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

https://andregarzia.com/2020/03/private-client-side-only-pwas-are-hard-but-now-apple-made-them-impossible.html

by soapdog • 6 years ago

963 891 6 years ago

As the article explains, Offline Web App is being used to mean Progressive Web Application (the standard terminology).

(edit Turns out that's not quite right, see diggan's reply.)

From the article:

You’d almost think they had an App Store to promote or something.

There's certainly a tension here. I'm still not sure why more vendors don't make iOS PWAs to get around the App Store payment rules.

Perhaps related: Very roughly a year ago, something changed in iOS that broke the 2048 PWA. Its swipe-detection no longer works. A pity.

diggan17• 6 years ago

offline web apps are different than PWA. A PWA doesn't necessarily work offline, but more is independent from the connection / loading of it. I do think most PWAs do work offline, but doesn't mean it's a requirement to call it a PWA.

Similarly, an offline capable web app is not necessarily a PWA, as PWA carries a lot of features to it besides being offline capable.

MaxBarraclough3• 6 years ago

Good points. I've edited my comment.

lonelappde2• 6 years ago

What is an "off-line web app"? If an app never goes online and is sandboxed from other apps, then it never has any data at risk of exfiltration.

criddell• 6 years ago

I'm still not sure why more vendors don't make iOS PWAs to get around the App Store payment rules.

Because users won't use them. For users that don't have a technical background: if it isn't in the app store then it essentially isn't an app. For techie users: lots of us don't want web apps because of the power, memory, and bandwidth usage is often higher than a well written native app. The fact that there's a gatekeeper who has some control over what shows up in the app store is usually a feature and not a bug.

If there were big parts of the app ecosystem that didn't have native apps, then eventually users would find web apps. But that isn't the case. Think of anything and search for it in the app store and there's an app for it (including 2048).

MaxBarraclough3• 6 years ago

For users that don't have a technical background: if it isn't in the app store then it essentially isn't an app

I'm not convinced of this. If it has an icon like proper apps, and feels like an app, I don't think users are going to mind if it came from the App Store.

The question is whether the unfamiliar 'installation' process is too fiddly for non-technical users. I don't think it is. I figure a 10 second How to install our app animation would do the job.

vbezhenar13• 6 years ago

I'm still not sure why more vendors don't make iOS PWAs to get around the App Store payment rules.

One reason is because Apple have incentive to break PWAs and they will do it. It's not a wise business decision to act against big player.

arghwhat• 6 years ago

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).

m-p-32• 6 years ago

If you want more access

which is somewhat ironic, because the goal of a web app is to break free of the walled garden and become OS-independant.

akmarinov2• 6 years ago

No way that's happening on iOS as long as Apple takes 30% off the top

FpUser• 6 years ago

Which in a current situation is running a risk to fall into Google's walled garden. It is not there yet but Google's working hard on subverting the Internet.

fierarul4• 6 years ago

But browsers are severely sandboxed already. What the article is talking about is:

deleting all local storage (including Indexed DB, etc.) after 7 days

which I can see how it might help privacy (since you could be tracked via local storage too) but also how it might break any potential web app that might need data to last more than 7 days.

If you want more access, make a native app

But then, everybody will complain about yet another Electron app, right? Not to mention that you have to fork over $99 and go through the signing / notarization hoops that change from one week to the other.

I think in the name of privacy and security only Apple and some select few corporations will be allowed to make software in the future. macOS / iOS and Windows 10 are evolutionary dead ends in many ways.

DagAgren• 6 years ago

They do not "change from one week to another". They have changed, what, twice ever?

janoc• 6 years ago

Native app != Electron app (fortunately!) The less of that bloated slow crap the better.

george_perez• 6 years ago

7 days after Safari use without user interaction on the site.

_0w8t4• 6 years ago

Apple requires that all code-related assets for an app should be included into the app. So the app cannot just be a launcher that show a browser with a website.

kkarakk4• 6 years ago

More likely that apple and the other corporations are also evolutionary dead end and this is a temporary hiccup

codesections• 6 years ago

Apple restricts tracking by limiting browser storage

But the argument that this will protect privacy in the first place seems really weak.

Before this change in Apple's policy, an app could store my config data on my PC.

After this change, they'd need to have me log in and send the config data to their servers.

That seems like I've lost privacy, not gained it.

JumpCrisscross5• 6 years ago

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.

chrismarlow9• 6 years ago

Wouldn't it be possible to retain the data with privacy by:

- Asking the user client side for a password

- Encrypt data as a blob using some symmetric encryption (AES)

- Push encrypted blob to the server with login attached

If you're using SSO the client authenticates and then can pull down the encrypted blob based on the SSO auth being valid. You can tie 2FA in however you wish. At that point the user is prompted for a "data" password for that particular site. Or would there be an easy way to build a pki/pin cert type of encryption to eliminate the password prompt? (I feel like this is essentially what Keyring!? would do but maybe not?)

Outside of implementation weaknesses which I feel could be mitigated by created standard libs to do this, what am I missing?

Bonus points for pushing the data diffs only or even a version controlled blob (data stored in a git repo where only the diffs are pushed in encrypted form).

Edit: Or how about a local hardware appliance for your network that stores all data like this encrypted and pulls from there.

manigandham• 6 years ago

Technically local data is more private than contacting a remote server to download it again. I don't see that being a controversial stance.

k__2• 6 years ago

I know this is ad hominem, but your comment just sounds like "I make big money with native apps and don't want web apps to catch up!"

vbezhenar13• 6 years ago

If you want more access, make a native app (with or without web technologies).

Browsers usually ask for an additional permission in this case which would be a good approach. Your post sounds like "browsers need to be severely limited, so if you want to watch video, just launch VLC". It does not work this way.

zzzcpan• 6 years ago

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).

Native apps have the same problems too and such "severe" limiting of apps in web browsers still doesn't solve it. The only more or less privacy preserving model I can think of for native apps today is open source repositories with app distribution not controlled by app developers, like f-droid or repositories in various linux distros.

megous4• 6 years ago

If you want more access, make a native app (with or without web technologies).

How's installing a native app better for a random user privacy or security wise, exactly?

jrockway• 6 years ago

You have to send every change to Apple before the user can run the code. In theory, that allows Apple to do more checks than when the code is dynamically loaded from your web server.

kingo552• 6 years ago

With embedded SDKs and device identifiers that work similarly to third party cookies, they're not.

I understand it's changing too, but not as fast as safari.

IggleSniggle• 6 years ago

It must go through the App Store vetting process, whereas a web app can come from anywhere.

Wowfunhappy• 6 years ago

And, um, any other app which saves local data locally.

TeMPOraL• 6 years ago

It's not "limiting browser storage", it's making browser storage expire. TFA's example is just some random app, but this essentially kills the entire concept of an offline-first web app, and severely hurts the browser as an application platform.

_0w8t4• 6 years ago

Web apps brings nothing in revenue to Apple.

untog15• 6 years ago

Genuine question: what makes native ad frameworks different here? They execute with the same privilege of their containing app so surely they’re open to similar privacy concerns. Shouldn’t native apps have their storage cleared?

kkarakk4• 6 years ago

OR maybe it's apple's responsibility to figure out how that usecase can exist without security flaws?

As a customer, I'm tired of devices functionality being limited coz "security risks". Functionality that is arguably superior to native apps apart from the security risk.

greggman3• 6 years ago

Wouldn't making it first party only cover it? I don't see how this has anything to do with privacy/tracking. webpages can still leave long term cookies. The only way this is a privacy issues is if 3rd party iframes can use localstorage but just like 3rd party resources have their cookies blocked so to could localstorage.

Otherwise this has absolutely nothing to do with privacy or tracking.

alerighi2• 6 years ago

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.

badthingfactory• 6 years ago

My company created a web client for our chat software product around 5 years ago. The quality of our product has slowly deteriorated as browser vendors continually remove or restrict features that once worked fine. Just to name two examples: autoplay audio for chat notifications and tab throttling killing websocket connections and background timers. I understand bad actors are abusing these things, but they're breaking totally legitimate use cases.

We've been forced into an electron client and now urge our customers to ignore the web client. If we didn't have a small number of customers on Macs, we would abandon web tech altogether and build a native Windows client.

andrekandre• 6 years ago

The real 'write once, run everywhere' are webapps, a webapp doesn't care if you are using Apple, Windows, Linux, BSD, whatever

that’s not been my experience*

* unless you use some huge web framework to abstract everything and patch all the differences between the browsers

the_gipsy5• 6 years ago

If you want more access, make a native app

...and give apple their cut. Why not add permissions to webapps? Like location, or push notification... oh that's another feature that happens to be missing only in safari.

Just accepting these moves from apple as "in the interest of users" is naïve. Apple has a huge vesting in their appstore, and every webapp is a potential appstore-app that is some lost revenue.

I mean, maybe apple is right, and the web should go back to a readonly document-like format, like in the old days. Articles and links. Apps for everything else. But let's not kid ourselves that they do it purely in the user's interest.

pier2517• 6 years ago

which hurts my particular app

A big chunk of the web these days uses JWT and localStorage for auth.

bg02• 6 years ago

I really appreciate this link. I would have never seen this otherwise. It's kind of a disappointment for us on the enterprise side. Our main offering is an offline app where people are disconnected from the internet for weeks and we use localStorage to validate who they are. It's a bit vague about how this affects apps that don't use safari. Nevertheless, we might have to start to really think about the user experience here now that this update is out.

yohannparis• 6 years ago

Webkit's website says: "[..] deleting all of a website’s script-writable storage after seven days of Safari use without user interaction on the site."

It is not clear that a user coming to your website before the 7 days, even offline, is exempt of it.

bg02• 6 years ago

Yea, we actually don't use safari at all in our app. So this might not have an effect but it's pretty vague.

vbezhenar13• 6 years ago

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

diggan17• 6 years ago

Yeah, as far as I understand, cookies is the only storage method that will be left to use for long-term storage of user data. If I'm wrong, someone please correct me.

Edit: getting downvoted without any reasoning provided, so I assume I'm incorrect, there are more/less ways of storing data in the future for Safari users?

gsnedders• 6 years ago

Cookies expire in the same way.

tnorthcutt• 6 years ago

Not sure if this answers that, but: https://webkit.org/blog/8613/intelligent-tracking-prevention...

Cookies can either be set in HTTP responses or through the document.cookie API, the latter sometimes referred to as client-side cookies. With ITP 2.1, all persistent client-side cookies, i.e. persistent cookies created through document.cookie, are capped to a seven day expiry.

nradov• 6 years ago

Have you considered porting to a native application?

vetinari3• 6 years ago

Users are using other than macOS/iOS devices too. Most of them are not willing to pay extra for native app that runs on only one of the platforms used.

Touche4• 6 years ago

I've considered just not supporting iOS.

roywashere2• 6 years ago

To be honest, HTML5 LocalStorage was always different on iOS when compared to other platforms. The iOS browser localstorage is stored in /caches so it is cleaned when the device goes low on disk space. I found out the hard way, had a cordova app which ran on Android and iOS (and web) and saved an account token in LocalStorage. Some iOS users kept on getting logged out, mostly users with smaller size iPhones!

Now we store the account token in iOS keyring and that works.

ref: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/32927070/complete-data-l...

DaiPlusPlus2• 6 years ago

How do you use the iOS Keyring from within a PWA or website in Safari?

duxup6• 6 years ago

Yeah I've got a lot of users with very shaky internet and intermittent involvement with a given application (not using it for a month, more). This presents some serious challenges / impossibilities for those user's use of a web app when they're not online.

I hope they come up with some good options as this news settles. It's hard to see this as anything but even just a accidental push ('well you should always have written an app for the app store') to force folks to write a native app / participate in the app store.

yesimahuman• 6 years ago

If you're using Cordova or Capacitor this is why, at Ionic, we recommend never using localStorage for storing important data. Better to use an explicit filesystem storage solution like SQLite.

vanderZwan• 6 years ago

I would be OK with 7 days being the default with a permission model where I can grant a website longer storage time.

Actually, I'd be even happier if any form of offline storage required explicit user permission anyway.

m-p-32• 6 years ago

There's certainly a balance to achieve there. Too few permissions prompt and you lose control, and too many and you get desensitized or even worse annoyed at them.

marcosdumay• 6 years ago

There's no balance. You just let the user set any permission and make the prompts unobtrusive.

Aardwolf• 6 years ago

Actually, I'd be even happier if any form of offline storage required explicit user permission anyway.

Even offline storage that is only used locally? Say a game with savegames that has doesn't use online connection to play it.

Another example: a password manager.

SkyBelow• 6 years ago

I would say yes. The reason being is that exceptions will be abused, so it is better to enforce rules that everyone has to follow than to depend upon good behavior which the people we are trying to stop won't (almost by definition, because we wouldn't be needing to try to stop them with rules if they were already respectful of the social contract).

andrewla• 6 years ago

If there were a way to enforce that the application has no access to any communication system (network, inter-app, maybe excluding explicit copy/paste), then I would be happy to give it permanent storage.

But as soon as you allow it any access to network resources then carrying state becomes a liability.

layoutIfNeeded• 6 years ago

Both network usage (in native apps) and storage (both for native and web apps) should prompt for permission IMO.

streptomycin• 6 years ago

Even before this change, data in IndexedDB was kind of volatile - if a device was low on space, browsers could delete stored data.

https://dexie.org/docs/StorageManager describes the StorageManager API which lets you prompt the user to allow your IndexedDB data to be stored more reliably. My first thought after reading this article was wondering if this would allow an exception to the 7 day rule... but then I remembered that Safari is the only "modern" browser which does not support the StorageManager API

lol, sucks for users of my client side JS video game!

jwr2• 6 years ago

I have an app which isn't offline, but I wanted to make use of IndexedDB and LocalStorage to make things faster for users. Now I wonder if it's worth the effort to even try. I think this pretty much kills the utility of all local storage initiatives.

My app is an inventory control system used by businesses that build electronics (https://partsbox.com/). Deleting client-side data after 7 days is ridiculous. You can't assume that people will always log in every week, in small businesses or design/manufacturing companies there are times when 2-3 weeks can pass without building new hardware or touching inventory.

k__2• 6 years ago

CouchDB and Amplify Datastore do delta syncs, should this get around the problem?

If you put data in IDB, it will stay there for 7 days and then if it gets deleted the delta sync would just download it again.

kreetx• 6 years ago

I see two problems: - apps with client-side-only data, i.e PWAs served from static sites - delta sync, although useful, is little help when what the dev wanted was a fast start

diegoperini10• 6 years ago

Both your and Apple's concerns are valid. This change makes the fact (arguably) that these local storages are caches apparent.

