Michael Tsai - Blog - iOS 17.4 Changes PWAs to Shortcuts in EU:
Apple had two years or so to prepare for the DMA, but they “had to” to remove the feature entirely (and throw away user data) rather than give the third-party API parity with what Safari can do. I find the privacy argument totally unconvincing because the alternative they chose is to put all the sites in the same browser. If you’re concerned about buggy data isolation or permissions, isn’t this even worse?
Michael neatly collects together the responses to Apple’s frankly pathetic removal of proper PWA support in the EU, but I think his own quote above hits the nail on the head. The company has had years to prepare for this. If it got blindsided, that’s a management failure. If it’s being petulant, that’s a management failure. If it can’t devote the resources to make this work, that’s a management failure. And if this is an attempt to enforce using native APIs and the App Store rather than PWAs… well, that too is a management failure.
Apple’s whole response to the DMA ruling has been nothing but disastrous for its credibility amongst developers, but unfortunately the company seems to have forgotten that without developers, its platforms are nothing but pretty user interfaces for copying files around.
