The fact that iOS safari supports SO many lifecycle features except BeforeInstallPrompt is just so frustrating.
You can feel the dev team trying to get as close as they can without shooting their golden goose App Store.
So many apps could be PWA…and we could expect so much more from the median PWA.
> The fact that iOS safari supports SO many lifecycle features except BeforeInstallPrompt is just so frustrating.
BeforeInstallPrompt is non-standard. They removed it from the specification because Mozilla had no plans to support it and Apple wouldn’t commit either.
Here’s the discussion:
> There is also some disagreement on the a `BeforeInstallPrompt()` event (BIP). Despite BIP having been in the spec for a few years, neither Safari nor Firefox have opted to support it. As it stands, Mozilla does not plan to support BIP. We are unsure what WebKit's plans are - @hober maybe could let us know? If WebKit doesn't plan to support it, then we should probably remove it from the spec.
— https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-webapps-github/2...
So yet again, this is a case of Google wanting something, Google implementing it unilaterally, Google not being able to convince any other rendering engine to implement it, then the non-standard, Blink-only behaviour is being presented in situations like this as if Safari alone is failing to support a standard.
Web standards are not whatever Google wants. They are arrived at through consensus.
You're absolutely right about BeforeInstallPrompt. It never achieved consensus, Mozilla declined to implement it, and this is exactly how standards should work. But here's the thing, this actually makes the broader argument stronger, not weaker. The issue isn't any one feature rejection, it's the pattern.
Remember the iOS 17.4 thing from February 2024. Apple completely disabled PWAs in the EU, claiming alternative browser engines created insurmountable security problems that would require building "an entirely new integration architecture" that wasn't practical given DMA timelines. Then after two weeks of backlash they reversed it. If the technical barriers were real, how did they solve them in 14 days? That looks less like a technical limitation and more like testing how much they could get away with.
Or push notifications, Safari on macOS got them in 2013. Safari on iOS got them in 2023. Same WebKit engine, same APNs infrastructure, 10 years apart. What's the technical explanation for that gap? And even after iOS finally got push notifications, they only work for PWAs installed to home screen, not in Safari itself. That's a restriction that doesn't exist anywhere else. Android Chrome has had this working in the browser since 2015.
That's the genius of plausible deniability, every individual decision has some technical justification you can point to. BeforeInstallPrompt lacks consensus (true). Safari has limited resources (as has Chrome). Security is hard (definitely true). But the cumulative effect of all these decisions, year after year, is that PWAs on iOS are hobbled compared to native apps in ways that just happen to protect a $20B+ App Store business.
Your fact-check on BeforeInstallPrompt actually demonstrates why the other patterns are harder to explain away. It shows Apple can legitimately decline features through proper standards processes, which makes the decade-long notification delay and the iOS 17.4 reversal look even more suspicious by comparison.
> The issue isn't any one feature rejection, it's the pattern.
Yes, and this pattern keeps popping up:
- Google wants something
- Google writes a spec.
- Google implements it.
- No other rendering engine wants it.
- It starts popping up on sites like this.
- People complain that it’s Apple’s fault for not implementing the standard.
Google keeps doing this over and over again. This is embrace and extend all over again. Web standards are not whatever Google wants them to be. They need to be arrived at through consensus.
Google gives Mozilla billions and billions of dollars and they still can’t get Mozilla to agree to these things. Google can’t get anybody outside of Google to implement these things.
Stop ignoring the fact that Mozilla is also saying no to a tonne of stuff. Stop ignoring the fact that no other rendering engine wants these things.
This is not “Apple is holding things back”. This is “Google is trying to unilaterally control web standards”.
You're making a fair point about Google and embrace-and-extend, but you didn't actually address the evidence I raised. Let me ask more directly.
Again, the iOS 17.4 situation. Apple claimed building PWA support for alternative browser engines wasn't "practical to undertake" due to security architecture requirements. They removed the feature. Two weeks later they brought it back. I'm asking one more time, what changed in those 14 days? If the architecture work genuinely "created insurmountable security problems that would require building "an entirely new integration architecture" that wasn't practical given DMA timelines", how was it completed so quickly?
