My banking app makes me log in every time. I prefer that, but I didn't realize some apps don't do that?

My banking apps ask only for my fingerprint, or a short PIN if biometrics are not available. You could call that “logging in”, but it’s certainly not as serious of a log-in as you would have on the web (with a username and a password, and if the computer is unrecognized, authentication on the phone).

Most of mine do too so I don’t use them.

Either I use a short, easy to type password for my banking so I can log in all the time, or I use a long one and use a password manager to fill it for me and we’re basically back to “use the phone’s biometric authentication” with extra steps.

There’s already a strong, secure option for authenticating the user on a mobile device… I wish everyone would use it instead of trying to use the crap option we’re using elsewhere, especially since passwords are a pain on a tiny touchscreen keyboard.

This is why I hope PWAs take off more. If there is an implicit "save first party cookies forever" for PWAs that have been "installed" and we make them discoverable it's a net win.

Apple will make sure PWA's aren't successful. They can't risk their control over the app ecosystem.

Are you aware that iOS supports PWAs, and recently implemented notifications for them?

Exactly, they are in recent years moving to address these previous issues, I applaud them.

I would like it if they were more discoverable, but not necessarily with the obnoxious pop ups. It would be awesome if they let you list a PWA in the App Store for a fee or the 30% cut.

Only 8 years late: https://developer.chrome.com/blog/push-notifications-on-the-...

Besides - there are plenty of other things Apple can do to ensure PWA's don't take off. For example, there is no ability for a web-app to have a "click here to install to desktop" button - the website must try to guide the user into clicking the share button and then creating a desktop icon - which most users don't associate with 'installing' something.

Also, the 50Mb limit on PWA's prevents a lot of usecases - like photo/video editors, and even most messaging apps.

Fascinating how to keep moving the goalposts.

Firefox refuses to implement pwa. Chrome has pwas but they're not isolated.

Apple is the only one with sane pwa but somehow they're the worst and are totally sabotaging PWAs because something something walled garden?

If you want to use a PWA on an iPhone, you are fully dependent on Safari support. Firefox's decisions here aren't blocking anyone.

Firefox Android certainly supports Progressive Web Apps with push notifications, I use them daily.

>50 MB excludes most messaging apps

The entirety of TempleOS (including dozens of programs and multimedia games) is 2MB.

At 640x480 (for the whole screen) and 16-bit color

Hey, TempleOS is simply using the resolution God requires.

This isn't just the limit for css/js... It's the limit for user data too. Ie. if you share some videos with a PWA app, then all the videos have to fit inside 50MB unless you want to fetch them from a server each time you play them.

Or consider a PWA music player - 50MB of music is all you can play offline.

Or a photo editor - 50MB is the limit for all your saved files unless you want to save them to a cloud server.

> Or consider a PWA music player - 50MB of music is all you can play offline.

> Or a photo editor - 50MB is the limit for all your saved files unless you want to save them to a cloud server.

Why should either of these be saving files in an app-specific private datastore? Music, photos, videos, etc. should be in the standard system locations. The app's data storage should be solely used for settings, cache, and other internal data only useful to the app.

I'm not familiar with PWAs but if they can't access system storage then I don't think they're a useful choice for a music player or photo editor.

Because you might not have unrestricted rights to the files. The Netflix app allows me to download movies to watch offline but they're DRMed and rented to me by Netflix, not owned by me. A Netflix PWA would not allow for such feature.

DRMed files can be stored on the normal filesystem just fine, if they're DRMed that means they're encrypted at rest and decrypted on the fly.

DRMed content providers might not want to store their files on the normal filesystem because then they might have to answer uncomfortable questions like "why can't I copy this file to X and play it there?" but there's no technical reason they can't do just like every DRMed content provider on normal PC platforms has always done and store encrypted files on the normal filesystem.

But then there are apps like Discord which log you out of the app if you don't use it for X days.

I hate the fact that if you lose your phone and restore to a new one, suddenly every app is logged out again.

Like can't the login-state be part of the backup? If I was logged in when the backup was taken, I should still be logged in when restored to a new device.

On iOS many (most?) apps do store your credentials in a way that you don’t have to login if you have restored from backup or setup a new device from backup. Not all do this. Google is one annoying example that requires a fresh authentication.

I think if you do an encrypted itunes backup to your mac, they should remain signed in

Note that this is now in Finder, not iTunes, as of.. some recent MacOS? 11?

> Honestly that feels like what apps are.

Almost every single app on my phone forgets who I am even after minor updates.

Apps I use infrequently? It's like they never knew me to begin with.

You don’t force login on your banking apps? Eek. Or maybe you mean they do biometric auth instead of user/pwd? Leaving banking/finance apps unprotected sounds sketchy AF to me.