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I built a progressive web app and published it in three app stores

debuggerdotbreak.judahgabriel.com

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Re: I built a progressive web app and published it in three app stores

#51

Post by Grae »

shinratdr wrote: post #39

From a user perspective, this is why I love iOS. * Barrier to entry. If your project is more than a hobby, you can jump through a couple hoops to reach the iOS userbase. If the difference between $99 and $25 is make-or-break, you're probably trying to publish a hobby/low quality app anyways. There is a reason the Microsoft Store and Google Play are absolutely filled with trash, and this is part of it. * Forcing you t…

>If the difference between $99 and $25 is make-or-break, you're probably trying to publish a hobby/low quality app anyways.

Or maybe you live in a situation where $74 USD is a meaningful barrier to accessing a market.

>The only people who like webapps and their encroachment on good, native apps are webapp developers because it allows them to use their skillset to build something they don't know how to build.

You're excluding people and organizations who want to maintain a single codebase.

>I've never met a developer who complained about needing a Mac to develop for iOS that has put forth an even halfway decent iOS app.

My takeaway from this is that you've not met a lot of developers outside the U.S. or who have ethical concerns about mandatory hardware / software purchases as prerequisite to market access.

Re: I built a progressive web app and published it in three app stores

#53

Post by jacquesm »

shinratdr wrote: post #39

From a user perspective, this is why I love iOS. * Barrier to entry. If your project is more than a hobby, you can jump through a couple hoops to reach the iOS userbase. If the difference between $99 and $25 is make-or-break, you're probably trying to publish a hobby/low quality app anyways. There is a reason the Microsoft Store and Google Play are absolutely filled with trash, and this is part of it. * Forcing you t…

I don't care about the $99, I absolutely loathe native apps (because I don't have nor want a smartphone) and there is no way I'll ever buy a Mac to do iOS development. I do have some Apple hardware here but it runs Linux.

Developers should be free to make their choices without being forced into some kind of eco-system, especially not with Apple itself focusing more on their gadgets and fashion items revenue streams than on making actual computers.

Re: I built a progressive web app and published it in three app stores

#54

Post by squeral »

shinratdr wrote: post #39

From a user perspective, this is why I love iOS. * Barrier to entry. If your project is more than a hobby, you can jump through a couple hoops to reach the iOS userbase. If the difference between $99 and $25 is make-or-break, you're probably trying to publish a hobby/low quality app anyways. There is a reason the Microsoft Store and Google Play are absolutely filled with trash, and this is part of it. * Forcing you t…

For me the great advantage of web apps is that you build a single code base for that can run on any platform (browser). That make it so much easier to maintain so you can focus more on features. If you build a native app for iOS you'll have to build another for Android and so it could be harder to maintain.

Re: I built a progressive web app and published it in three app stores

#55

Post by judah »

rolha-capoeira wrote: post #47

> From minor things like “iOS Safari won’t let you play audio without first interacting with the page” to major, show-stopping things like, “iOS Safari won’t let you play the next song if your app is in the background or if your screen is off.” I disagree that these things are purely because Apple wants your $99/year. Maybe that's part of the story, but not all. I am glad that websites cannot play audio without the u…

Agreed that apps (web or native) shouldn't have free access to e.g. your contacts without permission.

But Apple goes beyond security and actually makes it impossible to build first-class experiences for iOS without paying $99/year + 33% in-app purchases. I think that's unfortunate.

The free and opened web presents a challenge to Apple's app business. They have a perverse incentive to keep web apps second-class citizens on iOS. And this is a major reason why iOS Safari has become the new Internet Explorer 6.

Re: I built a progressive web app and published it in three app stores

#56

Post by christocracy »

shinratdr wrote: post #39

From a user perspective, this is why I love iOS. * Barrier to entry. If your project is more than a hobby, you can jump through a couple hoops to reach the iOS userbase. If the difference between $99 and $25 is make-or-break, you're probably trying to publish a hobby/low quality app anyways. There is a reason the Microsoft Store and Google Play are absolutely filled with trash, and this is part of it. * Forcing you t…

>requiring a Mac

No kidding. If you hope to develop apps for iOS, you better have a machine with the corresponding build tools.

