Granted, this is just UI tweak so I'm not convinced it has to be private, but they probably just don't want to have to maintain that forever.
It mattered because Microsoft had 95% of the operating system market at the time and was using its monopoly position to take over the web, even after signing a decent decree with the US government.
The current web monopolist (Google) was coincidentally founded 2 months after the US antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft was decided (july - september 1998).
Similarly meh results with US vs Google two weeks ago.
So, if you wanted webviews that could leverage this you’d basically need a native swift app with webviews to get access.
Is Google's "-webkit-tap-highlight-color" also anticompetitive? Should we ban the current practice of shipping proprietary CSS attributes while sometimes also proposing them for standardization?
It's just really hard for me to read that as a legit complaint.
If Apple uses this CSS liquid glass effect in their apps, it'll pass App Store review just fine.
Do you see the issue now?
So when Google creates self-serving APIs in a web browser engine, it's anti-consumer and is killing the free web.
But when Apple does it, it's just another private API, a red herring and their right as the proprietor of Safari.
Hmm...
What apple does and what the article talks about: They have a CSS property that ONLY they can use, you can't put that in your PWA, it won't work (no matter the browser).
Apple does plenty of bad things, and many are worse than this, but it doesn't mean it's not fair to point out this one is bad, too.
It all comes down to "the vendor can do things with your computer you can't do yourself" in the end.
It's not even that. A console vendor that locks down everything behind the TPM helps to not deal with cheaters is arguably fine. A console vendor that is also a game develop and caps the FPS of all games that aren't their own is abusing their monopoly position in one market to gain unfair advantage on a different market.
For example, if there was a glowing light on the edge of the phone that only lights up with stock apps and company apps, and that signfies for security that an app belongs to a company, that is ok.
I don't consider design/appearance to be a feature. YMD.
If you mean "anti-competitive" without referring to monopolies, then, well, every company does that.
There are some places where I hope Apple improves things like legibility and contrast, but I'll take anything over the bland, flat designs of the Window 8 era.
I'm neutral on this first implementation (some good, some bad). But I think the approach will be picked up by essentially everyone. Good news for you, there's nothing saying the overlay UI model has to be transparent. Some will probably be opaque but still floating.
First, AR is currently aspirational at best. After decades of failures.
Second, overlaying translucid UI over content makes separation of UI from content worse, not better.
Windows Aero tried that 2 decades ago and, while it looked cool, they reverted.
Please, please cite sources for this. Without context you are really just drawing conjecture here.
Apple certainly seems invested in the idea of an AR future. But users do not - ARkit integrations are few-and-far between, Pokemon Go is a dead fad and Vision Pro failed harder than almost any other contemporary Apple product. It seems less like Apple is skating to the puck, and more like they're begging someone to pass to them. But the rest of the industry seems content ignoring the AR industry to invest away from Apple into stocks like Nvidia. Simultaneously, Apple threw away their stake in consortiums like Khronos, signalling a lack of desire to engage in new software standards.
With how many roadblocks Apple is facing here, I have no idea how you'd conclude that forcing AR on their users is a preferred paradigm.
is this true? i know very little of iOS development but i swear i remember watching a decompilation of an app that used various internal APIs to provide animated home screen widgets
the main reason webviews in apps have such a bad reputation is because you don't notice the webviews that are integrated seamlessly
I can't help but lament just a little bit. Apple used to be about insane polish. Just think about the mentality that created the rounded screen corners on the original Mac. That's just crazy and I admire it.
I think that's mostly a brand narrative/myth. MacOS has always had warts at any given time.
- people who have gone down the webview path, and know how difficult it is to do well
- people who have been told they can simply package their webapp into a native application
You can probably guess which group has more people
In this case some subset of apple provided apps weren't following the theme and they fixed it by adding a private css property.
Vs some other OS vendor that likely removed most of the theme controls so they didn't have to keep fixing a huge pile of 1/2 baked abandoned toolkits scattered across their product portfolio.
It's being sold as the best thing since sliced bread. Googling it felt like I entered a parallel universe.
Apple's new glass UI seems to draw a lot of ire, but I... kinda like it? It feels like the OS has some actual personality again instead of just being flat and boring. I can visually tell the size of click targets now and the buttons are finally visually distinct from text again. I view it as a welcome change. It's not just "nostalgia" either. It has actual utility.
I installed the iOS 26 Beta to test some things on the websites I maintain in advance of it going public, and while there are some issues here and there I think the overall direction to add more personality back into the OS is a good one. Normies will love it.
The bar is high
It's just terrible.
What is genius here? Create something, that nobody asked for, create an in-house CSS property to use across approved apps. Genius? I would simply call this a dirty trick.
There are a lot of things, that they could have implemented, according to the CSS spec. But they decided to spend workforce on this shit. Yeah, they are a business and free to do whatever they want with their money. But I don’t like their choices.
iruoy•1h ago
This is what stood out to me. I've never really suspected webviews and can't think of a place now.
echeese•1h ago
bstsb•1h ago
JakaJancar•1h ago
ciabattabread•1h ago
JimDabell•10m ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30648424
dcarmo•1h ago
alwillis•1h ago
ivape•1h ago
inc3pt•1h ago
galad87•1h ago