Some web apps already saw the danger of having an easily purge-able storage on the client side and simply implemented an export function for their tools. I admire those tools more than the ones who overuse local storage for everything.

One such tool is draw.io, a flowchart maker. You use the app, persist everything in local storage and when you are done, you export your project into a file, all happening on the client side. When you need to edit, you import the file on launch. It's portable, it's protected from browser bugs/decisions and imho pretty user (privacy) friendly.

gok• 6 years ago

Your demo page is 3.23 MB. ~500KB is javascript, ~500KB is CSS and another ~400KB is web fonts. The parts database is 24 KB. That's certainly not the first place I would look for an optimization target, even for customers with very large parts databases.

jwr2• 6 years ago

With respect, I believe you are mistaken about what my important use cases are like.

Not going to go into details, but that JavaScript, CSS and fonts are all immutable assets, never to be requested again, while the database is significantly larger for clients who run their businesses using this software.

jimpick• 6 years ago

This is terrible...

I have a copy of my “DAT Shopping List” demo I last opened about 6 months ago saved to my iPhone home screen... I opened it, and the data was still there. I’ll be really sad when I open it again after iOS autoupdates and the data will be nuked.

https://github.com/jimpick/dat-shopping-list-tokyo

alexcroox• 6 years ago

Are we absolutely sure they don't just mean the localstorage containers that aren't part of the current domain? In the same way they are clearing cookies from a different domain, and not the ones that belong to the current domain.

EDIT: Clarification from a Webkit dev https://twitter.com/alexcroox/status/1242559843354972161

dangoor• 6 years ago

Yeah, if you look at the section in question, they're talking about this: "However, as many anticipated, third-party scripts moved to other means of first-party storage such as LocalStorage."

Basically, the ad tech/tracker folks were using first-party site storage to store identifiers, which is what Apple's trying to protect against.

oefrha5• 6 years ago

The argument would be stronger if the post got into what privacy protection in Safari isn’t available in the Apple News app. Instead there’s a seemingly random plug for a content blocker app I’ve never heard about, which upon further inspection happens to be sold by the author.

mathiasrw• 6 years ago

Why not let users give access to that one site use data older than 7 days? So data stays but its only being deleted if you click that it can access (first time only - next time it remembers)

flixic• 6 years ago

Safari already was lagging behind Chrome, Chrome forks and Firefox in a lot of feature adoption. This will only make it more of a "new Internet Explorer", a browser that sites recommend you NOT to use.

scarface747• 6 years ago

Good luck with telling people not to use Safari (or more accurately WebKit) on iOS....

EGreg• 6 years ago

You’re right. Tell people not to use iOS

https://www.forbes.com/sites/gordonkelly/2020/03/14/apple-io...

You Apple users will put up with anything!

(disclaimer: iOS user)

hesarenu• 6 years ago

Nothing to tell. They don't have a choice.

realusername2• 6 years ago

As a web developer, I spend as much time to fix stuff for Safari as for IE11, I consider them on a similar level.

twsted• 6 years ago

Normally when one said "the new Internet Explorer" he meant "the browser that was always recommended to use", "the browser that stopped innovation because it was almost the only one used".

donohoe• 6 years ago

I think it is worth noting that you can really say "Apple" is doing this or "Apple" is doing that with decisions at this level.

The company is just too big and not working in unison.

The Apple Safari Team is killing/hurting offline apps. The author asks why they don't take the same approach in Apple News - as if it is the same team that is in charge. Different team with different priorities and likely not talking to each-other.

I think the larger point is valid - but it better to understand that this isn't some cohesive cross-company strategy at play. Its size-able teams working on their own priorities within a larger roadmap (presumably).

diggan17• 6 years ago

As Apple is one of the most closed companies, it's hard to put blame on anything Apple-related as you don't really know who the teams are. Sure, WebKit contributors are visible as it's an open source project, but who is the "Apple Safari Team" really? And who is the "Apple News" teams?

Easiest is just to put blame on the top-level entity, which is Apple. They have control over their teams so they can redirect the blame if they feel it's needed.

And if this change is to be able to force more developers to build native apps on their platform, then it's for sure a cohesive cross-company strategy. But we don't know if that's the case.

JustSomeNobody• 6 years ago

I love these types of comments. They contrast very well with the “the reason Apple makes great products is because their hardware and software teams work so closely together to bring a cohesiveness that other companies can’t” comments.

meesterdude• 6 years ago

webkit is open source - can't this be changed (be it by fork, or a commit proposal?)

matkalaukku• 6 years ago

Sure it can be forked, but the problem is the millions of devices running Apple's version of Safari/WebKit on iOS without any say in it except switching to Android.

abrowne• 6 years ago

Sure, so maybe WebKitGTK will (if this applies to that version). But why would Apple choose to include this fork over their own version in their OSes? If they don't how do you plan on using it with any Apple OS?

starbugs6• 6 years ago

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.

IvanK_net4• 6 years ago

I have many useful files in my computer, which I don't want to be deleted. You are saying, that it is ok, if the OS deletes all files in my computer from time to time.

A local storage is the only way webapps can store any data in your computer (other than asking you to manually load / save some configuration file). Not all webapps can afford cloud storage for all user.

starbugs6• 6 years ago

I am not saying that it is OK to delete all your files. I am saying it has always been like that in the case of a browser's local storage.

As I said, that use case was out of the window long before. From the start, as far as I know.

No browser has ever given you any definite promise on whether your local storage data will be kept. That's also true for IndexedDB. So you need a mechanism to restore that data, be it cloud storage or something else.

If you wanted to support Safari private browsing, you even had to deal with local storage not being available _at all_.

MatthewPhillips• 6 years ago

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.

starbugs6• 6 years ago

Hint: they are a for profit company and want you to pay 30% of your app revenue. Don't expect any open web standard that can actually compete with native apps unless something in the market changes.

IvanK_net4• 6 years ago

It is related only to WebKit (Safari). So I think people will just switch to other browsers.

diggan17• 6 years ago

Except for iPhones/iPads where you don't really have a choice. Also most people don't give a shit which browser they use, they just use whatever browser is available when they get their device, which makes sense. But those users might soon have their data removed without really understanding why.

IvanK_net4• 6 years ago

So I guess more people will switch from iOS to other devices.

I am the creator of a photo editor www.Photopea.com and I see, that more and more people care about their browsers. They spend a lot of time discussing the issues of their browser with me, because they need to do a serious work in it.

things• 6 years ago

It's not super clear but, if I'm reading it correctly, the 7 days are 7 days of use. So if you don't open the site for 3 days, the counter is still at 0.

simion314• 6 years ago

Will this affect all browsers that in iOS are forced to use same engine?

robenkleene3• 6 years ago

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 systemically hindering web apps, especially on ones that are good on iPadOS, in order to boost native apps.

(I’m not saying this necessarily the start of this, but I am saying I'm not surprised. This is exactly the type change, targeting the exact type of app I’d expect to be targeted.)

[0] https://blog.robenkleene.com/2020/03/20/ipadoss-new-mouse-su...

cageface3• 6 years ago

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.

_0w8t4• 6 years ago

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.

wildduck• 6 years ago

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.

tomp• 6 years ago

Technically it's disallowing third-party JITs / executable data. Which is a good thing all-in-all.

TheKarateKid4• 6 years ago

Always ostensibly to protect users but always also conveniently putting webapps at a permanent disadvantage to native apps.

This isn't always a bad thing though. For example, Safari has prohibited some obnoxious behavior that Chrome has allowed: Autoplaying videos, tab suspension, push notifications. These hog CPU and destroy battery life, worsening the user experience.

Remember, making everything a web app is Google's agenda because they benefit most from it.

ChrisMarshallNY2• 6 years ago

As a native app developer, I can live with this.

OzzyB2• 6 years ago

As long as you start refering to the "i" in "iPhone" as Intranet and not ~Internet~ then we're cool.

illuminati19113• 6 years ago

As a navive app/web/backend developer and most importantly as an iOS user I can definitely live with this.

We don't want filthy legacy webapp shit, but 2020 high quality user experiences.

Veen4• 6 years ago

If this were true, how would you explain the recent improvements to Safari on the iPad that make it as capable as desktop Safari. Until last year Google Docs did not work in Safari on the iPad. Now it works very well indeed. The same is true of most web apps.

diggan17• 6 years ago

This particular move takes something that is possible in web applications today and makes it not possible in the future (offline capable frontend-only applications), making the gap between native applications and browser applications further, so developers who need to build apps that works offline on iPhone, will only be able to use Apples own technologies for doing so, in a non-cross-platform way. Which in general, is what Apple always been favoring.

Google Docs doesn't really work offline, so it's not impacted by this change. Could also be a change of heart from Apple, since their stance on web applications have changed before.

robenkleene3• 6 years ago

This is a great point with a simple explanation: How good Safari was on iPad was irrelevant before mouse support. Before mouse support, we had apps made with UIKit, which is a touch-first app framework, competing with web apps, which are keyboard-and-mouse first. So UIKit apps won, because UIKit apps are better for touch. With mouse support, that situation becomes exactly inverted: In UIKit apps, the keyboard and mouse are secondary, so web apps have the advantage in being keyboard-and-mouse first.

So now that web apps have the advantage, at least when a keyboard and mouse are attached to the iPad, Apple is going to be seeking to tip the scales back in native apps favor.

madeofpalk7• 6 years ago

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.

As a web developer, I've never believed Apple has hindered web development on their platform, purposefully or not. They just don't spend their resources adding in WebBluetooth or whatever new API-of-the-day Google has decided to come up with.

As I see it, their focus is on the user, which is why they've been slow to adopt APIs that are privacy concerns, or drain battery, or have other negative implications.

untog15• 6 years ago

That’s a very rosy way of looking at it. iOS has had bugs with its “add to home screen” webapps that kicked around literally for years. If they were being “user first” they’d support it fully or not support it at all. Instead they implemented then neglected it.

gear54rus2• 6 years ago

As I see it, their focus is on the user,

Oh and let me guess, they know better than me that I don't need this or that.

Let them suffocate inside their poisonous wall garden as the web gets richer and richer.

Silhouette17• 6 years ago

As a web developer, I've never believed Apple has hindered web development on their platform, purposefully or not. [...] As I see it, their focus is on the user, which is why they've been slow to adopt APIs that are privacy concerns, or drain battery, or have other negative implications.

As another web developer, I find this entirely unrealistic. Apple's QoI even for popular new features like the HTML5 media elements was a bug-ridden mess for years before they fixed even basic problems. Conveniently, having managed to break the de facto standard for serving video on the web that had been working for years up to that point (Flash players), that left native apps as the only reliable way to do a lot of even quite simple things you might want to do with multimedia content. There is a deep irony that some of the breakage was because they were playing those media elements through effectively a separate plugin of their own that wasn't properly integrated into Safari and consequently broke other basic web behaviours like cookies.

At this point, the idea that Apple's motivations for the constant breakage and even severe regression of web functionality on iOS devices are entirely altruistic and for the benefit of their users is about as credible as Google and Facebook lobbying for privacy regulations because they want to decrease tracking on the Internet.

saagarjha22• 6 years ago

The people who work on making websites function better on iPad are literally a 20 second walk away from the people who work in Intelligent Tracking Prevention–do you really think that they'd seek to undermine each other in this way?

LocalPCGuy3• 6 years ago

Absolutely, do you have evidence they are talking and consulting with each other? Obviously lack of evidence isn't evidence either, but departments do things all the time that are at odds with each other in companies like Apple.

_bxg1• 6 years ago

Which is strange, because they're already under scrutiny for being anti-competitive WRT their app ecosystem. Having good support for web apps could've softened that case a little bit.

phkahler• 6 years ago

IMHO adding more local storage via browsers was a huge step in the wrong direction from the users point of view.

heynk2• 6 years ago

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 massive market, but iOS Safari is.

Any thoughts about how we should address this change?

oefrha5• 6 years ago

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 storage which any user can do at any time for a variety of reasons?

heynk2• 6 years ago

No, it's not tied to a specific device. You can of course log back in, and keys are not "destroyed". We ask users to store a 12-word seed phrase, from which all other keys are derived from.

pier2517• 6 years ago

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

Eg: in a classroom.

true_religion• 6 years ago

From the article...

Heck, they could even go further and ban apps from corporations like Facebook, Inc., and Alphabet, Inc., that have violating your privacy as the core tenet of their business model.

If Apple were to ban the Gmail app (and obviously block web access via iOS too because that would be a loophole otherwise), I would throw away my iPhone, swear off business with Apple, and search dearly for a way to sue them.

I don’t love the walled garden iOS represents, I merely live with it in exchange for great hardware and UX. If the bargain changes to be more restrictive, I would turn against it in a heartbeat.

Thinking about that, is no surprise Apple is striking out early to make web apps useless. If they wait too long, they will become entrenched, and people will feel like they have lost something if access is restricted. Apple really wants to jealously protect its control, and more importantly ability to take 30% tax of every transaction that they can perceive.

aazaa• 6 years ago

The article doesn't exactly cut to the chase. Here it is:

"...But deleting all local storage (including Indexed DB, etc.) after 7 days..."

From the Apple announcement:

Now ITP [Intelligent Tracking Prevention] has aligned the remaining script-writable storage forms with the existing client-side cookie restriction, deleting all of a website’s script-writable storage after seven days of Safari use without user interaction on the site. ...

https://webkit.org/blog/10218/full-third-party-cookie-blocki...

booleanbetrayal• 6 years ago

I can't seem to find whether or not these policies and storage caps are implemented in a WkWebView context. Any idea?

jagged-chisel• 6 years ago

I'm confused, or seeing confusion, over some things in the comments here. "We don't use Safari in our app..." We're talking web apps: you know, web sites with functionality. You don't exactly have control over which browser your users use. And in iOS, everyone is using 'Safari' even if it's Firefox or Chrome wrapped around the rendering control. This means you have to assume that the policy affects any visitor from any web browser on iOS. Technically, the other browser vendors can siphon the data into other storage to their users' benefit, but I don't know how likely they are to do that, nor whether Apple would approve them with such changes.

Do you mean that you deploy a 'native' app that's really just a wrapper around a web view that would also be just Safari? Same policy applies, but now, you have the option, in native code, to siphon off data and put it into Real Storage.

themihai2• 6 years ago

Offline Web Apps were already weak(i.e. CORS restrictions). Now they are even more useless with this storage limitation. You can't really blame Apple.. after all, Google claimed that offline web apps are nothing more than websites so that's what we have... I don't mind if Safari deletes offline data stored by websites every week so why would I complain about "offline apps" ?

