Live data from Hacker News

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

andregarzia.com

411–420 of 927 posts

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

#411
An update from John Wilander would seem to confirm that this could happen in Safari - and they consider it a bug.

Of note, John’s replies also mention this policy does not apply to WKWebView or UIWebView, because they lack ITP.

https://twitter.com/johnwilander/status/1242882202301427712?...

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

#412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they had much better privacy / security policies Why is a PWA better from a privacy or security perspective than a native app?

This depends on many factors but a PWA can be inspected by third-party using the browser developer tools which makes easier to find out about its communication. You can do that with proxies and other heavier tools for native apps, but it it requires more skills than the former. Also the web platform is very private, you don't get access to files and many other features without user consent. Native apps might not be l…

I mean... hang on there.

The sandbox, while questionable at first, has slowly been improving and at this point gives the same features as the web you're describing. If anything I find the APIs more feature complete, albeit less well documented as... well, let's face it, this is Apple and macOS we're discussing here. ;P

I'll also note that "requires more skills" seems like a bit of a blanket statement to me. They're just different sets of skills.

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

#413
post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your browser is already caching a whole lot of stuff that you don't know about just by visiting a site. A little LocalStorage isn't going to hurt you. Cookies I get, but I don't know of any dark patterns with localstorage / the benefits are pretty great.

I asked about the dark patterns above and got answers confirming it https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22687214

I'm not convinced that actually confirms much.

One of the pages linked there just says local storage is used to store stuff... yeah? It's still not as wide open as cookies.

You could use local storage while doing other things, but i'm not convinced it's a serious issue with tracking or etc. ... and if ANY storage is considered an issue I think we're in for a big snowball effect on what we should or shouldn't allow from ... anything, including native apps, etc.

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

#414
post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they had much better privacy / security policies Why is a PWA better from a privacy or security perspective than a native app?

Security: it runs in the browser's sandbox. Native apps by contrast generally have (or can request) full access to your system.

The macOS sandbox exists to mitigate this. The system also goes out of its way to let you know you're running an un-sandboxed-app.

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

#415
post #383

Workaround: encode your app's state into window.location.hash

I've seen this before on an ecommerce site :sigh:

Wife: Hey, check out this! [link with embedded state]

Me: Wow, I'm logged in as you and can even see your payment information! Let's not buy from this site!

Let's not do this. Ever.

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

#416

What’s wrong with a “normal” app? No server required and data stays only on the device. The argument that the author is building a PWA because other people abuse privacy (with apps) doesn’t make much sense. Why not build the app, respect privacy, and be done with it? LocalStorage is not a substitute for an actual database, it’s a cache. The problem with the author’s technique is that privacy minded users clear their…

A normal app requires a separate build process, users to install it, manual review for each update, perhaps the platform owner will just deny it without reason, and for Mac/iOS it also requires actually owning or "borrowing" (using another persons/companies) build machine and software.

I don't understand why an installed PWA should not be able to keep their storage just as a "normal" app can. It would clearly be better for both developers and users. There are so many apps & websites that could be more privacy friendly if they could just trust localstorage to actually be "storage".

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

#417
> deleting all local storage (including Indexed DB, etc.) after 7 days effectively blocks any future decentralised apps using the browser (client side) as a trusted replication node in a peer-to-peer network

Sounds good to me, I don't want websites turning my browser into a p2p node :)

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

#418

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.

You want all your important apps to migrate to a platform where their data is all tucked away in inscrutable filesystem locations that don't expire ever?

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

#419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honest question - If you're creating an app like that, is a PWA really the right way to go? Aren't there other options available (such as creating a native app with a SQLite database)?

Sure you can do that. But now you need a Mac, probably an iOS device and pay $99/yr to Apple. If you're just providing a small one-off solution for a particular problem that you're not monetizing, the above may pose a serious problem. For example, I (used to) maintain a tool that is essentially a save file viewer, but must store some data for decryption of said files. It's an Electron app, but could work as a normal…

[deleted]

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

#420
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

User not coming to website 7 days can't be invalid use-case. Losing important data simply because someone went on vacation is unacceptable.

So store this data on the server.

Would make our app non functional for users who have limited internet and also a huge burden of responsibility to store their data securely. We’ve always avoided hosting data as that’s a completely different ballgame.
Post reply on HN