Apple could solve this problem on iOS by giving us a button that forces the browser to appear to be desktop Safari, but apparently this is all part of their overall apps strategy or something.
The best is when after you go through all the nonsense, you get "This article is not available on your device." It's like when you want to watch a video, and you have to watch a 30 second ad first, and after the ad you get an error saying the video no longer exists. But the ad played. Oh you can bet that ad is always going to exist.
>apparently this is all part of their overall apps strategy or something.
Actually, in iOS 6, Apple added a graceful way to handle this case. The site can use a special HTML tag to indicate they have an app available, and that will show a tasteful banner at the top of the Safari screen that can be easily dismissed and that can launch the app, with context of the current page. Much better than some homebrew Javascript solution.
But site developers still have the option to completely block you from their content when they detect you're using iOS Safari. Which is what so many news sites are doing.
...as do other alternative browsers, like iCab Mobile or AtomicWeb.
Handy for not just getting around app-prompts but also other over-customization for mobile/touch devices (like 'OnSwipe' or forced-mobile-site-version).
The best is when after you go through all the nonsense, you get "This article is not available on your device." It's like when you want to watch a video, and you have to watch a 30 second ad first, and after the ad you get an error saying the video no longer exists. But the ad played. Oh you can bet that ad is always going to exist.