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My first attempt at iOS app development

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Re: My first attempt at iOS app development

#121

Post by gregoriol »

st3fan wrote: post #104
sltr wrote: post #101

> haven't paid for the Apple Developer Program yet Then you aren't even half done. You still have to undergo the memorable experience of code sign and app store review. First wrote iOS apps in 2010. Loathed it then, loathed it now. I shun these devices for which I can't write my own software without permission.

Code signing has been a non issue for years now. It was a complete horror show when we started 15 years ago but in today's Xcode it all just works out of the box.

Oh while a single simple setup is easier, it's still a horror show as soon as you need entitlements, more build environments, more devices (wtf does Apple makes us wait 72 hours to add one?!), ... Apple caters to kids starting development these days, not enterprise developers.

Re: My first attempt at iOS app development

#122

Post by cyberax »

tcoff91 wrote: post #119
cyberax wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but we found plenty of bugs. Fixed some (e.g. in TrueSheet). It is drastically faster, but I won't call it a "game changer". It's great for us because we have native code modules, and seamless Turbo Modules are nice (you _can_ use them with the old arch, but it requires some jumping through hoops). As for reanimated, I would just stay away from it entirely. Way too many layering violations for my taste.

It’s not so much the performance that has me excited, just the synchronous vs asynchronous communication with the renderer.

It has its own problems... Since the async round-trip is gone, you can end up with rendering happening too _early_.

The rendering is also not truly synchronous, you can't resize graphical surfaces from the JS thread. You still need to do a round-trip to the platform UI thread. So for example, React Native WebGPU misrenders an image when you rotate the screen because of that.

The rendering callback ends up running before the surface has the chance to get resized. I've also seen that with other libraries that mix native rendering. I'm pretty sure reanimated is also susceptible to this.

Re: My first attempt at iOS app development

#123

Post by DrammBA »

jhatemyjob wrote: post #120
ryandrake wrote: post #15

Coming from embedded development, where it's mostly crappy SOC vendors providing a barely-working SDK and toolchain they cobbled together from an ancient version of gcc, moving to iOS development / Xcode was in most aspects a breath of fresh air. It does have its annoyances, though. Code signing, provisioning profiles, entitlements, AppStore wizardry... And the developer program fee is a bummer: It means you can't su…

$100 a year is nothing

> $100 a year is nothing to me

Added missing context.

Re: My first attempt at iOS app development

#124

Post by homebrewer »

jhatemyjob wrote: post #120
ryandrake wrote: post #15

Coming from embedded development, where it's mostly crappy SOC vendors providing a barely-working SDK and toolchain they cobbled together from an ancient version of gcc, moving to iOS development / Xcode was in most aspects a breath of fresh air. It does have its annoyances, though. Code signing, provisioning profiles, entitlements, AppStore wizardry... And the developer program fee is a bummer: It means you can't su…

$100 a year is nothing

It's a week's salary for a typical junior developer in my neck of the woods.

Re: My first attempt at iOS app development

#125

Post by basisword »

ryandrake wrote: post #15

Coming from embedded development, where it's mostly crappy SOC vendors providing a barely-working SDK and toolchain they cobbled together from an ancient version of gcc, moving to iOS development / Xcode was in most aspects a breath of fresh air. It does have its annoyances, though. Code signing, provisioning profiles, entitlements, AppStore wizardry... And the developer program fee is a bummer: It means you can't su…

>> Code signing, provisioning profiles, entitlements, AppStore wizardry

Maybe it's because I've been doing iOS development since the original SDK, but this stuff is now super automated. I can't remember the last time I thought about any of it other than enabling some entitlements (and that's done in Xcode with a checkbox now).

>> Apple makes it difficult to maintain support for older devices.

I'm not sure I agree with this either. I work with a range of large iOS devs and they're all still supporting iOS 12 and 13 without much difficulty. Sure, you can't use the latest and greatest API's but there's nothing blocking you from using the API's supported by the older OS versions.

Regarding the iPhone 7 - it's very old. Nearly a decade old. And even at that it still supports iOS 15 which is only a couple of years old.

Generally I find indie shops will force you to use the most recent couple of OS versions because they want to use the new API's and don't want the overhead of maintaining support for older ones. Any app that's relying on having lots of users is supporting as far back as possible (particularly when it comes to iPad because those users keep their devices far longer).

Re: My first attempt at iOS app development

#126

Post by basisword »

TheDong wrote: post #54
deadbabe wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It means you can't sustainably release free apps unless you're willing to just ignore that you're burning $100 a year forever. The fact that this $100 yearly fee has never been adjusted for inflation, in a time when developers are easily shelling out $200 a month to use LLMs, makes this gripe all the more petty. Especially when software developers are still among some of the highest paid jobs on the market.

Back in the days of newgrounds, a bunch of kids learned to program by picking up flash, making games, and sharing them with their friends. That would not have happened if you had to pay even $1/year to publish a .swf file. Now, their friends all have iphones, and if a kid could hack out an app for their friend group and share it around, it would give them great motivation to learn and hack in that ecosystem. It's kid…

I get your point but if they can't afford the $100 for the dev account they probably also can't afford the Mac to build the apps.

Re: My first attempt at iOS app development

#127

Post by bredren »

m3kw9 wrote: post #62
bredren wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The author mentions code signing as a tricky ecosystem thing. Well, wait until the app has to get new assets to be resubmitted with bug fixes for new versions of iOS. And if they don’t keep updating it, it will stop working and the buy it for life idea commits the dev to maintenance that isn’t paid for either upfront or through subscription. There are folks who make and give away a lot but some learn their lesson qui…

Apps will work if you don’t update it I have apps that are 10 years old not updated and still work

Some last, some don’t. I think it may depend on how the app is implemented and what it depends on.

Re: My first attempt at iOS app development

#128

Post by testing22321 »

dcow wrote: post #97
testing22321 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> get essentially a new phone for free every 2 years What you mean to say is the payments for the phone (and the interest for the loan) are just bundled into the monthly plan. The phone is categorically not free, the payment is just obfuscated to the point that many people don’t understand.

Of course. Either way you’re getting what you pay for and there’s no way to select “I don’t want a free phone every two years take $15 off my monthly payment please”. It kinda is moving that way now, though. The monthly cost for new hardware is increasingly more optional and better delineated from the phone service. But thats’s new stuff—it will take awhile for things to percolate down.

Of course there is!

Show up with your own phone and the plan options are entirely different and cheaper.

I’ve never had a plan where phone payments are rolled in.

Re: My first attempt at iOS app development

#130

Post by nkotov »

sltr wrote: post #101

> haven't paid for the Apple Developer Program yet Then you aren't even half done. You still have to undergo the memorable experience of code sign and app store review. First wrote iOS apps in 2010. Loathed it then, loathed it now. I shun these devices for which I can't write my own software without permission.

Even getting in the program takes time. I signed up on Thursday, had to send a ton of documents, and for organizations, you need a DUNS number. Whole process kind of sucks currently.
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