One of the reasons we have grown fond of Apple is because the company makes its own decisions and follows a different path from others. With Apple devices, we have exclusive applications and features, but not all of the company’s decisions turn out to be positive. Apple has had to surrender to EU regulations and although it has said it would comply with the DMA law, it has ended up breaking its Progressive Web Apps (PWA) on iPhones.
Since Europe imposed its new regulations, several technology sector companies have had to change many things in order to sell in European territory. Here we have companies like Amazon, Twitter (X), Meta, and even Apple. The latter is one of the companies that has had to make the most drastic changes, like when it had to get rid of its old Lightning connector. Thanks to EU laws, from now on all Apple devices include USB-C, although as we saw, Apple limited its speed to USB 2.0 on the iPhone 15 in response.
Apple cannot handle all of the EU’s demands, and Progressive Web Apps stop working
The bitten apple company must comply with European Union regulations if it wants to continue selling its devices throughout Europe. Apple reluctantly accepts and, as we have seen on more than one occasion, changes come with drawbacks. The latest change announced by Apple is to comply with the EU’s DMA (Digital Markets Act), but it has not gone as planned. With this change, Progressive Web Apps, or PWAs, have stopped working.
Apple confirms and blames the EU’s DMA law for the problem, as it involved changing functionality for developers and users in more than 600 new APIs. The Cupertino-based company details all the difficulties they have had, and in order to comply with the regulations, they have had to sacrifice web applications.
Apple will stop DWAs from working for now, at least until they meet all the changes required by the EU
Since iOS 17.4 Beta 2, it has been observed that web applications were not working properly. It was believed to be a bug that would be fixed in a later version, but Beta 3 arrived and Apple made an official statement that they would not function as before. Researchers found that PWAs had been changed to simple web shortcuts. Their original function was to feel like native iOS apps, but with this change, they become like bookmarks saved on the home screen.
Apple has already warned that these apps will open in the default browser from now on, but notifications and other functions will also be lost. It seems that the company has not been able to try to comply with all the changes demanded by the EU while maintaining functionality. We have already discussed something similar in previous news, such as allowing the use of third-party app stores and alternative browsers to WebKit.
The fight between the EU and Apple ends up being paid by users: Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) are over. This was first published on El Chapuzas Informático.
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