It's fine if Apple wants to control their store, but that only apps approved by them, in their store, should be allowed ... should be illegal.
My App Is Dead in the Water
141–150 of 206 posts
Re: My App Is Dead in the Water
#142I think it's important to look at the broader issue: "App stores" are walled gardens, policed by corporations and are the opposite of freedom. The web is open and free. We made a deal with the devil when we collectively decided to write and use apps and not the web. This is just one symptom.
"We made a deal with the devil when we collectively decided to write and use apps and not the web."
No - apps are fine.
Even app stores are fine.
It's the fact that you can't distribute an app outside an app store ... this is a problem.
So basically Apple is the problem, everyone else is fine.
Re: My App Is Dead in the Water
#143Why is there a need for a "Hacker News client"? It's a web site.
Re: My App Is Dead in the Water
#144Earlier quoted context omitted.
How does it make a difference from a legal perspective? I am a former lawyer and can't see how any of this matters. I have thought about this deeply in the past (dealing with the same issue for another app), and talked with IP lawyer friends, and we cannot determine what basis Apple has for singling out apps that are essentially specialized web browsers. I'm happy to be enlightened on why this practice makes sense, b…
The Fair Use Doctrine allows someone to share copyrighted material for a limited and "transformative" purpose. Typically "transformative" falls into one of two buckets: parody or commentary/criticism. Reddit, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram all display the entire news article within their app only after it has been presented alongside the poster's commentary. OP's Hacker News Zero app does it the other way around. Cl…
This begs the question of why the fair use doctrine is required at all. It isn't needed for a web browser; why would it be needed for a pared-down web browser? Is it needed for a text-only web browser?
None of these is addressed by your original comment or the link, which all presuppose that the fair use doctrine is the only way to escape copyright problems associated with loading a webview with someone else's content.
Re: My App Is Dead in the Water
#145I think it's important to look at the broader issue: "App stores" are walled gardens, policed by corporations and are the opposite of freedom. The web is open and free. We made a deal with the devil when we collectively decided to write and use apps and not the web. This is just one symptom.
There's that and the notion that as a distribution mechanism app stores are hopelessly ineffective unless you happen to have bribed your way into being featured or listed in their top whatever (at great expense).
(Mobile) web is where the action is these days. The conversion from there to app installs is typically beyond terrible. It just doesn't matter how good your app is. The vast majority of your web users will never see your app or care to see it.
A lot of the stuff that currently requires native, you might be able to pull off via wasm instead. In any case, most users simply don't bother with installing apps for anything except a handful of things they really need. You are simply not the center of their universe. So, focus on mobile web.
Make it a progressive mobile web app and you have Android covered as well. And whatever else people might use these days (Ipads, Amazon kindles, chrome books, windows ARM, etc.). Add a bit of responsive design and it works on desktops as well. If successful, you can still package your web app as a native app. Lots of other web developers do this. If Apple ever crippled their embedded browser, it would break most of the apps in their store.
Re: My App Is Dead in the Water
#146I've checked couple of popular apps on the App Store and here are my findings: - Twitter: uses SFSafariViewController - Reddit: uses custom in-app web view, shows page title and url on top, provides "open in Safari" option through share button - Instagram: uses custom in-app web view, shows page title and url on top, provides the built in share-sheet, interestingly disabling open in Safari, but enabling "Add to Readi…
Not from a legal perspective. But from a technical perspective, I refuse to use any app that doesn’t use the SFSafariViewController for third party content - including Facebook. The web is an awful place. An app that doesn’t use an SFSafariViewController doesn’t take advantage of the built in content blocking framework.
Re: My App Is Dead in the Water
#147I think it's important to look at the broader issue: "App stores" are walled gardens, policed by corporations and are the opposite of freedom. The web is open and free. We made a deal with the devil when we collectively decided to write and use apps and not the web. This is just one symptom.
"We made a deal with the devil when we collectively decided to write and use apps and not the web." No - apps are fine. Even app stores are fine. It's the fact that you can't distribute an app outside an app store ... this is a problem. So basically Apple is the problem, everyone else is fine.
It’s only a “problem” for a relatively few techies. Most people would be better served by a wall gardened. Seeing the mess that the average consumer makes on thier Windows computers is evidence.
My mom would never have to worry about getting malware because she searched for a printer driver if she had an iPad. Heck, she wouldn’t have had to worry about a printer driver at all.
And if you want to see what happens on mobile when you have an App Store with an out clause like on Android for the common consumer, look no further than what happened with Fortnight.
Re: My App Is Dead in the Water
#148Earlier quoted context omitted.
That would make sense except the author said they have a “show in Safari” button for each article. Apple’s reply was very specific and said nothing about just adding titles and URLs or the safari view controller.
In the current App Store version the share button embeds both the original and HN discussion link into a promotional message about the app. Not providing attribution in the form of the address bar (title + url) might be the main problem here but I personally feel fixing sharing would help as well.
Regardless the lack of communication from Apple about what needs to be done differently is infuriating.
Re: My App Is Dead in the Water
#149Why is there a need for a "Hacker News client"? It's a web site.
So is Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Reddit, etc.
Re: My App Is Dead in the Water
#150Sounds like their problem is that you don't have permission from Hacker News to launch a Hacker News app? To be honest, this is a good policy - the app store is inundated with shitty apps that capitalize on well known properties in this way and monetize their users with ads for even shittier apps, with straight up scams being the plankton on which this ecosystem depends.