My point is that Offline Web Apps (i.e. PWA) that are installed on user's desktop should have a bit more permissions than websites but people in charge(google, apple etc) seems to think otherwise.

https://discourse.wicg.io/t/proposal-full-network-access-in-...

pier2517• 6 years ago

Read the article, it's not only about offline PWAs. All local storage is deleted after 7 days.

themihai2• 6 years ago

As for as "persistence" is concerned I really care only about offline PWAs. Why would a website need offline data after 7 days? It would improve performance, that's true but everything else should be "fresh" unless that said website wants to actually behave like an "app". Maybe the "website" should ask the client to be installed as "app" if the user wants to take advantage of persistent storage(and other "app" features) . Asking the user to install(which is actually just a kind of bookmarking for PWAs) isn't that much of an effort if the user is planning to use it regularly.

mfer• 6 years ago

This whole thing is about trade-offs.

If tracking companies cannot use cookies they can use JS and local storage instead. Then they can keep tracking people for long periods.

So, in the escalating war Apple alters local storage so that non-use for more than 7 days doesn't keep data along. It becomes less valuable for use with tracking.

The trade-off is that offline web apps become less capable and some use cases go away (e.g., completely offline).

Which trade-off is better for whom and in general? I've not thought to know. But, the trade-off is worth pondering. Whether we agree with Apple or not.

est31• 6 years ago

Offline web apps are direct competitors to apps from the Google play store and Apple app store. You can't expect Apple to be fair to them if they are missing out of their 30% for every USD of revenue on those web apps.

z3t4• 6 years ago

Apps added to the shelf should keep their data

dennisy• 6 years ago

This "feature" also invalidates the use case for WebCrypto API, since a user's keys would be stored in IndexDB, which now means keys cannot be safely persisted.

synfonaut• 6 years ago

Exactly this. Most "non-custodial" web wallets will die as a result of this change (some may even lose money/assets). Very unfortunate Apple!

endorphone• 6 years ago

Posts like these are much more convincing when they simply make a case for some allowance or some functionality, or point out the downsides. The moment they go into whataboutism or grander claims of conspiracies or ill intentions they fall apart.

Rational readers click back and move on. You end up just preaching to the choir.

This particular complaint is paradoxical because Apple birthed web apps, and has done more than anyone to make them a reality. Unfortunately they remain a very rare beast -- extraordinarily rare -- and are dwarfed by the privacy concerns of people using iOS just to browse. So the team dealt with that. Seems a fairly obvious pros and cons analysis.

Maybe they'll add an exception for installed to desktop webapps.

throaway9aaaapp• 6 years ago

Our company has started shaming iOS. We tell users that because of a commercial policy aiming to increase their revenue from their App Store, iPhones and Ipads "do not support the Web 2.0 technology enabling powerful experiences for web sites and web applications, while Android and Windows devices have been supporting this technology since 201x". We briefly explain in one sentence that it would not be the best use of our resources to try to bypass Apple's technological decisions but that they should contact Apple for further information.

We then link them to a $30-$50 Android device that they can buy on Amazon and use as a second device to use our services "if they are interested in a more powerful web experience". We provide a basic version to all users, but put a shamewall for advanced features. Best use of our time and resources.

It is time to push back, stop making Apple's problems your problems. Educate people without ranting and offer them solutions, developers have the bad habit of trying to cover up this kind of non-sense and taking the blame while really Apple are the ones who should be ashamed. If people love your product/service getting a $30 phone to be power users and make their life easier and their experience richer will not be a big deal for them. It's all about educating them the right way.

untog15• 6 years ago

What technologies does Safari not support that you need?

That’s a genuine question by the way. I’ve been frustrated by Apple’s reluctance in the past but since they implemented Service Workers things have gotten better. I still really wish they had Web Push but I do understand at least conceptually why they’d be hesitant.

tarkin22• 6 years ago

Web recording api. Only works in safari under a flag - they won't release the feature to chrome/firefox.

spzb• 6 years ago

Obviously I have no idea what your product is but if I got that message I'd just likely go to one of your competitors (assuming they exist). I wouldn't go and buy another device unless it was for an absolutely critical application.

theNarrative24• 6 years ago

It's a win win.

OP doesn't need to spend excessive money on developing for a Evil company, and those who buy their products can go to a competitor with a more expensive product.

Nearly everyone has at least one non apple product, so it seems like it would be a problem for a limited number of users.

OP, you are doing God's work.

shadowgovt7• 6 years ago

assuming they exist

And that's the real nature of the market, isn't it? If enough third-parties aren't willing to play by Apple's rules, Apple will have to modify the rules.

They're a stubborn company, but it's happened before. They've also been burned trying to own a standard when a common consensus exists they can't control before.

freehunter• 6 years ago

Exactly. It sounds to me like websites that refuse to load in GDPR countries. Good, if you can’t support me I don’t need to support you.

90% of software engineering (or engineering in general) is finding solutions for difficult problems. Throwing up your hands and saying you refuse to support one of the most popular computing platforms is certainly a decision that any business is free to make, but then again as a consumer I’m free to make my own decisions as well.

staplers• 6 years ago

Sounds extremely condescending and off-putting. I'd be annoyed if a company said this to me.

There is a lot to love about Apple products outside of a few safari restrictions. They're not perfect but better than a lot of alternatives.

jeffhuys• 6 years ago

Our company has started shaming iOS

Why isn't our product taking off?!

jbeam• 6 years ago

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

shadowgovt7• 6 years ago

... 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.

SifJar• 6 years ago

In addition to what others have said, I think the effectiveness of this likely depends heavily on the target audience - to a non-technical user, this will probably come across as lazy. From their perspective, everything else works fine on Apple, so you must be complaining about nothing.

Of course, if everyone did the same, people would start to realise the problem might be with Apple, but the chances of all (or most, or even many) big web services deciding to alienate such a large portion of their (potential) customers seem slim.

shadowgovt7• 6 years ago

It very much depends on the market.

In the general case, almost all websites and web apps don't need offline storage at all.

But the ones that do often need it for very business-enterprise reasons, and here Apple is taking a bit of a risk. I've watched companies hang onto old versions of Flash well past the sell-by date because for quite some time, it was the most practical platform to build a cross-platform videoconferencing client in. And once it's built, the opportunity cost to throw it away and switch to [OTHER_TECHNOLOGY_X] matters.

jamil72• 6 years ago

If people love your product/service getting a $30 phone to be power users and make their life easier and their experience richer will not be a big deal for them.

So you're suggesting shifting the development costs of you building a native / cross platform app directly to your customers? Does this work?

Hackbraten• 6 years ago

Are you aware of the poor security a $30 phone has?

sandstrom• 6 years ago

How would static "single-page" apps (HTML/JS/CSS) that store session tokens in localStorage avoid 7-day auto-logout?

Perhaps using something like this: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Credential_...

Anyone know of other Web APIs that could be used?

jdxcode• 6 years ago

might have to use cookies

aurbano• 6 years ago

Cookies are a lot safer for authentication than localStorage. The only problem with this change is persisting data for offline use, not authenticating the user.

tarkin22• 6 years ago

All moves of Apple's towards privacy are tempered with the knowledge that smooth, successful webapps hurt the iPhone's business proposition.

Apple want to move you closer into their walled garden with the prospect of enhanced privacy.

The idea that iPhone apps are more private than web app because Apple must approve your apps is troublesome.

blauditore• 6 years ago

Wait, does that mean that the only way to keep a login session for more than 7 days will be by using cookies? This seems like a terrible idea. Cookie authentication doesn't make sense in several scenarios, especially when working in a CORS context.

For webapps that keep a session token stored locally, this will be inevitably wiped, so users will have to re-login after that time. I can already hear the complaints coming. Should devs now build a back end just to keep the token, and connect there with a cookie?

garganzol• 6 years ago

Pretty much an expected move from Apple in its current state, shape and form. Security is such a sweet excuse for a tyranny.

Abishek_Muthian2• 6 years ago

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 exist at that point like it does now. 'Apple didn't choose to be in data' is projected as altruistic, instead of just a marketing ploy(they didn't choose, because it wasn't available).

Apple doesn't receive even the fraction of scrutiny Google, Facebook receive (which they should). e.g. iCloud hack, Apple's response to iOS vulnerabilities targeted by state actors, Newer Safari being incompatible with privacy extensions such as uBO etc.

Personally I feel good that Apple is not into data, just because I feel if they are into data; they might be more evil than Google or Facebook aided by their walled garden.

Arnt2• 6 years ago

This is webkit, which is open source. Apple took an existing HTML/CSS/DOM engine, rewrote it, renamed it, and opensourced its version, too.

It's compiled using LLVM, which also contains thousands of lines of open source code by Apple.

Of course you might argue that these examples don't prove your sweeping statement false, but please read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman before arguing.

testtesttest• 6 years ago

Open source is not the same as open. You can't run Firefox on an iPhone.

Jasper_• 6 years ago

It was open sourced as WebKit because it derived from KHTML, which was copyleft, and it took lawyers getting involved before Apple played ball and released it as open source.

diggan17• 6 years ago

I think looking at ANY company as the savior of privacy is a waste of time. Companies have proven time and time again that they are unable to self-regulate this. Only way forward is to introduce legislation that makes it illegal to track users using privacy-invasive practices, otherwise we'll never get rid of it. A company can be privacy-preserving today, but then the leadership changes or acquisition happens, and now they change their practices, without informing users.

I simply see no technological solution to this problem, it'll always be a cat-and-mouse game, until governments catch up and makes it illegal.

I'm eager to hear if someone here does have any solution to this problem though.

thefounder2• 6 years ago

> I simply see no technological solution to this problem, it'll always be a cat-and-mouse game, until governments catch up and makes it illegal.

Then you we will have privacy-avoidance companies just like we have tax avoidance. Problem solved!

FreakyT• 6 years ago

Agreed — Apple’s trying to project a high-minded motivation here, but their real motivation is likely to try and limit web technologies so that companies must still invest in native iOS apps and remain within their walled garden.

saagarjha22• 6 years ago

They have always favoured closed systems even if didn't provide privacy advantages

Yes.

or as in this case was counter-intuitive for privacy

I fail to see how this is counter-intuitive for privacy.

iCloud hack

Targeted spearphising?

Apple's response to iOS vulnerabilities targeted by state actors

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20897368

Newer Safari being incompatible with privacy extensions such as uBO etc.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21025252

anchpop2• 6 years ago

I fail to see how this is counter-intuitive for privacy.

It makes it impossible to have an app that stores data in localstorage reliably, instead requiring it to be backed up on the app's servers.

millstone3• 6 years ago

When you use Apple Maps, Apple doesn't know who you are, where you go. There's not even a way to sign in.

It's not incompetence. When you request a route, your iPhone breaks up the request into separate, unrelated segments so Apple doesn't even know your total route. They've done work to avoid tracking you.

Call it a "marketing ploy" or "altruism" or whatever, but the fact is that Google wants to know where you go, and Apple doesn't.

diegoperini10• 6 years ago

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 space consumption. Implementing an export function will automatically make your app portable, which is always appreciated I believe.

Most data on local storage is some kind of structured tree, table or blob. All can be exported with only little effort.

HTML5 games -> Prompt user with a dialog to download saves/assets after they play the game for a while.

Productivity apps -> Detect "ctrl/cmd + s" to prompt a save dialog. Add save buttons somewhere visible.

Map like apps -> Do nothing. If the user is not visiting the map for 7 days, they don't need the map data persisted either. If necessary, allow explicit save with UI buttons for people who travel often.

Apps/sites which use local storage for auth related artifacts -> Notify users if they click "Remember Me" and explain them the caveats. Allow for encrypted save if users ask for it.

Kiosks -> Use Electron or a similar tech.

I am open to counter arguments. I don't have any idea about how mobile browsers behave for the scenarios stated above.

Edit: I use draw.io since last year and the experience there is as refreshing as it can be in this SPA jungle. I use it as a good example to learn from for my own web app projects.

donatj2• 6 years ago

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 as a permission like camera or microphones.

joeblau2• 6 years ago

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.

diegoperini10• 6 years ago

Our suggestions are not mutually exclusive options. Both can coexist if the developers are ready for the implementation burden.

The issue with the permission model is there has to be a mechanism to prevent overuse which I believe is always worked around by annoying the user with the prompt as often as possible until they concede.

joshspankit2• 6 years ago

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?”

snemvalts• 6 years ago

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.

henriquez3• 6 years ago

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)

henriquez3• 6 years ago

Also you could sync data to an API and offer a login function. If the cookie expires, login and download your data again. This could be end-to-end encrypted for privacy, and having remote storage enables other clients to login and access the same data. Either way it's wise to have some kind of persistence option beyond just cookies and localStorage.

It's annoying how far Apple is behind Mozilla and Google when it comes to progressive web app functionality, but I don't think their action is as user-hostile as is being raised here.

kristiandupont• 6 years ago

I don't have any idea about how mobile browsers behave for the scenarios stated above.

That's the problem, it won't work there. Apples support for PWA's is frustrating to say the least.

It's fair that you might need consent from the user before storing and keeping large amounts of data, but by removing the option you are forcing a bunch of developers to make a native app instead of a webapp which I find quite infuriating.

duxup6• 6 years ago

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.

But... why? Drag the user through some dialogue to save a file locally / manage / be responsible for that and then deal with that whole deal? That seems like very... old / unnecessary.

The fact that applications store some random things locally to me is neither surprising nor a hassle. Browsers already cache files and etc. Unless I don't know something... LocalStorage and other non cookie options seem just fine / safe.

I get the concerns about cookies and such but this seems a step beyond what is needed into the realm of unnecessary / a hassle for the user.

Maybe I'm missing some bad patterns / dark patterns using LocalStorage and etc but it seems to throw them out with the bathwater.

diegoperini10• 6 years ago

This is a valid argument.

Here is a fun idea that just came to me (trying to find middle ground here):

- Allow localStorage writes automatically, persist forever (choose your favorite definition for "forever").

- Allow localStorage reads automatically for 7 old.

- Prompt permission dialog if last read from localStorage is at least 7 days long.

pier2517• 6 years ago

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

alerighi2• 6 years ago

Doesn't make sense, just ask the permission to use the local storage to the user if that is the deal.

But that is not the deal, the deal is that they fear that more and more developers are moving to webapps instead of developing native apps that need to pass trough the App Store and thus be approved by Apple, and they don't like that.

megous4• 6 years ago

- Give user the option whether to enable "unlimited" storage on per-domain basis. There's already a standrad API for that.

aquadrop2• 6 years ago

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.

diegoperini10• 6 years ago

Implicit consent is lack of explicit consent so yes, apple fixed the problem by inventing another one. The thing is, this new problem of missing the explicit consent is easier to fix than going all in with the implicit approach. Not sure if Apple will follow though.

floatingatoll2• 6 years ago

It seems like the Storage Standard [1] could be combined with the writeable-files proposal [2] to permit the same sort of behavior for local files-on-disk webapps as mobile apps receive, where they can download large asset files and store them on disk in a persistent cache:

https://storage.spec.whatwg.org

https://wicg.github.io/native-file-system/

gridlockd11• 6 years ago

Dear lord, I hope you don't have any UX design responsibilies.

