Live data from Hacker News

iOS indie app development looks like

safespace.is

41–50 of 90 posts

Re: iOS indie app development looks like

#41

I gave up on mobile app dev years ago. To Apple, I'm not giving you $100 per year for four people to play my hobbyist games. Not to mention getting my account approved in the first place was such a horrible process. They can and will deny your app for random reasons. I don't know how any independent developer really wants to base their entire income around such madness . What they want is multi-billion companies publ…

I have a hard time taking people seriously who make such a huge deal out of the developer account pricing. A hundred bucks per year just isn't much money, I'm sorry, maybe it's my privilege talking, but if you're getting into iOS development you have, at base, one mac and one iDevice, if for NO other reason than development and testing of the app you want to make. The cheapest Mac available new is $600, and the cheap…

All right, I'll give you an example. I made a small game about 4 years ago for iPhones, maybe 30 people downloaded it. It works fine, it's just a small game.

To prevent apple from just taking it down I have to pay $100 per year, meaning even if I don't actively develop apps anymore, I'm just wasting money.

Now if I wanted to play the Apple dance every 6 months and hope they let me actually publish my games, I got a lot of pushback with my first project, then I guess it would be worth it.

Re: iOS indie app development looks like

#42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a hard time taking people seriously who make such a huge deal out of the developer account pricing. A hundred bucks per year just isn't much money, I'm sorry, maybe it's my privilege talking, but if you're getting into iOS development you have, at base, one mac and one iDevice, if for NO other reason than development and testing of the app you want to make. The cheapest Mac available new is $600, and the cheap…

All right, I'll give you an example. I made a small game about 4 years ago for iPhones, maybe 30 people downloaded it. It works fine, it's just a small game. To prevent apple from just taking it down I have to pay $100 per year, meaning even if I don't actively develop apps anymore, I'm just wasting money. Now if I wanted to play the Apple dance every 6 months and hope they let me actually publish my games, I got a l…

Okay; in which case, your little game was probably free.

How much would you pay for hosting at this point? The cheapest Droplet on DigitalOcean will cost you $60 per year. Maybe you planned to have your game downloaded from Google Drive, but I’m with Apple on this one, a small fee prevents many bad actors.

Especially when 95% of iOS developers are comfortably in the top 10% of US salaries, and top 1% worldwide.

Re: iOS indie app development looks like

#43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have encountered the infamous > The compiler is unable to type-check this expression in reasonable time; try breaking up the expression into distinct sub-expressions a lot. And it’s impossible to debug. https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/652691

that just means you have too many items together. break them up into smaller components or use something like a Group and that solves it. not a big mystery

We all know it’s just the Swift compiler getting confused.

In my cases I encountered this error in different scenarios in offset modifier, Strings, Colors.

Re: iOS indie app development looks like

#44
post #5

Really, the fact that Apple pushes swiftui as production ready is laughable. The framework is so ridden in bugs, does not play nicely with the other frameworks like photosui, and the language itself is incredibly bloated.

With all of the continued complaints about SwiftUI I almost wonder if, the specter of the Google Graveyard aside, Flutter would be a better bet. Yeah, it might be a second-class non-native citizen on iOS, but if you’re gonna use a half-baked cross-platform solution why not use one that can also target Android?

Re: iOS indie app development looks like

#45
post #5

Really, the fact that Apple pushes swiftui as production ready is laughable. The framework is so ridden in bugs, does not play nicely with the other frameworks like photosui, and the language itself is incredibly bloated.

With all of the continued complaints about SwiftUI I almost wonder if, the specter of the Google Graveyard aside, Flutter would be a better bet. Yeah, it might be a second-class non-native citizen on iOS, but if you’re gonna use a half-baked cross-platform solution why not use one that can also target Android?

You can target Android with Swift/Swift UI with SKIP.tools (skip.tools) and SCADE (scade.io), both of which use native controls on Android as well.

