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

#101

Post by al2o3cr » Mon, Apr 16, 2018, 5:27 PM UTC

judah wrote: post #55

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 citize…

Lemme get this straight: you're mad that a company you don't want to pay $99/yr to won't build APIs so you can make money on their platform.

So sad, lemme find my tiny violin.

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

#102

Post by judah » Mon, Apr 16, 2018, 5:27 PM UTC

oakesm9 wrote: post #65

The article mentions that the author was worried that the fast processing time for Google Play meant that it hadn't actually been check, but according to Google they do: https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2015/03/creating-b... I believe the way it works is they run the app through an automated test suite (virus scan and monkey testing) and if it flags anything up then it goes to a human to review.

Author here. Yeah, I suspected precisely this. They run it through an automated test, and a human reviews only if the automated test raises a flag.

I guess that's OK. I did like the fact that my app went from submitted to in the Google Play store in all of 5 minutes. (Compared to 48 hours for iOS, and 72 hours for Windows.)

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

#103

Post by curun1r » Mon, Apr 16, 2018, 5:28 PM UTC

notyourday wrote: post #81

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.

It is a random garbage company that is stuck in early nineties. It preys on stupid first time company owners whom it sells its credit builder for business services. That's the entire business model. Edit: Can't respond due to rate limit - 40k/year from 1000 companies is nothing compared to $199/mo and more from credit builder from every Jack and Jill with a DBA, LLC or Inc.

> That's the entire business model.

Umm...that's comically wrong. The fortune-500 company I worked for paid more than $40k/yr to license their data and update it monthly. Given the description of how Apple is using it, they're probably paying six figures per year. Neither of our companies were buying credit builder services.

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

#104

Post by Silhouette » Mon, Apr 16, 2018, 5:29 PM UTC

judah wrote: post #35

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…

Yep, I hear you. Unfortunately, the status quo today is, that's where the users are. I love the free and opened web. I want it to win. I think it will win and eat native apps (PWAs are already making that happen.) But the barriers to this right now are 1) app stores are where users are and 2) some mobile platforms (read: Apple) have a perverse incentive to cripple web apps so that submitting native apps to their stor…

Unfortunately, the status quo today is, that's where the users are.

I've seen a few people make this argument, but no real data. Does anyone have any relevant stats about web vs. app store sales, perhaps the ratios between customer numbers and/or revenues through different channels, that they'd be willing to share?

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

#105

Post by shkkmo » Mon, Apr 16, 2018, 5:32 PM UTC

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…

> I am glad that websites cannot play audio without the user first interacting with the page. I am also glad that websites can't play audio in the background

> These are higher-level permissions and should not be free for the taking.

While they shouldn't be available to every site, these higher level permissions should be request-able by a PWA with the option to grant that permission indefinately. Apple is deciding they know better than me and providing me no choice. This sort of crap is why I don't own an iPhone.

Requiring developer to buy a Mac and pay $99/year to play audio in the background is developer-hostile in a way that is not user-friendly at all.

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

#106

Post by WA » Mon, Apr 16, 2018, 5:33 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…

> Forcing you to use native controls.

This is wrong. Cordova has been around for years.

Furthermore, it’s detached from reality. I released an app made with Ionic. It’s an app for average joe, not for devs or designers. Out of 20,000 downloads, I received exactly 0 complaints about performance or UI. Most users don’t care and don’t notice anyways.

And it’s pretty much the only way how I can maintain an app for both platforms as a solo dev.

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

#107

Post by cache_miss » Mon, Apr 16, 2018, 5:33 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.

I used my personal $500 mac mini for full-time desktop and webapp development when employed at Citrix. This excludes the cost of peripherals, of course.

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

#108

Post by shkkmo » Mon, Apr 16, 2018, 5:34 PM UTC

al2o3cr wrote: post #101

judah wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 citize…

Lemme get this straight: you're mad that a company you don't want to pay $99/yr to won't build APIs so you can make money on their platform. So sad, lemme find my tiny violin.

I'm not mad at them. However their lack of support for industry standards is why I won't buy their product.

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

#109

Post by briandear » Mon, Apr 16, 2018, 5:36 PM UTC

judah wrote: post #72

squeral wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Why are you generating apps? Sounds like you need a website. Do your apps use the camera, accelerometer, AR, ML GPS or any other parts of a device? Or is it just a website with the cachet of being “an app.”

Most people releasing apps shouldn’t.

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

#110

Post by scarface74 » Mon, Apr 16, 2018, 5:37 PM UTC

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.

So they could afford a Mac and internet access, but they couldn't afford the extra $74?

As far as excluding people and organizations that want to use a single codebase - good. If they didn't want to take the time to customize their apps enough to make it work on my platform of choice, it's not an app I wanted anyway.

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.

And the market is at work - they chose not to take the time to make an app optimized for my platform of choice, and I'm not stuck with an app that isn't optimized for my platform of choice.