I make a number of Cordova plugins. Many devs without a Mac often use PhoneGap Build as their dev build service. The turn-around to make a code-change and see the result must be about 60s.

Re: I built a progressive web app and published it in three app stores

#57

Post by AceJohnny2 »

> From minor things like “iOS Safari won’t let you play audio without first interacting with the page” to major, show-stopping things like, “iOS Safari won’t let you play the next song if your app is in the background or if your screen is off.”

As a user, I'm very happy Apple prevents a random website from doing this. I'm sorry this complicates your specific use-case, but the benefit for me is that I don't get audio ads just from opening a webpage (ads), nor will a page I opened a while ago unexpectedly start playing sound at me (ads!)

Furthermore, the latter restriction lets the scheduler/power manager make better decisions about what runs (and thus can consume power).

The broken HTML input though, that sucks and I'm sorry.

Re: I built a progressive web app and published it in three app stores

#58

Post by eropple »

judah wrote: post #45
shinratdr wrote: post #39

From a user perspective, this is why I love iOS. * Barrier to entry. If your project is more than a hobby, you can jump through a couple hoops to reach the iOS userbase. If the difference between $99 and $25 is make-or-break, you're probably trying to publish a hobby/low quality app anyways. There is a reason the Microsoft Store and Google Play are absolutely filled with trash, and this is part of it. * Forcing you t…

Controls: It doesn't force me to use native controls. :-) My web app today is still using the free and opened web, and all the goodness that comes with that, for UI and code. Requiring a Mac: Now you've met one. I built a halfway decent iOS app, and I don't want to spend $7000 on a Mac and its crappy dev tools and frameworks. I've poured nearly 7 years of work into user experience. I don't need to redo all that for A…

You can buy a completely dev-usable Mac for under $1000. (My CI machine is a Mac mini I bought used for $350 and dropped an SSD and an extra stick of RAM into.) Its "crappy dev tools" are free.

This is some silly stuff right here.

Re: I built a progressive web app and published it in three app stores

#59

Post by judah »

rolha-capoeira wrote: post #49
judah wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Controls: It doesn't force me to use native controls. :-) My web app today is still using the free and opened web, and all the goodness that comes with that, for UI and code. Requiring a Mac: Now you've met one. I built a halfway decent iOS app, and I don't want to spend $7000 on a Mac and its crappy dev tools and frameworks. I've poured nearly 7 years of work into user experience. I don't need to redo all that for A…

$7000? Your bias is showing. You can buy a Mac for <$1000 and it's perfectly capable of developing most apps.

Yes, I'm using hyperbole. :-) Even $1000 to build a free app is too much. (That said, going to Apple.com and clicking Mac shows me the base model for $4999.00 [0])

What happened to cross-platform apps? Why is it that Google and Microsoft are champions of the free and opened web, and even cross-platform dev tools for web development, while Apple is holding back progress?

I think the reason is their business is jeopardized by the free and open web, just as Microsoft was in the late 1990s.

[0}: https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/imac-pro

Re: I built a progressive web app and published it in three app stores

#60

Post by mgkimsal »

rolha-capoeira wrote: post #49
judah wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Controls: It doesn't force me to use native controls. :-) My web app today is still using the free and opened web, and all the goodness that comes with that, for UI and code. Requiring a Mac: Now you've met one. I built a halfway decent iOS app, and I don't want to spend $7000 on a Mac and its crappy dev tools and frameworks. I've poured nearly 7 years of work into user experience. I don't need to redo all that for A…

$7000? Your bias is showing. You can buy a Mac for <$1000 and it's perfectly capable of developing most apps.

<$1000 mac for even moderate development use cases? your bias is showing now.
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