zlacker

>>samwil+(OP)
,,In addition, Apple has been underfunding Safari for the past decade leading to missing critical functionality and a buggy experience for Web App developers thus ensuring that Native Apps, another Apple revenue source, are the only viable solution.''

It's not just funding. Apple changed webapps to delete indexedDB periodically even if they are inatalled on the home screen.

There's no way to have a great experience if you can't store data permanently.

>>xiphia+of
Safari deletes all of a site's local data after a week of inactivity, including cookies.

This makes users feel like they're never logged into a website when they need it, unless they're using it almost daily.

That high-friction experience pushes users towards apps, which of course are always ready to go.

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

> Back in February 2019, we announced that ITP would cap the expiry of client-side cookies to seven days

> ...

> 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. These are the script-writable storage forms affected (excluding some legacy website data types):

> Indexed DB

> LocalStorage

> Media keys

> SessionStorage

> Service Worker registrations and cache

EDIT 2: That page indicates web apps on the home screen get some variation for this behavior, but the difference isn't clear to me.

>>spiffy+sq
> Safari deletes all of a site's local data after a week of inactivity, including cookies.

That’s a gross misrepresentation of how Safari ITP works.

>>DaiPlu+lv
What's the correct version?

>>tehlik+xL
The parent has since updated their post with updated details that I wasn't previously aware-of - I thought they were referring to a news story from 2012 when Apple first introduced clearing of client-side-cookies (i.e. cookies set by JavaScript, not cookies in general) after inactivity but was commonly misinterpreted as Apple saying they'd just delete all cookies after a week willy-nilly.

However I note that contrary the parent-poster's implication that Apple is using tricks like these to steer users towards native apps, the same linked article talks about how pinned web-apps (i.e. PWAs) _don't_ have their local content deleted after inactivity, which contradicts the claim that Apple is using this in particular to sabotage PWAs:

> 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.

But I do agree that Apple very likely has internal orders from the top-down to de-prioritise PWAs because Apple definitely wants to see users (and devs) go native (or least via the App Store) instead of being PWAs - but I don't believe it goes as far as _actively_ sabotaging PWAs (i.e. just merely "passively-sabotaging", I guess?).