[HN Gopher] iOS indie app development looks like
___________________________________________________________________
iOS indie app development looks like
Author : satanworker
Score : 31 points
Date : 2025-02-10 12:48 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (safespace.is)
(TXT) w3m dump (safespace.is)
| peterallport wrote:
| Won't folks prefer to use native system features (e.g. password
| protected apps or the "hidden" album in Photos app)?
| JTyQZSnP3cQGa8B wrote:
| That, and how did Apple managed to approve an application that
| hides its true purpose like that?
| Twisell wrote:
| The scariest part is probably the user-base ready to purchase
| such an App. The demo gif literally showcase "Jenn*Nud*.jpg"
| as an example..
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| Maybe I'm way out of touch, but does anyone over the 18
| bother to hide their stash of pornography unless it's
| somehow illegal? I mean, be worried whether or not there's
| parental controls so the kids can't get to it, but to
| encrypt it?
| brailsafe wrote:
| I feel like encrypting and hiding personal private
| photos/video would be the point, not so much downloaded
| porn.
| idolofdust wrote:
| Some people hide their porn from their partner /
| significant other; I don't know why people rationalize
| that, but it's common enough.
| brailsafe wrote:
| I mean, I don't like JPGs as much as the next guy, but idk
| that I'd call them scary
| gumby271 wrote:
| Maybe, but does that mean this app doesn't deserve to exist on
| user's computers if they so choose? Not sure why Apple has a
| say in that just because they have a massive advantage over
| every other dev on their platform.
| jll29 wrote:
| There can be different views on this, I guess.
|
| Apple is known to like to exercise control and to keep their
| ecosystem closed (recall that Jobs was initially AGAINST the
| AppStore concept entirely, which was invented by someone else
| and now makes a ton of money for Apple).
|
| Open systems with little control lead to a bazar like the
| various Linux distros with inconsistent-looking and buggy
| apps mixed with great apps - anything goes.
|
| Imagine you are Apple and you want your AppStore to convey a
| professional and safe look and feel, you probably don't want
| 60,000 converter or image viewer app but a variety of tools,
| maybe 5-10 per category max, or it will be hard for users to
| navigate and tiring to explore.
| gumby271 wrote:
| I guess my disconnect is that the computer that a person
| owns isn't the same as a store that Apple runs and can
| carefully curate that runs on that computer. Combining
| those into one thing strikes me as dangerous, with not much
| upside. Everything you described can be true while allowing
| the user to use their computer how they want, it just
| doesn't make Apple as much money.
| CharlesW wrote:
| > _recall that Jobs was initially AGAINST the AppStore
| concept entirely..._
|
| Jobs was initially against allowing third-party native apps
| on the iPhone, but not App Store as a distribution
| mechanism. Once he relented on inviting ISVs to the profit
| party, the iTunes Store model was never in question.
| emoII wrote:
| Really, the fact that Apple pushes swiftui as production ready is
| laughable. The framework is so ridden in bugs, does not play
| nicely with the other frameworks like photosui, and the language
| itself is incredibly bloated.
| samtheprogram wrote:
| People I know who are iOS developers say differently.
|
| The Swift language itself is bloated? Compared to what? Golang?
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| there's a meme that it has too many keywords, but this
| criticism is shallow. it also grew a lot of features quickly
| to prioritize SwiftUI support perhaps with unnecessary
| language complexity as a result.
|
| I'm an iOS dev full-time now (bootstrapped) and SwiftUI is
| definitely not production ready if it means that it can be
| used without needing UIKit introspection hacks. I like it and
| ship all my work with it, but it is painfully broken and will
| take years more to mature
| brailsafe wrote:
| I have no idea how well it works on iOS, but on Mac it's a
| sluggish black box api that could otherwise have some
| potential. There are workarounds, there are some nice
| components you can put together, but for me it was a little
| defeating to continue bashing my head against it.
