All of these things are already available in native apps. Putting aside all the business reasons for why Apple wouldn't want to do this, why should Apple spend any time to enable this for web apps? You say the choice is between a web app and no app, and I'm sure on the margin this impacts companies that can't afford to create a native app, but why should Apple cater to the lowest common denominator? Steve Jobs' post on Flash addresses this specifically [1]:
>Sixth, the most important reason.
Besides the fact that Flash is closed and proprietary, has major technical drawbacks, and doesn’t support touch based devices, there is an even more important reason we do not allow Flash on iPhones, iPods and iPads. We have discussed the downsides of using Flash to play video and interactive content from websites, but Adobe also wants developers to adopt Flash to create apps that run on our mobile devices.
We know from painful experience that letting a third party layer of software come between the platform and the developer ultimately results in sub-standard apps and hinders the enhancement and progress of the platform. If developers grow dependent on third party development libraries and tools, they can only take advantage of platform enhancements if and when the third party chooses to adopt the new features. We cannot be at the mercy of a third party deciding if and when they will make our enhancements available to our developers.
This becomes even worse if the third party is supplying a cross platform development tool. The third party may not adopt enhancements from one platform unless they are available on all of their supported platforms. Hence developers only have access to the lowest common denominator set of features. Again, we cannot accept an outcome where developers are blocked from using our innovations and enhancements because they are not available on our competitor’s platforms.
Flash is a cross platform development tool. It is not Adobe’s goal to help developers write the best iPhone, iPod and iPad apps. It is their goal to help developers write cross platform apps. And Adobe has been painfully slow to adopt enhancements to Apple’s platforms. For example, although Mac OS X has been shipping for almost 10 years now, Adobe just adopted it fully (Cocoa) two weeks ago when they shipped CS5. Adobe was the last major third party developer to fully adopt Mac OS X.
Our motivation is simple – we want to provide the most advanced and innovative platform to our developers, and we want them to stand directly on the shoulders of this platform and create the best apps the world has ever seen. We want to continually enhance the platform so developers can create even more amazing, powerful, fun and useful applications. Everyone wins – we sell more devices because we have the best apps, developers reach a wider and wider audience and customer base, and users are continually delighted by the best and broadest selection of apps on any platform.
that quote basically sums it up. third-party cross-platform solutions are good for developers but bad for Apple and all it's users. The reason I choose Apple is because they make these kind of user-first decisions.
> "We know from painful experience that letting a third party layer of software come between the platform and the developer ultimately results in sub-standard apps and hinders the enhancement and progress of the platform."
Yet those of us old enough to remember the 90s also recall how the openness of the web freed people from the monopolistic behavior of Microsoft. Sure, the web was bad for Microsoft, but great for users.
This whole argument is circular. Web capabilities lag because companies like Apple deliberately drag their feet. Then people like you cite all the advanced features of native development as a reason not to try and use the web. All of which suits Apple fine, since they get 30% of native, and 0% of the web. Apple hobbling PWA is the new "IE-only" website.
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it." - Upton Sinclair
I take it you didn't catch that that was all hypocritical bullshit :/. Steve Jobs can poke fun at Adobe all they want over Flash not adopting Cocoa and enabling developers to build applications using a third-party API layer over their platform, but it is totally duplicitous to do so without admitting that at the time iTunes was still written in Carbon and there was no timeline for that to change because their Windows implementation was ported to that platform as an API layer over the Win32 platform that allowed them to not have to maintain a truly native port of that product. To this day iTunes is written in that fashion; and, in fact, large amounts of it have been built on top of hybrid app web technologies so they can minimize how much stress they have to put on their increasingly abstract API layer. Seriously: go install iTunes on Windows and stare in awe at how Apple has essentially reimplemented OS X in a massive wad of DLLs so they can have iTunes sit on top. If Apple wants to be taken seriously, they should stop preaching and put their money where their mouth is and reimplement iTunes to work on both Windows and macOS as first-class native applications tied to the low-level APIs offered by the platform. The reality, of course, is that even a company as massive and successful as Apple understands the value proposition inherent in having one codebase that works on multiple platforms, and is willing to hamstring even their own macOS experience to make maintenance of their port to Windows easier. What is sad is that they can still tell these bold-faces lies about what their motives are, and people like you somehow still believe them :/.
This is a great post about why you should target iOS and macOS features specifically. But it misses the point,
> we want to provide the most advanced and innovative platform to our developers, and we want them to stand directly on the shoulders of this platform and create the best apps the world has ever seen.
Yes, that's what (you and) Apple want. But what developers really want is a simple cross platform framework to target all OSes and the widest user base possible with the least effort.
These applications can then enable custom features on macOS where they get a better experience if they have a need for that.
Remember OpenStep? Yellowbox? We want those tools; right now the web is an ok standin, and until there is something better, developers will keep demanding these features. It's about targeting the widest user base possible, not about making a single platform the most successful.
Cool so then it just comes down to leverage. Developers who wants this have almost none and Apple has all of it. As a user who mostly doesn't care about the trials and tribulations that developers go through, my interests are aligned with Apple's.
As long as Apple continues to sell more product that dynamic isn't going to change.
> Cool so then it just comes down to leverage. Developers who wants this have almost none and Apple has all of it.
You are definitely right that Apple has a lot of leverage for now. I love my Apple products, as a user I have no intention of switching away from them (I stuck with them through their worst period, '96 - '00, because I was so excited for the coming of Unix). Again as a user I want them to succeed because I love the products.
As a developer though, I want my favorite tools and languages available. And I want to spend the least effort in targeting users...
These are good arguments. But they apply verbatim to Java, HTML, and JavaScript in the times of Windows and IE3/4, if Bill Gates had been asked publicly.
>Sixth, the most important reason.
Besides the fact that Flash is closed and proprietary, has major technical drawbacks, and doesn’t support touch based devices, there is an even more important reason we do not allow Flash on iPhones, iPods and iPads. We have discussed the downsides of using Flash to play video and interactive content from websites, but Adobe also wants developers to adopt Flash to create apps that run on our mobile devices.
We know from painful experience that letting a third party layer of software come between the platform and the developer ultimately results in sub-standard apps and hinders the enhancement and progress of the platform. If developers grow dependent on third party development libraries and tools, they can only take advantage of platform enhancements if and when the third party chooses to adopt the new features. We cannot be at the mercy of a third party deciding if and when they will make our enhancements available to our developers.
This becomes even worse if the third party is supplying a cross platform development tool. The third party may not adopt enhancements from one platform unless they are available on all of their supported platforms. Hence developers only have access to the lowest common denominator set of features. Again, we cannot accept an outcome where developers are blocked from using our innovations and enhancements because they are not available on our competitor’s platforms.
Flash is a cross platform development tool. It is not Adobe’s goal to help developers write the best iPhone, iPod and iPad apps. It is their goal to help developers write cross platform apps. And Adobe has been painfully slow to adopt enhancements to Apple’s platforms. For example, although Mac OS X has been shipping for almost 10 years now, Adobe just adopted it fully (Cocoa) two weeks ago when they shipped CS5. Adobe was the last major third party developer to fully adopt Mac OS X.
Our motivation is simple – we want to provide the most advanced and innovative platform to our developers, and we want them to stand directly on the shoulders of this platform and create the best apps the world has ever seen. We want to continually enhance the platform so developers can create even more amazing, powerful, fun and useful applications. Everyone wins – we sell more devices because we have the best apps, developers reach a wider and wider audience and customer base, and users are continually delighted by the best and broadest selection of apps on any platform.
[1] https://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-on-flash/