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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

#201

Post by Kalium »

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 to put too fine a point on it, but some organization's internal engineering goals should not become our UX nightmares.

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

#202

Post by thebruce87m »

Jyaif wrote: post #164
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?

I wouldn’t consider myself a “Top Developer” but in that situation even I would run a single Mac with multiple OSX virtual machines.

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

#203

Post by judah »

scarface74 wrote: post #132
judah wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Author here. Maybe Java fans, or Sun/Oracle employees and fanboys said that. That doesn't really mean much. I did predict years ago that open web technologies will destroy native (desktop) apps, Flash, and Silverlight. In hindsight, I was correct. I am predicting the same thing with regards to native mobile apps: they will largely disappear, and web apps will again win.

Well actually no. Mobile destroyed Flash and Silverlight and all of the complex apps that were moved to mobile went native - like Netflix.

You're right that mobile did help kill plugins. But that was the final blow; HTML5 had already disrupted native apps on desktop OS for a few years, and as browsers picked up HTML5 support, there was almost no need for plugins.

(I say this with first-hand knowledge: several years ago when plugins were still common, I gave the final talk to a Silverlight user group in Minneapolis, in which I told the crowd there was simply no reason to continue using plugins. HTML5 won, and mobile only finalized its success.)

Just as open web technologies ate Microsoft's lunch, undermining the domination of Windows, I predict the same will be true of the Apple (and Google) app ecoysystems. More and more, operating systems are simply environments in which to run web browser. I believe this trend will continue.

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

#204

Post by saagarjha »

evv wrote: post #192
scarface74 wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want a native app, use native tools for each platform to create the best user experience.

This is effectively asking to double the size of the engineering team, or slow it down dramatically. If I were a startup or small business, I'd rather ship a slightly slow-feeling app with my existing team of web developers who already know their tools, than to hire a bunch of native developers and somehow get them all on the same page.

> If I were a startup or small business, I'd rather ship a slightly slow-feeling app with my existing team of web developers who already know their tools, than to hire a bunch of native developers and somehow get them all on the same page.

That might be the time where you'd want to stand out from your competitors by shipping a fast, native app rather than a web app.

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

#205

Post by saagarjha »

Silhouette wrote: post #131
333c wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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. That doesn't necessarily follow. The average mobile app is so simple in terms of both the data it's working with and the complexity of its UI that reasonably efficient code is unlikely to challenge a modern mobile device, whether it's…

> The average mobile app is so simple in terms of both the data it's working with and the complexity of its UI that reasonably efficient code is unlikely to challenge a modern mobile device, whether it's native or running within a browser.

Unfortunately, it has been shown time and time again that this isn't the case. Somehow, it seems that web apps just never get the performance that native apps do.

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

#206

Post by saagarjha »

WA wrote: post #106
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 p…

> 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.

Personal anecdote: I wrote an app to replace one that was written using Ionic because the experience was so poor. None of the complaints for that app were about the UI, because I assume most users, not being developers or designers, couldn't put their finger on what was wrong with it. However, once I released my app most my of reviews ended up being about how it was much better designed.

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

#207

Post by judah »

hamiltonkibbe wrote: post #142
judah wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Imagine you install $ANYTHING as a PWA. It's now on your homescreen, you launch it. You do $THING. now you switch to twitter. Now the PWA -- in the background -- loads some ad with an autoplaying video and now theres ad audio coming from ... well, you're not sure where, but it doesn't seem like it's coming from twitter. now you have to go find it and stop it. Meanwhile bitcoinminer.js is burning through your battery…

Stepping back a moment, it's worth noting that this was Steve Jobs' original vision for the iPhone:

“The full Safari engine is inside of iPhone. And so, you can write amazing Web 2.0 and Ajax apps that look exactly and behave exactly like apps on the iPhone. And these apps can integrate perfectly with iPhone services. They can make a call, they can send an email, they can look up a location on Google Maps.”

Here we are, a decade later, and Apple has not only abandoned that vision, they are actively working against it by preventing web apps from becoming first-class citizens on their platform.

I mean, consider an app that does 2FA. "To sign in, please enter the code sent to your mobile device." You switch over to Messenger, and...wooops! Your app just reloaded its home page, and the auth prompt is gone.

Surely, any rational person can see this is too restrictive. Perhaps Apple will loosen these restrictions in the future.

Yes, as you point out, there is the potential for abuse. But that's already there with native apps. The things you just mentioned can -- and have -- been done with native apps.

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

#208

Post by jessaustin »

cbasoftware wrote: post #145
bitmapbrother wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That wasn't the author's conclusion.

Obviously, you're an Apple fan boi. The author was the person who responded to you!

You've confused threads here. It sometimes helps to collapse all but the post to which you're responding...

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

#209

Post by [deleted] »

zghst wrote: post #163

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 tim…

[deleted]

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

#210

Post by forkLding »

Developed solely for the IOS appstore for a year in IOS Swift, my app (http://lucid.fyi - shameless plug):

Hated developing for IOS because came from web background and everything is restricted and you need payments to do anything. I'm also a sole developer and so every step that requires money I hate because I don't have a lot of money.

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