| sandoze wrote:
| So many things wrong with this. Reminds me of the Objective-c
| vs Swift arguments from back in the day. The author mentions
| the initial release, as someone who held out migrating
| production apps to Swift until v3 I think we all know early
| adoption is going to be bumpy.
|
| But as of iOS 15+ SwiftUI is very production ready. I've
| migrated two production applications from UIKit to SwiftUI.
| These have active users and are available on the App Store.
|
| Bloated? The last migration resulted in 79k new lines of code
| written and 181k deletions after rewriting 80% of the
| application.
|
| Photos album works out of the box. If you mean camera then
| there are some issues depending on your use case. Beauty of
| SwiftUI is we can wrap UIKit views and interop allowing it to
| play nicely with other frameworks.
|
| If you're supporting applications that target the last few iOS
| versions it's time to learn the new paradigm. Do yourself a
| favor but most of all anyone who might inherit your codebase.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| Try doing performant infinite scrolling on macOS
| sandoze wrote:
| I primarily do iOS and iPadOS, but it's far easier to
| bridge the gap between all the platforms than the
| experience I had in the past with UIKit/AppKit. My last
| MacOS app sadly does not do infinite scrolling.
|
| Off the top of my head, I'd consider the approach. Is it a
| ScrollView? A LazyVStack? What do your view redraws look
| like?
|
| Anyone working with Swift Strings back in Swift 1+2 was in
| for some shockingly bad performance. We adopt, we adapt,
| and the framework matures.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| LazyVStack and ScrollView don't scale (no cell reuse / no
| unloading). The only option is List which has different
| behaviors and performance characteristics on macOS
| including issues with eager rendering
| sandoze wrote:
| To be fair a LazyVStack handles cell reuse and unloading
| automatically which is why offscreen content that was
| previously viewed further back on the list will only
| maintain the root level state (children in the view
| hierarchy may and will lose state in order to save memory
| and energy). How that data is loaded and how you key off
| Identifiable is also important.
|
| Apple's own documentation discusses this in detail and
| for large data sets recommends the Lazy approach. If
| you're using List you're in for some issues.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| Where do you see that it does cell reuse? Their docs only
| talk about lazy loading, not reuse or unloading, eg: http
| s://developer.apple.com/documentation/swiftui/creating-p.
| ..
| danielscrubs wrote:
| The Swift compiler is still the only compiler I know that times
| out.
|
| Algorithmic complexity is such a large part of a fancy university
| education that I just don't understand how they could come up
| with swifts feature set if they knew it would come back and
| royally bite them.
|
| What an I missing? What is the backstory?
| 999900000999 wrote:
| I gave up on mobile app dev years ago.
|
| To Apple, I'm not giving you $100 per year for four people to
| play my hobbyist games. Not to mention getting my account
| approved in the first place was such a horrible process. They can
| and will deny your app for random reasons. I don't know how any
| independent developer really wants to base their entire income
| around such madness .
|
| What they want is multi-billion companies publishing content
| consumption apps, and occasionally some slightly smaller multi-
| million dollar companies might get some sales.
|
| Google used to be cool, but now you need to have 20 or something
| people download the app to test it first. Which is easy to game
| if you have enough money ( or I guess you just go out and buy 20
| devices yourself, a cheap Android device is going to run you $50
| or so).
|
| At least with Android I can point you to my git repository, feel
| free to download my free APK.
|
| Look at the source code, the build process, install it if you'd
| like.
|
| However, there's always light. WebGL is at the point where I can
| publish small games directly onto a web page. No one needs to
| download anything, and no one needs to worry about me doing
| something bad.
| mertbio wrote:
| > we decided to test a sharp pivot just before shutting it down:
| rename the app, change the concept from a photo vault to a
| converter disguise, and sell encryption as a feature.
|
| I'm not really convinced that by just changing those you can
| suddenly get a lot of downloads.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2025-02-12 23:01 UTC)