The Decline of Mobile Development

It is a pain to deal with their App Store, but it isn't intolerable. I don't charge for my apps, but I understand that the Apple ecosystem is very lucrative for devs that do.

> causing codebases to become complicated and littered with if/then evaluations for various SDKs

I have found that I almost never have to do this, and when I do, it's usually a bad code smell. Part of the reason, is that I develop native, for one platform at a time. It might be another story, entirely, if I have to develop for multiple ones.

I just got contacted by a friend, wrt an ObjC app that has been deprecated for over a decade. He reports that it still works fine, on iOS18.

Many years ago, I spent a few months, learning Android. The thing that really put me off, was the Android Pizza of Death. That's the pie chart that describes the percentage of users, running various Android versions.

It was sobering.

Apple basically allows me to write support for the current OS, and support just one back. The app I'm in the process of releasing now, works in iOS 15, but I am declaring support starting at 16, and it works fine in 18.

The only headache that Donn eludes to that I've experienced had to do with Android's scoped storage. It's taken them a few tries to get it right, and their documentation hasn't really provided good best practices, so I've had to roll with the punches a few times. But I really haven't had to deal too much with Donn's other points.

React Native also works but has it's own set of challenges.

I know. Sometimes it makes sense. Sometimes it is easier. Sometimes it is for work, and it is a requirement. Often it could be a page, and is not just to have access to your device data.

For myself? Most of the programs I write are pages. Works on any device, Writing guis is not a problem, there are a ton of useful frameworks. There is no need for synchronizing data between devices, not need to install it on client devices etc. Etc.