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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

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 7y 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.
- ianlevesque 7y ago
  People keep wishing for a loophole. There isn’t one they won’t close sooner or later.
- swsieber 7y ago
  A feature for who? Not for users - now there's one less avenue for developers to get them something they want. Not for developers - now they have to jump through additional hoops to make something that works cross platform. Who exactly does this benefit?
  - snazz 7y ago
    Users want to be able to log in and see their data from any device. If the whole idea is that there is no server that the data is stored on, then you can't have a sync function, can you? Do any of you have an example of a good offline-only PWA that will be affected by this?
    - swsieber 7y ago
      The whole point is that you don't need to download a big payload just because you haven't used it recently. There are two ideas that go together well: * The app can work offline * The app doesn't need a server to function Neither of those prevent a sync function from existing. Right now, apps can do both of those. Why don' we want PWA's to be able to do the same? Why do I have to go through Apple's walled garden in order to so? Especially when said alternative is in a sandbox?
    - woodson 7y ago
      It means you constantly have to re-login on a PWA (e.g. Twitters web client PWA).
      - falcolas 7y ago
        Constantly being weekly at most frequent in this case.
        vxNsr 7y ago
        I roll my eyes every time robinhood makes me login again after an app update... though it hasn't happened in a while, so maybe they fixed that bug, but it was annoying when it's an unexpected hurdle that doesn't follow what other apps are doing.
    - dktp 7y ago
      Games with your personal high scores. Is the one that would affect me Plus a local note-taking app I created a while ago
    - eslaught 7y ago
      The whole point is that those PWAs probably never got built in the first place because the foundations were always shaky at best. It's a chilling effect. But if you look at native apps, especially ones I use on desktop OSes, they're dominated (at least in my usage) by offline-first or offline-only apps---and for me, this is a feature, not a bug. This doesn't have to mean they don't have sync, by the way, it just means that's separate from the main functionality of the app. A perfect example of this is Dropbox: it syncs to your local disk by default. It's easy to forget how valuable this is until you go camping (or similar) and suddenly you realize you forgot to star that one directory you care about. Now your mobile phone is useless, but your laptop works no problem. And due to this being factored out into a separate app, all my files now work regardless of file type (I don't need separate offline support in every app I use, since that's the default).
- carlosdp 7y ago
  It doesn't have to be that way though, that's the point of PWAs. A way to use web technologies for local applications.
- osrec 7y ago
  So you can think of absolutely no situation where a user would access a web app, and might want to store state info locally?
  - falcolas 7y ago
    I can personally think of cases (not that PWAs have ever been anything but fragile when it comes to locally stored data), but as a user, the occasional clearing of super cookies is a bigger boon.
    - osrec 7y ago
      I don't disagree that local data for PWAs has always been fragile. I wished browsers were taking steps to make it less fragile, as opposed to more fragile. It would allow certain use cases to become valid for PWAs, thereby circumventing the need to create a 10mb native app for something that can be deployed much more easily and quickly with 30kb of Javascript.
      - falcolas 7y ago
        Respectfully, I haven't visited an online SPA with under 100kb of Javascript in a very long time. Anytime I care to look, they are almost always in the 5mb range. So, an offline app's size, when compared to just browsing the web, isn't a compelling difference (especially since it's downloaded maybe once a month or so).
- brlewis 7y ago
  > A web app on the other hand is connected by definition, no? No, it just has to run in a browser.
  - fastball 7y ago
    Well it needs to be downloaded from the internet at least the first time, so it's intrinsically going to be less secure than an app that you can guarantee never connects to the internet.
    - osrec 7y ago
      Your app needs to be downloaded the first time too. In fact, a downloaded app can run riot on your filesystem. A web app runs in the "cage" of the browser, and is arguably more secure and explicit about permissions it requests.
      - rstupek 7y ago
        "... can run riot on your filesystem"? Citation needed because an app is as heavily sandboxed as a web page running in a browser. An ios app gets no view into anything you as a user don't choose to give it (no access to photos, etc).
        osrec 7y ago
        I mean, if you give the app access to your filesystem (which a lot of non-tech users would, almost without thinking), it can potentially access/modify/delete your files and folders. With PWAs, that's not really a possibility.
