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Private client-side-only PWAs are hard, but now Apple made them impossible

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Re: Private client-side-only PWAs are hard, but now Apple made them impossible

#201

Post by MatthewPhillips »

starbugs wrote: post #29

Is this really that big of a problem? You had to be expecting that local storage is deleted without any notice anyway, in every web app.

I absolutely don't have that expectation. I built a comic reader app that I use on my Android tablet, which saves files to IndexedDB. I've been using this for over a year and no files have ever been deleted, even after I stopped using the app for a month or so.

If Apple provided an alternative this would be ok. An alternative such as the native file access API (still a WIP). Or a prompt so that the user can allow long-term storage. Or supporting the web app manifest so that users confirm they want to "install" a web app, granting it greater permissions.

But they've offered no alternatives here, that I can see. They've determined that client-side web apps are simply not important.

Re: Private client-side-only PWAs are hard, but now Apple made them impossible

#202

Post by hu3 »

anon102010 wrote: post #107
hu3 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Android? I've had to aid my parents using Apple devices just as much as Android (father likes iPhone, mother prefers Samsung Galaxy). edit: so much for anecdotes...

Most of us have caught onto the scam promises of ongoing support from android device makers. With an iphone you are pretty sure of 3-4 years of good support. Doesn't the latest iOS support the iphone SE? And I think iOS 12 is still getting updates (Jan 2020).

By most of us you're referring to a minority that use iPhones?

That's a very US centric view. And even among those, most iPhone users aren't tech savvies.

Re: Private client-side-only PWAs are hard, but now Apple made them impossible

#203

Post by sonofaplum »

kkarakk wrote: post #175
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they'd need to have me log in and send the config data to their servers You'd have to log in. That's a hurdle that involves implicit consent.

Most people don't care about logging into services anymore. just implement a fb login and it takes less than 5 secs

If you've ever looked at user analytics you know this is absolutely not true

Re: Private client-side-only PWAs are hard, but now Apple made them impossible

#204

Post by cageface »

_0w8t wrote: post #179
cageface wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

moving forward we can expect Apple to start systemically hindering web apps They have been doing this for quite some time now. Always ostensibly to protect users but always also conveniently putting webapps at a permanent disadvantage to native apps. For my part I'm not interested in being a user of a platform so hostile to the web that it disallows any third party browsers.

Apple disallows third-party web rendering engines. Google Chrome on iOS uses own networking stack. It is still a significant restriction, but it is rather understandable. Without it it could be just Blink everywhere at this point.

So it's not about what's best for the user but what's best for Apple? I wouldn't call that "understandable". All this is doing is contributing to webkit monoculture.

Re: Private client-side-only PWAs are hard, but now Apple made them impossible

#205

Post by pier25 »

diegoperini wrote: post #165

I already have a comment on this subject in a thread here but I believe this should be stressed more explicitly. Apple didn't kill offline web apps. You can always add an interaction to your app which exports the stored data into a file which then can be saved by the user. It can be done entirely on the client side as well. If anything died here, it is the implicit consent by the user for allowing unnoticed storage s…

These are workarounds for a problem that shouldn't exist in the first place.

Re: Private client-side-only PWAs are hard, but now Apple made them impossible

#206

Post by matsemann »

SalimoS wrote: post #176
matsemann wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But wouldn't that make it have less privacy? Now my webapp cannot be used offline and anonymously, user has to be logged in and tracked

If it’s your app how not being tracked is an argument ? I mean you just can just not track him (unless I’m not understanding your point)

Of course, I can make my backend service well-behaving. But offline first is privacy by default, which I'd argue is a better approach.

Re: Private client-side-only PWAs are hard, but now Apple made them impossible

#207

Post by uglycoyote »

shadowgovt wrote: post #168
jbeam wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would have to REALLY love your service to want to carry around an extra device to use it.

... or find it really necessary. Banks, for example, have the clout to expect this kind of behavior. The built-up reputation and long-term partnerships a company and a bank build up can out-value all kinds of IT inconveniences.

I don't know if you meant from the consumer perspective, but if my bank started telling me what kind of a phone or computer I needed to have to use their services I would definitely find another bank! I'm not sure if clout is the right word for what what banks have, it's more like a kind of lock-in because of having to sign a million pieces of paper to change banks, that makes people put up with a certain amount of IT inconvenience, coupled with the fact that usually the competition is equally inconvenient.

Re: Private client-side-only PWAs are hard, but now Apple made them impossible

#208

Post by henriquez »

snemvalts wrote: post #187
diegoperini wrote: post #165

I already have a comment on this subject in a thread here but I believe this should be stressed more explicitly. Apple didn't kill offline web apps. You can always add an interaction to your app which exports the stored data into a file which then can be saved by the user. It can be done entirely on the client side as well. If anything died here, it is the implicit consent by the user for allowing unnoticed storage s…

So i can start to manage save files on my disk? in 2020?? this is absurd. apple should fix their safari bugs first before starting with this nonsense.

After the number of times my Firefox and Chromium profiles have been wiped clean due to browser or packaging bugs it's become clear to me that localStorage is not the end-all in terms of data persistence. It's always been a "best effort" rather than a guarantee.

Browsers offer a lot of useful functionality, but people increasingly expect them to be a replacement or substitute for an operating system, and in terms of being operating systems, they're all pretty lacking. Mozilla learned about this with Firefox OS (it was pretty cool though, RIP)

Re: Private client-side-only PWAs are hard, but now Apple made them impossible

#209

Post by gridlockd »

joeblau wrote: post #189
donatj wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This might technically work, but is an absurdly user-unfriendly. Name a modern game that required you to manually manage game state files, let alone didn’t have autosave. It’s a feature users expect, and they’re going to have a bad time. I don’t want to play a quick game on my phone and have to remember to save and where I am keeping my save files. I’d argue a far better options would be just to treat local storage a…

I don’t even play games but I wouldn’t expect a web game to store all of its metadata in my local storage. I would expect it to store data on their own severs and only store active gameplay information locally. My browser storage is not a game developers long term storage, its a cache.

It's not about metadata or "web games". It's about apps/games that can be used offline. For that to work, all the data needs to be stored client-side.

> My browser storage is not a game developers long term storage, its a cache.

IndexedDB is explicitly not a cache, it's long-term data storage for significant amounts of data.

Re: Private client-side-only PWAs are hard, but now Apple made them impossible

#210

Post by mattmanser »

joeblau wrote: post #189
donatj wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This might technically work, but is an absurdly user-unfriendly. Name a modern game that required you to manually manage game state files, let alone didn’t have autosave. It’s a feature users expect, and they’re going to have a bad time. I don’t want to play a quick game on my phone and have to remember to save and where I am keeping my save files. I’d argue a far better options would be just to treat local storage a…

I don’t even play games but I wouldn’t expect a web game to store all of its metadata in my local storage. I would expect it to store data on their own severs and only store active gameplay information locally. My browser storage is not a game developers long term storage, its a cache.

Why? Are you paying for it? To you, it's trivial amount of data that you can wipe if you somehow desperately need the 1mb, to them it quickly adds up to significant costs.

I find this position absurd, just like the suggestion that everyone should start programming complicated user hostile save flows.

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