Apple didn't kill offline web apps.

Yes, they did. For an app to work offline, you need to be able to at least cache the app itself. If that gets wiped after seven days, you can't call your app "offline capable".

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

What about the "implicit consent" that bandwidth is being consumed?

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.

That would be awful. Imagine being prompted to import your data every time you launch it.

Maybe that sort of works with document-centric apps that have no persistent settings, but even then it wouldn't be possible to integrate properly into the file system in the way users would expect (file assocations).

HTML5 games -> Prompt user with a dialog to download saves/assets after they play the game for a while.

More like constantly reminding the user that their valuable progress gets wiped after seven days, should they make the poor choice to run the app offline.

Productivity apps -> Detect "ctrl/cmd + s" to prompt a save dialog. Add save buttons somewhere visible.

Same as above, except the data might be even more valuable.

Apps/sites which use local storage for auth related artifacts -> Notify users if they click "Remember Me" and explain them the caveats.

"I'm sorry, we made a decision to write an app with technology that, in hindsight, we shouldn't have used. Therefore, your user experience will now be more annoying. Thanks for sticking with us while we're rewriting the app!"

diegoperini10• 6 years ago

Your response sound a little angry but maybe the tone is lost in the text so I will respond in good faith.

I hope you don't have any UX design responsibilies.

I don't. We are safe. :)

For an app to work offline, you need to be able to at least cache the app itself.

You can still do it, for a limited time. Your mission critical app will work offline if you are not planning to isolate your device from the internet forever. I know this doesn't solve the issue but I believe it is the lesser evil.

What about the "implicit consent" that bandwidth is being consumed?

This always bugged me as well. This is unexplored territory for all browsers if I am not mistaken.

Imagine being prompted to import your data every time you launch it.

I don't have to. I use draw.io excessively and it prompts me every single time. I actually appreciate the experience but I am a sample size of 1.

More like constantly reminding the user that their valuable progress gets wiped after seven days, should they make the poor choice to run the app offline.

If it is valuable, maybe browser is not the best medium for it. Here, Apple's anti-consumer practice with its App Store becomes more relevant than Safari's localStorage algorithms.

"I'm sorry, we made a decision to write an app with technology that, in hindsight, we shouldn't have used. Therefore, your user experience will now be more annoying. Thanks for choosing sticking with us while we're rewriting the app!"

"In order for 'Remember Me' to work as you expect, please visit us every once in while <3"

floatingatoll2• 6 years ago

Perhaps the author doesn't realize that WebKit is open source. They could have used their screed to propose to the WebKit team that a first-party page loaded from a file:/// URI not have its client-side storage subject to the 7-day purge, by setting the "firstPartyWebsiteDataRemovalMode" network connection property to "none" — patch included! But they did not, which is quite disappointing.

The new change to ITP is here: https://github.com/WebKit/webkit/commit/4db42c1571d821572ea9...

The cookie filtering logic specifically is located here: https://github.com/WebKit/webkit/search?q=filtercookies

The file:/// handler is implemented here: https://github.com/WebKit/webkit/blob/master/Source/WebCore/...

(I don't have anything to do with Apple or WebKit.)

DiabloD3• 6 years ago

Apple does not use that Webkit branch, however. They maintain their own branch internally that cherry picks from upstream. Webkit could very well accept a patch, and then Safari never ships that patch because they disagreed with it for use in Safari.

Also, unrelated fun fact: Did you know Webkit still uses svn? That Github repo you linked to is a clone of Webkit's own git repo (git.webkit.org), which is a mirror of their actual repo (svn.webkit.org).

talkingtab• 6 years ago

A previous HN discussion about PWA's replacing native apps: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22554745

coffeefirst• 6 years ago

Great... So all those "consent to cookie/GDPR/etc/subscribe to our newsletter" popups will now reappear every time you go 7 days without visiting a site.

I'm 100% on team privacy but this isn't the right way to do it.

sneak• 6 years ago

A bit offtopic, but the following is my basis for interpreting privacy-related claims from Apple.

I noticed a text editor I bought from the Mac App Store, iA Writer, includes silent spyware that transmits your activity back to the developer without notice or consent (thank you, Little Snitch). Apparently, I "consented" to this in the Mac App Store ToS (right).

When I left a negative review on the app, their response was "we aren't doing anything not permitted by Apple in the App Store".

I don't use App Store apps any longer, and I take most of what Apple says about privacy with a huge grain of salt.

PS: OSX phones home to Apple in about a dozen different ways even with iCloud entirely disabled and all reporting/telemetry/feedback options turned off during the OOBE/setup. Try doing booting a fresh install of macOS with Little Snitch, but disable the Apple/OS exemption in Little Snitch's rules. I was astounded. Dozens of things.

I wonder if there's any major, widespread GUI OS in a default configuration that does not transmit to your ISP and third parties (including government snoops) when you open a local text file to write. I block all of these requests; most do not.

I am reminded of Winston Smith's paper journal.

thosakwe2• 6 years ago

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.

zeveb• 6 years ago

And the new title no longer has any relationship to the title of the post. And no admin (from what I can see) even bothered to let us know why he censored this.

edit: 17 minutes after posting this comment critical of moderation, I am unable to submit a new story. Coincidence?

thosakwe2• 6 years ago

Original article was here, in case my comment makes no sense now: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22683535

I was confused as to why the page in question had changed, but I realized it was moved.

gfodor• 6 years ago

We use local storage for features in hubs.mozilla.com when most sites would use a database, because we want to minimize storage of data in our servers to increase privacy. This basically will now force us to store this data in our database for safari users, eroding their privacy.

pier2517• 6 years ago

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.

matlin• 6 years ago

What we really need is a way for users to store their own data that has the simplicity of local storage but the convenience of storing data in the cloud.

It does seem that Apple intends to cripple web technologies in order to move developers to their native platform but this will likely do more damage to privacy than anything. All of the alternatives to local storage for simple mobile apps typically involve moving data to a third parties like Firebase, AWS, etc.

Simple apps that didn't need a server and could just keep data or user-preferences locally would now need to either create their own data service or pay for a BaaS which means moving your data out of your control.

This behavior leads to companies like Under Armour to house data they shouldn't have and puts everyone (150M people) at risk.[0]

[0] https://www.wired.com/story/under-armour-myfitnesspal-hack-p...

progx• 6 years ago

Then data will stored online on servers, i cant see how this is better for privacy.

ocdtrekkie• 6 years ago

I find localStorage a bad crutch, when storage accessible to any browser or computer would be better. I'm totally cool with this because magical storage in your browser is just a bad idea, especially when it requires developer tools to find and see what it is doing.

fredsted• 6 years ago

Feels like Apple is just continually making the Safari browser worse.

I think they just want to push people towards native apps so they have full control. Apple always wants control.

First they prevented plugins like uBlock, made it very expensive to create your own plugins, and now they're messing up LocalStorage.

pwinnski• 6 years ago

So Apple can't really care about privacy because:

- They have a News app

- They haven't rejected apps from Google and Facebook

Can you imagine what would happen if Apple rejected apps from Google and Facebook? Can you even fathom the outcry?

Apple News uses differential privacy and doesn't track user history, but yes, they do provide personalized News I guess? They must not care about privacy at all then!

If you're upset about a seven-day limit on local storage, okay. I get it. It sucks. But to claim Apple's reasons for this are invalid because they allow Facebook apps to exist, that's... weird.

davweb• 6 years ago

I think the original post is oversimplifying the new behaviour a little. If you look at the other blog post on ITP 2.3 [1] it says:

ITP 2.3 caps the lifetime of all script-writeable website data after a navigation with link decoration from a classified domain.

i.e. the 7 day timeout for local storage only kicks in if you've been redirected from a domain that ITP has classified as one that tracks users. So, for example, web apps that users navigate to directly will be unaffected.

[1] https://webkit.org/blog/9521/intelligent-tracking-prevention...

kevin_thibedeau• 6 years ago

When will Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager get onto this list of trackers? Lots of web apps are using them.

t0astbread3• 6 years ago

As far as I understood this is not a "list of trackers" per se but a "list of websites that track you when you navigate to another website from them" and people don't navigate away from the Google Tag Manager or Google Analytics domains because they don't serve content with links.

pspeter3• 6 years ago

I think confirmation in the blog post yesterday would have provided a lot of clarity.

t0astbread3• 6 years ago

Okay that's good but still, couldn't a domain on that list be weaponized against legitimate sites this way? For example:

- Somehow goodsite.com's user ends up on evil.com

- evil.com redirects to goodsite.com?clickID=1234

- goodsite.com's storage gets flagged

noobquestion81• 6 years ago

This! ^

Could someone please change the title of this post? It's rather inaccurate and spreading FUD... legitimate offline web applications are not going to randomly lose their storage abilities in Safari. Tons of people read this (admittedly hard to follow) blog post quickly and then took a nose-dive into their own hot takes.

Hoping Webkit pushes another of these posts later to clear things up.

saagarjha22• 6 years ago

They already have–the post referred above is old.

magicalist• 6 years ago

If you look at the other blog post on ITP 2.3...

why would you look at the old blogpost for the new behavior?

It's all web pages, regardless of classification or redirects. The new webkit blog post is quite clear:

Now ITP has aligned the remaining script-writable storage forms with the existing client-side cookie restriction, deleting all of a website’s script-writable storage after seven days of Safari use without user interaction on the site

https://webkit.org/blog/10218/full-third-party-cookie-blocki...

Or straight from the ITP lead's twitter:

Fifth, all script-writeable storage is now aligned with the 7-day expiry Safari already has for client-side cookies.

https://twitter.com/johnwilander/status/1242516001939324928

(with follow up replies on what resets the seven day clock)

brlewis5• 6 years ago

You're describing behavior from 2019-09-23

I see the same "oversimplifying" in webkit's 2020-03-24 blog post linked from the original post. See "7-Day Cap on All Script-Writeable Storage" in https://webkit.org/blog/10218/full-third-party-cookie-blocki...

BiteCode_dev2• 6 years ago

website.example will be marked for non-cookie website data deletion if the user is navigated from a domain classified with cross-site tracking capabilities to a final URL with a query string and/or a fragment identifier, such as website.example?clickID=0123456789.

So my guess is you are fine most of the time, except if you allow other sites to embed your content in their page. In that case, you should:

- provide the embed on a separate subdomain

- remove features requiring identification if the content is view embedded: attempting to use them redirect to the real site.

Otherwise ITP will mark your domain as tracking and wipe you after 7 days if your user don't interact directly with the site.

I have a hard time deciding if it's a good thing or not.

I guess it has the potential to be mostly a good thing, provided that:

- I understood it correctly, which I'm not sure, as their wording is not clear

- It's implemented correctly. Once the deal is done, it's in the wild years, fix or not.

- It's implemented in good faith. Apple wants to promote the app store and has shown to neuter web apps in the past.

I still have a strange bad feeling about this.

pier2517• 6 years ago

It's very confusing...

I still don't understand if Safari will delete a JWT in localStorage used to talk to different microservices.

pier2517• 6 years ago

So, for example, web apps that users navigate to directly will be unaffected.

I don't think that's true.

I asked the head of Webkit dev on Twitter and he said:

This time limit affects first-party storage

https://twitter.com/othermaciej/status/1242926762029285376

Aissen• 6 years ago

There are still people who believe Apple cares about the web platform, 12 years after they forbade browser competition on iOS ?

arkanciscan• 6 years ago

People who use WebKit deserve it

pier2517• 6 years ago

This won't accomplish much in the long term. Ads networks will simply start introducing server side SDKs. Websites that rely on ads will gladly use those to keep their revenue even if that means more load on their server.

shireboy• 6 years ago

Does this affect Cordova apps? They use WebKit and may store stuff like api tokens in local storage

dang2• 6 years ago

Thread about the webkit.org post from yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22677605

jwiley• 6 years ago

Is there anything to stop an application from touching the cache periodically (in the Unix sense of updating modification timestamps without changing values) on load?

If so, assuming the application is used more than once every 7 days, this seems like less of an issue.

andrewrothman3• 6 years ago

This is a serious problem for modern web experiences.

"After seven days of Safari use without the user interacting with a webpage on website.example, all of website.example’s non-cookie website data is deleted." (https://webkit.org/blog/9521/intelligent-tracking-prevention...)

Granted, this could turn out really well if the industry adopts another standard which requires user permission, overcomes this limitation, overcomes the existing limitation of LocalStorage on iOS getting automatically cleared when a device is low on storage, and overcomes the problem of sites being able to use up a lot of storage on users' devices without their knowledge.

I'd be very welcoming of such a standard. These could be good future replacements if the industry can adopt them:

https://chromestatus.com/feature/6428344899862528

https://wicg.github.io/kv-storage/

https://chromestatus.com/feature/5715811364765696

https://storage.spec.whatwg.org/

osrec6• 6 years ago

My comment from a similar article:

Rather than wiping local storage/indexed DB data after 7 days, could you not just make it an opt in thing, like the camera or mic? For example, ask users "Allow myapp.com to store app related data on your computer?". If they allow it, then give access to local storage APIs, otherwise don't. That way users can still have fully local PWAs if they wish.

As an ardent PWA developer, this change annoys me immensely.

finaliteration4• 6 years ago

I’m a little confused by this and maybe I’m missing something. Wasn’t localStorage always intended to be treated as a volatile storage mechanism for non-critical data and caching? The advice I’ve seen for several years says to avoid storing sensitive or critical data there.

Can PWAs not switch to using IndexedDB which seems like it’s more purpose-built for this use case?

No snark intended. I’m legitimately curious what the situation is and where any blockers are.

nicoburns4• 6 years ago

Can PWAs not switch to using IndexedDB which seems like it’s more purpose-built for this use case?