Push notifications on iOS versus macOS. 2013 on Mac, 2023 on iPhone, same WebKit engine, same APNs backend. Apple controls the browser and the notification system on both platforms. Why the 10 year gap for what should be the same technical implementation? The thing is, whether or not Google tries to control standards doesn't explain these Apple-specific patterns that are clearly driven by Apple's conflict of interest. Mozilla declining BeforeInstallPrompt doesn't explain why features Apple already built for macOS took a decade to reach iOS. These are implementation decisions about Apple's own technology on Apple's own platforms.
You can argue Google is problematic (I'd also agree on that!) and also admit that Apple's decisions around PWAs are clearly driven by their conflict of interest to protect their $20+ billion dollar App Store business model. Those aren't mutually exclusive. But you haven't explained the iOS 17.4 reversal or the notification delay at all. Could you address those specifically?
> Again, the iOS 17.4 situation. Apple claimed building PWA support for alternative browser engines wasn't "practical to undertake" due to security architecture requirements. They removed the feature. Two weeks later they brought it back. I'm asking one more time, what changed in those 14 days? If the architecture work was genuinely impractical, how was it completed so quickly?
The target changed. The EU rules implied that there was a requirement for parity between Safari and the other browsers. Implementing that parity by adding a tonne of new APIs for other browsers is understandably infeasible to achieve in a short timeframe. Can we agree on that?
So the other option to achieve parity is by removing the functionality from Safari. Which is what they did – in a beta not a release version if I remember correctly. That got a big reaction, and the EU backed off. So Apple no longer had to achieve this parity in a short timeframe, so they could just keep the status quo. And I think we can agree that keeping the status quo is easy to implement, right?
So what we’re really saying here is that adding a load of new APIs is hard, and not adding them is easy. In that light, Apple saying “hey this is hard” and then a few weeks later going “never mind” makes total sense. And since that time, they have been adding a load of new APIs for other browsers to achieve parity – just not on the super short timescale.
> Push notifications on iOS versus macOS. 2013 on Mac, 2023 on iPhone, same WebKit engine, same APNs backend. Apple controls the browser and the notification system on both platforms. Why the 10 year gap for what should be the same technical implementation?
I don’t believe Apple have ever claimed it was a technical limitation have they? If you ask real users – even here on Hacker News – a bunch of them will say they don’t want websites to send them notifications on their phone. The user demand isn’t as high as you think it is.
> even after iOS finally got push notifications, they only work for PWAs installed to home screen, not in Safari itself.
You will see this in a lot of Apple decisions around web standards. They see visiting a website and installing a PWA as expressions of different levels of trust and they are trying to avoid permission prompt fatigue. Do you want any random website to send you notifications? No. Do you want websites to constantly prompt you for permission? No. If they do that, will lots of users accidentally say yes? Yes. Are the answers to these questions different for something a user explicitly installs? Yes. If you read through the discussions on the web specification proposals, you’ll see this kind of thing come up several times, from Mozilla as well.
> You can argue Google is problematic (I'd also agree on that!) and also admit that Apple's decisions around PWAs are clearly driven by their conflict of interest to protect their $20+ billion dollar App Store business model.
I definitely think that Apple makes choices that deprioritise the web. But I also think that 90% of the things people here actually complain about are actually reasonable, and it’s only a small minority that are less justifiable. I also think it’s less a case of moustache-twirling “let’s hold the web back to boost native apps” and more “why should we?”
End-users strongly prefer native to web. End-users are not asking for PWAs in meaningful numbers. At this point people often blame Apple for holding PWAs back, but this isn’t the case.
Apple are not holding PWAs back on Android. Google implement all the APIs they feel like on Chrome for Android. PWAs on Android are not held back. PWAS on Android are a best-case scenario for PWAs. But end users still overwhelmingly choose native apps over PWAs on Android.
If PWAs were preferred by users and artificially limited by Apple, then we would see end-users pick PWAs on Android. Developers wouldn’t build native apps on Android so much, they would just build PWA+iOS and skip the native Android implementation. They don’t do that.
The causality is the opposite direction to what you think. Apple aren’t causing PWAs to fail; PWAs failing causes Apple to not care about them.
@dang can you please review these coordinated false flags? thank you!
> I need to address several evasions and fabrications of yours here with actual evidence.
> Source this immediately.
