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

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

#511

Post by the_gipsy » Thu, Jan 30, 2020, 8:50 AM UTC

rubyn00bie wrote: post #328

Random_Person wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The sites I build at work have proper push notifications. This problem has already been solved.

I will never enable push notifications from websites. This problem has not been solved. It also doesn't hold across devices or if the browser isn't open.

Why not? You do, for apps, right?

App PNs also don't "hold" across devices. You don't need to have the browser "open", whatever that means.

BTW there are tons of apps that do push notifications wrong. There are many apps which keep sending you PNs after you log out or switch accounts. This can be really sensitive content (e.g. chat apps).

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

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Post by artsr » Thu, Jan 30, 2020, 8:51 AM UTC

steve_adams_86 wrote: post #479

Despegar wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That really just says it all doesn't it? It's basically an admission that the use of cross-platform frameworks is worse for customers/users, but they're going to ignore that to optimize for their own software engineering org.

It doesn't necessarily have to mean that. If performance is generally good enough, then the ability to do things like add critical features, patch bugs, and refine the app much faster is much higher value for the user and Shopify.

I was writing POS applications in the 90s. And ringing up customers needs speed and responsiveness. Windows was way too slow at the time, that's why POS applications even to this day often still work in character mode, or DOS-graphics.

PS I know it's becoming less and less of an issue these days, but you get my point.

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

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Post by the_gipsy » Thu, Jan 30, 2020, 8:52 AM UTC

xyby wrote: post #94

berns wrote: post #85

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How did you solve the lack of push notifications on iOS?

For iOS, can't you just wrap your web application in a thin native app layer that provides the push functionality?

Yes you can and there tons of apps that do just that.

The important part is that they go through the app store, so that apple has complete control of what goes through.

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

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Post by artsr » Thu, Jan 30, 2020, 9:07 AM UTC

s_y_n_t_a_x wrote: post #434

tr33house wrote: post #310

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How has flutter compared?

It emulates the UI, so the fake is noticeable, and it will be hard for them to maintain perfect 1:1. RN on the other hand bridges the native UI w/ your code via a JS bridge. The downside is the bridge can be a bottleneck so you have to be careful how much you congest it. The result is being able to expose every native functionality and abstract it anyway you want using React extensions. Flutter plans to target deskto…

Don't know why you're being downvoted. These all are perfectly reasonable concerns. I've seen many GUI frameworks fail because of a mix of these reasons.

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

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Post by scarface74 » Thu, Jan 30, 2020, 9:46 AM UTC

bsaul wrote: post #506

rbrtl wrote: post #499

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I think perhaps your business model isn't as solid as you might think. Producing an app is not a free pass to live on the revenue, and the market capture is an important part. I'm not an app developer, I'm in the music industry (day job in IT infra), but it seems to me there are some people projecting their bad business sense onto Apple. As per my other comment in this thread, and the reply someone made for me, the c…

I don’t understand your comment. I have other sources of revenue, mainly doing development for customers. I didn’t bet everything on that app and raised money on the expectation this would be a gold mine. I’m just stating a fact : without those 30%, in my present situation, i could live only based on this app revenues. With the 30% cut, i can’t.

I’m sure most people could live off of less revenue if they didn’t have any expenses.

But, a niche product where people aren’t willing to spend money is a business model problem.

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

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Post by ksec » Thu, Jan 30, 2020, 9:49 AM UTC

bytesmith wrote: post #498

microcolonel wrote: post #416

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Because the architecture is the primary source of the performance issues. React Native is widely used by the many-billion-dollar company that originated it, so major performance opportunities are not likely to be low-hanging fruit at this point.

There is a major re-architecture of React Native underway[1]. See Lorenzo Sciandra's excellent conference talk for an explanation of what the current limitations are in React Native and how they are planning on addressing them in the near future [2]. [1] https://github.com/react-native-community/discussions-and-pr... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gm0owyO8HU

I just speed read though it, So basically Everything is changed? I am not even sure if that is like a re-architecture, it is more like a a rewrite, literally every apart of the stack, all the way to Javascript Engine. All aiming for 2020 release.

At least the whole stack have many large companies'vested interest in it now so it is unlikely RN will fade out anytime soon. Will be interesting to see how all these played out in 2021/2022.

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

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Post by scarface74 » Thu, Jan 30, 2020, 9:52 AM UTC

jhasse wrote: post #495

scarface74 wrote: post #439

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So these same people couldn’t spend $300 on a used 2014 Mac Mini but could buy a PC?

Ypu don't need to buy a PC - you already have one.

So if you already have a PC and such a great app idea, why not develop for Android first - where 85% of the mobile users are - make money on your great app idea and then by a Mac?

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

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Post by scarface74 » Thu, Jan 30, 2020, 10:01 AM UTC

bsaul wrote: post #487

krrrh wrote: post #477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are thousands of desktop app developers that never got out of the hobby stage because they couldn’t get past the costs of processing payments, managing refunds, managing download servers, implementing licensing frameworks, implementing a smooth upgrade process, search engine optimization, establishing enough trust with users that they are confident they aren’t installing malware infected software, marketing, pu…

i think you also forget that many people buy ipads because of apps created by developers ( in my case, i believe my app is the direct reason for the sale of my customer's ipad pro). and that developpers need to buy apple hardware to build and distribute on the store. those 30% come in addition to all the revenue generated by hardware sales, because of independant app developers.

So your customers are willing to pay at minimum $799 for an iPad Pro but don’t value your product enough for you to charge enough to make it a sustainable business?

Just maybe it’s a product market fit issue?

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

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Post by dmitriid » Thu, Jan 30, 2020, 10:09 AM UTC

pjmlp wrote: post #486

dmitriid wrote: post #380

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Yes. Web is full of arcane knowledge. Take virtual lists for example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22186827

Unfortunately I can also provide several items of arcane knowledge for Android and iOS. So should we now measure who wins in arcane knowledge counts?

Yes. We could. The web would lose hands down.

The Web lacks even the most primitive of UI primitives that desktop and mobile UI kits have had for decades. Virtual lists is the prime example.

You can't even reliably animate an element independently of other elements without breaking your entire page.

You can't pick an arbitrary group of components and place them in a different location of the page without them breaking in subtle and not-so-subtle ways unless you are extremely careful with your flat global namespace that is CSS. WebComponents solve some of that, extremely poorly.

And the list of things that are taken for granted in the desktop/mobile world is near-infinite. All of them have to be re-created from scratch, poorly, on the web.

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

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Post by jamil7 » Thu, Jan 30, 2020, 10:12 AM UTC

trevyn wrote: post #211

hugey010 wrote: post #101

I thought the cool thing to do was declare React Native dead for your org, not the new hotness?!? I try to re-evaluate my opinion of the mobile ecosystem monthly, and would love to know how people agree / disagree with my rankings: 1. Just make a web page 2. Native iOS & Android 3. Flutter 4. Some ordering of remaining cross-platform tools depending on requirements. (React Native, Vue Native, Xamarin, Ionic, Titanium…

Really depends on what you’re making. Personally, I find RN much more productive than native iOS, for the areas where it is applicable. The hot reload is quite magical. Also, you can push JS updates without needing to update the app in the store, which is a huge plus.

> I find RN much more productive than native iOS

Give SwiftUI a go, it's buggy right now but you can see the potential, I find Swift a far more productive language than Typescript. However, I agree the hot reloading and updates are a pretty big plus.