        LocalH 7y ago
        Stock iOS doesn’t allow apps to directly access data from other apps afaik
    - e12e 7y ago
      Has to come from somewhere. A pwa might have to come via http (I'm not sure) - but html+js+css can come from the (from a) filesystem too. Like an USB-c memory stick. Or from an extracted archive (much like a native app).
- cryptonector 7y ago
  Apple's app store is a walled garden. The web isn't a walled garden. TFA wants to be able to operate outside the walled garden. EDIT: Also, it's probably cheaper to develop one PWA than a PWA + N native apps, even if N=2. Probably lots cheaper. Now, perhaps there's a way to build a native app that is just a wrapper around WebKit/Safari and a PWA, but you'd still be subject to Apple's walled garden. For example, think of Gab or some such website whose apps have been banned by the various app stores...
- untog 7y ago
  > A web app on the other hand is connected by definition, no? No, not in the era of "progressive web apps", which is really just a little bit of branding around interconnected APIs. The Cache API in particular means that a webapp can be downloaded and made available offline on a permanent basis. Unless it isn't actually permanent at all, which is what Apple are doing here. The web and the App Store are just delivery mechanisms for code with different trade-offs built into them. Apple have added an extra trade-off on the web side in the name of privacy.
  - icedchai 7y ago
    Personally I would never expect a web app to be available offline on a permanent basis.
    - untog 7y ago
      Okay?
      - icedchai 7y ago
        I basically assume my phone is nearly useless without connectivity. And if I want something to work in that sort of environment, it better be a native app.
        untog 7y ago
        Okay? ...I guess I don't really see why the current state of things should block any future development. Browsers shouldn't ever implement new features because users today aren't expecting them to exist?
        rezz 7y ago
        To an end user there’s an icon on their screen, they tap it, the app opens. It didn’t matter if they downloaded from the AppStore or from a website. This is no longer the case which is why the OP is upset.
- ajford 7y ago
  No, it's a grab for money. Releasing an iOS app requires Apple hardware, X-code, and an Apple developer license which is $100/yr. Where as developing a PWA can be done on any hardware, and would be natively cross-platform. An offline PWA does not require an active connection, and in fact is the one of the reasons behind the idea of developing a PWA instead of a general webapp or website. All other browsers allow the use of local storage to optimize and enhance your experience by allowing things like pre-loading data or storing your preferences. This disappears with the decision Apple made to clear storage.
  - jfb 7y ago
    I promise you that Apple does not give a shit about the revenue from the developer program.
    - lliamander 7y ago
      Then why not make it free?
      - falcolas 7y ago
        That's easy. It adds a hurdle for people who make malicious or fraudulent apps. It's not free, but neither is it MSDN levels of absurdity.
        fomojola 7y ago
        I'd counter that: make it a one time tax, like the Play Store. Is it reasonable that I need a Dun and Bradstreet number to write an application for my computer?
    - judah 7y ago
      It's not just about the revenues of $100/year. It's also the revenue from 30% sharing of profits. And most importantly, it's the bigger revenue generated from having apps that work only on iOS, which drives users to buy iPhones and iPads.
- EvanAnderson 7y ago
  You should research the original plan for "apps" on the iOS platform. There was no "native app" story originally, and Javascript-based applications were expected to be the only 3rd party platform on the OS.
  - npunt 7y ago
    As should you. It’s not that an app ecosystem was never planned, it’s that it was not an early priority. Remember they were literally defining everything at the beginning - OS, UX, APIs, core features, hardware, first party apps, market positioning, etc etc. Needs of third party developers weren’t nearly as important as nailing the basics and ensuring a risky project was a success. The html5 app bit was a way to test the waters for developer interest and demand but very much an interim solution.
    - EvanAnderson 7y ago
      How do you square that against all the reported accounts (including the Isaacson biography) of Steve Jobs saying that he was opposed to third-party native applications on the platform? Yes, they changed direction in 2008. That's just it, though. They changed direction.
