Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Home Screen Advantage

infrequently.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 230 posts

Re: Home Screen Advantage

#101

Post by rezonant »

ThePhysicist wrote: post #84
JimDabell wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s incorrect. See the section Capped Lifetime For All Script-Writeable Website Data : https://webkit.org/blog/9521/intelligent-tracking-prevention...

That's only for tracking-related cookies/storage as detected by Safari, regular cookies e.g. for authentication or storage of app-related data are not affected by this at all.

No I think you are mistaking the mechanism that enables this policy for some kind of Safari magic that tries to detect the purpose of the stored data.

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Storage_API...

> Safari proactively evicts data when cross-site tracking prevention is turned on. If an origin has no user interaction, such as click or tap, in the last seven days of browser use, its data created from script will be deleted. Cookies set by server are exempt from this eviction.

It doesn't matter what the data actually is or whether it is used to track users. Safari deletes it.

Re: Home Screen Advantage

#102

Post by latexr »

underwater wrote: post #59
th4tg41 wrote: post #2

Off topic: This site is next to unreadable on my phone. Zigzagscrolling is an insult to the audience.

If Safari supported extensions then you'd have the ability to resolve this by installing something like Readability. If iOS supported other browsers then you could read it in a Chromium based browser, where it appears completely readable.

Safari does support extensions. And it has built-in Reader mode. And it needs none of that for this case since the website loads perfectly fine with no zigzagging required.

What Apple is doing sucks, for sure, but let’s not lose sight of reality and make stuff up or misinform people.

Re: Home Screen Advantage

#103

Post by fuzzy2 »

Devasta wrote: post #94

Its honestly a fantastic feat of marketing that JavaScript apps outside the browser are still referred to as web apps.

They’re not Javascript apps though. They’re HTML with Javascript over HTTPS, rendered by a browser engine and… oh wait, that’s a website.

Re: Home Screen Advantage

#104

Post by veeti »

JimDabell wrote: post #58
phartenfeller wrote: post #18

I think removing persistent storage and the ability to add websites to the home screen makes it obvious what their strategy is. The EU shows that they want interoperability for big players like they do with messenger interoperability in the DMA. The web is such a fundamental standard and its interoperability is so important I guess the EU will fine Apple for such behavior. The question is how soon this will happen.

> Removing persistent storage They aren’t making any policy changes relating to storage. Apple have been progressively locking down methods websites use to persistently track people for privacy reasons. All forms of permanent storage (e.g. cookies, local storage) are limited to a seven day lifetime unless the user interacts with that website / web app. If the user keeps visiting the website / web app at least once a…

It really makes me wonder what makes people engage in such pointless semantic handwringing like this. Your comment even acknowledges the end result: support for PWA's and as a result persistent storage has been removed. Do you think that end users care that you can make some theoretical mental gymnastic argument about how there hasn't been a "policy change" when from any practical point of view there actually has been one?

Re: Home Screen Advantage

#105

Post by JimDabell »

the_gipsy wrote: post #92
JimDabell wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> in practice it's against apple development directives. Most professional iOS developers use these kinds of services. They are totally commonplace and not against Apple’s terms in the slightest.

I feel you're being disingenuous. Close to zero professional iOS developers develop on a non-mac.

There isn’t a part of Apple’s terms where they say you are only allowed to use build servers if you are a professional iOS developer.

Build servers are absolutely fine.

Re: Home Screen Advantage

#106

Post by rezonant »

e_y_ wrote: post #85
theferalrobot wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we're getting technical you don't need to jailbreak to sideload on iOS either. AltStore automates the tedium but you can side load just fine on iOS too (for now).

With a 7 day expiration, max of 3 apps. It's more of a "developer account lite" testing tool than a bona fide sideloading mechanism.

A seven day expiration alone makes it useless. Why would anyone think side loading is supported when you can't open the app anymore after 7 days?

