701–710 of 927 posts
I don't understand why the title was changed - the focus of the article isn't just on the fact that WebKit is changing how it handles local storage, but also a criticism of Apple's motivations for this decision.
I was confused as to why the page in question had changed, but I realized it was moved.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
All parts of Apple's platform has had bugs that have kicked around for literally years . Their native SDK is infamously under documented and has all sorts of bugs https://twitter.com/caseyliss/status/1171778706878160897 The bugs in Apple's software, whether in web or native or in documentation are not part of some nefarious plot, its just a part of Apple's mismanagement and relatively minimal resources.
> relatively minimal resources Uh, they're the most well capitalized corporation in the world (or hovering in the top 3 plus or minus a few quarters). They have the resources to make it work if they wanted. There are undoubtedly thousands of engineers, hundreds of managers, and at least a handful of execs, working for Apple, lurking in this HN thread today, not because they're unaware of their ongoing sabotage of web…
The source clarifies that this only applies to websites run within the Safari browser.[1] PWAs added to the home screen aren't affected. > As mentioned, the seven-day cap on script-writable storage is gated on "after seven days of Safari use without user interaction on the site." That is the case in Safari. Web applications added to the home screen are not part of Safari and thus have their own counter of days of use…
But it's no surprise that Apple would want to impose an "install" step on the web to prevent it from looking more attractive than the App Store.
I agree, this is really stupid. Data should only be reclaimed when requested by the user or if more storage is needed on the system on a LRU policy per site.
Seriously, you should browse the web for a bit and see just how many "client side PWAs" you've used/installed, vs how many tracking identifiers have been installed.
I ported Polar ( https://getpolarized.io/ ) over to a PWA about a year ago. It's kind of a nightmare due to both Google and Apple messing things up. PWAs could be an amazing platform but both companies are really messing it up. Apple is trying to kill them by giving plausible explanations as to why they can't have PWAs. Security this, blah blah blah. There's no reason they can't have PWAs work well in Safari other th…
> ... Consumers are another problem. ... You blame Apple, Google and your consumers, instead of just making native apps. Why?
I hope Apple keeps restricting this in the future too so that iOS app ecosystem won't turn in to a turkish fruit market full of crap like Android.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
All parts of Apple's platform has had bugs that have kicked around for literally years . Their native SDK is infamously under documented and has all sorts of bugs https://twitter.com/caseyliss/status/1171778706878160897 The bugs in Apple's software, whether in web or native or in documentation are not part of some nefarious plot, its just a part of Apple's mismanagement and relatively minimal resources.
> relatively minimal resources Uh, they're the most well capitalized corporation in the world (or hovering in the top 3 plus or minus a few quarters). They have the resources to make it work if they wanted. There are undoubtedly thousands of engineers, hundreds of managers, and at least a handful of execs, working for Apple, lurking in this HN thread today, not because they're unaware of their ongoing sabotage of web…
I wouldn’t be surprised if Safari/WebKit was one of the larger teams within Apple dedicated to a single app.
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…
As a native app developer, I can live with this.
We don't want filthy legacy webapp shit, but 2020 high quality user experiences.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It could also be exactly what they say it is: a way to prevent the abuse of local storage for tracking.
People who want to track users will always find a way to do so, it's a endless cat-and-mouse game. Now they will just use cookies instead... The only way to win this is to legislate away the freedom to track users by using privacy-invasive methods. That's the only way that will work long-term. But that'll make half of the internet industry disappear, along with it's shareholders, so it's unlikely to happen.
In the linked article it actually mentions that this policy is being widened from cookies to the rest of script-writable storage.
Did PWA's take off? What are some famous/big PWA's now? I can't remember ever "installing" anything in a browser as an app, or even being asked if I wanted to do it. Am I misunderstanding what they are?
PWAs haven't taken off because Apple won't implement full Push API support in Safari thus forcing you to go through the App Store if your web site or application needs push notifications. The App Store then complains if you try to publish an app that just wraps your web site so that you can have push notifications. It's... infuriating.
Apple isn't obligated to implement every single "this is now cool on web"-thing on it's platform to satisfy small niche of people who will find value in them.
I ported Polar ( https://getpolarized.io/ ) over to a PWA about a year ago. It's kind of a nightmare due to both Google and Apple messing things up. PWAs could be an amazing platform but both companies are really messing it up. Apple is trying to kill them by giving plausible explanations as to why they can't have PWAs. Security this, blah blah blah. There's no reason they can't have PWAs work well in Safari other th…
- If I press the settings gear, the text on the settings page is about twice as wide as the screen, requiring horizontal scrolling.
- On the front page, if I open the color picker, it's partially offscreen.
- On all pages, if I do a scroll gesture in the wrong direction, it scrolls the entire UI rather than just the scrollable part. Admittedly, iOS has long made this hard to avoid without hacky JavaScript, but it's been doable, and it's much easier now [1].
- The hamburger button on the left opens a modal view that covers all of the screen but a small margin on the right, making it unreasonably hard to exit.
- If I try to create a tag or folder, the name prompt appears under the other modal view and is improperly sized.
- Oh, and the UI looks thoroughly non-native, e.g. Google-style floating action button, UI not covering the status bar, bottom tab buttons too short, etc. The animations are also haphazard.
My point is not just to nitpick. It's just that while I sympathize with the idea of PWAs in principle, almost every single time I see someone talk about theirs, the PWA in question has immediately obvious glaring UI defects that have nothing to do with browser limitations, and leave it far below the standard of a good native app, or even a bad one. I honestly don't know why this is, but experiencing it over and over makes it hard for me to care about PWAs.
[1] https://benfrain.com/preventing-body-scroll-for-modals-in-io...