      - npunt 7y ago
        Jobs’ hot takes aren’t the end-all when it comes to product intent at Apple. He was basically an embodiment of strong opinions weakly held. His superpower was focusing teams on what the right set of features would be to create a product that made sense to the market, and ignoring everything else. The phone / iPod / internet communicator trifecta was example of this - nothing but nailing those three mattered at launch, and any effort elsewhere was wasteful. Without that kind of leadership, eng teams will often dither efforts over many things that don’t matter to success. The history of Apple is filled with examples of this dynamic. iPhone was a group effort among many talented and influential people and I doubt Forstall and others driving software had same opinion on third party apps. They just didn’t pick that battle before it made sense to. Every other computing platform at the time (including Windows Mobile, Palm, and BlackBerry) supported third party apps, it’s not like the use case was novel or difficult to see, and the webs limitations were considerable. Adding apps was a default path temporarily set aside.
- gnicholas 7y ago
  > If you want to make something local, make an app and distribute through the app store, that's what it is for. Have you ever gone through the app review process? It can be frustratingly capricious, which makes it very expensive. We've had features in our app for years, displayed in plain sight, and then all of a sudden they decide to block an update because of these utterly innocuous features. No rhyme or reason, and now we've got to spend dev time fixing a "problem" that never was a problem before. And we have to delay our entire update because of it. PWAs offer a way around that uncertainty and added cost. There's also the cost of a developer license, and the Apple hardware you have to buy to run XCode (and probably iOS devices too, so you can test IRL).
- jariel 7y ago
  "Apple forcing local apps to distribute through the app store is a feature." Forcing companies to give Apple 30% is not a feature. If companies feel they can deliver a net experience in webapp that's better than an app, then so be it, it's their choice. App makers are smart enough to know what makes sense for them.
- txcwpalpha 7y ago
  At one point, Apple was denying some app store reviews because they said they should be distributed through PWAs instead. If this is supposed to be a "feature", it seems like some product manager has their head up their ass. Also, the entire point of PWAs is that they are supposed to have feature parity with local apps, but delivered via the browser. This change is obviously counter to that goal.
DaniloDias 7y 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.
- marmada 7y ago
  It didn't gain traction because iOS killed it. Also "some people" includes everyone who doesn't want to make an iOS app.
notduncansmith 7y 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-blocking-and-more/ 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.
- RussianCow 7y ago
  7 days is actually a really short period. There are lots of apps and websites that I only open on my phone every now and then. I would never use them if I had to log in almost every time.
- Silhouette 7y ago
  If a website hasn't been used for 7 days, I'm happy for its data to disappear and save space on my device. You might be, but maybe not everyone is. I've worked on apps based around multimedia content where downloading in advance to watch or listen later was a big deal, because a typical user also travels a lot and might well be going away for longer than a week. Even if they can get the same data again next time they're online, it might still be much slower and more expensive for them to do that on an international data plan instead of back home.
  - notduncansmith 7y ago
    Then wouldn't it be appropriate to offer a native app to offer that functionality? A web browser in 2020 is a place to run vast swathes of untrusted code safely; it is not a digital workstation platform, that is the job of the OS. If what I am downloading from you is important enough that I want to have it even offline, then I trust you enough to install your native app.
    - LocalPCGuy 7y ago
Aaargh20318 7y 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.
- Fauntleroy 7y ago
  "just write an iOS app" versus "my web application can be used on Apple devices" is a bit much, don't you think?
- Silhouette 7y ago
  No, that is trivial to do: just make an actual damn application. So trivial that all it needs is learning a completely new skill set and tools, signing up for a gated distribution mechanism that can kill your application on a whim if you violate any of the rules over which you have no control, and then giving a huge cut of your revenues to the rent-seeking platform owner? The web has been more than just text documents since around the turn of the millennium. It's probably about time we stopped ignoring 20 years of very popular evolution and pretending that what might have been "intended" before a lot of people reading this comment were born should still guide what we build today.
- gridlockd 7y ago
  > 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. You must've been not following things. The web platform is an application platform and has developed to that end, for many years. Progressive Web Apps are applications based on standard Web APIs that are designed with the intent to enable offline-capable applications with persistent offline storage of significant amounts of data.
  - Aaargh20318 7y ago
    > The web platform is an application platform and has developed to that end, for many years. No it’s not. Using it like that is a lasagna of dirty hacks. The web is for structured text with hyperlinks, everything else is bullshit that doesn’t belong on the web.

