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A bit overly dramatic, don't you think? "Apple rolling out anti-PWA practices" refers to them clearing local state after 7 days of no use. How is that going t

by slver 5y ago

A bit overly dramatic, don't you think? "Apple rolling out anti-PWA practices" refers to them clearing local state after 7 days of no use. How is that going to stop anyone from having a PWA app? Web browsers have to prune their cache all the time, otherwise your entire phone would be just web cache. Local storage is intended to be cache. Nothing more. If you have something worth preserving beyond 7 days of inactivity, put it on the damn server and reload it when you have to. For the record, local storage is typically limited to 5MB. Users visit hundreds, often thousands of sites each month. They open links through social media to some random meme all the time. So we never clear those 5MB, what happens? Month 1: 5GB of local storage... Month 2: 10GB of local storage... Month 3: 15GB of local storage...

CodesInChaos 5y ago
> "Apple rolling out anti-PWA practices" refers to them clearing local state after 7 days of no use. If they actually did that, it'd be crippling installed PWAs compared to native apps, since you couldn't persist anything without an account. However, from what I remember, they don't actually clear the state of installed PWAs for the primary domain, since the 7 days only count down if you actually open the app on that day.
hutzlibu 5y ago
"Local storage is intended to be cache. Nothing more. If you have something worth preserving beyond 7 days of inactivity, put it on the damn server and reload it when you have to." How about the idea that not everything must live in the cloud? I like apps that keep my data on my phone. Or when you use your phone in areas with bad connections? Say an outdoor app, you have on your phone with lots of data you specifically wanted for this area. In case you need it. But now you have to remember to use it regulary, or you have to walk up an mountain to get parts of your old state again. There is a difference between temporary cache and intentionally saved data. Even from webapps. But this just means a further push to develope a "real app" inside apples walled garden, for a proper functioning app. (assumed this auto delete of all pwa cache is actually the case, and it would be allright with me, if there are exceptions for "installed PWA's")
- slver 5y ago
  > I like apps that keep my data on my phone. I like apps that act like apps, and sites that act like sites. There's a reason we don't drive-by install apps on our phone just by clicking a link. But you do drive-by install site local storage on your phone by clicking a link. So you need a way to clean those up at the very least. > But this just means a further push to develope a "real app" inside apples walled garden, for a proper functioning app. You can also wrap a page as an app on the App Store if that's what you want. And store infinite data for infinite time. So everything is already possible. So you don't have to develop an app in the walled garden, you just have to submit it to the walled garden, and not do something horrible using the native APIs, and you're done.
  - hutzlibu 5y ago
    The point of PWA'S are, that if I develope one, I don't have to go to Apples app store. I as a web developer don't know how it works and I don't want to have to know, how it works specifically. Neither do I want to target Microsoft's plattform nor Googles Playstore and figure them out. I want to target the web. So anyone with a decent browser can use my app. PWA'S are not simple websites. They are more. A plattform independent application with web technology.
    - slver 5y ago
      > The point of PWA'S are, that if I develope one, I don't have to go to Apples app store. I as a web developer don't know how it works and I don't want to have to know Unfortunately that's often what it comes down to. Developers who don't care about the devices they target and their software stack. Developers should be open to learn new tech, before they reject it. Sure, go the web app route, but don't do it because you look at iOS and the App Store and you "don't know how it works and don't want to have to know". To me it's not surprising Google wants everything to be a browser with rich permissions that easy to track, search index, put ads on and monetize. This is why they want powerful PWA. This is why Chromebooks are basically... a browser. Apple on the other hand has crafted a platform optimized for their philosophy of UX and design. And which is often incompatible with these PWA standards that have emerged, which are often honestly sloppy and indiscriminate in wasting a user's power, bandwidth and leeching their private data. Apple and Google have diametrically opposed goals here. - Apple wants a free and powerful web, but not a web so powerful it takes over your entire phone, because let's face it, the web is a giant balls of kludges, it's a miracle they work at all. - Apple wants to save battery, to value user's privacy, and to allow the device to use its full potential through native APIs that are integrated with hardware functions etc. but not abused (which happens without at least cursory review process). - Google doesn't care about wasting power, doesn't care about privacy, they run an ad business and a search engine. They want three things: 1. Everything everywhere should be the web. 2. The web should have access to everything on your device. 3. Google should own the web.
serial_dev 5y ago
It doesn't stop you from having a PWA app, it just makes it less useful, harder to implement correctly, and overall a worse experience for both devs and users. > If you have something worth preserving beyond 7 days of inactivity, put it on the damn server and reload it when you have to. It could be also true about native apps, heck, why do we even have any storage option beyond 7 days except on servers? If what you said were true, why would they not have the same policy for native apps? It's just an excuse to cover up how they knee cap PWAs. Their actions result in PWAs that can replace native apps even less often than today. PWAs had the potential to be free and platform independent, whereas Apple has much more control over their native apps. See your own example with the local storage: it doesn't make it completely impossible to make PWAs, it just makes it overall a worse option, for both devs and users, so it's easier to go ahead with the native app.
manigandham 5y ago
The A in PWA stands for Apps. They’re specifically meant to be more than just websites and more like native apps that can be delivered and rendered by existing web tech. Setting the same limitations as a website for a PWA defeats a major purpose for using them.
KingOfCoders 5y ago
"Local storage is intended to be cache." We're can I read up about this intention? I always thought local storage was just that, local storage.

