How Apple's anti-consumer changes affect Junat.live
iOS 17.4 is due for release in March of 2024 and will enable developers not to use the App Store to distribute apps, a feature called side loading. Until these changes take effect, Apple has boasted a monopoly requiring developers to pay a yearly fee to use their App Store, taking 30% of all transactions made through the platform. Side loading allows downloading apps from the internet or even other app stores that might pop up. More excitingly, the Digital Markets Act forced Apple to allow other browser engines to function on the platform. Currently, you can only use WebKit, and browsers like Chrome and Firefox use it under the hood on iOS, although they both have their engines on other platforms.
That all sounds great on paper, but there's always a but with Apple. Apple will require a 0,5€ fee for every download of a side-loaded app when the downloads exceed one million. And since other browser engines can work on iOS in the near future, Apple disabled progressive web application (PWA) support entirely. PWA is a web application you can install on your home screen that behaves similarly to a native app. This scorched earth campaign is what Germans used in the Lapland War. Instead of allowing PWAs to flourish with browser engines that give them full support (e.g., Blink by Google), Apple hardcoded a solution to prevent PWAs from working on iOS.
That said, the Junat.live PWA will probably stop working when iOS 17.4 reaches general availability. The change can already be seen on iOS 17.4 beta, available for users enrolled in the Apple Developer program.
17.2.2024
Apple has confirmed that they will remove PWA functionality in iOS 17.4, and are blaming DMA for it. Apple is threatened by their walled garden getting new residents, so they are artificially limiting what a browser can do in iOS.