More likely to be iOS apologists looking for a narrative, they try it out and proclaim that it works, but have no intention to actually use their side loaded test app, so they don't even realize it only looked like it worked.

Re: Home Screen Advantage

#107

Post by JimDabell »

veeti wrote: post #104
JimDabell wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Removing persistent storage They aren’t making any policy changes relating to storage. Apple have been progressively locking down methods websites use to persistently track people for privacy reasons. All forms of permanent storage (e.g. cookies, local storage) are limited to a seven day lifetime unless the user interacts with that website / web app. If the user keeps visiting the website / web app at least once a…

It really makes me wonder what makes people engage in such pointless semantic handwringing like this. Your comment even acknowledges the end result: support for PWA's and as a result persistent storage has been removed. Do you think that end users care that you can make some theoretical mental gymnastic argument about how there hasn't been a "policy change" when from any practical point of view there actually has bee…

It’s not pointless semantic handwringing. I was specifically responding to this:

> I think removing persistent storage and the ability to add websites to the home screen makes it obvious what their strategy is.

Inferring their motives from a policy change that hasn’t taken place is pointless.

This would have been a reasonable thing to say:

> I think removing the ability to add websites to the home screen makes it obvious what their strategy is.

Specifically referring to the removal of persistent storage as if it were a policy change they are currently enacting is counterfactual.

Re: Home Screen Advantage

#108

Post by mdhb »

JimDabell wrote: post #70
rictic wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I didn't delete your files, I moved them from the bucket where they aren't deleted to the bucket where they are deleted, and then according to my own policies, I deleted them. This change is mandatory." It's a policy change that impacts storage and has the practical effect that PWAs on iOS in the EU have had the persistent storage feature removed with no replacement. Seems fair to gloss that as "Removing persistent…

> It's a policy change that impacts storage I agree. It has a knock-on effect. But their storage policy hasn’t changed, a different policy has. > Seems fair to gloss that as "Removing persistent storage." The problem is when you try to determine their intent from the misunderstanding that they have changed their policy specifically regarding storage . They haven’t done this. Their storage policy is the same as it has…

And yet pretending this new approach to PWAs is somehow business as usual is incredibly disingenuous.

Re: Home Screen Advantage

#109

Post by JimDabell »

ephemeral-life wrote: post #93
JimDabell wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apple's no longer a hardware company, they're a platform rent extraction company. Apple still make the vast majority of their revenue from hardware. All of their service revenue combined is only about 20% of their revenue.

Revenue doesn't really matter, you should look at profits. Amazon makes most of their revenue from the website, but pretty much all of their profits come from cloud. The tech giant business model is to dominate distribution and extract profits by self preferencing. Im sure apple's services division is a good portion of their profits.

> Revenue doesn't really matter

Grandparent is claiming that Apple aren’t a hardware company any more. Pointing out that the vast majority of their income comes from hardware is totally relevant.

Apple brings in hundreds of billions from selling hardware every year. They are definitely still a hardware company.

Re: Home Screen Advantage

#110

Post by pmontra »

veeti wrote: post #104
JimDabell wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Removing persistent storage They aren’t making any policy changes relating to storage. Apple have been progressively locking down methods websites use to persistently track people for privacy reasons. All forms of permanent storage (e.g. cookies, local storage) are limited to a seven day lifetime unless the user interacts with that website / web app. If the user keeps visiting the website / web app at least once a…

It really makes me wonder what makes people engage in such pointless semantic handwringing like this. Your comment even acknowledges the end result: support for PWA's and as a result persistent storage has been removed. Do you think that end users care that you can make some theoretical mental gymnastic argument about how there hasn't been a "policy change" when from any practical point of view there actually has bee…

You are correct but Apple might get away with that because those users bought Apple phones because they like Apple and those phones. Some of those users might also not like the EU but that's not important. They made an explicit pro Apple choice as customers and they'll defend their choice not to concede that they were wrong at trusting Apple. The blame will be on the EU. Those bureacrats in Brussels...
Post reply on HN