Notices by Jonathan Joelson (jjoelson@mastodon.social)

@masukomi @inthehands I actually see a lot of bugs caused by devs trying to keep things as simple as possible in the micro, while accidentally introducing system-wide complexity via duplicate sources of truth.

@masukomi @inthehands It’s definitely good to avoid unnecessary complexity, but in real life projects I find that the biggest cause of bugs is duplicate sources of truth and data inconsistency across the system. Sometimes maintaining a single source of truth involves refactoring and creating abstractions which are not always simple.

@thomasfuchs I guess for me the nuance is in questions like: is it illegally anticompetitive that Apple Watches can unlock my phone but 3rd party watches can’t? Like, is *any* degree of proprietary integration between the iPhone and Apple Watch illegal on its face? I don’t think this is super straightforward as you appear to think.

I mean, is the Mac just completely illegal given its integrations with the iPhone? HomePod? Vision Pro?

@thomasfuchs Not to mention the fact that Android exists. I’m not accusing you of this, but I see a certain elitism in some who would rather pretend that Apple is a monopoly than give up their precious iPhone and slum it with the Android folks.

@thomasfuchs Well it’s an idea about how a very old law might apply to computer hardware and software. I don’t want companies to have free reign to act anticompetitively, but also I don’t think it’s good for anyone if companies are forced to allow 3rd party integration at *every* level of the software and hardware stack. I’m trying to understand what the criteria is or ought to be for when it’s legally required.

@thomasfuchs I’m not sure I understand the scope of argument though. Is the idea that once a company gets large enough they are no longer allowed to have private interfaces? Or, what is the criteria to determine when keeping an interface private becomes illegal?

@mmasnick @DeanBaker13 I hope you don’t take this the wrong way as I’m a long time reader and appreciator of your work, but my read on this thread is that while your experience running Techdirt gives you a valuable perspective on how this stuff plays out in the micro, it also creates a pretty big conflict of interest. Are you really objectively evaluating the merits of this potential policy change or are you talking your own book?

@smitten @thomasfuchs No argument from me that Apple hasn’t thrown their full weight behind making PWAs work, but I’m not really sure it’s reasonable to expect that. They support them well enough that we should be seeing them take off if it’s a genuinely good approach for services and users.

It’s two taps in Safari to add a site to your Home Screen.

@thomasfuchs I think productionizing APIs to do what was previously an internal integration is a meaningful amount of work, and I can see it tipping the cost/benefit analysis in the other direction.

Apple has small teams and is willing to prioritize a bit more ruthlessly than their peers. Remember how they shipped the first iPhone OS with no copy/paste? I wouldn’t be surprised if they add this back later as higher priority items are checked off.

@thomasfuchs idk man, do you actually know people in real life who take advantage of this feature? I see people around me bookmark sites on their Home Screen sometimes, but not those rich full screen PWAs. There doesn’t seem to be much of an appetite for it on the part of either users or services.

Apple’s comment that the feature is not popular enough to be worth creating new APIs for 3rd party browsers rings pretty true to me.

@thomasfuchs tbf the use cases for this device are at-home entertainment or work. It’s not being pitched as a device to wear out and about, so I don’t think looking dumb is necessarily a dealbreaker here the way it would be for products like watches or headphones.

@thomasfuchs I wonder if they would consider an Apple Watch level of impact a success or failure? Certainly the ambition here seems much larger.

@thomasfuchs With the amount they’ve invested in this, I think they’re going to keep plugging away at it for several years even if it’s flopping hard.

@airspeedswift I’m super glad to see the expanded code is available to see right there!

@adamdavidson @Gargron I respect other admin’s right to make their own decisions, but I agree with your thinking on this ?