Building all of our new mobile apps using React Native • Hacker News Board

Re: Building all of our new mobile apps using React Native

#61

Post by jszymborski » Wed, Jan 29, 2020, 5:18 PM UTC

newfeatureok wrote: post #7

Honestly I think the future of mobile will just be... mobile websites. What's missing until regular websites have parity with mobile apps in functionality? - Accelerometer and all sensor support (some of these are already supported on various browsers on various OSes) - Background support - Bluetooth - WiFi - Better notifications - etc. Sure there will always be a need for native, but 99% of apps don't need any of th…

It's times like this where it becomes painfully clear that FirefoxOS was (1) ahead of its time and (2) woefully poorly managed.

Re: Building all of our new mobile apps using React Native

#62

Post by xenihn » Wed, Jan 29, 2020, 5:19 PM UTC

EugeneOZ wrote: post #46

xenihn wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that Facebook themselves will never be able to replace their native iOS and Android apps with RN implementations says it all imo.

It just says that web apps can't steal enough data from your phone.

But RN apps are not web apps...?

Re: Building all of our new mobile apps using React Native

#63

Post by k__ » Wed, Jan 29, 2020, 5:20 PM UTC

ronlobo wrote: post #51

Curious to hear more about their deep dive into Native, Flutter and React Native as possible technology choices. Hopefully, React Native is not a nosedive ;)

Flutter and React-Native are different directions, I think.

For higly customized UIs (think Ableton Live, Photoshop, Excel, etc.), I'd say use Flutter, because of the non-native rendering, it will look the same everywhere. Otherwise use React-Native.

Re: Building all of our new mobile apps using React Native

#64

Post by NickBusey » Wed, Jan 29, 2020, 5:25 PM UTC

newfeatureok wrote: post #7

Honestly I think the future of mobile will just be... mobile websites. What's missing until regular websites have parity with mobile apps in functionality? - Accelerometer and all sensor support (some of these are already supported on various browsers on various OSes) - Background support - Bluetooth - WiFi - Better notifications - etc. Sure there will always be a need for native, but 99% of apps don't need any of th…

I was really impressed recently by Wealthfront's mobile site. It's so good and fast, they don't even push you to download their native app. You just don't need it when the website works that well on mobile.

Re: Building all of our new mobile apps using React Native

#65

Post by wvenable » Wed, Jan 29, 2020, 5:26 PM UTC

I don't understand why so many large companies use platform abstractions. At a certain size you're big enough to have an iOS team that develops natively in Swift/ObjC and an Android team developing natively in Kotlin or Java. Developing directly for the platform, with expertise in that platform, is a proven long term bet. Screwing around with platform abstractions seems much riskier.

The situation is a lot different if you're a small organization (or individual) and just don't have the resources for platform specific experts.

Re: Building all of our new mobile apps using React Native

#66

Post by weberc2 » Wed, Jan 29, 2020, 5:27 PM UTC

_hl_ wrote: post #56

newfeatureok wrote: post #7

Honestly I think the future of mobile will just be... mobile websites. What's missing until regular websites have parity with mobile apps in functionality? - Accelerometer and all sensor support (some of these are already supported on various browsers on various OSes) - Background support - Bluetooth - WiFi - Better notifications - etc. Sure there will always be a need for native, but 99% of apps don't need any of th…

> What's missing until regular websites have parity with mobile apps in functionality? Performance. But we're beginning to approach performance parity - not by the web becoming an faster, mind you, but by apps becoming slower. It used to be only cheap/poor-quality apps that felt like glorified web pages, but now even many high-profile apps are just parts of a web stack embedded into an app.

Absolutely this. Native apps are just so much smoother, and I say this as someone who really wants the web to win, and who used web apps almost exclusively because my 16GB iPhone 6 had very little space for apps. Also, the quality of native apps was much higher (e.g., Twitter feed doesn’t abruptly jump all over on mobile) although this could just be due to more budget allocation into native apps for whatever reason.

Re: Building all of our new mobile apps using React Native

#67

Post by rchaud » Wed, Jan 29, 2020, 5:27 PM UTC

alexashka wrote: post #58

newfeatureok wrote: post #7

Honestly I think the future of mobile will just be... mobile websites. What's missing until regular websites have parity with mobile apps in functionality? - Accelerometer and all sensor support (some of these are already supported on various browsers on various OSes) - Background support - Bluetooth - WiFi - Better notifications - etc. Sure there will always be a need for native, but 99% of apps don't need any of th…

You're viewing it through the lens of a developer. The user wants the best experience. Because software costs 0$ to distribute, the best user experience will always win out. The future of all software is faster, better software. Websites are shitty, arcane technology - the opposite of the future.

If a website is popular and does the basics well, it doesn't matter how 'shitty' the technology is.

Amazon.com has easily the most hideously designed product pages out there. Because sellers can "customize" the product page, you get their content (usually hero images with tiny text) mixed in with text-only product details, "users also bought" carousels, Q&A and Reviews all jammed together.

And they're still doing better than most large ecommerce stores (Walmart, Best Buy etc.) because the stuff that matters (pricing, delivery time) is better than the competition.

Switching to the Amazon app doesn't fix any of these problems because it's primarily a content and UX issue.

Re: Building all of our new mobile apps using React Native

#68

Post by sandGorgon » Wed, Jan 29, 2020, 5:28 PM UTC

I think one of the coolest things that Shopify is doing is this:

We’re sponsoring Software Mansion and Krzysztof Magiera (co-founder of React Native for Android) in their open source efforts around React Native.

and

We are working with Discord to accelerate the open sourcing of FastList for React Native (a library which only renders list items that are in the viewport) and optimizing for Android.

Basically RecyclerView for React Native.

Re: Building all of our new mobile apps using React Native

#69

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Jan 29, 2020, 5:29 PM UTC

newfeatureok wrote: post #7

Honestly I think the future of mobile will just be... mobile websites. What's missing until regular websites have parity with mobile apps in functionality? - Accelerometer and all sensor support (some of these are already supported on various browsers on various OSes) - Background support - Bluetooth - WiFi - Better notifications - etc. Sure there will always be a need for native, but 99% of apps don't need any of th…

[deleted]

Re: Building all of our new mobile apps using React Native

#70

Post by phreack » Wed, Jan 29, 2020, 5:30 PM UTC

newfeatureok wrote: post #7

Honestly I think the future of mobile will just be... mobile websites. What's missing until regular websites have parity with mobile apps in functionality? - Accelerometer and all sensor support (some of these are already supported on various browsers on various OSes) - Background support - Bluetooth - WiFi - Better notifications - etc. Sure there will always be a need for native, but 99% of apps don't need any of th…

It can't be overstated how many apps are absolutely dependent on working push notifications (all chat for example) and can't be replicated as websites. And that's not yet implemented for iOS so we're all at Apple's mercy until it is, which may never be.