Post

Alex Russell
@infrequently.org

The tech press are Tim levels of cooked. Absolutely nowhere will you see any mention of web apps and PWAs as an alternative to censorious native app stores (I looked), and that's a bloody scandal.

12 reposts80 likes

Keith Henry
@k17.dev

There are still heavy financial incentives pushing apps, especially if you're providing content. Apps can still do one thing a PWA struggles with: break out of the webview container in another app to show your own adverts (especially on iOS) If you're news, you push your app.

Alex Russell
@infrequently.org

I mean, query *why* the web wasn't up to it (APIs Apple could have added), and why it caught up. Cupertino gave up on the web as soon as the App Store model took off; money too juicy to turn down, and rubished it as a competitor as soon as that happened: infrequently.org/2025/09/apples-a…

infrequently.orgApple's Antitrust Playbook - Infrequently NotedApple wants to launder the consequences of its own anticompetitive, anti-user choices through a credulous tech press. The goal is to frame regulators for Apple's own deeds, and it's rotten to the core...
Alex Russell
@infrequently.org

No, web apps aren't 100% censorship resistant. Nothing is. But they aren't also an obvious single point of failure like this. What are the tech press, who all publish on websites, doing?

Alex Russell
@infrequently.org

(to be clear about the threat model for web apps: threat would be against DNS provider and/or a hosting; those are routinely issued, but some providers are not as cowardly as Apple)

Bumping into people
@bumpingintopeople.bsky.social

The DNS and hosting threats also affect most apps because they need to “talk” to a remote server. There isn’t really any valid points against PWAs. They are less intrusive, easier to build and deploy. Of course, Apple doesn’t get $$ from the developer accounts and sales.