IndexedDB is also subject to the 7 day limit. Leaving no persistent storage for web apps at all.

finaliteration4• 6 years ago

Ah, I missed that in the original documentation and most of the discussion I've seen has been around localStorage. Thank you!

judah7• 6 years ago

In the original post from Apple[0] announcing these measures, they've listed all script-writable locations are subject to cache clearing:

- Indexed DB

- LocalStorage

- Media keys

- SessionStorage

- Service Worker registrations (I guess this means service worker caches)

[0] https://webkit.org/blog/10218/full-third-party-cookie-blocki...

finaliteration4• 6 years ago

Thank you for outlining that! I missed the impact on Indexed DB in my original read of the issue. It makes more sense, now.

judge20202• 6 years ago

Is there any evidence that local storage is being used as a pseudo-cookie way of tracking users? If so, keeping local storage saved while regular cookies are being deleted would defeat the purpose of deleting cookies for anti-tracking reasons.

majormajor• 6 years ago

I was in the adtech world about ten years ago, and localstorage was definitely one of the things used for "supercookie" stuff (along with Flash, etags, and probably other stuff I'm forgetting).

hosteur• 6 years ago

This is exactly what it is about. I welcome the move from Apple. Web devs can store state server side. They cry because tracking will be harder now.

soapdog19• 6 years ago

I'm the OP and I'm crying because I'm working on apps that don't have backend so that your data is yours and never leave your computer. This is now impossible for WebKit users.

JumpCrisscross5• 6 years ago

Is there any evidence that local storage is being used as a pseudo-cookie way of tracking users?

Yes [1].

[1] https://clearcode.cc/blog/alternatives-to-cookie-tracking/

marta_morena_23• 6 years ago

Whoever uses local storage as persistent storage doesn't understand what local storage is. 7 days is enough. Local storage is supposed to allow your app to temporarily navigate around connection issues, to not require "always on". You can never rely on this storage to be permanent, there are just too many ways to accidentally wipe it all and for the user there is no easy way to back it up.

Your offline app should ALWAYS sync to the server whenever possible. The only bad thing I can see here is that if you can't upload the data in time and the user then doesn't use your app for 7 days, he will lose what he last worked on, but such is life and why you should rather use real apps. Offline apps needs to work differently, they need to get permanent storage just for that app but only if the user explicitly choses to install it like that. Not every random page should get permanent storage on your device. This is the right move, Apple might just lack an alternative for apps you actually chose to "install permanently" ;).

rconti2• 6 years ago

What are private client-side PWAs anyway?

(proceeds to not answer the question)

Found the answer: Progressive Web Apps[1]

1: https://medium.com/@amberleyjohanna/seriously-though-what-is...

soapdog19• 6 years ago

Sorry, I wrote this blog post too fast because I was/am a bit angry and didn't notice my usage of jargon without explanation.

It is a “Progressive Web App”. Sorry for the jargon usage without explanation. Basically it is a marketing term used to place some new web APIs and best practices into an umbrella of a “near native UX on a Web App”. What it usually means is that your application is:

* Served from a secure context (a requirement for the other APIs anyway).

* Has an application manifest (this contains metadata about your web app and is used by browsers and OSs to add icons, names, themes, etc)

* Has a service worker (which enables your application to potentially work offline beyond what other cache solutions did in the past)

So with these in place, browsers can offer a “Install this site and an app” feature which allows the site to open in its own window, with its own icon and name on the launchers and home screens.

rconti2• 6 years ago

Thanks for your reply :) I recognize often articles are meant for a specialized audience and shared here without the author even being aware of the site, so it's unreasonable to expect that everything be described to a total neophyte, but sometimes I have to laugh at the buzzword articles that get posted here about how to implement foo in bar on baz, using a fizzbuzz framework running blarg, and I have no idea what ANY of those things are, having worked in tech for decades :D

nicoburns4• 6 years ago

I really hope the outcry about this is big enough to get Apple / Webkit reconsider. With service workers and improvements in browsers/cpus "PWA"s (aka web apps) were just getting to the point where they could compete with native apps for a number of use cases. And they had much better privacy / security policies. This doesn't completely kill that, but it's a big setback.

JumpCrisscross5• 6 years ago

they had much better privacy / security policies

Why is a PWA better from a privacy or security perspective than a native app?

judah7• 6 years ago

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

soapdog19• 6 years ago

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 like that even though Catalina is going crazy with the permission dialogs.

pier2517• 6 years ago

I really hope the outcry about this is big enough to get Apple / Webkit reconsider

I seriously doubt it. Apple has been undermining web dev for years.

wolco2• 6 years ago

It doesn't scale from device to device for settings or items that should stay for longer than a week.

Local storage should be treated as cache.. it may get refreshed.

What Apple did was fine. A backend isn't only for storage either.

soapdog19• 6 years ago

It is not fine if you're creating apps that don't have a backend.

finaliteration4• 6 years ago

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)?

wolco2• 6 years ago

If you don't have a backend and don't want to use sqlite or something externally you can't save your data with the expectation it won't get erased. Before this change someone could manually clear storage, running out of space could trigger erasing this, etc. Now things clear after 7 days.

If you care about saving that data forever don't use local storage. Just like don't expect cookies you set on the client not to be modified by the client.

gowld2• 6 years ago

It is fine if your apps use only 1st party scripts and not 3rd party scripts.

If your web application does experience website data deletion, please let us know since we would consider it a serious bug. It is not the intention of Intelligent Tracking Prevention to delete website data for first parties in web applications.

SahAssar3• 6 years ago

A lot of "normal" apps treat local storage this way. A lot of those apps are basically a wrapper around a WebView. Why does apple accept it there but not for PWA:s?

pat2man• 6 years ago

Sounds like the solution is to add the app to your home screen. I don't think its reasonable for a browser to let any site I ever interact with to store data on my device indefinitely

soapdog19• 6 years ago

Even web apps that you add to your home screen are subjected to this.

redindian75• 6 years ago

"Web applications added to the home screen are not part of Safari and thus have their own counter of days of use."[1]

From WebKit: [1] https://webkit.org/blog/10218/full-third-party-cookie-blocki...

A Note On Web Applications Added to the Home Screen

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. Their days of use will match actual use of the web application which resets the timer. We do not expect the first-party in such a web application to have its website data deleted.

If your web application does experience website data deletion, please let us know since we would consider it a serious bug. It is not the intention of Intelligent Tracking Prevention to delete website data for first parties in web applications.

nikkwong• 6 years ago

It depends on the context.. For example, I use an invoicing web app that stores previously created invoices indefinitely in localStorage. This gives me the benefit of not having to manage login credentials and keeping everything client-side. It also gives the site's developers the benefit of not having to manage user accounts or server side state.

Without being able to use localStorage as a long term store, I'll have to register for an account, have to deal with them handling my data, etc. Losing the functionality of localStorage as a long term store has disadvantages.

drkstr3• 6 years ago

Maybe it is because I can't seem to hold onto a device for more than a year or two before I lose it somewhere, but the idea of having all my important invoice data on a single device sounds scary to me. I would hope that localStorage is included in in iCloud backups.

andy_ppp• 6 years ago

Am I right in saying this prevents any embedded widgets that need to show a logged in version, i.e. comments or whatever...

sidhanthp• 6 years ago

I think this is a good idea. Developers should not be able to store something on my computer indefinitely without my consent. This doesn't apply to applications users add to their home screen.

This doesn't "destroy" the PWA ecosystem. Just makes a user's intention explicit when they save a PWA to their home screen, rather than continuing to use it within the browser.

From the WebKit Blog (https://webkit.org/blog/10218/full-third-party-cookie-blocki...) "Web applications added to the home screen are not part of Safari and thus have their own counter of days of use."

duxup6• 6 years ago

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.

judge20202• 6 years ago

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

briandear• 6 years ago

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 browsers from time to time, so they would be inadvertently clearing data they actually wanted to keep because who uses LocalStorage as a persistent data store? Sure it could be used like that as an “off label” use, but generally it’s used to cache what is persistently stored elsewhere or used as a means to avoid multiple network calls in the process of doing something (such as saving calculations, the results of which would be eventually persisted.) Local Storage should be used as if it were a session store rather than something persistent.

sj4nz• 6 years ago

The problem with a "normal" app is now you are beholden to the rules/regulations/evaluations of a third party that can easily decide without recourse that your "app" should not be in their store. Even if your app "is fine" every update and upgrade incurs a delay through the third party's reviewing process before your users receive it.

If the web browsers would provide _some API_ for persistent storage without yanking the carpet out from underneath developers this wouldn't be such a huge problem. There _used_ to be a file-access API but it was removed.

Personally, I think web browsers are too large a surface area to secure/keep secure and the world is probably going to swing the opposite direction to native, downloadable applications without the interference of a third-party store.

danans• 6 years ago

Personally, I think web browsers are too large a surface area to secure/keep secure and the world is probably going to swing the opposite direction to native, downloadable applications without the interference of a third-party store.

Wait, you think downloadable native apps without any intermediary to validate them is more secure? What you're describing is basically the old shareware system, which was riddled with security issues.

SahAssar3• 6 years ago

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".

alkonaut4• 6 years ago

Those sound like problems for the developer, and not the end user.

chrisshroba• 6 years ago

Does this also mean you'll have to re-login to websites every 7 days? (Sorry, not very familiar with web tech!)

icebraining5• 6 years ago

No, you'll have to re-login only if you haven't been to the site in the last 7 days.

thehappypm2• 6 years ago

Maybe I'm being cynical here -- I'm not a web developer but have lots of experiencing managing web-based products -- but if you want to have state you should store it in the cloud, because local devices are volatile. Xbox Live, for example, uses a fairly simple service for cloud saves for games; local saves still happen but any developer has the option to push saves to the cloud. The author definitely raises good points about how it's easier for developers to not have to worry about it, but cloud saves have some hefty benefits, like multi device support, user getting a new device, etc.

duxup6• 6 years ago

The problem is (at least for me) offline apps, or for customers who have poor or intermittent / unpredictable internet access.

They threw LocalStorage and etc out with the bathwater that are cookies.

thehappypm2• 6 years ago

Rightfully so. We won't have a cookieless world if the entire tracking industry basically just switches to LocalStorage when cookies finally die. Enough whack-a-mole.

deedubaya• 6 years ago

Yes, you're correct, but have you ever used an app that worked offline or performed well with a poor network connection? Or a website maybe provided wicked fast data access despite only having a 2G connection?

These technologies can be leveraged to improve usability. Unfortunately, advertisers and 3rd party trackers make it so we can't have nice things.

mattl• 6 years ago

By now, most people are aware of the amount of surveillance and tracking that their web usage is subject to on a daily basis and how this data can be used in ways that do not match their own personal values.

Sorry, but no way.

szc2• 6 years ago

The data for "Local Storage" is stored in ~/Library/Safari/Databases -- you will need to give Terminal access to the Safari directory as the current Sandboxing works both ways, Safari stores security config info in this directory and scripted malware could / can exfiltrate data and change values in this location.

To violate privacy (aka enable tracking) a sub-iFrame could be set up that uses "local storage" with a parent page security policy that allows communication across the iFrame boundary. Sorry, yes, I am being a bit vague.

Who cleans up ~/Library/Safari/Databases? I personally see crud in this directory from 2011 that has been migrated from older systems.

Almost not relevant now, but Flash also had a "local storage" system that was shared across all Flash Apps. It also allowed (before sandboxing) local apps to proxy and communicate (via shared memory) with any standalone Flash App on the system through any page that used the Flash plugin -- i.e any running web browser, violating all attempts to have web compartmentalization rules.

szc2• 6 years ago

I think some threads have been merged. I am now seeing some posts that confirm what I say above, but were made earlier in time that I had not seen. My experience and perspective is from security and privacy defense, rather than "find the loophole". [edited for clarity]

sebringj• 6 years ago

That is terrible if you are working on a pwa game to cache assets offline. There should be some opt-in approach similar to location tracking in the background like some apps do. That seems way worse than simply having local data be relied upon. Not cool.

icebraining5• 6 years ago

What's the problem with the client having to re-download those assets if they don't play for a week? Seems long enough that I'd expect a patch download on a typical gaming platform, for example.

bdefore• 6 years ago

Offline iPad kiosks

Jach2• 6 years ago

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

withinboredom• 6 years ago

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.

recursive2• 6 years ago

Not all data is sensitive data.

icebraining5• 6 years ago

That works as long as the user keeps the tab open, but if they use a bookmark (or just remember the domain), the hash part will be lost.

Jach2• 6 years ago

The hash part is not lost to bookmarks, unless Apple broke that too. If it was, no one's MEGA bookmarks would work.

KarlKemp2• 6 years ago

I don’t remember ever seeing this usage pattern in the wild? As far as I understand, it would always have resulted in data loss whenever users chose to clear browsing data. There also wouldn’t have been any natural way for backups or synchronization.

A browser plugin might be one way to achieve something like this. Personally, I really don’t care about the data my feed reader has, so I wouldn’t mind even public data storage backends, like gist. Or steganographically encoding my list of feeds and uploading it to porn sites :)

Animats• 6 years ago

What are private client-side PWAs anyway?

Good question. The definition of a "progressive web app" is vague. What they seem to mean is a web page which, once you visit it, is cached locally, and thereafter runs locally. The web page accesses various servers, not necessarily ones from the same domain as the web page. Persistent state, if any, is stored locally. The page gets its own icon on the home screen somehow, so it sort of looks like an "app".

Apparently "progressive web apps" are supposed to have a browser service worker so they can get notifications pushed to them from somewhere, although it's not clear why that's essential. That would seem to depend on whether the function performed requires being notified of something happening elsewhere.

Apple apparently dislikes this because they don't get to force people to use their store, with their big cut of the revenue.

Is that about right?

Does this only apply to pages read through Apple's browser, or does it impact Firefox, too?

JumpCrisscross5• 6 years ago

Apple apparently dislikes this because they don't get to force people to use their store

This is part of the motivation. The other is advertisers using persistent local storage to track users [1].

[1] https://clearcode.cc/blog/alternatives-to-cookie-tracking/

oblio• 6 years ago

Do they block native apps that track users?

soapdog19• 6 years ago

Does this only apply to pages read through Apple's browser, or does it impact Firefox, too?

This applies to WebKit, but if that decision sticks Mozilla might follow. Who knows... I hope not. Also be aware that Firefox on iOS is WebKit.

judah7• 6 years ago

Is that about right?

Progressive Web Apps are strictly defined:

1. The app has an app manifest describing metadata about the web app, enabling it to be treated like an app (e.g. it can be installed)

2. The app has a service worker, enabling it to work offline like a native app.

3. It's served over HTTPS.

Those are the 3 technical requirements of a PWA.

There's also the philosophical direction of Progressive Web Apps: they're progressive, meaning they offer the app's essential experience no matter the device, but enhance progressively based on the device they're running on. That is, more capable devices let the app offer more functionality without blocking out users on lower-end devices.

judah7• 6 years ago

On one hand, I don't like this direction from Apple because it's meant to boost Apple's proprietary app store business -- which directly competes with the open web -- but masquerades as a privacy issue.