mulmen 7y 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.

ianlevesque 7y ago
People keep wishing for a loophole. There isn’t one they won’t close sooner or later.
swsieber 7y ago
A feature for who? Not for users - now there's one less avenue for developers to get them something they want. Not for developers - now they have to jump through additional hoops to make something that works cross platform. Who exactly does this benefit?
- snazz 7y ago
  Users want to be able to log in and see their data from any device. If the whole idea is that there is no server that the data is stored on, then you can't have a sync function, can you? Do any of you have an example of a good offline-only PWA that will be affected by this?
  - swsieber 7y ago
    The whole point is that you don't need to download a big payload just because you haven't used it recently. There are two ideas that go together well: * The app can work offline * The app doesn't need a server to function Neither of those prevent a sync function from existing. Right now, apps can do both of those. Why don' we want PWA's to be able to do the same? Why do I have to go through Apple's walled garden in order to so? Especially when said alternative is in a sandbox?
  - woodson 7y ago
    It means you constantly have to re-login on a PWA (e.g. Twitters web client PWA).
    - falcolas 7y ago
      Constantly being weekly at most frequent in this case.
      - vxNsr 7y ago
        I roll my eyes every time robinhood makes me login again after an app update... though it hasn't happened in a while, so maybe they fixed that bug, but it was annoying when it's an unexpected hurdle that doesn't follow what other apps are doing.
  - dktp 7y ago
    Games with your personal high scores. Is the one that would affect me Plus a local note-taking app I created a while ago
  - eslaught 7y ago
    The whole point is that those PWAs probably never got built in the first place because the foundations were always shaky at best. It's a chilling effect. But if you look at native apps, especially ones I use on desktop OSes, they're dominated (at least in my usage) by offline-first or offline-only apps---and for me, this is a feature, not a bug. This doesn't have to mean they don't have sync, by the way, it just means that's separate from the main functionality of the app. A perfect example of this is Dropbox: it syncs to your local disk by default. It's easy to forget how valuable this is until you go camping (or similar) and suddenly you realize you forgot to star that one directory you care about. Now your mobile phone is useless, but your laptop works no problem. And due to this being factored out into a separate app, all my files now work regardless of file type (I don't need separate offline support in every app I use, since that's the default).
carlosdp 7y ago
It doesn't have to be that way though, that's the point of PWAs. A way to use web technologies for local applications.
osrec 7y ago
So you can think of absolutely no situation where a user would access a web app, and might want to store state info locally?
- falcolas 7y ago
  I can personally think of cases (not that PWAs have ever been anything but fragile when it comes to locally stored data), but as a user, the occasional clearing of super cookies is a bigger boon.
  - osrec 7y ago
    I don't disagree that local data for PWAs has always been fragile. I wished browsers were taking steps to make it less fragile, as opposed to more fragile. It would allow certain use cases to become valid for PWAs, thereby circumventing the need to create a 10mb native app for something that can be deployed much more easily and quickly with 30kb of Javascript.
    - falcolas 7y ago
      Respectfully, I haven't visited an online SPA with under 100kb of Javascript in a very long time. Anytime I care to look, they are almost always in the 5mb range. So, an offline app's size, when compared to just browsing the web, isn't a compelling difference (especially since it's downloaded maybe once a month or so).
brlewis 7y ago
> A web app on the other hand is connected by definition, no? No, it just has to run in a browser.
- fastball 7y ago
  Well it needs to be downloaded from the internet at least the first time, so it's intrinsically going to be less secure than an app that you can guarantee never connects to the internet.
  - osrec 7y ago
    Your app needs to be downloaded the first time too. In fact, a downloaded app can run riot on your filesystem. A web app runs in the "cage" of the browser, and is arguably more secure and explicit about permissions it requests.
    - rstupek 7y ago
      "... can run riot on your filesystem"? Citation needed because an app is as heavily sandboxed as a web page running in a browser. An ios app gets no view into anything you as a user don't choose to give it (no access to photos, etc).
      - osrec 7y ago
        I mean, if you give the app access to your filesystem (which a lot of non-tech users would, almost without thinking), it can potentially access/modify/delete your files and folders. With PWAs, that's not really a possibility.
