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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

#161

Post by salvar »

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…

How are developers not free to make their choices? Who is forcing them into what eco-system?

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

#162

Post by matthewmacleod »

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…

This is absolute nonsense.

Most web technologies are supported by Safari.it has lagged behind other browsers for a while - not terribly so, but enough that it can be a little annoying at times. But the comparison with IE (or rather Edge now) is just wrong by an order of magnitude.

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

#163

Post by zghst »

Another developer whining that they don't have free range to do whatever they want.

There are a multitude of reasons why Apple doesn't allow Safari sites to do whatever, namely security, power management, feature duplication/user confusion, etc. When you pay to deploy a native app, you are paying for hosting, the reviewers, payments, availability, etc.

There is no control over when a website may change and at any time your server can be hijacked to distribute malicious content vs an app, which is much more protected by layers of security and process.

Your priorities are definitely not priorities of the end user, where Apple, a company that has millions of customers is. If they were irresponsible and distributed iOS in the way you want, it would be Windows XP all over again. Viruses, security holes daily, etc.

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

#164

Post by Jyaif »

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…

-Having a barrier to entry is good useful only if your App-store search is crap. Also, the $99 is every year. Developing on iOS has cost me $900 in certificates, compared to $25 with Google.

-That's obviously wrong, see 100% of the top selling games.

-The top developers have to make clusters of freaking mac minis just to run their continuous integration tests. Do you think they are happy about that?

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

#165

Post by chrisweekly »

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…

You might be applying your anti-Electron arguments a bit too broadly. PWA is not that easy, but the UX friction involved with downloading and installing native mobile apps is abysmal. Electron is (arguably) a shortcut for desktop apps, putting webdev convenience above UX. Whereas PWA is all about improving UX, and is also typically (in practice) more relevant to mobile than desktop.

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

#166

Post by floatboth »

mamcx wrote: post #129
judah wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

> Android webviews are VERY slow

Huh?

Since KitKat I think, WebView is updatable (and is on the App Store), plus browsers like Chrome and Firefox can provide their own WebView implementation. Most people with non-ancient phones are probably using Chrome's engine in all WebViews.

And also, old engine doesn't even mean "slow".

Only Apple used to an actual problem here, because for a long long time there was no JS JIT in WebViews.

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

#167

Post by zghst »

judah wrote: post #90
ggg9990 wrote: post #84

So by this author’s estimation, the Apple App Store is the worst and the Microsoft App Store is the best. I can tell him that from the user’s perspective, it’s the exact opposite, and I have exactly one app from Microsoft and hundreds from Apple.

No, that wasn't my conclusion. If you read the article, I offer a summary at the end, where I give a winner. (Winner, meaning best/easiest/simplest/fewest barriers to entry from a developer perspective.) The winner is Google. One of the main reasons for that is, Google tries to make everything in the OS available from standard JavaScript. Their platform is web friendly. For example, want to display the currently play…

Really this is all about your aversion to paying the fee and to learning how to develop for the respective platforms. JavaScript does not offer performance or optimization near the same levels of native code, etc. On top of that, there are guidelines, accessibility features, and carefully crafted UI components for a respective OS (that have thousands of hours of user research).

The amount of standard APIs developed in JS are nowhere near native APIs, also JS has barely gotten to the point of good enough for native development, whereas, mobile platforms have had 10 years of mature development.

It's quite the fantasy to pretend that PWAs can offer the user anything better than a native experience at this point.

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

#168

Post by andai »

vkjv wrote: post #128
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…

This is a really interesting point I haven't heard before: that the silver lining of everyone making electron apps is better Linux support!

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

#169

Post by zghst »

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…

Developers are most definitely free to make their choices.

Look at Windows Mobile.

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

#170

Post by zghst »

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 bought a 2013 Macbook Pro for $700. Retina Display. Where there's a will, there's a way.
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