> That's pure gaslighting
> You are now dictating how I have to adjust the style of my writing so you can be bothered to finally answer my questions after you've repeatedly evaded answering question? You never had any intention of answering them. Apple's conflict of interest which you're hellbent on denying is indicative of your own conflict of interest. Shareholders tend to be defensive of their own investments.
> You evaded and dodged questions by Gish galloping and didn't expect that I would relentlessly press you on answering them. After you've realized that I will not give up on demanding substantiated answers to those inconvenient questions, you pivoted to arguing about tone. Your strategy is obvious.
> @dang can you please review these coordinated false flags?
You are being flagged because you are dragging this thread down into the mud. Note that your earlier comments where you were behaving more reasonably are not flagged, but as you descend into baseless accusations and conspiracies, your comments are getting flagged.
I pointed you to the site guidelines before:
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
If you make more of an effort to follow them, you might not get your comments flagged so much. But more importantly, you would stop making this thread an unpleasant distraction from the main topic.
>You are being flagged because you are dragging this thread down into the mud.
You're projecting and the quotes of mine you've listed are an adequate description of your debate strategy. Then you condescendingly link to the guidelines as if you weren't the one who broke them in the first place by consistently arguing in bad faith.
You may want to email hn@ycombinator.com. It's not clear if the string @dang does anything.
Thank you! Done.
Can you give provide a source for your iOS 17.4 "parity" claim? Apple's actual statement: "complex security and privacy concerns associated with web apps using alternative browser engines would require building an entirely new integration architecture that does not currently exist in iOS and was not practical to undertake." That's what they said. Security architecture requiring new engineering work, not parity between browsers.
Second, "the EU backed off." can you provide a source for that? Apple reversed their decision after massive backlash from developers and users. If you're claiming the EU changed their position instead, provide a source from which you derived that.
Third, here's crucial context you're ignoring, Apple just threatened to stop shipping products to the EU entirely rather than comply with the Digital Markets Act. (https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/sep/25/apple-cal...) They've called for the DMA to be repealed. They've deliberately delayed features and explicitly stated "EU users' experience on Apple products will fall further behind." Those are Apple's own words.
Notice the pattern? iOS 17.4: remove PWAs, cite security concerns, reverse under pressure. Now Apple threatens to withdraw products entirely, cite security concerns, fight DMA in courts, hold an entire market hostage. This is the same company you're arguing has no conflict of interest and is just making neutral technical decisions about web standards?
Let me ask you directly, does Apple have a conflict of interest here? They run a $20+ billion App Store business that takes 15-30% of digital transactions. PWAs would let developers bypass that entirely. Do you acknowledge this financial incentive structure exists, or are you seriously claiming Apple has no motivation to limit PWA capabilities?
Because your entire argument requires believing that Apple's decade of PWA underinvestment, the iOS 17.4 removal and reversal, the current threats to leave the EU market, the active legal fights against the DMA, and the systematic feature gaps compared to Android are all just coincidental technical decisions completely unrelated to App Store revenue. That's not remotely plausible.
On push notifications, your logic contradicts itself. You're saying users don't want them and Apple chose not to implement them for a decade, but then Apple implemented them anyway in 2023. Why? If there's no demand, why spend engineering resources on it? And why did macOS Safari get them in 2013 if user demand is so low? The 10-year gap between platforms using the same technology stack still has zero explanation from you.
Your Android argument actually proves our point, not yours. PWAs need iOS support to be economically viable for developers. Without iPhone users being reachable, the entire cross-platform proposition fails. Developers can't justify PWA investment if they can't access the iOS market. Saying "PWAs fail on Android" when iOS support is systematically hobbled just demonstrates exactly what we're arguing: Apple's gatekeeping shapes the entire ecosystem.
And your claim: "PWAs failing causes Apple not to care about them." That's pure gaslighting through reversed causality. Apple's systematic underinvestment, active obstruction (iOS 17.4), and decade of feature gaps cause PWAs to struggle on their platform. Then you point to that struggle as justification for Apple's behavior. That's circular reasoning designed to absolve Apple of responsibility for the situation they created.
You've shifted explanations three times in this thread. First it was Google doing embrace-and-extend. When that didn't explain Apple-specific behavior, you pivoted to "parity requirements". Then "user preferences" (with no supporting data). Now Android market dynamics (which proves our point about gatekeepers). Every time evidence contradicts your previous explanation, you invent a new one. That's not reasoned argument, that's motivated reasoning to protect a predetermined conclusion.