        LocalH 7y ago
        Stock iOS doesn’t allow apps to directly access data from other apps afaik
  - e12e 7y ago
    Has to come from somewhere. A pwa might have to come via http (I'm not sure) - but html+js+css can come from the (from a) filesystem too. Like an USB-c memory stick. Or from an extracted archive (much like a native app).
cryptonector 7y ago
Apple's app store is a walled garden. The web isn't a walled garden. TFA wants to be able to operate outside the walled garden. EDIT: Also, it's probably cheaper to develop one PWA than a PWA + N native apps, even if N=2. Probably lots cheaper. Now, perhaps there's a way to build a native app that is just a wrapper around WebKit/Safari and a PWA, but you'd still be subject to Apple's walled garden. For example, think of Gab or some such website whose apps have been banned by the various app stores...
untog 7y ago
> A web app on the other hand is connected by definition, no? No, not in the era of "progressive web apps", which is really just a little bit of branding around interconnected APIs. The Cache API in particular means that a webapp can be downloaded and made available offline on a permanent basis. Unless it isn't actually permanent at all, which is what Apple are doing here. The web and the App Store are just delivery mechanisms for code with different trade-offs built into them. Apple have added an extra trade-off on the web side in the name of privacy.
- icedchai 7y ago
  Personally I would never expect a web app to be available offline on a permanent basis.
  - untog 7y ago
    Okay?
    - icedchai 7y ago
      I basically assume my phone is nearly useless without connectivity. And if I want something to work in that sort of environment, it better be a native app.
      - untog 7y ago
        Okay? ...I guess I don't really see why the current state of things should block any future development. Browsers shouldn't ever implement new features because users today aren't expecting them to exist?
      - rezz 7y ago
        To an end user there’s an icon on their screen, they tap it, the app opens. It didn’t matter if they downloaded from the AppStore or from a website. This is no longer the case which is why the OP is upset.
ajford 7y ago
No, it's a grab for money. Releasing an iOS app requires Apple hardware, X-code, and an Apple developer license which is $100/yr. Where as developing a PWA can be done on any hardware, and would be natively cross-platform. An offline PWA does not require an active connection, and in fact is the one of the reasons behind the idea of developing a PWA instead of a general webapp or website. All other browsers allow the use of local storage to optimize and enhance your experience by allowing things like pre-loading data or storing your preferences. This disappears with the decision Apple made to clear storage.
- jfb 7y ago
  I promise you that Apple does not give a shit about the revenue from the developer program.
  - lliamander 7y ago
    Then why not make it free?
    - falcolas 7y ago
      That's easy. It adds a hurdle for people who make malicious or fraudulent apps. It's not free, but neither is it MSDN levels of absurdity.
      - fomojola 7y ago
        I'd counter that: make it a one time tax, like the Play Store. Is it reasonable that I need a Dun and Bradstreet number to write an application for my computer?
  - judah 7y ago
    It's not just about the revenues of $100/year. It's also the revenue from 30% sharing of profits. And most importantly, it's the bigger revenue generated from having apps that work only on iOS, which drives users to buy iPhones and iPads.
EvanAnderson 7y ago
You should research the original plan for "apps" on the iOS platform. There was no "native app" story originally, and Javascript-based applications were expected to be the only 3rd party platform on the OS.
- npunt 7y ago
  As should you. It’s not that an app ecosystem was never planned, it’s that it was not an early priority. Remember they were literally defining everything at the beginning - OS, UX, APIs, core features, hardware, first party apps, market positioning, etc etc. Needs of third party developers weren’t nearly as important as nailing the basics and ensuring a risky project was a success. The html5 app bit was a way to test the waters for developer interest and demand but very much an interim solution.
  - EvanAnderson 7y ago
    How do you square that against all the reported accounts (including the Isaacson biography) of Steve Jobs saying that he was opposed to third-party native applications on the platform? Yes, they changed direction in 2008. That's just it, though. They changed direction.
