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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

#301

Post by waddlesworth »

ntoeint34vuvwi wrote: post #256

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 mat…

Requiring a computer to make an app is hardly a fair comparison. The point the author is making is that you need a Mac to build an iOS app. It's impossible to make an iOS app on any other platform.

Meanwhile, you're perfectly capable of building both Windows and Android apps on either Mac, Linux or PC.

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

#302

Post by addicted »

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…

> as a user, I would find it too "buried" behind Safari

How is this any different than music playing on say Google Play Music on my iPhone? I listen to music from YouTube, iTunes, iHeartRadio, Google Play Music, Pandora, and other apps occasionally. Why don't I feel it's buried in those situations? Because of the simple reason that Apple allows only one source of audio on iOS at any point of time (including Safari), which can be controlled from Control Center. Control Center also displays the app, and tapping on it, takes me straight to the app.

There is no reason a tab on Safari couldn't similarly queue up a playlist, and if I want to get back to it, I go to control center, and tap the safari icon which takes me to Safari and the tab playing the music.

Now I don't think Apple prevents this out of malicious reasons. It's likely a vestige of their older restriction mechanisms which they haven't gotten around to changing because most people do in fact just create apps for things like music playlists.

But I seriously doubt there is any good UI reason to prevent a tab in Safari from queuing a playlist, any more than there is for preventing native app from doing so.

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

#303

Post by Trundle »

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…

Yes, the users in the free market are capable of choosing quality apps. They do that by outsourcing the filtering to Apple.

Why fridge? That's basically what the supermarket does for me. They sift through a sea of garbage and show me a selection.

Apple just happens to be both the fridge manufacturer and supermarket.

If my supermarket released a fridge I might consider it.

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

#304

Post by waddlesworth »

msie wrote: post #263

He complains about buying a Mac but what about Mac people who want to develop Windows DirectX games? They have to buy a PC (realistically you don't want to emulate a PC).

The article is about PWAs which have no native code. The restriction for DirectX is a technical one, not a business one. Cross-compiling is possible, but difficult as the ABI has to perfectly match.

Not being able to push a bundle of JS+HTML to the Apple store without a Mac is a completely artificial barrier. Even in regards to the full XCode suite (which I could understand why they wouldn't release for other platforms), the unbelievable lengths that Apple go to to ensure that OS X can't run in a virtual environment is quite frankly ridiculous.

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

#305

Post by linkmotif »

al2o3cr wrote: post #101
judah wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed that apps (web or native) shouldn't have free access to e.g. your contacts without permission. But Apple goes beyond security and actually makes it impossible to build first-class experiences for iOS without paying $99/year + 33% in-app purchases. I think that's unfortunate. The free and opened web presents a challenge to Apple's app business. They have a perverse incentive to keep web apps second-class citize…

Lemme get this straight: you're mad that a company you don't want to pay $99/yr to won't build APIs so you can make money on their platform. So sad, lemme find my tiny violin.

This is a ridiculous comment unworthy of this community.

Safari doesn’t follow web standards that other browsers follow. That’s worthy of frustration. If they build a browser, they should implement standard APIs.

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

#306

Post by tuchsen »

mr_toad wrote: post #283
judah wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Author here. I'm not making any money on their platform. I'm a non-profit, building a free app; this isn't about money. I mentioned money in the post as a list of all barriers to moving a PWA to app store. $99/year + 33% in-app purchases (plus a $1000+ Mac to build, and probably one or more Mac minis for CI) is a barrier. The bigger concern is Apple is lagging behind on web standards. I suspect the reason for that is…

> Apple is lagging behind on web standards. Google’s bright ideas aren’t necessarily standards. Service workers are only a working draft, and only implemented in 2 of the major browsers. Obviously Google and Apple have different priorities, and clearly service workers benefit Google more than the other vendors.

My understanding is that service workers have buy in from all four major browser vendors now, with implementations in all of them. I haven’t played with it yet but it seems like service workers are here to stay

https://caniuse.com/#feat=serviceworkers

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

#307

Post by FridgeSeal »

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.

If I wanted functionality past the most basic kind, then I would use the full, native app.

Web apps are not a sufficient replacement for a proper application and if a developer can't be bothered building an app properly then they shouldn't be surprised when I don't use it.

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

#308

Post by kbutler »

saagarjha wrote: post #206
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…

> 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,…

Did you re-design the UI, or just re-implement the same UI as native widgets?

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

#309

Post by sitharus »

addicted wrote: post #302
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…

> as a user, I would find it too "buried" behind Safari How is this any different than music playing on say Google Play Music on my iPhone? I listen to music from YouTube, iTunes, iHeartRadio, Google Play Music, Pandora, and other apps occasionally. Why don't I feel it's buried in those situations? Because of the simple reason that Apple allows only one source of audio on iOS at any point of time (including Safari),…

From observing non-techy people it's because of intent. When you go to YouTube or Pandora or whatever you intend to make your phone make noise. When you follow a random link from your Facebook news feed on to an unknown website with a 'funny' article you don't. This is why autoplay videos are now blocked from playing audio as well.

This can't be resolved with a confirmation dialog as people don't read those either.

I do hope Apple add support for PWAs in the future, though perhaps with some very guarded APIs available to avoid exfiltration of contact lists and excessive background work etc.

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

#310

Post by usaphp »

> 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.

> Google asked for a token $25 one-time fee. Probably to avoid spammers and decrease truly junk apps from entering the store

So he found an excuse for google to do it, but somehow Apple is evil when they do the same?

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