Apple vs. PWAs – Go act now and help avoid this disaster…

Apple wants to disallow Web Apps on iOS to be added to the home screen, run full screen and use the APIs necessary to create a great app. And to make things worse, only in Europe. We need to stop this from happening.

The European Union is enforcing its Digital Markets Act and Apple aren’t happy about it.

This should have been a great thing – more browser choice on iOS and distribution via URL. But instead it means you can’t publish full feature Web Apps on iOS – you stay within the browser and it’s limits.

The Open Web Advocacy group has all the details what that means for developers, but, even more importantly, they ask EU companies and developers to give them information by the 9th of March to show to Apple and the EU commission to prevent this.

They also have an open letter to Tim Cook for you to sign.

So fill out this survey if you want to stay a first class Apple developer although you are in the EU.

I met with Bruce Lawson of the OWA and Web App expert Ben Francis to discuss this in a special “Coffee with developers”. Check it out on YouTube.

Here’s some more info about this:

• Alex Russell has an excellent long form piece that explains the reality of what’s going on.
• The state of PWAs on iOS wasn’t good to start with as explained in Web Push on iOS – 1 year in and PWAs wont replace native iOS apps.
• Game developers face the fact that Apple effectively kills numerous browser games in the EU.
• The Register claims that Apple broke web apps in iOS 17 beta and that Apple makes it official: No EU Home Screen web apps.
• 9 to 5 Mac tries to explain why that is and Jeremy Keith shows the effect on web developers.