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

andregarzia.com

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

#221

Post by aquadrop »

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…

And for what? To save space? That's ridiculous.

> If anything died here, it is the implicit consent by the user for allowing unnoticed storage space consumption

What about explicit consent? It also dies. That's just inventing problems.

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

#222

Post by diegoperini »

aquadrop wrote: post #217
diegoperini wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not allowing important data to be downloaded for cold storage is unacceptable.

Ok, allowing, then what? I still don't want to deal with export/import as a user.

I have a few suggestions in the comment section you may or may not find agreeable.

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

#223

Post by joshspankit »

donatj wrote: post #181
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…

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…

While I agree that it’s ideal to treat localstorage as a permission, as someone who has played a lot of games over the years I can tell you that I wish I could manually manage game state files.

The current way iOS does it (either keep the game installed forever or erase all your progress when deleting it) is a huge barrier to me getting invested in iOS games at all. With “save progress to file” (and loading), I would be a lot more comfortable.

I would still want autosave though. No way do I want to go back to the era of “oh all my work for the past 6 hours is just gone?”

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

#224

Post by pier25 »

Is this also going to affect web views?

For the past couple of years I worked on an education app where users are 90% of the time offline. Users can remain offline for weeks. There the is no reliable internet in most of the schools in Mexico.

I don't work on that company anymore but this is going to be a massive headache.

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

#225

Post by wildduck »

cageface wrote: post #89
robenkleene wrote: post #60

I’m guessing that Apple will start hindering web apps because the new mouse support in iPadOS is going to be such a boon to web apps. Because of sandboxing, web apps are the only cross-platform apps that can run in their full versions on iPadOS. I wrote a quick summary of the situation[0]. Therefore, since native apps are more of a platform differentiator than web apps, moving forward we can expect Apple to start sys…

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.

One can always rely on cordova/phonegap type of app with a C++ plugin to address this issue.

Personally, not having web app storing large amount of data is a good thing.

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

#226

Post by matsemann »

dev_tty01 wrote: post #155
shadowgovt wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a hurdle that involves de-anonymization of the user.

No, Apple offers anonymous user credential technology. Server gets unique identifier and ability to authenticate with no actual user info. Server gets an anonymous redirected email for sending info to the user. Apple is the intermediary. Of course, you can choose not to trust Apple, but Apple already has my info and their business model is not predicated on tracking and advertising. I'd rather continue to trust them…

But that's a solution for a single OS, for a web page that should be cross platform by default. And it's not really a solution, just additional complexity to what was a solved problem.

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

#227

Post by alerighi »

arghwhat wrote: post #4

Better title: Apple restricts tracking by limiting browser storage, which hurts my particular app. Browsers need to be severely limited due to them running arbitrary code from the web. Doesn't matter if it's an offline web app. If you want more access, make a native app (with or without web technologies).

Making a native app is more complicated than making a webapp, especially if you want something cross platform. Browsers are now an universal virtual machine, what was the JVM years ago, and with webassembly we will se more and more things done in the browser.

The real 'write once, run everywhere' are webapps, a webapp doesn't care if you are using Apple, Windows, Linux, BSD, whatever, if you have a compatible browser you use the app.

Sure there is Electron (or React Native), to me it doesn't make sense, what is the point that every application needs to ship basically a browser? And still Electron apps need to be compiled and packaged for every platform, while with webapps you enter the URL in the browser and you are done with it.

Doesn't adding APIs to browsers not only to use the local storage but also to access the filesystem of your device (of course asking the permission to the user) make more sense?

Of course what really Apple fears is loosing the control of the apps that gets used on their device, now they control the App Store that is the only way to get apps on their devices (beside jailbreak), with webapps is different, since you can access them directly from the browser.

And the thing that is absurd is that the first iPhone didn't have the App Store since Apple decided that the only way to get third party apps was trough the browser, now they are aiming for the opposite thing.

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

#228

Post by diggan »

tyingq wrote: post #182
diggan wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With cookies you can set the expire time yourself, as a developer. And looking at the list of the original blogpost from webkit ( https://webkit.org/blog/10218/full-third-party-cookie-blocki... ) it shows the following will be affected by the 7 day cap: Indexed DB, LocalStorage, Media keys, SessionStorage, Service Worker registrations Since cookies are not mentioned, I'm assuming it's NOT affected by the 7 day cap bu…

If the cookie is set by http headers, yes. If it's set with client side js, though, it's capped at 7 days (since ITP 2.1).

Interesting, I did not know that. Thanks for clarifying!

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

#229

Post by lcfcjs2 »

Abishek_Muthian wrote: post #164

I think looking at Apple as saviour of Privacy, is for lack of better term just wrong. They have always favoured closed systems even if didn't provide privacy advantages or as in this case was counter-intuitive for privacy. I feel the comparison of Apple with data companies such as Google, Facebook is by itself at fault. Apple like any computer company of 70's was not into data, just because Internet itself didn't ex…

Google is bad, and facebook is worst.

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

#230

Post by pier25 »

oefrha wrote: post #102
heynk wrote: post #69

I'm an engineer at a platform that makes it easier to build privacy-friendly apps. This means that all apps on our platform have app-specific private keys stored on the client side (in localStorage), and they never touch a server. With this change, you're essentially "logged out" after 7 days of inactivity. This is pretty a bad user experience. I honestly am not sure how to mitigate this. MacOS Safari might not be a…

Being logged out after 7 days of inactivity could be a little bit annoying but I can live with that, as long as I can log in again. I could be misinterpreting your comment but are you saying your keys are simply destroyed upon this “log out”? Then I’m not really sure why your platform was considered working in the first place, if it’s tied to a specific browser of a specific device and won’t survive a clearing of sto…

What if you don't have connectivity when localstorage is deleted and can't log in?

Eg: in a classroom.

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