2019-12-11 Apple Is Trying to Kill Web Technology

The programming languages used to build the web often find their way into apps, too. That’s largely due to software that allows developers to “reuse” the code they write for the web in products they build to run on operating systems like Linux, Android, Windows, and macOS.

But Apple has a reason not to like this recycling of web technology. It wants its Mac App Store to be filled with apps that you can’t find anywhere else, not apps that are available on every platform. With a recent policy change, the company has made it a little more difficult for developers to submit apps containing web code.

The Mac App Store has quietly started rejecting apps made with a popular tool called Electron that allows developers to base all of their apps on the web-based code. Some of the most popular apps in the App Store, like Slack, Spotify, Discord, and WhatsApp, fall into this category.

These types of changes may be made in the name of privacy or security, but the reality is that the argument looks weak when both users and developers simply don’t have a choice because Apple controls the platform, browser engine, and the distribution method. Regardless of your opinion of Electron app quality, choice is important.

Apple’s control over its app ecosystem is a new type of monopoly that’s hard to understand for lawmakers, and difficult for us to fight back against — because there simply isn’t a way out of these restrictions when the company controls both the distribution method and the platform itself.