David Pierce at The Verge on the Vision Pro and Safari-based web apps:

Embracing the web will mean threatening the very things that have made Apple so powerful and so rich in the mobile era, but at least at first, the open web is Apple’s best chance to make its headset a winner. Because at least so far, it seems developers are not exactly jumping to build new apps for Apple’s new platform.

It’ll be great if we see Safari improvements because of this. Maybe Apple can relax the 7-day cookies and local storage.

@manton I’m struggling to make sense of this personally. Vision Pro is exactly the kind of platform that demands native apps and tight integration with unique hardware & OS features. The success of the platform isn’t going to come from the presence of the today’s Netflix and Spotify apps, but on unique apps & workflows the spatial environment unlocks. The web has been kinda terrible for this sort of iteration so far. We are just getting a decent way to build GPU-centric web apps after decades.

@manton what do you mean 7 day local storage?

@cdevroe @manton Safari will only retain a client-side cookie for 7 days. https://clearcode.cc/blog/intelligent-tracking-prevention-faq/

@Eggfreckles @manton I see. But not local storage. That remains “forever”.

@manton @cdevroe I am just glad Apple is keeping everyone safe.

@manton weird, I use it on stupidwordgame.com and stats are persistent for tons of players. Even if they don’t play every day.

@twenty3 Yeah, I guess the hope is that Apple will be sort of forced to do more to make web apps great. For example, maybe Sonoma's "save as web app" on the Vision Pro. Some things only native apps could do, but Netflix would be fine from the web, just like on the Mac.

@cdevroe Are you sure that stats are persisting in Safari when not used for over 7 days? I'd be very curious to know.

@manton It’s interesting that the lack of Netflix and Spotify are being seen as a negative for Apple when Apple is a direct competitor for both services. So no Spotify, check out Apple Music. No Netflix, check out Apple TV+. Here is 90 days free to try it out. Seems like an unforced error by those companies.

@manton @cdevroe @Eggfreckles do I understand that doc correctly that the local storage gets deleted after 7 days if there is no activity only or regardless?

@manton Vision Pro is going to be in a pickle if Apple can't persuade first party apps for the headset.

@rom Only if no activity. So if you use a web app every day, it’s usually fine. (Although I’ve seen times that data is cleared anyway.)

@manton Argh! if it is not consistent in keeping the 7-days, then it is useless! LOL

@manton I will set up a test. But…

@twenty3 @manton Agreed. I think people are concerned that Lotus 123 and Word Perfect aren’t on the original Mac. It isn’t a crazy point of view at all! But I think apps embracing the platform for what it is and can do is where it’ll shine and, ultimately, be where the value lies.

@manton @twenty3 Netflix isn’t great on the Mac though — no offline downloads!

@gruber @twenty3 Hmm, good point. I just reviewed the limits for local caching in Safari and it seems like it would be enough for at least some offline downloads. Wonder how much Netflix has explored this.

@jimmylittle Netflix has good developers, I expect they try a lot of things that don't ship.

@manton I still have to set up a test case for this. Perhaps this weekend. But I did have time to read the spec and it does mention that clients can delete storage whenever they want. Boo.

https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/webstorage.html#dom-localstorage-dev