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

#311

Post by kbutler » Tue, Apr 17, 2018, 4:45 AM UTC

judah wrote: post #59

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.

Yes, I'm using hyperbole. :-) Even $1000 to build a free app is too much. (That said, going to Apple.com and clicking Mac shows me the base model for $4999.00 [0]) What happened to cross-platform apps? Why is it that Google and Microsoft are champions of the free and opened web, and even cross-platform dev tools for web development, while Apple is holding back progress? I think the reason is their business is jeopard…

To be fair, judah said "going to Apple.com and clicking Mac shows me the base model for $4999.00"

Doing what he said takes me to:

  https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/imac-pro

On which the only computer I see without scrolling is the Mac Pro. My UI design friends constantly tell me anything "below the fold" may as well be invisible.

Clicking the "Buy >" button takes me to

  27-inch Retina 5K 5120-by-2880 P3 display

$4,999.00

I know there are other options, but that's the default path for a naive user wanting to buy a mac from apple.com.

I hope casual users don't end up following that path often!

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

#312

Post by jhanschoo » Tue, Apr 17, 2018, 4:51 AM 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…

> The free market and users are completely capable of choosing quality apps

You should get your ideology out of the way. Apple's customers generally expect Apple to curate its App Store and expect Apple to not allow malware in its App Store. This is true for Google Play and the MS Store, except that they are in a poorer position to demand greater scrutiny for its developers, and are lousier app stores for it.

TL;DR: an app store is not a government, it is more like a mall: its patrons expect it to exercise some oversight ensuring that its vendors don't sell lemons.

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

#313

Post by askvictor » Tue, Apr 17, 2018, 4:53 AM UTC

usaphp wrote: post #310

> 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?

There's a big difference between $25 one-off and $99 per year. I make a niche app that gets about $20-$50 per year in sales. I'm not interested in making money on it, but it would not be worth my while developing such an app for iOS. OTOH, I've made back my $25 Play store fees and can now make my app free.

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

#314

Post by imron » Tue, Apr 17, 2018, 5:02 AM UTC

platinumrad wrote: post #297

saagarjha wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As the article mentioned, they went with a $25 online Mac solution instead.

That's what I get for reading the comments before reading the piece, sorry. I'm still uncomfortable with the extent to which Apple's walled garden is walled though. 25 USD/month does add up, even if you unsubscribe during months where you aren't using the service.

Macincloud also have pay by the hour solutions.

I have an account with them to do testing on different versions of macOS than the one installed on my development machine, and it only costs a few dollars a year.

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

#315

Post by FridgeSeal » Tue, Apr 17, 2018, 5:02 AM UTC

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.

Isn't one of the long held up tenants of software development that you should "pick the right tool for the job"?

Because if, as a user the choice is between another shitty JS/web-app masquerading as a real app, and an app that's built properly with native API's and native code, I'm 100% going to choose the latter.

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

#316

Post by imron » Tue, Apr 17, 2018, 5:07 AM UTC

danShumway wrote: post #237

saagarjha wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

> Developers still request too much .. > it's gotten a bit better .. > It's a very small improvement, but it helps .. > These are all small steps

Thereby illustrating the parent's point that developers will still ask for too much and that the power balance is in favour of the developer.

Apple on the other hand heavily restricts what developers can do. It's developer-hostile, but user-friendly.

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

#317

Post by pacomerh » Tue, Apr 17, 2018, 5:34 AM UTC

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…

Partially true, but knowing that google is making it easier to publish web applications just makes me more attracted to that ecosystem as a web developer. Apple has for long been a closed ecosystem and they have their reasons, they try to control everything in it to maintain a quality standard, so it only makes sense that trying to build something as open as a PWA would not be of interest to them, or beneficial for that matter.

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

#318

Post by thomasz » Tue, Apr 17, 2018, 5:59 AM UTC

FridgeSeal wrote: post #307

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.

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.

This is circular reasoning. Web Apps are not a replacement for a proper application because they are being sabotaged.

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

#319

Post by bradhe » Tue, Apr 17, 2018, 6:05 AM 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…

Thank you. I came back here to specifically higlight that bit because Jesus Christ guys you can’t ask for ads that don’t auto play and complain about this thing at the same time.

“The vendor should figure out what I want” is a really easy thing to say...but this is how they’re doing it!

At the end of the day if you want a tiered permissions model you need a strictly tiered authorization model. Right now you implicitly authorize an app/website/service/whatever to do certain things by explicitly installing it as an app. On desktop, web apps explicitly require your authorization for things like pushing notifications (isn’t it weird that EVERY WEBSITE wants to push notifications now?) or using your location data.

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

#320

Post by FridgeSeal » Tue, Apr 17, 2018, 6:18 AM UTC

thomasz wrote: post #318

FridgeSeal wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is circular reasoning. Web Apps are not a replacement for a proper application because they are being sabotaged.

Ok, put it this way: they should be sabotaged if they're never going to be as good as native apps. Seeing as they're not going to be, and Apple has standards for how it's phone behaves and the quality of the ecosystem, I have no problems with them essentially insisting that developers build proper apps.