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Launch HN: Bitrig (YC S25) – Build Swift apps on your iPhone

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Re: Launch HN: Bitrig (YC S25) – Build Swift apps on your iPhone

#101

Post by ggrelet »

jacobx wrote: post #60
chwzr wrote: post #58

Tried to create a canvas like app view, your app froze after some prompts (guess the swift interpreter?) reopening the app and selecting the project again does not help

Thanks for trying, sorry you hit that issue! Could you send us feedback from your project? (Go to the ... menu, then Send Feedback.) If you're not able to use the UI from within your project you can long-press on it from the main screen and choose Recovery Mode, and then enter the project with the interpreter disabled.

Not GP but all I’m seeing is « contact us » which will open the Mail iOS app.

Since I don’t have that app on my phone I’m met with an error message and cannot know what address of yours I need to use to send a feedback.

Btw my feedback is that I tried to create an app which needs camera access. The prompt and code creation worked. However the app does nothing since I believe the permission for camera access are not handled on bitrig

Re: Launch HN: Bitrig (YC S25) – Build Swift apps on your iPhone

#102

Post by tomaskafka »

debdut wrote: post #86

This is crazy, you guys basically rebuilt Swift (interpreter instead of compiler) and also the frameworks. This is the level of engineering that does the magic of "it just works". I, personally, am very interested in swift, and would love to work for free for you guys.

A subset of swift, it seems - the instructions say to avoid async/await for example, but impressive nonetheless!

Re: Launch HN: Bitrig (YC S25) – Build Swift apps on your iPhone

#103

Post by tomaskafka »

I think it’s a question of time until the mobile OS do this natively as a part of responding to user request. Like those Siri app snippets (scores, maps, stocks …), but with whatever adhoc UI that’s needed to best present the result (or allow the user to further interact).

“What to do in Zagreb with a family?” will build a personalized map & content app tailored to everything the AI knows about your preferences.

AI services will want to own this, but the current OS makers have all the incentives to not let them, so I expected OpenAI hardware to be this - a smartphone with launcher basically replaced by a prompt.

Until then, you might sell Bitrig to them as a way to wrestle this approach onto competing platforms, wrapped inside their app?

As an indie app maker (Weathergraph - a beautiful hourly forecast visualization), I should probably include the Ralph “I’m in danger” gif :)

Re: Launch HN: Bitrig (YC S25) – Build Swift apps on your iPhone

#104

Post by tomaskafka »

MMoe wrote: post #97

For some reason I dislike Log-In by Mail. Since this is purely based on iOS devices, log-in with Apple seems to be an obvious and frictionless solution.

Yes, but then Apple (an occasionally fickle and petty entity) owns your relationship with users or even ways to communicate with them.

I may not like it but I understand the services that do this.

Re: Launch HN: Bitrig (YC S25) – Build Swift apps on your iPhone

#105

Post by kylemacomber »

codruterdei wrote: post #94
kylemacomber wrote: post #2

On a personal note, I wanted to thank the HN community. I’ve been reading HN since college (for over 15 years now!) and it’s been formative in my development as a software engineer and leader. I don’t pipe up very often, but I visit HN almost every day. Many of the books I read, blogs I frequent, and podcasts I listen to, I found via HN. I think it’s fair to say, if it weren’t for HN, that Bitrig wouldn’t be Bitrig a…

That’s great and I’m glad you feel good here. I think it’s time for you to share what you found over the years on HN with us. Your curated list, if you will.

This isn't exhaustive, but quickly top of my head:

- How to Win Friends and Influence People — This was really eye opening to me and helped me more productively engage in a large organization like Apple.

- Sam Harris's podcast — I'm always interested to hear his takes on the controversial topics of the day as well as more philosophical and philanthropic ones.

- The Knowledge Project podcast — I don't listen to this as much anymore but a few years ago I was a regular listener.

- Simon Willison’s blog — The highest signal to noise way I've found to stay up to date with developments in AI.

Re: Launch HN: Bitrig (YC S25) – Build Swift apps on your iPhone

#106

Post by kylemacomber »

debdut wrote: post #86

This is crazy, you guys basically rebuilt Swift (interpreter instead of compiler) and also the frameworks. This is the level of engineering that does the magic of "it just works". I, personally, am very interested in swift, and would love to work for free for you guys.

One clarification: we did not rebuild any of the frameworks. As quickly as possible, the interpreter calls out to the compiled frameworks in the OS. So Bitrig is calling into the real SwiftUI, the real Foundation, the real MapKit, etc.

Re: Launch HN: Bitrig (YC S25) – Build Swift apps on your iPhone

#107

Post by addandsubtract »

_1tem wrote: post #78

This is what Apple Intelligence should’ve been.

This is what it'll be. Apple just wants a more polished, streamlined, locked down solution – and they don't do betas. So I'm sure we'll see something like this from them, when it's ready.

Re: Launch HN: Bitrig (YC S25) – Build Swift apps on your iPhone

#108

Post by programmarchy »

Would it be possible to embed Bitrig in an existing app? Similar to how you might embed React Native into a portion of your app to accelerate development in a specific area, it’d be awesome to preserve the mature areas of our apps and use Bitrig to quickly iterate on new features.

Re: Launch HN: Bitrig (YC S25) – Build Swift apps on your iPhone

#109

Post by kylemacomber »

spike021 wrote: post #100

Would you consider having a way to export work done in this app to be included as part of regular Xcode projects? I've been working on a project and sometimes when I'm away from my laptop I have ideas I want to try in SwiftUI but only have my phone on me. What I end up doing is just writing my idea in text and then waiting till I'm back at my desk to give it a shot. Being able to spin up a quick prototype and preview…

Totally! I have the same use case when I’m, say, at the park supervising my kids.

You can export your entire project as a single swift file from the share sheet. This makes it pretty straightforward to import the code into an Xcode project when you’re back at your Mac

Re: Launch HN: Bitrig (YC S25) – Build Swift apps on your iPhone

#110

Post by gtirloni »

tomaskafka wrote: post #103

I think it’s a question of time until the mobile OS do this natively as a part of responding to user request. Like those Siri app snippets (scores, maps, stocks …), but with whatever adhoc UI that’s needed to best present the result (or allow the user to further interact). “What to do in Zagreb with a family?” will build a personalized map & content app tailored to everything the AI knows about your preferences. AI s…

Can you imagine that question being asked thousands of times per second around the globe vs a well built app?

Also, how many years do you think it will take for AI to reach that level of creating a bugless app that won't need a real developer to look at not even a single time?

Will users stay around for hours for the app to be built and deployed after they ask their question?

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