    - npunt 7y ago
      Jobs’ hot takes aren’t the end-all when it comes to product intent at Apple. He was basically an embodiment of strong opinions weakly held. His superpower was focusing teams on what the right set of features would be to create a product that made sense to the market, and ignoring everything else. The phone / iPod / internet communicator trifecta was example of this - nothing but nailing those three mattered at launch, and any effort elsewhere was wasteful. Without that kind of leadership, eng teams will often dither efforts over many things that don’t matter to success. The history of Apple is filled with examples of this dynamic. iPhone was a group effort among many talented and influential people and I doubt Forstall and others driving software had same opinion on third party apps. They just didn’t pick that battle before it made sense to. Every other computing platform at the time (including Windows Mobile, Palm, and BlackBerry) supported third party apps, it’s not like the use case was novel or difficult to see, and the webs limitations were considerable. Adding apps was a default path temporarily set aside.
gnicholas 7y ago
> If you want to make something local, make an app and distribute through the app store, that's what it is for. Have you ever gone through the app review process? It can be frustratingly capricious, which makes it very expensive. We've had features in our app for years, displayed in plain sight, and then all of a sudden they decide to block an update because of these utterly innocuous features. No rhyme or reason, and now we've got to spend dev time fixing a "problem" that never was a problem before. And we have to delay our entire update because of it. PWAs offer a way around that uncertainty and added cost. There's also the cost of a developer license, and the Apple hardware you have to buy to run XCode (and probably iOS devices too, so you can test IRL).
jariel 7y ago
"Apple forcing local apps to distribute through the app store is a feature." Forcing companies to give Apple 30% is not a feature. If companies feel they can deliver a net experience in webapp that's better than an app, then so be it, it's their choice. App makers are smart enough to know what makes sense for them.
txcwpalpha 7y ago
At one point, Apple was denying some app store reviews because they said they should be distributed through PWAs instead. If this is supposed to be a "feature", it seems like some product manager has their head up their ass. Also, the entire point of PWAs is that they are supposed to have feature parity with local apps, but delivered via the browser. This change is obviously counter to that goal.

DaniloDias 7y 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.

marmada 7y ago
It didn't gain traction because iOS killed it. Also "some people" includes everyone who doesn't want to make an iOS app.

notduncansmith 7y 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-blocking-and-more/ 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.

RussianCow 7y ago
7 days is actually a really short period. There are lots of apps and websites that I only open on my phone every now and then. I would never use them if I had to log in almost every time.
Silhouette 7y ago
If a website hasn't been used for 7 days, I'm happy for its data to disappear and save space on my device. You might be, but maybe not everyone is. I've worked on apps based around multimedia content where downloading in advance to watch or listen later was a big deal, because a typical user also travels a lot and might well be going away for longer than a week. Even if they can get the same data again next time they're online, it might still be much slower and more expensive for them to do that on an international data plan instead of back home.
- notduncansmith 7y ago
  Then wouldn't it be appropriate to offer a native app to offer that functionality? A web browser in 2020 is a place to run vast swathes of untrusted code safely; it is not a digital workstation platform, that is the job of the OS. If what I am downloading from you is important enough that I want to have it even offline, then I trust you enough to install your native app.
  - LocalPCGuy 7y ago

Aaargh20318 7y 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.

Fauntleroy 7y ago
"just write an iOS app" versus "my web application can be used on Apple devices" is a bit much, don't you think?
Silhouette 7y ago
No, that is trivial to do: just make an actual damn application. So trivial that all it needs is learning a completely new skill set and tools, signing up for a gated distribution mechanism that can kill your application on a whim if you violate any of the rules over which you have no control, and then giving a huge cut of your revenues to the rent-seeking platform owner? The web has been more than just text documents since around the turn of the millennium. It's probably about time we stopped ignoring 20 years of very popular evolution and pretending that what might have been "intended" before a lot of people reading this comment were born should still guide what we build today.
gridlockd 7y ago
> 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. You must've been not following things. The web platform is an application platform and has developed to that end, for many years. Progressive Web Apps are applications based on standard Web APIs that are designed with the intent to enable offline-capable applications with persistent offline storage of significant amounts of data.
- Aaargh20318 7y ago
  > The web platform is an application platform and has developed to that end, for many years. No it’s not. Using it like that is a lasagna of dirty hacks. The web is for structured text with hyperlinks, everything else is bullshit that doesn’t belong on the web.