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The Swift SDK for Android

swift.org

231–240 of 298 posts

Re: The Swift SDK for Android

#231

I've worked with Flutter, React Native, and now I'm building an app in SwiftUI. I've found a few things in the process: 1.) Neither RN nor Flutter seems to be able to create truly native applications on iOS. I've never once seen an application made in either of them and thought it was a native iOS application. 2.) Unless your application must support both platforms, android (in an economic sense) is dead weight. I wa…

What's your market? Android being financially irrelevant seems very US-centric.

Re: The Swift SDK for Android

#232
post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very unpopular opinion but i like apps that ashew looking “native” for an original ux. Maybe it is my love for gamedev and all the crazy designs they come up with but i personally loath boring uninspired native apps esp when the native ux is terrible. Apple wants everyone to conform because historically their ux is on point but the last update really reinforces my view.

IMHO, Apps can look (and maybe even "feel") any way they want. But when it comes to integration into the system, they should be as native as possible. It'S 2025 and I can't drag and drop from/to the Gmail app on iOS - that's ridiculous (especially because I can't have real-time push notifications for IMAP in the mail app for Gmail account, which as far as I know is also a limitation by the Gmail servers, not by IMAP…

I would like to see an UX research of what is actually important to match to the platform for the users.

The matching of the look is, from my experience, pretty low on the list. It's usually some interaction that doesn't exist or match that people complain about.

Re: The Swift SDK for Android

#234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can set the corner radius to whatever you like in Flutter, also the framework is quite fast, if an app doesn't respond to touches it's likely a poorly made app

Flutter has a long-standing issue where every interaction is subject to a 1-frame delay on iOS (P2 since 2022)… https://github.com/flutter/flutter/issues/110431 Not to mention the stuff with shader compilation lag

Shader compilation lag hasn’t been a thing for years

Re: The Swift SDK for Android

#235

The most important question for every cross platform framework is what happens to the UI? Adobe products (both the Creative Suite, and their Flex Builder environment for Flash app) had their own design system that felt foreign on every platform it shipped on. If you wanted something that felt native, you had to reimplement e.g. Apple Aqua in Flash yourself. Flutter goes out of its way to do that work for you, aiming…

> Flutter goes out of its way to do that work for you, aiming for a "Cupertino" theme that looks-and-feels pixel-perfect on iOS.

Key word _aiming_ lol

Re: The Swift SDK for Android

#236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

guard let self = self else { return }

Ha! But that's not semantically meaningful Swift code in any normal context, nor is it idiomatic. `self` is equivalent to `this` in C++, and is never normally null. You use this construct for unwrapping nullable fields, for example something like this: guard let httpResult else { return } Note that you don't need to assign the value to itself in modern Swift. This line takes an optional (httpResult?) and returns earl…

> But that's not semantically meaningful Swift code in any normal context, nor is it idiomatic. `self` is equivalent to `this` in C++, and is never normally null.

It is, when `self` is captured weakly in a closure, and that closure is outliving the instance.

Re: The Swift SDK for Android

#237
> Swift has matured significantly over the past decade — extending from cloud services to Windows applications, browser apps, and microcontrollers

Really!!! Would love to know more how that statement is true. I could not find any resources to support that claim

Re: The Swift SDK for Android

#238
post #101

I have been sharing code between Android and iOS for a long time. Sharing the UI has always been a nightmare for non-trivial apps. What makes sense to share is complex libraries, and usually I have been doing that with C/C++/Rust libraries. But it means that the team now deals with Kotlin, Swift and one (or more) of those "sharing" languages. What I believe KMP and Swift for Android bring is that teams will be able t…

Cannot agree more. The UI concepts and capabilities differ too much. Any cross platform UI solution will always be missing some hard to implement things and many recently introduced UI features. And so far I haven't seen a single non trivial app from RN / Flutter world which would feel native on iOS.

Re: The Swift SDK for Android

#240

What does this mean for React Native? Is Swift now going to be the de facto language for Mobile (and maybe Desktop) development?

Not a chance React Native is popular because there’s a thousand times more React devs than native devs. And people like to use what they know. Also React dev experience makes anything Swift related look like stone age technology

> React Native is popular because there’s a thousand times more React devs than native devs.

Exactly this. And they come cheaper. JS dominance in development stems from business logic, not from quality of development environment or tools, or developers preference.

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