On the other hand, this direction keeps web devs honest: local storage, service worker, cookies and other script-writable areas are meant to be temporary.

fomojola2• 6 years ago

I see nothing in any of the specs that implies local storage was intended to be temporary? You could argue cookies, maybe, but even that I'd dispute: it is a user-agent, I should be able to tell it "don't delete my stuff". I already have browser controls over my local storage: I can go into settings in every reasonable browser and flush that down the tubes.

saagarjha22• 6 years ago

Related discussion from earlier today: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22683535

WebKit blog post from yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22677605

dang2• 6 years ago

I think we'll merge today's threads. Any reason not to? Edit: merged.

saagarjha22• 6 years ago

I can't think of any, they're all the same topic as far as I can see. The WebKit blog post has a little bit about third-party cookies being blocked but everyone quickly moved discussion to the script-writable storage cap.

eyesee• 6 years ago

Would it be possible for Apple to relax the 7 day limit for apps that are strictly client side only? I.e. sandbox the apps to not allow access to any remote resources? It seems to me the opportunity to exploit a user's privacy would be very limited without exfil.

icebraining5• 6 years ago

Maybe, but it would only apply to a subset of PWAs. For example OP's RSS reader must access remote resources.

rapind• 6 years ago

It would be nice to eventually have a standard way (OS / browser specific) of asking permission to use permanent storage with restrictions. Could be locked down by domain etc.

chrisfinazzo3• 6 years ago

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?...

cmsj3• 6 years ago

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 :)

_pius• 6 years ago

This headline rewrite does a disservice.

It editorializes away the point of the post, which is that, according to the author, "Apple just killed offline web apps while purporting to protect your privacy [by forcing WebKit to delete all local storage after 7 days]."

jchw3• 6 years ago

Actually, Apple has crippled non-PWA apps. I agree that Apple does seem to not want PWAs to succeed based on my experiences with them on my iPhone, but on the other hand this effectively does not apply to PWAs that are added to the user’s home screen since the counter only runs every day Safari runs but homescreen sites have their own counters.

I worry that 7 days is too short of a period even then, but I do agree indefinite local storage does not make sense in most cases.

stcredzero• 6 years ago

Many web developers are turning to Electron in these cases but IMHO this is a waste of resources as the Electron runtime is not shared among the different apps running and there is only so many browser engines your computer can run before it has impact on its performance

Why? Why isn't the case that the code which runs Electron, and library code JIT-ted by Electron can't be reused by other processes on the same system?

restoreddev• 6 years ago

I guess this means Safari won't support persistent storage anytime soon. I was looking forward to it becoming a standard API. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/StorageMana...

OJFord• 6 years ago

Based on the table there it seems Edge had but removed support anyway?

bradgessler• 6 years ago

Do any lawyers out there know if Apple's sabotage of PWA's by their inaction or "features" like this could be considered anti-competitive behavior for an anti-trust lawsuit?

yaktubi• 6 years ago

Not a lawyer but probably not. There’s many ways to make an App for their platforms. Just because people want to use web technologies is an implementors decision.

alkonaut4• 6 years ago

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?

Macha2• 6 years ago

devdocs.io is the most successful example I'm aware of. I've never "installed" it as an app, as I don't use a browser that supports that (basically Edge, Safari or Android Chrome), but I've certainly relied on its ability to load without an internet connection for train/plane journeys.

theturtletalks• 6 years ago

https://appsco.pe/ has popular PWAs. They don't need to be installed, they just look and work like an app on the browser.

lucasmontano• 6 years ago

they really “look” like an app

shawnz• 6 years ago

The key is the 'P': Progressive. A PWA is just a web app, but one that takes advantage of features you'd typically see in a locally installed application like local storage, notifications, etc. This might mean it has metadata to make it "installable" in browsers that support that, but I wouldn't say that's a requirement to be considered a PWA.

soapdog19• 6 years ago

I'm the OP, I use a lot of PWAs. My main machine is a Surface Pro X and I don't have native apps (as in native aarch64 binaries) for many of the things I'd like to use. So, I'm using PWAs for Instagram, Twitter, Kindle, Pinafore (mastodon client), Spotify, and some of my own.

I was developing a feed reader that was supposed to be a client-side-only PWA but that's tricky.

alkonaut4• 6 years ago

What is spotify pwa offering that is an improvement over their regular web app? Is it offline streaming (downloaded playlists)?

andrewrothman3• 6 years ago

Off topic, but how is this experience using the Surface Pro X as a PWA machine? Does Windows / PWAs work well in tablet form? I was thinking of switching to a similar setup and using it essentially as you describe. Seems like it could be a really lightweight and simple computing environment similar to Chromebooks but still allows you to run traditional Windows apps as well if you need.

xingyzt2• 6 years ago

Do you know a PWA for Kindle? Their browser-based reader hasn't been updated for quite a while.

seanabrahams3• 6 years ago

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.

asadlionpk• 6 years ago

Seeing all the "enable notifications" popups on every site I visit, I am happy that Apple doesn't allow this for websites.

seanabrahams3• 6 years ago

Further, if Apple were truly concerned with the quality of the apps in their store they would free developers from having to submit apps just to support push notifications. Less time reviewing and rejecting apps, less "low quality" apps in the store, happier developers, happier users.

pgt2• 6 years ago

The only long-term solution I can think of is to build a competing hardware company, and that’s really hard. But I’m willing to do it.

illuminati19113• 6 years ago

Yeah so maybe try making a real native app instead of trying to hackaround with web sites?

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.

StephenCanis• 6 years ago

PWAs are also useful where you want visitors to be able to access a portion of a website while offline. I run a site that hosts audio tours[1] for museums and walking tours. I use PWAs to allow visitors to quickly download the tour onto their phone in case they don't have a data plan or a portion of the tour will not have cell service.

Apple definitely makes it difficult to use them effectively. For example you need to use Safari on iOS in order to download the PWA - it won't work if you're on chrome or another third party browser.

[1]https://www.youraudiotour.com

arendtio4• 6 years ago

How should PWA take off, when Apple with a high mobile market share refuses to implement basic APIs like the Push API and other browsers can't run their own engine on iOS? It is abusive, but who cares.

untog15• 6 years ago

There's a chicken/egg issue here. Apple's support for progressive web apps has been subpar, so it's difficult to justify the extra effort in making a PWA when a major platform doesn't fully support it. Which, in turn, means people turn around and say "why should Apple support PWAs? No-one uses them!"

woodson2• 6 years ago

Twitter’s web client is a PWA

judah7• 6 years ago

Microsoft will be releasing PWA versions of the Office suite.

Twitter, Instagram, Starbucks, Pinterest and more have PWAs as well.

tsimionescu• 6 years ago

Given that the OneNote web and Windows 10 apps don't implement Find&Replace (just Find), 5-10 years after their first release, I wouldn't hold my breath for usable Office PWAs.

Edit: the official help page on how to do Find&Replace reads like a joke until you realize it is very real:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/find-and-replace-...

koonsolo2• 6 years ago

Twitter client is a PWA.

alkonaut4• 6 years ago

Ok I think I'll have to rephrase the question: are there many widely used PWAs that actually go one step further than being a web app using a few of these APIs (spotify, twitter), and actually try to "mimic" desktop apps more (installation, icons, fully offline etc)?

drkstr3• 6 years ago

DevDocs is great for offline documentation, and is entirely a PWA. You just preload the doc sets you're interested while online, and they will always be there for you when you need them. Automatic updates can be enabled for when you come back online.

dubcanada• 6 years ago

I don't understand what the problem is.

I can easily go to the settings area and delete my entire browser cache (Remove All Website Data), in fact if you are running low of space it even tells you to do it.

Why are people assuming things stored on a browser are a good place to store things. Nothing stored on a browser should be assumed to be forever.

beering• 6 years ago

If you read the article, that's the issue the author was talking about: it's basically impossible to make an app that can store its data locally, instead of on some web server.

All apps that you download from App Store can live offline, where they're usable without Internet or trusting some faraway web server.

You can't make a web app that can do that, and to some people it smells like Apple trying to force developers to release through App Store.

mulmen• 6 years ago

I don't really understand this. If you want to make something local, make an app and distribute through the app store, that's what it is for. A web app on the other hand is connected by definition, no?

Apple forcing local apps to distribute through the app store is a feature.

DaniloDias• 6 years ago

Who are the “some people”?

Are any of them outside of chrome’s WebWorker team, or the community of devs that were suckered into a model that really has never gained traction for iOS?

I’m sort of sympathetic to the devs who bought in to the solution, but this looks an awful lot like a pr pressure campaign that is unhappy with how this affects googles disintermediation goals.

notduncansmith6• 6 years ago

If you read the update from webkit.org, you'll see that it's still quite possible to store data locally.

Link: https://webkit.org/blog/10218/full-third-party-cookie-blocki...

Relevant quote (emphasis mine):

Now ITP has aligned the remaining script-writable storage forms with the existing client-side cookie restriction, deleting all of a website’s script-writable storage after seven days of Safari use without user interaction on the site.

If a website hasn't been used for 7 days, I'm happy for its data to disappear and save space on my device.

Aaargh203182• 6 years ago

it's basically impossible to make an app that can store its data locally, instead of on some web server.

No, that is trivial to do: just make an actual damn application.

What the author is complaining about is that it’s impossible to make a text document that pretends to be an application that stores data in ways they were never intended to be stored.

arendtio4• 6 years ago

The problem is, that it rarely happens under normal circumstances. So you might build a logic which synchronizes your data to the server but rarely has to download it as most of the time it still has a relatively current snapshot. And the few times you have to download everything, it is ok for the user to wait a while.

But if you have to wait every time your last interaction is more than 7 days ago, the whole experience will change. And supporting a reliable offline experience will be very hard to build.

daleharvey• 6 years ago

I can delete data from my hard drive, why are people assuming things stored on a computer is a good place to store things. Nothing stored on a computer should assumed to be forever

riquito• 6 years ago

If you are distribting a PWA through e.g. electron the user does not have (easily) the means to delete the cache. Web app is a misnomer in that case, they are just applications running inside a somewhat hidden browser.

notduncansmith6• 6 years ago

I also don't understand the alarm.

There is no hard limit on how long things will be stored. Data in localStorage might still be stored for weeks/months/years, as before.

The only limit is on how long things will be stored if the user does not interact with the site/PWA.

If you are a website, not a natively-installed app, that I haven't "used" in a first-party sense for 7 days or more, I don't think your data belongs on my device.

Storage space can be limited, and any app I haven't used in 7 days should be happy to re-fetch my data from a server or convince me to install their native app.

To act like this is some nefarious plan by Apple to get people to build native apps instead of PWAs is absurd. If a PWA was written properly in the first place, this change will have basically 0 impact on it.

cloverich• 6 years ago

It is certainly a plan to further relegate PWAs because they directly challenge the monetization strategy of apple. Its an area where their interests do not align with user interests. A "properly written" PWA may offer things like not re-fetching data from the internet when you already have it locally, and / or not forcing you to create an account just to save some basic data (ex: A recipe app, a jobs search app, etc). Consider for example, saving a job search website as an app, and being able to search and save jobs without having to make an account. An account could be offered if you want cross device syncing, but is not required just to save jobs. Which is great because some users prefer to remain anonymous, and PWA's open the door to that type of thing (as a singular example).

This move is _an_ example of Apple's (understandable) hostility towards PWA's, but you must understand the context here: There is a threshold beyond which PWA's become a generally acceptable strategy, and the quality and diversity rise over time. Apple is preventing that with this move (and others). That's why people are upset. Moreover, the outcome of this will be more "native" apps that are actually just wrappers around web apps, that exist purely because some basic functionality is being actively blocked by Apple.

pier2517• 6 years ago

Aren't there websites you use less than once a week?

If one of those is using a JWT for auth in localStorage (something which is extremely common) you'd need to login every time you visit such site.

onion2k• 6 years ago

There's a big difference between a user choosing to clear their data and a browser vendor deciding to clear a user's data.

ravenstine• 6 years ago

That's like asking why people store files on disks when they could store everything in the cloud.

jjtheblunt• 6 years ago

Perhaps this style of app, on iOS devices, drains more battery power than deemed reasonable?

megous4• 6 years ago

How does this make sense logically? Obviously the websites that you use the most have the biggest potential and opportunity to track you. All local storage should be deleted for the most used websites at random times, at avg. several times a week, without any extensions caused by recent website usage.

If this is done for privacy's sake, that is.

quotemstr• 6 years ago

All local storage should be deleted for the most used websites at random times, at avg. several times a week, without any extensions caused by recent website usage.

No matter what browser vendors do, it will never be enough for "privacy" activists.

arendtio4• 6 years ago

What did we expect? I mean how long is it now that Apple refuses to implement the Push API properly (which in turn is a basic requirement for many PWA use-cases). They clearly try to use their influence to defend their App Store revenue. And to make it look good, they do it in the name of privacy.

wubin• 6 years ago

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. Their days of use will match actual use of the web application which resets the timer. We do not expect the first-party in such a web application to have its website data deleted. If your web application does experience website data deletion, please let us know since we would consider it a serious bug. It is not the intention of Intelligent Tracking Prevention to delete website data for first parties in web applications.

[1] https://webkit.org/blog/10218/full-third-party-cookie-blocki...

osrec6• 6 years ago

That's a relief. We've built our business on our PWA, which also has an offline mode. It would be annoying if we had to adjust it for (yet another) Safari quirk.

kstrauser2• 6 years ago

Except that by "Safari quirk" you mean "the way that all common browsers are heading".

Safari is the first here. Firefox is certain to be right behind them. Google, probably not, but I bet Edge does the same thing before too long.

gridlockd11• 6 years ago

"Web applications added to the home screen are not part of Safari and thus have their own counter of days of use. Their days of use will match actual use of the web application which resets the timer."

What exactly does that mean? So you use the app for seven (perhaps non-consecutive) days, and now all third parties that haven't been, uh, interacted with, get their data wiped - but not the the first party, because that has been interacted with, by virtue of the PWA being launched in the first place?

I guess that solves the problem?

pcdoodle• 6 years ago

Thank you for the clarification.

untog15• 6 years ago

I don't think that's actually what it clarifies. Or at the very least it's very confusing.

have their own counter of days of use. Their days of use will match actual use of the web application which resets the timer.

This makes it sound very much like homescreen apps will have their data wiped after 7 days of non-use.

We do not expect the first-party in such a web application to have its website data deleted.

And this does not. It's a very confusing word salad.

gridlockd11• 6 years ago

Yes, it's confusing.

It's not 7 days of non-use, it's seven days of application use without visiting the site.

Safari is one application, the homescreen app is a separate application. Presumably, all the alt browsers or WebView apps are separate applications as well.

