Apple's Battle Against Progressive Web Apps
If you've been following the news recently, you've probably seen people talking about Apple's changes to Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) in iOS.
As someone building Melodic Mind almost entirely with web technologies, I wanted to explain why this matters.
Why PWAs matter
For a small company like Melodic Mind, web apps aren't just a nice option.
They're the only realistic way to build high quality apps for every platform without needing separate native teams.
The web has come a long way over the last few years. Modern browsers support powerful APIs for audio, graphics, storage, file access and much more. On most platforms, they're more than capable of delivering an experience that's very close to a native app.
That's exactly what Melodic Mind is built on.
The problem with iOS
Unfortunately, iOS has always been the exception.
Over the years I've spent countless hours trying to work around limitations that simply don't exist anywhere else.
Background audio behaves differently.
The Web Audio API has missing features and inconsistent behavior.
Browser bugs can take years to be fixed.
And because every browser on iOS has to use WebKit, there's no alternative engine developers can target.
Then came the announcement around iOS 17.4, where Apple initially planned to remove many of the capabilities that make PWAs feel like real apps in the EU.
Thankfully, they later reversed that decision after significant backlash.
But the situation highlighted something many web developers have felt for years: building serious web apps on iOS is far harder than it needs to be.
Why this matters to Melodic Mind
Every app I've built is powered by web technologies.
That wasn't a shortcut.
It was a deliberate decision because I believe software should be available everywhere, whether you're on Android, iPhone, Windows, macOS or Linux.
I don't want people to need a specific device just to connect with music.
When one platform makes the web a second-class citizen, it becomes much harder for small developers to compete.
Instead of spending time creating new tools for musicians, we're forced to spend that time working around platform-specific issues.
Looking forward
Despite all of this, nothing changes for Melodic Mind.
I'll keep building with the web because I still believe it's the best way to make music tools accessible to everyone.
I just hope we eventually reach a point where web apps are treated as first-class citizens on every platform.
If you'd like to learn more about this topic, I highly recommend reading the following article that explains everything.
I also wanna say thanks to the Open Web Advocacy foundation that fights this fight for all of us.