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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

#231

Post by saagarjha »

Silhouette wrote: post #138
scarface74 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If you aren't willing to offer it, I'm sure someone will. Given that some of the services my businesses offer are in various niche markets, and as far as we know they are totally unique and have no direct competition after several years on the market, apparently you are mistaken.

> as far as we know they are totally unique and have no direct competition after several years on the market

That's what every company says right before they get their lunch eaten by a startup that comes out of nowhere ;)

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

#232

Post by zamber »

scarface74 wrote: post #110
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…

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 take…

Consider all *nix tools one uses on a Mac. Consider the hack which git on Windows is.

VS Code is an example of an universal, well-optimized app. Slack on the other hand...

Stuff like this is driven by diluted business decisions. Inferring from it that probably one would not use the app eitherways is borderline Linux-like fanatism fueled by self-delusion.

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

#233

Post by rrix2 »

millstone wrote: post #118
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…

> 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"? What standard requires these things? And even if one does, it's not clear that users would be well-served by that standard. Apple has a rich native API for background audio playing, which covers things like whether the output stream should mix with other apps…

> So what do you think Apple should do here?

- Support service workers on PWAs that Safari has added to the Springboard.

- Support permissions-based model for reasonable user-facing features like background audio and camera.

- Don't reload application context when backgrounding PWAs; this doesn't happen if you run the exact same page in Safari-proper.

It's really not hard... Apple has had longer than Google to do this right and has repeatedly chosen to not add mobile APIs to Safari until the 11th hour, which only hampers adoption and makes them take longer to get to the 11th hour in the first place.

> It's specious to build on a non-native API and then complain that its capabilities and platform integration are inferior to native.

It's not, however, specious to compare to non-native APIs on other platforms which is the point of this entire article.

> Apple is right to be very conservative with what it allows these apps to do, at least initially.

The problem here is that last part, the fact that iOS has severely lagged behind in open web API adoption for the better part of its existence

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

#234

Post by scarface74 »

evv wrote: post #221
scarface74 wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. I'm asking a business that want to provide a native client to provide a native client. If it can be done as a web app why not do it as a web app? Yes I am a developer and for products that are suited to be on the web, I write websites.

What if that business wants to provide an "app" icon in the macOS dock, and a "program" in the windows start menu, without hiring a bunch of native developers? What would you advise for them, if not electron?

If they want to have happy customers they won't do that - electron apps eat battery life compared to just going to a website.

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

#235

Post by saagarjha »

danShumway wrote: post #228
saagarjha wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they just need some API features accessible to web and they'd be golden But now you have every single website asking for permission to use the microphone and camera and accelerometer or battery sensor. Every time some sort of device hardware is exposed to web applications, it needs to be rolled back in some way or the other because someone's found a way to use for fingerprinting.

> Every time some sort of device hardware is exposed to web applications, it needs to be rolled back in some way or the other because someone's found a way to use for fingerprinting. This is odd to me. Do you think it's harder for a native app to fingerprint you? At least on the web I can block specific domains or scripting in general. A native app will always be a net loss for privacy and sandboxing.

No, of course it's a lot easier for a native app can fingerprint you. The difference is that with native apps, I can trust that someone has already looked at this app to ensure that it's not doing anything malicious. Plus, I, myself, have to install the app, which shows that I put my trust in it.

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

#236

Post by judah »

geekles wrote: post #185
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…

The point of a PWA is that the app store is not needed. Why would you be trying to get a PWA into the app store?

I answer that in the post. The short of it is, because 1) that's where users look for apps and 2) Apple greatly restricts web apps in Safari. So much so that to be first-class citizen, you need to be an app in the store.

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

#237

Post by danShumway »

saagarjha wrote: post #227
shkkmo wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 t…

How are you going to stop every website requesting all the permissions upfront?

The same way we stop native apps from doing that?

It used to be fairly common in Android for developers to just request everything. Developers still request too much, but it's gotten a bit better because in newer versions of Android you have to actually start using the API before the permission will be requested - so as a user if you request microphone access, I know it's because right now you intend to record sound.

It's a very small improvement, but it helps, and it's pretty much copied wholesale from web's permission model. The web also allows you to grant parts of permissions. When a website asks you for location and camera, you can choose to give it just camera - or you can choose to give it camera for one session and then re-ask the next time the API is accessed.

These are all small steps that make it cumbersome for developers to just say "give me everything or nothing works." The trick is to make it easier for app developers not to think about permissions; and then when you get an app that requests 3 permissions upfront, you know something shady is going on because there just aren't a lot of legitimate reasons to do that anymore.

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

#238

Post by saagarjha »

evv wrote: post #226
saagarjha wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Slack was able to stand out from its competitors by providing a reasonably fast web app. Nobody cared (cares?) about the desktop app. It sure seems like you can compete with a good feature set and fast iteration on your product. Throwing more web developers on the project is often the right call, so you can keep shipping new features quickly on every platform. I'd love to be proven wrong, but performance seems to be…

> Nobody cared (cares?) about the desktop app.

Let me tell you, people do care about the desktop app, and not in a good way…

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

#239

Post by judah »

smsm42 wrote: post #183

In this article, I read that you not only need a registered company to publish iOS app, you also need it to be registered with third party (DnB) provider? Is it true? You can't publish on Apple store without having DnB-approved company?

Yes, that was the case for me. If there was some other way, it was not available for me.

The good news is that DnB probably already have a profile on your company. The bad news is, if any of the info is incomplete or incorrect, you need to rectify that before getting approved for the Apple Developer Program, which is required to get your app in the store.

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

#240

Post by judah »

kristianc wrote: post #149

> Don’t make me pay you to make my app available to your users. My app enriches your platform. Without good apps, your platform will be abandoned. I don't know much about the guy or his app but this sounds supremely entitled. I don't think Apple is in want of developers to make apps for iOS.

Author here. Every platform needs developers. One needs only to look to Windows Phone to see that an excellent OS without an app ecosystem is doomed.
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