Since you can't use a homescreen app without visiting the site, the 7 days of not visiting the site can't happen.

gowld2• 6 years ago

Suffice to say that the author of this blog post should have spent less time congratulating themselves and more time clearly explaining the impact of this change, to avoid scaring off developers and users.

om2• 6 years ago

Home screen web app data will be deleted onlY be deleted after 7 days of active use of that web app without any user interaction, which is nearly impossible. So the whole premise of the OP is false.

dieulot• 6 years ago

A clearer explanation has now been delivered by Safari’s evangelist: https://twitter.com/jonathandavis/status/1243228885006708737

Data isn’t deleted after 7 days for home screen web apps.

btown• 6 years ago

If there is, as they say, a dedicated counter on those home screen applications, what is the threshold? Will home page PWA apps not used often (say, for infrequent uses like travel) have first party data deleted after the icon isn’t clicked for some time? This is highly unclear and confusing.

eyelidlessness4• 6 years ago

The deletion occurs if you use the app for seven days and don't visit the site. Pinned sites cannot meet those criteria and will not trigger deletion.

iameli5• 6 years ago

"Web applications added to the home screen are not part of Safari and thus have their own counter of days of use. Their days of use will match actual use of the web application which resets the timer."

But said timer... does nothing? Why does it exist?

gridlockd11• 6 years ago

I suppose it would still affect any sites you visit from within the PWA, for example through an iframe.

Also, it's simpler to have a timer that effectively does nothing than having extra logic to suppress it.

eyelidlessness4• 6 years ago

Presumably because WebView is available to other applications besides Safari and pinned sites, and they want to offer the same privacy guarantees to users for WebViews in apps as for Safari. Adding an exception for pinned apps is unnecessary because it's impossible to meet the criteria for deletion.

pier2517• 6 years ago

Ok but OTOH Apple is not helping PWAs by hiding the "Add to home screen" in submenus and not having an official API to show a banner like Chrome has on Android.

Edit:

Also what about desktop?

enos_feedler5• 6 years ago

Not having a way for web apps to communicate a call to action dramatically reduces engagement with this feature, no doubt. The only way I can see this from Apple's side is they see it as a feature for Safari users, not from the platform side for the web.

From Apple's standpoint, when you put yourself on the user's homescreen, that is a deep connection between that app and the user. Apple spends billions in each finding new ways to enhance and enrich that connection. IMO, their _belief_ is that building a native app to take advantage of all these rich and engaging ways is the best way to build deep connections with your (developer's) users.

Being an icon on the user's home screen is where deep connection begins, not ends. You might add a today widget, you might want to send notifications, you might want to add AR experiences. You might want a Tablet experience and allow hand off between these devices. Apple is invested in becoming a deep level of importance in a user's life. They want to share as large of surface area with 3rd party developers as they can. It would be irresponsible to promote an API that made developers have to start from scratch when they decide they want to go deeper.

modeless2• 6 years ago

As the article has been updated to say, "installing" a PWA to the home screen is an optional step that many people prefer not to do in favor of bookmarks or the address bar or the new tab page or whatever.

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.

madeofpalk7• 6 years ago

But it's no surprise that Apple would want to impose an "install" step on the web

The FUD here is getting out of control. "PWAs", that Google pioneered, are all about having an ‘install step’ to put the "web apps" on your home screen. https://web.dev/customize-install/

enos_feedler5• 6 years ago

It is no surprise because the whole point of keeping storage around is because you intend to come back. Pinning a website to a homescreen is clear intent. Having a tab or a bookmark does not make that clear. I have tabs and bookmarks open that I haven't visited in years. Thankfully Safari now kills tabs that haven't been touched within X time frame.

"impose" is the wrong word. I think you mean they are "trying to understand you and do the best thing"

the_gipsy5• 6 years ago

Good luck getting your app added to the home screen. It only works through safari, so chrome or firefox users are ruled out, and it's hidden under some "bookmark" or "share" menu that is too difficult to discover.

pfundstein• 6 years ago

Safari is the only browser on iOS because Firefox and Chrome are forced to use the Safari engine due to "security reasons".

jrs95• 6 years ago

Given that PWAs don't work particularly well with iOS anyways even if you have a PWA you're probably better off deploying it to the App Store via Cordova and prompting users to install it from there.

jmull• 6 years ago

Ah.. well, ok, but this is pure nonsense.

First of all, the various kinds of browser local storage have always been volatile. It has always been a bad idea to treat it as permanent storage. Maybe it's a little more obvious now? Not exactly a bad thing.

the PWAs I was building here might just be dead for iOS users

If so, it was already dead for your users, whether you realized it or not. I guess you were going to implicitly promise something you could not deliver: that your PWA would keep track of the feeds the user was subscribed to (and perhaps also keep track of what had been read, and other user state). But you were going to screw your users, because a PWA without external persistent storage could not do that reliably. It's really luck for your users that this caught your attention and has you rethinking your app.

A partial list of things completely external to your app (not including this change) that could cause your users to lose things important to them that you stored in various local storage...

    * user switches browser
    * user has multiple devices 
    * user upgrades phone (or tablet, or workstation, or laptop)
    * phone (or other device) goes in for repair or upgrade
    * major change to browser (like Edge moving to chromium)
    * some OS updates
    * user clears browser data (as innumerable troubleshooting processes suggest)

It's wrong to think browser-based storage used to be stable but now isn't. It never was. Browser-based storage was never going to be a good place to store your user's important, persistent data.

WalterSear• 6 years ago

This sounds like a death-knell for my personal project: a fully decentralized collaborative task/wiki, built on ipfs, and encrypted against your blockchain wallet. I had just migrated the backend from firebase, too, and was ready to re-launch the beta next week.

Pretty much any PWA that was using ipfs as anything but a caching/distribution layer is no longer viable. This is a huge blow to decentralization technology.

Sure, you can make a standalone app, but that is going to cripple already difficult adoption.

This sucks :(

soapdog19• 6 years ago

I'm coming from a decentralization tech background as well and was working on similar stuff. That's why I'm so angry at this arbitrary decisions by Apple. This is just them breaking something that has been working well.

chadlavi• 6 years ago

If you want to make an app that someone can use offline on their device, why are you making it as a website at all?

diminish• 6 years ago

Apple is at war against the open web and tries to kill it at all cost.

Most apple apps are privacy hogs which don't have any way to turn off tracking. In apps, Apple created a prison which noone can question and everyone will allow them to do all abuse. Look at Apple News.

burtonator• 6 years ago

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 than they want you to port your app to the App Store and get locked into their native APIs.

Google's problem is, well, they're Google. Meaning things are somewhat incoherent, docs are all over the place, they start new initiatives then abandon them half way, etc.

Consumers are another problem. They have no understanding of PWAs and they go to the app store, don't find us, and then complain we don't have an app..

The plan now is to use Google TWAs and port our PWA to Android.

We're going to do the same thing to Apple after we do the Android release BUT I think there's a 50% chance that apple will just flat out block us.

I think we might have a chance of getting around it if we use mobile gestures properly, use platform specific APIs like the camera, audio, and GPS that aren't on web and try to really integrate into the platform properly.

For example, they have an API to detect dark mode now. IF that's on we're just going to magically enable our dark mode in our app.

vosper• 6 years ago

There's no reason they can't have PWAs work well in Safari other than they want you to port your app to the App Store and get locked into their native APIs.

Is it possible they also want you to port your app to the App Store to prevent an explosion of garbage and malware that could happen if PWAs really took off?

jamiesonbecker3• 6 years ago

to prevent an explosion of garbage and malware that could happen if PWAs really took off?

You mean, like the Internet. The App Store is a nice, safe walled garden, like AOL.

franga20002• 6 years ago

I seriously doubt that. It's a lot more difficult to do horrible things with PWAs than it is with native apps. Apple has a history of doing everything they can to keep people inside their walled garden and this is just another instance of that.

heavyset_go4• 6 years ago

There is absolutely no reason that PWAs can't be sandboxed like native apps, or even more aggressively. In fact, native apps are more likely to be spyware, as they can collect much more information from the user than a browser-based app can.

b1tr0t6• 6 years ago

Hi there, I'm the product manager for PWAs on the Chrome team.

Very interested in hearing about pain points you've had building out PWAs, especially if there's features you were keen on that haven't been released. Easiest way to reach me is on Twitter: https://twitter.com/b1tr0t

Fully agree with you that docs are all over the place. We've started to consolidate docs under web.dev, and the PWA section launched recently (https://web.dev/progressive-web-apps). Consolidating and adding docs is an active area of investment, and our goal is to create a well lit path for developers to succeed with PWAs.

searchableguy4• 6 years ago

More background services would be very nice even though it's a bit of a security nightmare. A request was opened almost 5 years ago for background geolocation services.

Any plans for https://developers.google.com/nearby ?

I don't want Google or central authorities to decide which PWAs are "trustworthy" directly to ask for certain permissions but there could be a way or compromise. I don't remember which feature it was but it required yes from Google.

I really want the first screen after installing PWAs to be their privacy policy or detailing which permissions/how they use them. It should be mandatory and important or may show a default screen with permissions and few dangerous ways they can be used for.

hutzlibu2• 6 years ago

Well, it would have been helpful to provide a simple example of a working pwa.

The example at

https://codelabs.developers.google.com/codelabs/your-first-p...

was way too complicated as a first example, if all I wanted to know was how to make my app installable and is also broken as it uses some outdated tools. (don't remember the details)

Also, it could have been mentioned somewhere, that when you serve from localhost, you do not need SSL to install it. Knowing that, would have saved me the trouble of messing with apaches config and certificates.

So that was very frustrating as a start.

Much more helpful was a very simple hello world pwa which was barely installable. But it worked. And from there it was easy.

https://medium.com/james-johnson/a-simple-progressive-web-ap...

vbezhenar13• 6 years ago

Please consider contributing to MDN. It's the best source for web development and it would be great to keep everything there, properly cross-referenced, etc.

Razengan4• 6 years ago

... Consumers are another problem. ...

You blame Apple, Google and your consumers, instead of just making native apps. Why?

illuminati19113• 6 years ago

Yep. Just because "PWA"-geek niche at HN wants to go back to shitty UX from 2004 it doesn't mean all tech companies or consumers want to.

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.

PudgePacket• 6 years ago

So, make 3 apps instead of 1? This was the whole idea behind PWA.

marmada3• 6 years ago

"just making native apps"

busymom0• 6 years ago

As an iOS and Android developer myself, this doesn't effect me but I still think Apple and Google making things harder for PWA is bad because Apple and Google are the gate keepers for what goes on their native app stores. I can cut some slack for Google as they at least allow third party app stores but Apple doesn't.

Either Apple should stop being the gate keeper or stop making life harder for web devs.

quickthrower2• 6 years ago

Makes sense, they want you to create native apps so they can collect their rent, and also dictate what is in, what is out, and control searching of apps.

comex• 6 years ago

I tried using your app on an iPhone (with Add to Home Screen).

- 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...

jdauriemma4• 6 years ago

There are some fantastic PWAs out there. Twitter is the one I use most regularly.

I think one of the reasons we see a lot of less-polished PWAs is that the idea of the PWA appeals to businesses at certain stages. Larger shops can afford to ship native binaries to more than one platform, but a smaller operation can't. PWAs are presumably tempting to those types of product teams: you get multi-platform reach while truly only writing for the web. The fact that their UIs have rough edges are probably a result of having an MVP-stage product.

fragmede• 6 years ago

Are you sure that's not a catch-22? The reason you've not seen any good PWAs is because the ecosystem doesn't exist for making good PWAs, which doesn't exist because there aren't any good PWAs. Any sane technologist is going to look at the shortcomings of PWAs, and choose a different technology to build their app. Choose boring technology[0], and unless your product is a PWA toolkit, the app UI library isn't the place to get creative.

The single issue with PWAs, on iOS, is how do I add a PWA app to the home screen? I go to the app store and search... and your app isn't there. As developers we innately understand why that's so, but our users don't and shouldn't need to understand the difference.

[0] https://mcfunley.com/choose-boring-technology

dazbradbury• 6 years ago

Regarding your point on consumers, we put our PWA/TWA into the app store (for the reason you outlined) - and now get a raft of negative reviews that the TWA is the same as the mobile site... Which is frustrating, because that's the point.

Making it clear why a TWA is in the app store is hard in itself. Trying to explain why it's better for consumers over a native app + mobile site is even harder.

See these reviews for yourself here: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=uk.co.openrent

6gvONxR4sf7o2• 6 years ago

Consumers are another problem. They have no understanding of PWAs...

Really? You're blaming your customers for not being sufficiently tech savvy and not wanting what you're providing?

Personally, I am happy with Apple's decision here.

taway555• 6 years ago

I'd rather use a native app than a PWA any day of the week. The experience of a mobile web app is clunky, slow, typically ugly, and just a generally bad experience.

goofballlogic• 6 years ago

While I agree with the concerns regarding arbitrary implementation of standard APIs, there are still a bunch of useful applications of PWA technology to enable temporary offline operation.

The more we use these, the more likely the APIs are to be fully implemented (and hopefully have features added to them).

pgt2• 6 years ago

When suppliers do this, they put customers back into a buying position. Instead of defaulting to buying another iPhone, I’m back in a buying position. So let me ask: what is a good alternative to an iPhone Xs on the market? I was also super close to buying an Apple Watch, but now I’ll defer that purchase.

I have already stopped building native apps because the App Store process is so painful.

mr_toad2• 6 years ago

It’s always been impossible to rely on local storage for long-term use.

Users clear their caches. They swap browsers. They swap machines. They use their phone instead of their desktop. They use private mode, or sand boxing. They re-install their OS. They buy a new machine.

Don’t be lazy. Using local storage without a backup is not acceptable.

And what kind of ‘progressive’ web app expects all the features in every client? Have we forgotten what progressive means?

Don’t be entitled. You are not more important than your users.

lnanek2• 6 years ago

Based on the blog, it sounds like he wants to downloaded RSS feeds to the user's device, and not store them on his server to speed up development (all those complaints about FAANG being able to develop at web scale and him not wanting to run a backend).

Then, if the user clears cache or changes computers, they lose the stuff they were following and have to wait for new items, but it's not the end of the world. They might even expect it if you name/describe the app a certain way.

E.g. if you download an app called "Podcast Downloader" that says it just downloads any new podcasts from feeds you follow for your later offline consumption on your current device - you might not expect a podcast on your phone to magically jump to your desktop without a re-download from the original site.

Seems like it could be a valid trade off if it lets a front end only web dev publish apps he couldn't publish otherwise because he can't/won't do backend. Storing user media on the backend is not cheap. The company I'm at has spent months of developer time moving over from Google to Amazon, for example, just for infra cost improvements that come from serving terrabytes of data off one instead of the other.

rvanmil• 6 years ago

I do not understand why anyone would want to store anything other than temporary/disposable data inside their browser.

