Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

debuggerdotbreak.judahgabriel.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 415 posts

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

#91

Post by peoplewindow »

Grae wrote: post #51
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 e…

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

Like what situation? To build an app at all he requires at least one computer, which is guaranteed to cost more than $99. He didn't blink at paying $25 to access MacInCloud.

The $99 fee is hardly a big deal. It's quite clearly there to encourage people to report charges on stolen credit cards, i.e. to make credit cards usable as a form of ID verification.

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

There are ways to do that which don't require the web.

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

#92

Post by 333c »

throwaway_80bf3 wrote: post #37
rhacker wrote: post #18

We're definitely at the point in history where we have to get out of these app stores . I get it if you're doing a game or something that's fine, stay in the app store. But I don't know how many times I've been extremely frustrated with a website telling me to get their app. * They break my in-browser password store * They introduce extremely complicated "app-only" device links for Oauth * Updating your UI for most a…

One of the ones I hate most is Reddit, which actually has a pretty good web interface. The worst part about their app is I can't search for words in threads.

My experience with Reddit mobile web has been frustrating, because every page has a secondary loading period that is entirely unnecessary and seems to only be loading styling and JS libraries. The old Reddit mobile (i.reddit.com, I believe) was fairly simple HTML (though to be fair, it didn't look good) that loaded quickly and felt responsive.

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

#93

Post by mschuster91 »

333c wrote: post #80
jacquesm wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 g…

> Many HN users (myself included) dislike Electron-type apps because they feel slow and bloated.

How much of this is the fault of the Electron runtime and how much is fault of the developers?

When one looks at the sheer amount of code that popular frameworks (or, as I call them, crapworks) like Angular require the browser to load, compile and run, plus the resources that these apps end up gulping down... it's madness, compared to how far plain old jQuery will get you while running at a quarter of consumed resources.

Sure, using only jQuery requires lots of thinking about your code structure and it will undoubtedly be more complex. But also: orders of magnitude faster.

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

#94

Post by kop316 »

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…

From a user perspective, I want PWA. I would rather PWAs (or something similar) to get first rate apps/aupport, so then it would be trivial to move off the iOS/Android OS. I want to have a smartphone I control. For iOS, I just don't control the phone. So far Apple has been reasonably good with privacy, and Android is almost by design user hostile for user privacy. If a third OS comes out (think Librem 5, PostmarketOS) with PWA support and there are already apps out there, it makes the switch much easier.

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

#95

Post by briandear »

Grae wrote: post #51
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 e…

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

Not my problem. Don’t shit on my user experience because what YOU want. Remember, I don’t need your product, but you need customers.

As far as ethical concerns about mandatory software purchases as a prerequisite— it’s not mandatory: you don’t have to develop for iOS. Make a website instead.

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

#96

Post by hesarenu »

ryandrake wrote: post #23
judah wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The dev experience was better with MS's tools, of course. They created PWABuilder, and it *actually generates a Windows Store package (.appx) that can be submitted to the store. No other steps required. Pretty amazing. Google wasn't bad; PWABuilder generated an Android Studio project. You open in Android Studio, build, and it generates the package to be submitted to the store. iOS was sadly the most painful. Not leas…

It’s a lot to do with what you’re used to. As an Apple user bought into their ecosystem and tools, I find developing for their platforms dramatically easier and more straightforward than for other targets. I can basically do Android development with some pain and confusion, but on Windows I’m totally stumped/useless.

I was trying to learn native iOS and Android app design been a mainly reactnative developer.

Android was very easy to start. I learnt kotlin as I was writing the code. Java I remembered some from college days decade ago. The UI builder was very easy to use. I even went far as using the dagger Di.

iOS I was kind of frustrated. I had gone over swift Lang some time back. But I found its syntax estoric. UI builder had its own issues for some row column the constraint layout kept on failing. Its not user friendly as in android. And in the strange name/ structure of routes, the dragging of ui elements to code.Considering that I would need to write business code for both platforms I just gave it up. Now trying out flutter.

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

#97

Post by Silhouette »

judah wrote: post #50
millstone wrote: post #36

> Mobile platform vendors, like Apple, are totally cool with apps that use your phone to its fullest. Access your location, play background audio, get your GPS coordinates, read all your contacts, play videos or audio without app interaction, read your email, intercept your typing, play more than one thing at a time, use your microphone and camera, access your pictures, and more. Apple’s totally cool with that. Apple…

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…

Mobile Safari's support for modern web standards has made IE look good for some time now. It seems very clear that Apple doesn't want a good experience for web users on its devices.

It's very frustrating, because we keep getting requests from users for features we're happy to look into or even already working on... but then discover the user has an iPhone, where the necessary web technologies are supported poorly if at all.

Unfortunately, since Apple also won't let anyone else supply a real browser to run on its devices, there's also no meaningful competition to force them to do better. Maybe monopoly/anti-competition regulations should be adapted so the same principles apply to platforms in this sort of controlling position.

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

#98

Post by al2o3cr »

judah wrote: post #2

Author here. Thanks all for bringing this to the HN front page. The jist of the article is getting a PWA into the app stores is harder than it needs to be, especially on iOS. Between Google, Apple, and Microsoft, I found Google's Play Store to be the simplest and quickest store to get a PWA published in. Another interesting bit is that web technologies haven't caught up to native. My PWA isn't super complex -- it's a…

    I think they will win in the long run, and will eventually
    (~5 years) become the dominant type of app in mobile and
    desktop app stores.
Am I the only one who remembers people saying this EXACT thing about Java Swing apps? Not saying it's impossible, but "Write Once Run Anywhere" has been a mirage "just over the horizon" for a long time.

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

#99

Post by curun1r »

jbob2000 wrote: post #63
curun1r wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

D&B isn't some "random" company. If you've ever been faced with a project that requires you to have a reasonably complete set of information on most businesses in the country, you quickly learn about D&B. Almost every large company is licensing D&B data in some form or another. Cataloging every business in the US isn't an easy problem to get right, even for a company as large as Apple.

They are just a "random" company. They don't sell any product a regular person would know about. Why was I able to setup a Google Play account without D&B? Amazon let me use EC2 without D&B, SendGrid let me use their mail API without any of this. It's a company that appears out of nowhere, for no reason. That's why it's "random". It's a stupid service that does nothing. If they deny me and I have nefarious, ulterior…

I think you've missed my point. The D&B requirement is a natural consequence of the fact that Apple has decided to require that publishers be an established business. My point wasn't to defend Apple's decision in that matter. You can setup Google Play, use EC2 or send a SendGrid email because those companies haven't made the same decision that Apple has.

I was mainly pointing out that D&B is a huge player that a lot of us have heard of. It makes complete sense that, once Apple has made the decision to require an established business, that they'd delegate the validation process to D&B. Just because people who have never thought about solving a problem like Apple decided to solve haven't heard of D&B, doesn't make them some "random" company. They're the market leader in their space and, as someone used their licensed data in a product, it makes complete sense to me that Apple would use their service in support of their business decision.

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

#100

Post by briandear »

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…

> I've poured nearly 7 years of work into user experience. I don't need to redo all that for Apple's closed, proprietary platform.

So don’t. I also don’t have to use your app.

Post reply on HN