an app they couldn’t.

Early users had two options: network applications these were nothing more than shortcuts to certain platforms’ web services or via jailbreak. Native apps that bypass Apple’s restrictions.

It is interesting that these web applications were Apple’s first solution to access certain tools, but this did not last long, because, as we said, in 2008 came the App Store, which became the only official and legitimate way through which users could install new applications. and games.

Web applications disappeared for Apple, but began to gain traction among certain developer groups in the following years. First, with the rise of HTML5, which proved to offer interesting features in this sense, and after a while, progressive web applications or PWA (Progressive Web Applications). The concept, created by two Chrome developers, combined this language with CSS, JavaScript and WebAssembly.

This option has gradually been integrated into desktop browsers and even mobile browsers, and even Apple started offering support for them in Safari in June 2023. This allowed any web page to be instantly turned into an app and added to desktop, mobile or computer. making it almost indistinguishable from native ones.

PWAs have gained popularity in recent years, becoming a very attractive alternative for developers who can benefit from the same code of web applications and do not need to create native versions for each architecture.

And yet, Apple killed this technology in iPhones. At least in the European Union.

The latest beta versions of iOS 17.4 were criticized precisely for causing problems with PWAs, and now Apple has confirmed to 9to5Mac that it is eliminating the possibility of these apps being available on the iPhone desktop for EU users.

The reason stated in the official statement is that they need to comply with the DMA, and that achieving such a thing in the EU would require a “completely new integration architecture”, which is “impractical” when implementing other changes imposed by regulators. . These include allowing third-party browsers to (finally) use their own engines on iOS and no longer rely on WebKit.

Criticism among developers

Apple explains that its web apps implementation is based on Webkit, which allows it to be compatible with the native iOS security and privacy model. With this change, Apple will continue to let you send websites to the iPhone desktop, but They only act as browser bookmarksand not as potentially standalone services that run as native applications in many cases.

The decision is as follows: was criticized a lot by developers and on Open Web Advocacy, an open standards advocacy platform, they also explained what this looked like to them Bad decision from Applethey still had options to fix the error.

Therefore, Apple should allow third-party browsers to load web applications, although Apple has already explained that this would pose security risks; It’s the same argument he makes with alternative app stores. There are other alternatives, such as forcing web applications to be managed by the default browser, but this will result in “breaking” this model.

According to these open standards advocates, Apple had plenty of time to prepare for these changes. “The final DMA text was published almost two years ago,” they explain, “and the complete absence of web apps from Apple’s DMA compliance offering, combined with the omission of this important change in the Safari beta release notes, points to a deliberate strategy of diversion“.

Image | William Hook

in Xataka | The demo where Steve Jobs presented the iPhone in 2007 was a miracle (with lots of tricks)