AndrewBissell• 6 years ago

Cedric Beust said on an episode of "Talking Kotlin" awhile back that he thought the Achilles' Heel for the WebAssembly cross platform story would be Apple moving to lock down their devices.

djsumdog• 6 years ago

I love that the app he wants to build is an RSS reader. I just did a post on why we should be making more use of RSS as individuals:

https://battlepenguin.com/tech/rss-the-original-federated-so...

Interesting he ran into the CORS situation with PWAs. It makes sense. It feels like even PWAs aren't that far off from Electron. Sure you're not launching another browser and can share a browser engine, but you hit other limitations.

I'd rather have a real, lightweight, stand alone app most of the times honestly. I wish people would write more stuff in Qt5. You can bundle Python+PyQt5 together for a reasonable licensing fee. A great example is the Resolve color/video editor is written in C++/Qt5.

awinter-py• 6 years ago

push messaging also doesn't work for PWAs on ios

(it does on android)

I get that controlling the walled garden is apple's mobile strategy now, but this is costing developers so much blood sweat & tears.

Both xcode and android studio are heavy + horrible compared to web, and the fact that you have to use both tools to release at scale makes them worse. Shopify wrote a dev post a few months ago saying 'we're react native as much as possible now' and claiming it makes life easier, but react native is worse than PWA because you still have to build for mobile 2x and deal w/ app store nonsense.

If PWAs supported push on ios, with or without cookie expiration, they'd be the preferred launch strategy for most non-game apps.

p1necone2• 6 years ago

Hasn't aggressively controlling the walled garden always been Apples strategy? I don't see them changing any time soon. iOS didn't even have an app store initially, and it took a lot of pushing for that to happen (they realized Android was going to eat their lunch if they didn't).

stwrong• 6 years ago

Does this consider hybrid apps like ionic or Cordova to be part of this?

andrewrothman3• 6 years ago

I commented about this in a different thread about the same topic earlier today, but I'll post here as well.

I can understand Apple's decision to do this, as there's a lot that can be improved about offline storage on the web:

* asking for user permission (i've seen demos try to exhaust the users' storage, and trackers can use this to invade privacy) * async writes and reads

However, making a change like this with no suitable alternative leaves PWA developers stuck in a hard place. I'm not sure what can be done in the short term here.

There's a few web specs that address these issues. I'd love to see them come further along, and maybe improve things for developers and users in the long run. If anyone knows, is there anything that members of the community can do to support these efforts?

https://chromestatus.com/feature/6428344899862528

https://wicg.github.io/kv-storage/

https://chromestatus.com/feature/5715811364765696

https://storage.spec.whatwg.org/

soapdog19• 6 years ago

OP here, I just posted an update section on the post that touches some of the comments I've been seeing here. English is not my first language so I think that sometimes I don't make my ideas clear enough or well explained enough.

p2detar• 6 years ago

Why 7 days though? Why not 30 or 3? What are Apple basing this number on?

franga20002• 6 years ago

Not on the main topic, but since OP mentioned CORS being a pain: is there a reason the browser doesn't let sites do cross-origin requests, but just without any cookies etc.? Either through a separate API or just the default behavior in the absence of CORS headers, is there a reason for that not being a thing? I can't imagine nobody has thought of it?

rini17• 6 years ago

This can't be prosecuted as anti-competitive practice?

soapdog19• 6 years ago

OP here, I just posted an update section there with some extra information that I decided to clarify upon after interacting with people here. Thanks a lot for the responses, this has been quite great. I wish more people that are affected by this or that have opinions about it would write more posts.

There is no change without applying pressure at Apple. If this is important, we must speak about it, all of us. And yes, I understand that some people feel that this is not important for them, that is OK, we have different values and understandings, but if you have an opinion about this, please go out and post to your blog, dev.to, medium, whatever, but post.

yeahkapp88• 6 years ago

Since when was software freedom synonymous with we should all want to use PWAs?

I’d be happy if Spotify gave me an API key and essentially went away except for a monthly bill.

But software has to be a product the masses get first to get made in our world.

I’m glad some folks are having their itch scratched but free streams are more than enough and I can wrap them for consumption as I choose.

Once again building your life around importing someone else’s priorities turns into an exercise of despair from not learning how reality doesn’t stand still no matter how hard you hope it will this time.

slaymaker1907• 6 years ago

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.

olliej• 6 years ago

Could you ask all the privacy abusers to stop using them to abuse privacy?

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.

greyhair• 6 years ago

It still comes down to the point that everyone wants you to load an app from an app store. Which drives me nuts. Just give me the web, please.

PWA is about the web.

rs23296008n12• 6 years ago

If privacy really is the thing, why can't I have an extension on ios to let me expire various cookies/storages on a per domain name basis, eg so I can write my extension to limit some cookies/storages to minutes or even seconds depending on how hostile or blacklisted such things are.

Other domains I'd actually prefer to be indefinite. I've got a notepad thing that uses local storage and doesn't store its data on the server. There's no excuse for deleting its data since its user data. Apple therefore has no permission to delete that data. Do I have a non-cloud workaround for that?

hokumguru• 6 years ago

Yeah, an App. They’re kneecapping the PWA to make apps more appealing.

rs23296008n12• 6 years ago

I wonder whether my irritation over this is strong enough to App up JustAnotherIOSWebKitBrowser with an extra API just for per site storage explicitly controlled by user. Literally to run a notepad and some kind of extension thing.

Its likely blocked by app store rules. Supporting extensions is probably forbidden.

Anyone care to be more authoritative based on their AppStore knowledge/experience?

dirtylowprofile2• 6 years ago

I have an app on the App Store that uses WKWebView, should I be worried?

brainthomson808• 6 years ago

it's really confusing

dirtylowprofile2• 6 years ago

I have apps using WKWebView should I be worried?

Andrew_nenakhov2• 6 years ago

The issue would be not that problematic if I could just run a real Firefox browser on iOS, not a skin over Safari, which leads me to a question that puzzles me for a long time.

Why Apple is not facing antitrust charges for not allowing competing browsers on their platform? Microsoft didn't SHIP competing browsers, but allowed them to run just fine on windows, and was fined nonetheless, but Apple somehow gets away with not even allowing competing browsers at all!

I'm not from the US, so maybe I'm missing something about these antitrust lawsuits. Can someone please explain?

Karunamon2• 6 years ago

This is a common misconception.

1. Apple is not a monopoly player in the app market.

2. Microsoft's antitrust fine was for forcing OEMs to not include any competing browsers (Netscape) on threat of losing special pricing.

Andrew_nenakhov2• 6 years ago

1. Apple is not a monopoly player in the app market.

Apple has a 100% monopoly in the app market by running the only AppStore available for iOS devices, and that store review guidelines specifically prohibits use of any other web rendering engine but WebKit [1]

2. Microsoft's antitrust fine was for forcing OEMs to not include any competing browsers (Netscape) on threat of losing special pricing.

That's not the only lawsuit they faced. There was EU case that forced MS to make a special installer [2] for alternative browsers.

I really can't perceive the meaningful difference between these cases. And I believe it's about time to force Apple to allow installation of alternative app stores, from where users would be able to install all the apps they want, without being handcuffed by device manufacturer.

[1] https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/

[2] https://cutt.ly/ztn4kxr

jka• 6 years ago

At the time of writing, the first sentence of https://www.apple.com/privacy/ states:

"Privacy is a fundamental human right."

gtsop• 6 years ago

People complaining about how PWAs haven't taken off yet are extremely ignorant. Go open up your dev tools and see how many websites you've visited make use of at least some PWA features (most likely cache) without you even noticing. PWA features have a lot to offer to the web experience even without installing the app. You've been enjoying these features and you don't even know it.

tech_dreamer• 6 years ago

PWA was an aberration - apple fixed it :)

joeyspn• 6 years ago

Well, wouldn't surprise me if Apple is now trying to kill aspects of the "open web" they dislike. Ironic because they used "upcoming" web standards as argument to kill Flash.

Apple will do whatever it takes to protect its closed ecosystem, and if that means killing PWAs built with open web technologies they'll provide any dubious excuse to justify it (security, privacy, blahblah). They did the same back in 2010, killing a perfectly valid app platform that was picking up momentum, but they didn't control. A platform that was 5-10 years ahead of the "open web".

Looks like this time they won't use HTML5 as piss-poor excuse.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thoughts_on_Flash

40four4• 6 years ago

This just sounds like a great reason to not use Safari. I switched to iOS recently, but I’m a dedicated Firefox user, so I personally don’t touch it except when I’m forced to by other apps opening links. (I was honestly REALLY disappointed in Apple when I realized that you’re not allowed to set a default browser besides safari, but that’s another story)

Forgive me, I’m a long time Android user, but do a lot of people choose to use safari as their main iOS browser, or are the usage numbers inflated because of the vendor lock in?

hoten2• 6 years ago

All browsers on iOS are webkit (read: safari) under the hood. Firefox and Chrome are just skins.

40four4• 6 years ago

Thanks for correcting my ignorance :) that makes more sense.

sequoia• 6 years ago

"do a lot of people chose to use safari" No. On iOS, www = safari to almost all users.

40four4• 6 years ago

Thanks for pointing this out. Always had Android before, now I see.

aww_dang• 6 years ago

Supporting Safari reminds me of supporting Internet Explorer years ago.

bitL• 6 years ago

The inability to save local files really hinders PWA and just allows all the shady large players to enforce their self-serving rules.

40four4• 6 years ago

Anybody have an idea what the significance of the 7 seven day cutoff is? Can’t imagine this magic number does anything to improve security. Seems kind of arbitrary.

chadcmulligan• 6 years ago

7 days is the side loading limit I think, so they're regarding these apps as sideloaded? Everything has to go through the App Store as a guess?

cjc19• 6 years ago

Property Wisdom Adminstration

hawaiian• 6 years ago

I know I'm in the minority, but I'm glad this change is happening. I simply don't trust large tech companies to keep user privacy a top priority, and in my mind, this outweighs whatever UX niceties an honest company may provide.

jeswin• 6 years ago

The solution could be to give that option to users; a way to mark a website or app as trusted or not. Apple's approach on the other hand really sets the web apps back, which I (as a privacy concious individual) am more comfortable using compared to apps.

If this encourages more apps to go the native route, we've done more harm than good. Apps can gather a lot more data than websites, such as the dreaded contact list access.

reilly3000• 6 years ago

This is really in response to the irresponsible use of APIs for trackers. Evercookie is a stunning example of how far it can go... From their repo:

- Standard HTTP Cookies - Flash Local Shared Objects - Silverlight Isolated Storage - CSS History Knocking - Storing cookies in HTTP ETags (Backend server required) - Storing cookies in Web cache (Backend server required) - HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS) Pinning (works in Incognito mode) - window.name caching - Internet Explorer userData storage - HTML5 Session Storage - HTML5 Local Storage - HTML5 Global Storage - HTML5 Database Storage via SQLite - HTML5 Canvas - Cookie values stored in RGB data of auto-generated, force-cached PNG images (Backend server required) - HTML5 IndexedDB - Java JNLP PersistenceService - Java exploit CVE-2013-0422 - Attempts to escape the applet sandbox and write cookie data directly to the user's hard drive.

https://github.com/samyk/evercookie

In short, everything and more can be used for tracking, and that has really killed the party for the many people who have created responsible, useful applications of these browser APIs.

schoenobates• 6 years ago

“... abusing over a dozen technologies...” is this a proof-of-concept or a real thing ? It just seems too horrendous to be real.

I think your comment really hits the nail on the head, IMHO the frustration shouldn’t be directed toward Apple but more toward the groups who have pushed the tracking practice so far to necessitate such draconian measures.

wmeredith• 6 years ago

This is 100% correct. Being upset at Apple here is exactly like publishers whining about ad blockers when they should direct their frustration and anger directly at the ad creators (or themselves) for foolishly abusing their audience.

_never_k• 6 years ago

This is real, but also not new (as you can tell from the name check on Flash, Silverlight and IE). They used to be called "supercookies", but that term has come to mean something else in the last few years.

thu2111• 6 years ago

It's really in response to a confused, ad-hoc web privacy model that has never been designed and is simply incrementally patched over time in response to complaints from an equally confused, directionless and visionless 'privacy warrior' subculture.

Mobile apps suffer these kinds of problems far less, partly because it's understood that actually mobile users don't install apps then get upset about "tracking", in fact, the vast majority of apps will want you to sign in to some sort of account and those that don't will be using ad networks to fund themselves, that users understand and accept this and that throwing up permissions screens doesn't achieve much because users will typically grant the permissions. Privacy on mobile platforms is more about stopping activity the average user would recognise as illegitimate spying - turning on cameras and microphones to feed conversations to angry ex-girlfriends, that sort of thing.

If the web's architecture had some sort of coherent view on how the tension between users, content providers and advertisers should work, then we wouldn't see this steady endless churn of app-breaking API changes. Everyone would know the rules of the road and there'd be way less tension as a result. Mobile platforms aren't quite there because they were designed with security architectures that were then pressed into service as ad-hoc privacy architectures, but they're still far more coherent on the topic than the web.

specialist• 6 years ago

"some sort of coherent view on how the tension between users, content providers and advertisers"

Please share anything you think and find.

Balancing these kinds of trilemmas, on a knife's edge, is my metaphor for designing open markets, governance, democracy, planning, and so forth.

dep_b• 6 years ago

You could permissionwall that stuff, just like iOS asks for permissions to ask your location. If a random website wants to mess with Local Storage I know that I need to turn around.

brlewis5• 6 years ago

Yes, that would have been a much better approach. It would hinder trackers, but not valid uses of localStorage.

DavideNL• 6 years ago

... however i'm afraid that 99% of all users (the non-techies) would just be annoyed by the popup and click "OK"

bovermyer• 6 years ago

Maybe I'm missing something here. Why not just build a native app instead?

nojvek• 6 years ago

Unpopular opinion but this is the kind of shit that makes websites have a banner “Safari browser will experience issues, use Chrome browser for the best experience”.

I remember when Edge/IE was crap, I put up a couple of banners that Firefox/Chrome/Safari are officially supported browsers and people did move away from Edge. Had <1% of traffic from there.

muneeb• 6 years ago

Can decentralized (i.e., user owned) storage help here? Instead of keeping data only at user device, it can be backed up in an encrypted and private way.

Gaia is one example: https://github.com/blockstack/gaia (I've worked on Gaia so I'm biased but there are other such decentralized options as well.)

homakov• 6 years ago

Have a look at data: URI technique we developed to avoid Apple/App Store altogether for critical apps:

https://coins.github.io/secure-bookmark/

Klasiaster• 6 years ago

I don't think this will help against tracking because a the tracker has no problem to refresh the identifier multiple times before the 7 day span would kick in.

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

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