The company will now allow web apps to send push notifications, that will appear on the phone’s Lock Screens as well as in other places such as the Apple Watch.
Since the very first iPhone, Apple has allowed users to add websites onto the iPhone’s Home Screen. There, they are represented just like normal iPhone apps, but work more like a shortcut to the website itself.
At the beginning, it represented a way for users to have something like the app experience without having to go through the App Store. Even now, such web apps are used to offer another way to get things onto the iPhone without having to go through that App Store process, which requires separate development, approval from Apple and a requirement that the company takes a cut of any payments made within those apps.
Such web apps have always been limited, however. They are not able to send notifications like normal apps, and other browsers such as Google Chrome cannot be used to make them.
Now both of those limitations have been lifted…