So I'm asking again, directly, do you acknowledge that Apple's App Store business creates a financial conflict of interest regarding PWA development? Yes or no? Because everything you've written requires us to ignore the obvious incentive structure and believe Apple is just making innocuous technical choices while coincidentally fighting regulations, threatening to leave markets, and maintaining decade-long feature gaps that happen to protect their most profitable business.
[flagged]
Okay, when I said start again with a new comment, I did not mean remove the first sentence and copy and paste the rest.
I have explicitly been trying to find common ground with you:
> Can we agree on that?
> And I think we can agree that keeping the status quo is easy to implement, right?
You, on the other hand, are basically calling me a liar and barking orders at me:
> Source this immediately.
> That's pure gaslighting
I’m approaching this as a discussion, you are approaching this as some sort of war.
I will have a discussion with you. I will not have a flame war with you.
[flagged]
> You are now dictating how I have to adjust the style of my writing so you can be bothered to finally answer my questions after you've repeatedly evaded answering question? You never had any intention of answering them. Apple's conflict of interest which you're hellbent on denying is indicative of your own conflict of interest. Shareholders tend to be defensive of their own investments.
I have given you plenty of time and written lengthy responses to you.
You have responded like this, so I am quite obviously not going to waste any more time on you.
I suggest you read the site guidelines:
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
This thread is failing them, so we should stop.
[flagged]
[flagged]
> I need to address several evasions and fabrications of yours here with actual evidence.
Start again with a new comment and I’ll respond. I’m not reading past here.
Should we really care what the rendering engines want? What about what users and app authors want? If Google was adding things that nobody cared about, it wouldn't be a problem. The problem is that these things are useful.
> Should we really care what the rendering engines want?
Yes. Let’s use Web MIDI as an example. This was proposed by Google, and implemented by Google. It was initially rejected by both Mozilla and Apple on privacy and security grounds. Mozilla eventually gave in and implemented it. Then it came to light that porn sites had been using Web MIDI to fingerprint and track users.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23679063
I think Apple made the right call there. Just blindly saying yes to functionality is not good for the web.
I sort of agree with Safari's call - a lot of Chrome's functionality is declined by Safari on reasons that it enables fingerprinting. For that reason I think the site is misleading in its rating of privacy.
But I don't think Google's to blame for making a different choice about it. It's picking a different privacy / functionality trade-off, but it's doing it with open standards that others are free to implement if they want.
It's putting some pressure on Apple because users often care more about functionality than about privacy, but not so much that they're worried about it, I think. They seem to be doing well!
This. PWA is the end of 75% of apps being in the app store
Seems doubtful to me. Native apps just tend to feel better.
This scorecard says that Chrome for Android already does pretty well, but how many users use PWAs on Android?
>Seems doubtful to me. Native apps just tend to feel better.
That may have being true a few years ago, but now days unless you are really pushing for very specific stuff GPU stuff. With CSS GPU acceleration its barely noticeable for normal UIs. Now there are tons and tons of PWA that is done in a very in efficient way, then you get a really laggy app.
If the theory is that if you do everything perfectly, you can reach the performance of a mediocre native app, then obviously most PWAs are going to suck and opinions will form accordingly.
You don't have to do everything perfectly. Both web apps and "native" apps will be similarly affected by a dev who is terrible at coding. Most people use web apps every day and are not even aware that they are using web apps. Some special interest groups are just very persistent in perpetuating falsehoods and myths in this matter.
>Seems doubtful to me. Native apps just tend to feel better.
I'm really tired of hearing this quite frankly, because the reasons as to why that happens to be the case in some scenarios is not "just" a coincidence, which has been explained ad nauseam.
>This scorecard says that Chrome for Android already does pretty well, but how many users use PWAs on Android?
While I've not seen any stats, I personally use them where possible. Interestingly, my boomer Dad, who is completely clueless when it comes to technology, independently discovered them. He has no idea what a "PWA" is, but he always asks me to "make this website an app for me".
That would be the interesting thing for an EU regulation to try to cover, maybe more than the app store regs. PWAs are just websites, so Apple can't really make same security argument, right?
That would be a nicer world.