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

#121

Post by jsgo » Mon, Apr 16, 2018, 5:45 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…

As someone who is both, there are times where you'd like to create a quick web application to do a task that is either very specific to one's needs or only needed for a brief period of time rather than going wholesale application development.

In this particular user's case, they just need some API features accessible to web and they'd be golden. As a user, if I have the ability to approve and later revoke the permissions (in the event WebAppX is a bit malicious in its permissions usage), I'm game. That's value added.

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

#122

Post by dspillett » Mon, Apr 16, 2018, 5:46 PM UTC

briandear wrote: post #95

Grae wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

> Remember, I don’t need your product, but you need customers.

Not all customers are desired. Some are enough of a hassle for support (both in developing for the idiosyncrasies of their platform and potentially dealing with the idiosyncrasies of their personalities) that they represent a cost rather than a profit.

This is why some are perfectly happy that Apple's policies effectively exclude Apple users from some of their output. It effectively means a bunch of self importants, who would complain that the moon is the wrong shade of grey if given it on a stick, are conveniently diverted away from bothering them. Unfortunately while Apple platforms seem to have more than their fair share, such self importants exist everywhere...

Similar arguments can be made for not supporting IE, particularly legacy IE: unless you are targeting certain industries (investment banks: I'm looking at you!) supporting users stuck on old browsers can be more time+hassle cost then they are worth.

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

#123

Post by magicalist » Mon, Apr 16, 2018, 5:46 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…

> There is a reason the Microsoft Store and Google Play are absolutely filled with trash, and this is part of it.

It's kind of ridiculous to pretend that the App Store isn't also filled with trash.

There are some excellent things (especially in security and privacy) you can depend on Apple's review either catching or warding off, but poor app quality is definitely not on that list.

(and as others have noted, far more apps are built with web views than you apparently realize)

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

#124

Post by jacquesm » Mon, Apr 16, 2018, 5:47 PM UTC

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…

A native app to me is something that works independent of a network connection (with the exception of browsers and an email client, those are obviously pretty useless without and a browser is the 'gateway' to the online world), and without an interpreter. Most mobile phone apps aren't native by that definition, but let's stretch the definition and include binaries targeted at virtual machines.

So native apps that I'm happy to use: compiler, editor, whatever stuff I've written myself, cli tools, bash, ssh, openoffice, okular, Firefox and Thunderbird.

Your typical mobile app is just an extension of someone else's server. As such it should be a web app rather than a native app.

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

#125

Post by scarface74 » Mon, Apr 16, 2018, 5:47 PM UTC

judah wrote: post #79

rolha-capoeira wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

And Pandora chose that it was worth the trade off in time and resources to create a better native experience it seems like a win for users.

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

#126

Post by altfredd » Mon, Apr 16, 2018, 5:48 PM UTC

scardine wrote: post #21

inferiorhuman wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Some mobile platforms (read: iOS) are hostile to web apps. I'm OK with that. Web apps are clunkier and provide a worse experience. That Google makes this easier speaks to the sort of UX you get with Android.

> I'm OK with that. Web apps are clunkier and provide a worse experience. That Google makes this easier speaks to the sort of UX you get with Android. Chicken and eggs argument here: web apps are clunkier and provide a worse experience because they are not well supported by the OS or the OS does not provide better support for web apps because they provide a worse experience? Hybrid app frameworks exist because phone…

> web apps are clunkier and provide a worse experience because they are not well supported by the OS

No, they are clunkier and provide a worse experience, because most "web apps" are ported version of desktop bloatware, targeting devices, permanently plugged into wall-mounted electric outlet.

What are "web applications" anyway? Something, that requires permanent internet connectivity? Something with DOM APIs? Something with built-in Javascript interpreter? Something with CSS support? The defining qualities of "web" have absolutely nothing to do with mobile devices. If anything, "web" has bad supported for OS. This is why all hybrid frameworks are about exposing additional OS functionality to browser, not the other way around.

Just accept, that you are looking at wrong tool for the job.

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

#127

Post by jsgo » Mon, Apr 16, 2018, 5:48 PM UTC

briandear wrote: post #95

Grae wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

Is the person's app going to automatically end up on your device or did I miss something here?

If Apple's review board feels the app is trash, it will be rejected as such. And the original poster wanted to just do a website instead, but they also wanted audio to be playable in the background (which makes sense when you're making a for all intents and purposes radio app).

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

#128

Post by vkjv » Mon, Apr 16, 2018, 5:48 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…

I love electron and I've never built one and don't have any immediate plans to do so. I'm a Linux user and because of how easy electron has made cross platform, I am enjoying far more applications that support Linux because barrier is so incredibly low.

Are they resource hungry? Yes. Are they as smooth as a well polished native app? No. But, for many of these apps, the alternative is having nothing at all.

"Requiring a Mac." This most often bites me for testing Apple Pay. This assumes that writing an iOS is my primary responsibility. For some folks, that's not the case. This isn't a huge deal because I can just use a test device, but it is annoying.

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

#129

Post by mamcx » Mon, Apr 16, 2018, 5:49 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…

> 2) some mobile platforms (read: Apple)

You mean Google. Android webviews are VERY slow. Tha comnpound with the overall bad android OS (terrible privacy and security, terrible overal performance).

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

#130

Post by scarface74 » Mon, Apr 16, 2018, 5:49 PM UTC

Silhouette wrote: post #97

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…

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…

It isn't Apple that needs to do better for its users the developers need to invest the time and resources so that the users have the best experience. If you aren't willing to offer it, I'm sure someone will.