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Building all of our new mobile apps using React Native

engineering.shopify.com

581–588 of 588 posts

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

#581
post #554

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I'm not sure about your calculation. A business with only 29% gross profit margin wouldn't be able to survive on the app store because they'd have to give 30% to apple.

Where did you get 29% from? I’m assuming that you are the only developer working on this (you didn’t say otherwise), for every $1 that someone spends, you get .70 cents.

But then why do you assume i've got no expenses ? Just because i'm the only one working on it doesn't mean i don't have to pay myself something to live. That's actually my point : the app doesn't generate enough revenue to cover my personnal expenses.

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

#582
post #581

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where did you get 29% from? I’m assuming that you are the only developer working on this (you didn’t say otherwise), for every $1 that someone spends, you get .70 cents.

But then why do you assume i've got no expenses ? Just because i'm the only one working on it doesn't mean i don't have to pay myself something to live. That's actually my point : the app doesn't generate enough revenue to cover my personnal expenses.

The marginal profit is the price the good sold for - the marginal cost. The only thing Apple has to do with this is the 30%.

The only fixed cost imposed by Apple is the $100 developer fee and whatever it cost to buy a Mac.

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

#583

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ten years ago Facebook fought this battle and lost. [1] [2] [3] [1]: https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-engineering/using-ht... "Using HTML5 Today" [2]: https://appleinsider.com/articles/12/09/11/facebook_admits_h... "Facebook admits HTML5 not competitive with Cocoa Touch" [3]: https://techcrunch.com/2012/12/13/facebook-android-faster/ "Facebook Speeds Up Android App By Ditching HTML5 And Rebuilding It Natively…

It strikes me that, more than anything, it is the lack of an efficient "Add to Home Screen" flow, that has doomed mobile websites. ...and it's intentional. By having an app store, mobile OS distributors know that they have control over a massive revenue stream.

Add to home screen is two clicks, how more efficient does it need to be?

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

#584

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Flutter has a larger number of "star" on Github. It also has more issues and more pull requests. React Native has 3x more followers on Reddit. So I guess it depends on your definition of community.

Flutter is only in beta for desktop and web. And it's emulated UI, not true native UI. RN is ready now and today for all platforms, including Window via react-native-windows. Microsoft is choosing React, I wouldn't go w/ Flutter. Why would you choose a Google only language and framework... unless you like rewriting code when it dies. Also, w/ React you can use TypeScript or JS, you don't have to learn a new language.…

Does RN work on macOS ?

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

#585
post #502

Shopify is associated with e-commerce shops. It would be much bigger news if this would be about an app for core e-commerce journeys, but Spotify builds Apps mostly for the merchants or in-store use cases where customers physically are already paying for a product. Performance matters less in such use cases as merchants or customers are already locked-in in the purchase flow and a drop out would be more costly for th…

So what? A customer facing e-commerce app is nothing but search, a list of results, filtering, a product page, photo gallery and checkout forms. RN has no trouble hitting full native performance all around (I’ve watched multiple apps built in this space).

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

#586
post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can, you just can't publish it on the appstore.

How do you distribute it in that case? Outside of enterprise apps, which are not allowed to be public.

Sorry but I think I don't understand your question.

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

#587

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> No, it's not perfect. Yes, JS can be awkward and confusing. Yes, a truly native app built by expert platform-specific developers would be better. This can't be understated. You can always tell when you've opened a React-Native (or similar "portable") app. It always feels like shit.

Instagram is React Native right? I wouldn't say it feels like shit.

Instagram is only react native in something like 20% of the app. I think it's comments or something, but I remember it was blogged somewhere. The rest is native.

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

#588

15 years in the industry has taught me to always have an exit strategy. React is the cool thing now but it wont be in 5 years. Make sure you can decouple and reuse your APIs with whatever comes next. And always remember that a native app will always give the best experience. Cross-platform tools aren't perfect and sometimes the cost of 'write once debug everywhere' is higher than 'write everywhere' especially if you…

I don't know about that. React was the cool thing 5 years ago, and 5 years later it's still the cool thing judging by how many jobs are out there for React and React Native developers.
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