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

#251

Post by WorldMaker » Mon, Apr 16, 2018, 8:58 PM UTC

zghst wrote: post #176

WA wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

How accessible is your app? Have you tried it with VoiceOver? How does it do with battery and memory vs another comparable native app? When there's an OS upgrade, does your app automatically adjust to new resolutions and device classes?

> When there's an OS upgrade, does your app automatically adjust to new resolutions and device classes?

HTML and CSS are far more proven at adjusting to arbitrary resolutions and device classes than the vast majority of "native" UI frameworks, specifically because nearly every device class needs to support HTML+CSS, but "native" frameworks don't have to support every device class.

Yes, it is neat that specifically, iOS is playing from some interesting fun toys like Cassowary solvers to support some pretty advanced stuff. From a pragmatic standpoint as a cross-platform dev I'd rather just let HTML+CSS do the work, because that can be used everywhere.

(Similarly, Browsers in general are pretty strongly accessible and HTML can be written very accessibly. Again, pragmatically cross-platform it's the easiest accessibility solution available.)

(Memory and Battery are somewhat fair questions. Given how much time people will spend in a Browser, though, I think the turnabout is better fair play: if there is such a noticeable battery/memory difference between native apps on your platform and websites/webapps, but you spend the majority of your time in websites/webapps, then what is your platform doing wrong?)

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

#252

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Apr 16, 2018, 8:59 PM UTC

mankash666 wrote: post #217

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…

Gosh darn the cognitive dissonance!! The free market and users are completely capable of choosing quality apps, iOS/Apple needn't babysit, nay play brainwashing big-brother-evil-megacorp strangling competition/dissent, them in the process. "If your project is more than a hobby, you ...." Yes yes - if you're serious about your project, you'll willfully submit yourself to anal-probes by monopolistic mega-corporation th…

[deleted]

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

#253

Post by kristianc » Mon, Apr 16, 2018, 9:01 PM UTC

judah wrote: post #240

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.

Beyond a certain point, the marginal utility of an additional app on the platform doesn't add that much. Even within your very narrowly defined niche, it wouldn't surprise me if there was an alternative app.

Apple is long past the point where marginal utility of adding an app really matters, whereas Windows Phone was missing apps for Instagram and Snapchat.

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

#254

Post by judge2020 » Mon, Apr 16, 2018, 9:04 PM UTC

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?

> -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?

Top app developers should already be on hosted/SaaS CI services that offer Mac servers like Travis or CircleCI.

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

#255

Post by hamiltonkibbe » Mon, Apr 16, 2018, 9:06 PM UTC

judah wrote: post #207

hamiltonkibbe wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

So now there's some awesome PWA api giving you all those native features, and a permissions model, and so you install SUPERPHONE app, and that needs access to your contacts and to make and receive calls, and you say "ok, yeah this is a better phone app so those are reasonable".

Now everything running JS in the context of $SUPERPHONE_DOMAIN or whatever has these new permissions. superphone pwa's calls to window.PwaGetContacts() and window.PwaMakeCall() work and everyone's happy, and your phone really is super now. the app shows a banner ad from google and you're cool with that because it was free, and hey, developers need to eat too.

Someone who makes ads figures out that ads can run JS. So your app pulls down an ad from some ad network and that ad has some cool JS that detects that those functions are available and starts calling all your friends from your phone and telling them that "`window.PwaGetOwnerName()` is really excited about LinkedIn and wants you to be their contact" after uploading your contact list to every 3rd party data broker that would pay for it.

well, that sucks, maybe there's a better way to limit the code that can run on your phone with specific permissions

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

#256

Post by ntoeint34vuvwi » Mon, Apr 16, 2018, 9:12 PM UTC

I found it interesting that he counts having to buy a Mac to do iOS development as a negative, but doesn't make the same case about having to buy a Windows PC to do Windows development. I currently own only Macs. If I want to develop for Windows, I can just buy a Windows license and use it on my existing Mac. And of course, I can install Linux on it, as well. Seems like a stupid thing to call a negative, since no matter what you use, you'll need to buy a machine to do any development.

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

#257

Post by pier25 » Mon, Apr 16, 2018, 9:23 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…

Are you glad that Safari for iOS (and its web views) don't follow the standards? For example you can't set the height of an which is something that has been been possible on every browser since IE4.

I agree that a browser should not be able to access native resources (in mobile nor desktop) but the problem with Safari for iOS goes way beyond that.

I won't claim to know Apple's motivation for not treating web technologies as first class citizens on iOS, but I know for sure that this situation is completely intentional. Apple has the resources and talent to make this happen and this problem has been a constant for years.

Safari has been neglected to the point where reported bugs linger for years, and when reporting a bug the most common answer is silence. The project is seriously underfunded.

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

#258

Post by pier25 » Mon, Apr 16, 2018, 9:29 PM UTC

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…

> it's not clear that users would be well-served by that standard

It's irrelevant. Standards aren't set to satisfy a portion of users.

Can you image the clusterfuck if there were different sizes of Bluray discs?

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

#259

Post by dragandj » Mon, Apr 16, 2018, 9:29 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…

Yet most of the apps in the AppStore are absolute crap. Add to that the useless search. OTOH, many students or open source developers may want to try offering free or cheap apps of ok quality, but they are disincentivized by the cost.

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

#260

Post by pier25 » Mon, Apr 16, 2018, 9:33 PM UTC

matthewmacleod wrote: post #162

Silhouette wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The problem is not only that it has lagged, but that it doesn't conform to all standards.

Something that hit me hard a couple of years back is that in Safari for iOS you can't set the height of an . Any browser back to IE4 can do this.