Re: iOS indie app development looks like

#46

I gave up on mobile app dev years ago. To Apple, I'm not giving you $100 per year for four people to play my hobbyist games. Not to mention getting my account approved in the first place was such a horrible process. They can and will deny your app for random reasons. I don't know how any independent developer really wants to base their entire income around such madness . What they want is multi-billion companies publ…

I have a hard time taking people seriously who make such a huge deal out of the developer account pricing. A hundred bucks per year just isn't much money, I'm sorry, maybe it's my privilege talking, but if you're getting into iOS development you have, at base, one mac and one iDevice, if for NO other reason than development and testing of the app you want to make. The cheapest Mac available new is $600, and the cheap…

"But you pay for other things" is not a good excuse. It's not that the price is unbearable--it's that it exists at all. I'd also complain if the price was $10/yr or $1/yr. It's the principle. I'm not going to pay for a row in a database that doesn't cost the company anything, without grumbling about it.

Re: iOS indie app development looks like

#47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With all of the continued complaints about SwiftUI I almost wonder if, the specter of the Google Graveyard aside, Flutter would be a better bet. Yeah, it might be a second-class non-native citizen on iOS, but if you’re gonna use a half-baked cross-platform solution why not use one that can also target Android?

You can target Android with Swift/Swift UI with SKIP.tools (skip.tools) and SCADE (scade.io), both of which use native controls on Android as well.

I always hear about projects like this or even back before Swift, like Codename One which allows iOS apps to be written with Java and my question is- does anyone actually use these? Why do this rather than use React Native, Flutter, Kotlin Multiplatform, even .NET MAUI or whatever Microsoft is on? One would assume that if these were good solutions more people would be adopting them.

Re: iOS indie app development looks like

#48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can target Android with Swift/Swift UI with SKIP.tools (skip.tools) and SCADE (scade.io), both of which use native controls on Android as well.

I always hear about projects like this or even back before Swift, like Codename One which allows iOS apps to be written with Java and my question is- does anyone actually use these? Why do this rather than use React Native, Flutter, Kotlin Multiplatform, even .NET MAUI or whatever Microsoft is on? One would assume that if these were good solutions more people would be adopting them.

Why is Codename One lesser than Flutter?

Plenty of companies/people use it. It's open source with commercial backing. It's free for commercial use. It existed well before flutter. Uses a language people actually use (Java) as opposed to Dart.

Why would people use flutter which is constantly in danger of being spring cleaned by Google since it makes absolutely no commercial sense. Without Google's support it becomes an unsustainable over engineered brick of code.

Re: iOS indie app development looks like

#49
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The scariest part is probably the user-base ready to purchase such an App. The demo gif literally showcase "Jenn*Nud*.jpg" as an example..

Maybe I'm way out of touch, but does anyone over the 18 bother to hide their stash of pornography unless it's somehow illegal? I mean, be worried whether or not there's parental controls so the kids can't get to it, but to encrypt it?

1. Intimate photos of your SO rather than generic porn

2. A lot of people live in a more prudish/religious society than you may

Re: iOS indie app development looks like

#50

I gave up on mobile app dev years ago. To Apple, I'm not giving you $100 per year for four people to play my hobbyist games. Not to mention getting my account approved in the first place was such a horrible process. They can and will deny your app for random reasons. I don't know how any independent developer really wants to base their entire income around such madness . What they want is multi-billion companies publ…

I have a hard time taking people seriously who make such a huge deal out of the developer account pricing. A hundred bucks per year just isn't much money, I'm sorry, maybe it's my privilege talking, but if you're getting into iOS development you have, at base, one mac and one iDevice, if for NO other reason than development and testing of the app you want to make. The cheapest Mac available new is $600, and the cheap…

My problem is that its an annual cost. When I dabbled in Android development, I think I paid a one-time fee of $25. That's a cost I can swallow for someone who wants to release apps for free. If I have to pay $100 a year, I need to make that money back from my apps which means I probably need to make them subscription based. Which leads us to the world we live in today.
Post reply on HN