by slver 5y ago

CodesInChaos 5y ago

> "Apple rolling out anti-PWA practices" refers to them clearing local state after 7 days of no use. If they actually did that, it'd be crippling installed PWAs compared to native apps, since you couldn't persist anything without an account. However, from what I remember, they don't actually clear the state of installed PWAs for the primary domain, since the 7 days only count down if you actually open the app on that day.

hutzlibu 5y ago

"Local storage is intended to be cache. Nothing more. If you have something worth preserving beyond 7 days of inactivity, put it on the damn server and reload it when you have to." How about the idea that not everything must live in the cloud? I like apps that keep my data on my phone. Or when you use your phone in areas with bad connections? Say an outdoor app, you have on your phone with lots of data you specifically wanted for this area. In case you need it. But now you have to remember to use it regulary, or you have to walk up an mountain to get parts of your old state again. There is a difference between temporary cache and intentionally saved data. Even from webapps. But this just means a further push to develope a "real app" inside apples walled garden, for a proper functioning app. (assumed this auto delete of all pwa cache is actually the case, and it would be allright with me, if there are exceptions for "installed PWA's")

slver 5y ago
> I like apps that keep my data on my phone. I like apps that act like apps, and sites that act like sites. There's a reason we don't drive-by install apps on our phone just by clicking a link. But you do drive-by install site local storage on your phone by clicking a link. So you need a way to clean those up at the very least. > But this just means a further push to develope a "real app" inside apples walled garden, for a proper functioning app. You can also wrap a page as an app on the App Store if that's what you want. And store infinite data for infinite time. So everything is already possible. So you don't have to develop an app in the walled garden, you just have to submit it to the walled garden, and not do something horrible using the native APIs, and you're done.
- hutzlibu 5y ago
  The point of PWA'S are, that if I develope one, I don't have to go to Apples app store. I as a web developer don't know how it works and I don't want to have to know, how it works specifically. Neither do I want to target Microsoft's plattform nor Googles Playstore and figure them out. I want to target the web. So anyone with a decent browser can use my app. PWA'S are not simple websites. They are more. A plattform independent application with web technology.
  - slver 5y ago
    > The point of PWA'S are, that if I develope one, I don't have to go to Apples app store. I as a web developer don't know how it works and I don't want to have to know Unfortunately that's often what it comes down to. Developers who don't care about the devices they target and their software stack. Developers should be open to learn new tech, before they reject it. Sure, go the web app route, but don't do it because you look at iOS and the App Store and you "don't know how it works and don't want to have to know". To me it's not surprising Google wants everything to be a browser with rich permissions that easy to track, search index, put ads on and monetize. This is why they want powerful PWA. This is why Chromebooks are basically... a browser. Apple on the other hand has crafted a platform optimized for their philosophy of UX and design. And which is often incompatible with these PWA standards that have emerged, which are often honestly sloppy and indiscriminate in wasting a user's power, bandwidth and leeching their private data. Apple and Google have diametrically opposed goals here. - Apple wants a free and powerful web, but not a web so powerful it takes over your entire phone, because let's face it, the web is a giant balls of kludges, it's a miracle they work at all. - Apple wants to save battery, to value user's privacy, and to allow the device to use its full potential through native APIs that are integrated with hardware functions etc. but not abused (which happens without at least cursory review process). - Google doesn't care about wasting power, doesn't care about privacy, they run an ad business and a search engine. They want three things: 1. Everything everywhere should be the web. 2. The web should have access to everything on your device. 3. Google should own the web.

serial_dev 5y ago

It doesn't stop you from having a PWA app, it just makes it less useful, harder to implement correctly, and overall a worse experience for both devs and users. > If you have something worth preserving beyond 7 days of inactivity, put it on the damn server and reload it when you have to. It could be also true about native apps, heck, why do we even have any storage option beyond 7 days except on servers? If what you said were true, why would they not have the same policy for native apps? It's just an excuse to cover up how they knee cap PWAs. Their actions result in PWAs that can replace native apps even less often than today. PWAs had the potential to be free and platform independent, whereas Apple has much more control over their native apps. See your own example with the local storage: it doesn't make it completely impossible to make PWAs, it just makes it overall a worse option, for both devs and users, so it's easier to go ahead with the native app.

manigandham 5y ago

The A in PWA stands for Apps. They’re specifically meant to be more than just websites and more like native apps that can be delivered and rendered by existing web tech. Setting the same limitations as a website for a PWA defeats a major purpose for using them.

KingOfCoders 5y ago

"Local storage is intended to be cache." We're can I read up about this intention? I always thought local storage was just that, local storage.