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The Swift SDK for Android

swift.org

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Re: The Swift SDK for Android

#81

Post by trevor-e »

pzo wrote: post #77
trevor-e wrote: post #47

Very excited to see this as an official project! I've been toying around with multiplatform frameworks like RN and Flutter for a side project of mine but they never feel right. I'd rather use the native UI per platform and have a nice way to share business logic. KMP exists but I think for most developers wanting to build an app it's more common to build for iOS first, and then port to Android later if the app gets t…

react native do uses native UI per platform in contrast to flutter or compose multiplatform. React Native improved a lot - it's not the same technology that has been 5 years ago. Especially this year there were plenty of improvements also regarding speed but in react native and community plugins (new architecture rolled in, react compiler, hermes v1, nitro modules, flash list v2, legend list, react native skia, react…

Yes it uses native UI by wrapping the underlying frameworks, but that still means there is a layer in between that has to be updated with fixes and new features. Every RN project I've tried in the past turned into a dependency mess since you find edge cases that are not supported by the framework.

It's definitely gotten better like you said but I just prefer to work with the native platform code even if it's a bit of extra effort.

Re: The Swift SDK for Android

#82

Post by disiplus »

a3w wrote: post #70
trevor-e wrote: post #47

Very excited to see this as an official project! I've been toying around with multiplatform frameworks like RN and Flutter for a side project of mine but they never feel right. I'd rather use the native UI per platform and have a nice way to share business logic. KMP exists but I think for most developers wanting to build an app it's more common to build for iOS first, and then port to Android later if the app gets t…

> but I think for most developers wanting to build an app it's more common to build for iOS first, and then port to Android later if the app gets traction. Is it? There seem to be a hundred million Java developers out there, that can do an Android app, plus even release that in-house or with minimal registration fees if single dev/sideproject. For Objective-C/Swift, there seem to be ten percent as many devs. I always…

for us its pixel phones, you can choose iphone if you want but most of us want pixel. so for me its macbook + pixel. I think the iphone only is unique to US.

Re: The Swift SDK for Android

#83

Post by bpavuk »

bitpush wrote: post #68
ls-a wrote: post #40

Thank you. Please kill RN and Flutter already. I'm done with square UI apps that handle touches after two days

I have no love for RN and Flutter, but what makes you think Swift on Android will be even remotely close to what Flutter and RN has? If anything, Apple will launch this and quickly forget this exist.

although Apple has tremendous influence over Swift, Swift for Android is a grassroots effort, as said in the link. if community needs it, community will maintain it, and Apple won't get in the way. why would they?

Re: The Swift SDK for Android

#84

Post by timeon »

kylecazar wrote: post #44
danielfalbo wrote: post #39

Why can’t everything just be a progressive web app

Because Google/Apple don't want us to circumvent their respective app stores, so they make certain features/API's a PITA (if not impossible) to use unless you are building natively.

Meanwhile I considered PWAs necessary evil on iOS. I would gladly use native tools but paying developer subscription just to install private/personal apps is no-go.

Re: The Swift SDK for Android

#86

Post by bsimpson »

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 for a "Cupertino" theme that looks-and-feels pixel-perfect on iOS.

React Native tries to delegate to platform primitives for complex widgets, so scroll views still feel like Apple's when on Apple's platform.

Just about every top-level comment here is talking about that in one way or another; yet the blog post doesn't mention it at all.

It's possible that Apple/Swift's mindshare among developers will lead to a significant number of apps shipping the Swift version for Android even if it means using Apple's UI, simply because they can't be bothered to make something bespoke for Android. Then again, Apple takes so much pride in its design language that it might not be willing to implement anything that feels good on a platform they don't own. If they were to ship an API-compatible widget toolkit, it might e.g. use intentionally bad spring physics to remind you you aren't on an iPhone.

I wonder how big the community part of this is. Is this an open source project of non-Apple people who are trying to break Apple's platform out of its walled garden? Is a lot of it funded by Apple? Ultimately, that's going to shape a lot of how this plays out.

Re: The Swift SDK for Android

#87

Post by palata »

trevor-e wrote: post #47

Very excited to see this as an official project! I've been toying around with multiplatform frameworks like RN and Flutter for a side project of mine but they never feel right. I'd rather use the native UI per platform and have a nice way to share business logic. KMP exists but I think for most developers wanting to build an app it's more common to build for iOS first, and then port to Android later if the app gets t…

> KMP exists but I think for most developers wanting to build an app it's more common to build for iOS first

This sounds US-centric to me.

The advantage of KMP is that it is pretty mature and it is used in big apps like Google workspace (Google Docs etc), so it feels like it may be in a really good position.

I used to be exited about Flutter when it started, but the speed of major releases (by the time I had rewritten my app for Flutter 2, Flutter 3 was out, or something like that) and it did not seem to get so much traction (Dart is fun, but well).

KMP builds on top of Kotlin, with big investment from JetBrains and Google. That looks extremely promising to me.

Re: The Swift SDK for Android

#88

Post by icar »

trevor-e wrote: post #47

Very excited to see this as an official project! I've been toying around with multiplatform frameworks like RN and Flutter for a side project of mine but they never feel right. I'd rather use the native UI per platform and have a nice way to share business logic. KMP exists but I think for most developers wanting to build an app it's more common to build for iOS first, and then port to Android later if the app gets t…

At Proton they use Rust for shared logic (their claim is more than 80% of the codebase iirc), and platform specifics for the rest.

Re: The Swift SDK for Android

#89

Post by mr7uca »

tomovo wrote: post #63
oblio wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How solid is Kotlin on iOS?

If you mean Kotlin Multiplatform, it works pretty well. Not easy to debug, the GC is a bit weaker than the Android implementation and optimized builds can get crazy slow as the app grows. The interface uses auto-generated ObjC headers which are very verbose. Native Swift API is in beta. Overall still worth it for a commercial app, I think.

incremental native builds are getting better at least

Re: The Swift SDK for Android

#90

Post by makeitdouble »

twof wrote: post #73
a3w wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but I think for most developers wanting to build an app it's more common to build for iOS first, and then port to Android later if the app gets traction. Is it? There seem to be a hundred million Java developers out there, that can do an Android app, plus even release that in-house or with minimal registration fees if single dev/sideproject. For Objective-C/Swift, there seem to be ten percent as many devs. I always…

It's not really about the number of developers. If you're running a company in the US at least, most of your revenue is going to come from iOS users.

The US still has a strong iOS market share, shipments just never go below 50%

https://counterpointresearch.com/en/insights/us-smartphone-m...

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