I built a progressive web app and published it in three app stores • Hacker News Board

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

#71

Post by curun1r » Mon, Apr 16, 2018, 5:04 PM UTC

squeral wrote: post #54

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.

I think you've discovered his point. The advantage that you describe makes the developer's job easier, not the user's.

If you're an iOS user, where the monetary incentive is there for developers to invest the time to build you a native app, you don't care whether that imposes a greater hardship on the developer, because you're not the one affected. You've become accustomed to developers building something specifically for you and you're not willing to throw that away for what is a somewhat compromised experience that makes the developer's life easier.

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

#72

Post by judah » Mon, Apr 16, 2018, 5:05 PM UTC

squeral wrote: post #54

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.

Agreed. As a non-profit, there is no way I'm building separate codebases for each platform. I simply don't have the time or money to do that.

In this sense, the web has already won here: I'm able to take a single codebase (HTML, JS, CSS) and generate apps for 3 major app stores.

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

#73

Post by limeblack » Mon, Apr 16, 2018, 5:06 PM UTC

eropple wrote: post #58

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…

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.

> My CI machine is a Mac mini I bought used for $350 and dropped an SSD and an extra stick of RAM into

All but the vintage 2012 desktop Mac minis have been nuetered in the sense they are not upgradable.

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

#74

Post by rolha-capoeira » Mon, Apr 16, 2018, 5:06 PM UTC

judah wrote: post #59

rolha-capoeira wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$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 jeopard…

First you said "$7000 on a Mac", then I said "You can buy a Mac for <$1000", then you said "Macbook shows me the base model for $4999.00" and you linked to an iMac Pro.

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

#75

Post by eropple » Mon, Apr 16, 2018, 5:06 PM UTC

judah wrote: post #59

rolha-capoeira wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$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 jeopard…

"Clicking Macbook shows me an iMac Pro"

Yeah, no, it actually literally doesn't. There's no "Macbook" button on Apple's site. There's a Mac button. The Mac page then shows you a range of Macs, from the Macbook to the Mac mini, at the top of the screen. they are showing you the iMac Pro--their halo-effect product and newest release--on the Mac landing page; that's not the same thing and it is dishonest to assert that it is.

Open standards are good. (The open web, whatever. I use React Native, because I like writing applications that feel responsive.) Open standard thumping as a proxy for weird platform fandoms is really not. Stop.

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

#76

Post by miragle » Mon, Apr 16, 2018, 5:08 PM UTC

I'm not particularly bothered by Apple making it harder to put shovelware like this on the App Store.

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

#77

Post by jclardy » Mon, Apr 16, 2018, 5:09 PM UTC

mgkimsal wrote: post #60

rolha-capoeira wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$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.

The $500 Mac mini can handle Xcode just fine, and that is a many year old machine that hasn't been updated. Maybe not if you've been spoiled on better hardware, but it performs adequately.

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

#78

Post by Silhouette » Mon, Apr 16, 2018, 5:09 PM UTC

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…

Barrier to entry. If your project is more than a hobby, you can jump through a couple hoops to reach the iOS userbase.

Sure, I can do that. But I won't. If you buy an iPhone, I'm afraid you will just get an inferior version of my service, or you won't find it at all, because you bought into a platform that is developer-hostile.

In the meantime, all of my other customers, who are happy to visit my web sites directly or find them via more developer-friendly channels, will be benefitting from improved features or extra content or lower prices that we could offer because we didn't waste time jumping through Apple's hoops.

This is very much about barriers to entry, because every barrier cleared represents an opportunity cost. Nothing about jumping through Apple's hoops makes my service better for my customers, and all of it makes life harder for us.

Your whole argument about being developer-first also being user-hostile seems like one big false dichotomy to me. It is precisely because I have limited time and resources and I want to spend them making things better for my users and thus ultimately being more successful as a business that I won't play these games.

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

#79

Post by judah » Mon, Apr 16, 2018, 5:10 PM UTC

rolha-capoeira wrote: post #68

judah wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Partially agree. I understand security concerns; we shouldn't allow random web apps to freely access privileged operations, for example. (Should we allow web apps to ask for permission? That is another question.) But stopping web apps from working? For example, breaking open standards like "you can't play more than one stream of audio", or "you're not allowed to play audio if your app isn't in the fore"? Nah, that's…

> iOS's new PWA support actually reloads your whole page - losing all context and execution - every time you bring it to the fore. It kills all execution when putting the app into the background. There's a bigger story to this, one could assume. I'll be the first to say that iOS and Safari (particularly on iOS) has generally lagged behind the community in adopting standards. But this seems like a feature, not a bug,…

Imagine if you install Pandora as a PWA. It's now on your homescreen. You launch it. You start playing some music. Now you switch over to Twitter. Woops! The audio stopped playing. You bring Pandora back to the fore. It reloads and starts playing a different song.

Worse, there's no way to fix that. That's how it's supposed to work.

This is the state of PWAs on iOS.

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

#80

Post by 333c » Mon, Apr 16, 2018, 5:11 PM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #53

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 t…

Does your distaste for native apps extend to the desktop computer? Many HN users (myself included) dislike Electron-type apps because they feel slow and bloated. On my computer, native apps are much nicer, and feel like they fit in much better with the desktop environment.

If you agree that native apps on the desktop are a good thing, than I think you would agree that, for smartphone users, native mobile apps are a good thing as well, for the same reason.