iCloud was storing cleared browsing histories

Re:iCloud was storing cleared browsing histories by abalone on Friday February 10, 2017 @05:37AM (#13614481)

That's a MacOS thing, not just a Safari thing. Windows stay open until you close them, even across restarts. MacOS, like iOS, has mostly retired the concept of "quitting an app kills state".

(You can go back to the old behavior via a system setting: "Close windows when quitting an app")

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Re:iCloud was storing cleared browsing histories by saurik on Friday February 10, 2017 @08:22AM (#13615163)

This feature isn't some kind of evil magic... it isn't like it is serializing the virtual memory state of the entire process to disk in the style of unexec(): programs have to manually decide what they think matters for their suspension state; correspondingly, if this happens, Safari would have to be incorrectly saving information that the user clearly doesn't expect or want.

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Re:iCloud was storing cleared browsing histories by abalone on Friday February 10, 2017 @02:33PM (#13618159)

> Safari would have to be incorrectly saving information that the user clearly doesn't expect or want.

This is vestigial thinking from the MacOS perspective. The concept of "saving" is gone. The concept of "memory state" versus "disk" is gone, from the user perspective. Those are all implementation details now. For the user it's simply, your windows stay open until you close them. Quitting does not close windows, so it's not unusual to see them when you return to an app.

By the way, Safari in iOS does exactly the same thing. And given that iOS kills apps on its own, there would be no question that randomly killing private sessions would be a bug.

I mean maybe you could distinguish between a force quit and an OS quit, but why? Just close the windows if you want to clear them. The private window guarantee is there will be no trace after you close the window. It's just vestigial thinking that quitting apps also closes windows.

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Re:iCloud was storing cleared browsing histories by Nullabillity on Friday February 10, 2017 @06:40AM (#13614698)

Storing stuff on disk that should be kept purely in-memory is a Mac thing?

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Re:iCloud was storing cleared browsing histories by kalleboo on Friday February 10, 2017 @07:59AM (#13615051)

Being able to pull the plug/battery on a computer and then having the restored state be exactly the same is a Mac thing, yeah.

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Re:iCloud was storing cleared browsing histories by yoz-y on Friday February 10, 2017 @08:07AM (#13615094)

In this particular case though it should not do so. Users do expect the private tabs to disappear after the window closes, no matter how it is closed.

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Re:iCloud was storing cleared browsing histories by Someone on Friday February 10, 2017 @08:41AM (#13615254)

I am not sure reopening private windows is a good idea, either, but Mac OS removed the rule "quitting an application closes its windows".

Given that, it is logical that it reopens private windows, just as, for example, TextEdit or Numbers reopen windows with content you never explicitly saved (even across reboots)

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Re:iCloud was storing cleared browsing histories by dTal on Friday February 10, 2017 @10:06AM (#13615836)

>Being able to pull the ... battery on a computer... is a Mac thing

Nope!

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Re:iCloud was storing cleared browsing histories by dTal on Friday February 10, 2017 @10:11AM (#13615864)

What is "quitting" then? How much state is stored? Between "no state" (window is a dead bitmap) and "all the state" (program is simply paused) is a lot of wiggle room.

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