[HN Gopher] My first attempt at iOS app development
___________________________________________________________________
My first attempt at iOS app development
Author : surprisetalk
Score : 219 points
Date : 2025-06-05 04:02 UTC (4 days ago)
(HTM) web link (mgx.me)
(TXT) w3m dump (mgx.me)
| earthnail wrote:
| The author will learn the hard way that their proposed, fair
| pricing model won't even pay a solo dev.
|
| Making reasonable money on iOS is hard, like, really hard, and
| just having a good product is definitely not enough.
|
| Sorry to sound so pessimistic; I just want to emphasise that
| monetisation and marketing is at least as important on iOS as
| product development.
| Spivak wrote:
| But it might buy you a nice vacation on top of your $dayjob for
| an app that's probably very low maintenance.
|
| Certainly not bad for three days work.
| amelius wrote:
| How do you know what they make? Maybe it's only $100? For
| three days work, that's terrible.
| vunderba wrote:
| Made even worse by the fact that the apple developer
| membership costs 99 USD per year...
| jll29 wrote:
| So Apple gets $99/year PLUS 30% app revenue share?
|
| So at a $2.99 "fair" price point as mentioned in the
| post, how many copies does he have to sell to break even
| (assuming 4 days of development priced at $2,500/day
| contractor rate)? (1 * .99) * .70 -
| (4 * 2500 + 99) < 0 (10 * .99) * .70 - (4 * 2500
| + 99) < 0 (100 * .99) * .70 - (4 * 2500 + 99) < 0
| (1000 * .99) * .70 - (4 * 2500 + 99) < 0 (10000 *
| .99) * .70 - (4 * 2500 + 99) < 0 (14574 * .99) *
| .70 - (4 * 2500 + 99) = 0.78
|
| The answer is => 14,574 downloads would give him $0.78
| profit, before taxes. (In that time, he would have earned
| more than $13,000 for Apple.)
| sokoloff wrote:
| I thought it was 15% for devs selling under $1M per year.
|
| It also seems like a super-weird analysis angle to both
| pay yourself a ( _very_ generous) full day rate _AND_
| then expect upside on top of that and conclude that
| making just the $10K for 4 days' work is somehow a loss
| for the solo entrepreneur.
| 4hg4ufxhy wrote:
| I think he is implying that that is neutral, not a loss.
| It is opportunity cost.
| sokoloff wrote:
| Is the opportunity cost of someone who has never
| programmed an iOS app before $2500/day as an iOS dev?
|
| Maybe in some analyses, but that's not where I'd estimate
| it. If they're turning down other $300/hr work, sure, but
| that's not how I read the account.
| ricardobeat wrote:
| On what planet do iOS contractors make $2500/day?
|
| That aside, 1) the author is not an experienced iOS dev
| 2) hourly rates != cost, and 3) you can certainly get the
| same app built for under $1000 by a freelancer.
|
| You also seem to have accidentally used a $0.99 price
| instead of $2.99.
|
| Real break-even would be closer to 1k-2k sales.
| Spivak wrote:
| We're talking about an app made as a weekend project to
| solve a problem the developer themselves has. Most normal
| humans would count their time as being free. I pity the
| person who considers the economic value and tax
| implications of their leisure time projects. So the
| calculation is just how many downloads do they need to
| make up for the $99 developer fee which breaks even at 47
| downloads at 30% or 38 at 15%. Definitely not
| unrealistic.
| matwood wrote:
| > I pity the person who considers the economic value and
| tax implications of their leisure time projects.
|
| Learning iOS development also has economic benefit beyond
| the app created.
| isoprophlex wrote:
| $2500 a day?! I will do anything, including clubbing baby
| seals to death, for half that rate. Is there any place
| where you can make that kind of cash doing contracting
| work?
| loginatnine wrote:
| You calculated based on a 0.99$ purchase price though, at
| 2.99$ it's 4825 purchases to break even.
| neepi wrote:
| I had an idea years ago for an app but came to the same
| conclusion after some market research and a risk assessment so
| didn't bother. I do not regret that decision for a moment.
|
| I either have to put enough time into the idea to do it full
| time or do a shitty job. I can't win either way without
| incurring massive risks so I will continue to part time two
| jobs and invest the earnings from those wisely instead.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Did the idea really require being an app? Could it have been
| a website/webapp instead?
| adastra22 wrote:
| How do you do photo deduplication on a website?
| dylan604 wrote:
| WASM
| adastra22 wrote:
| Photos are on device.
| neepi wrote:
| It could but I respect my potential userbase too much to
| make it more convenient for me and less convenient for
| them.
| criddell wrote:
| Do you think it's easier to make a living creating web
| apps?
| dylan604 wrote:
| There's no code signing process or update review. There's
| no $99/year registration fee for the privilege to have
| your code signed. There's no up to -30% hit on your fees.
|
| So yeah, there's an easier way of avoiding the Apple
| specific pain points. If you think that I felt it would
| be easier to program the actual app, then you're clearly
| just trying to be a hostile commenter and insinuating
| something about me.
| criddell wrote:
| I wasn't talking about any of that. I was talking about
| the ease of earning a living as a solo developer on the
| platform. On iOS, it's true that there are hoops you have
| to jump through and you have to share 15% of your fees
| (if you get to the point where you owe 30%, you are doing
| well!), but in return you get access to a fairly large
| audience of people willing to pay for apps and services.
|
| The web is the Wild West and I don't really have much of
| a feel for how difficult it is to find an audience that
| will pay to use the software you build.
| heliographe wrote:
| Yes, making money on iOS is an uphill climb, many times more so
| if you're not playing the TikTok ads and subscription model.
|
| I've been making iOS software independently for almost 2 years
| now (https://heliographe.studio) and am about ramen profitable.
|
| A few notes in case OP (or anyone interested in making some
| money in the App Store) is reading:
|
| - you have to make the app free to download, and quickly
| demonstrate value then show a paywall if you want any
| purchases. Paid upfront just does not work unless you're an
| already recognized product.
|
| I had some apps that were paid upfront, and would mostly get $0
| days. Switching to free to download immediately brought me to a
| slow but steady trickle of daily downloads, and from there you
| just have to work on your conversion rate.
|
| - but that's still going to be pretty low, if you want any
| meaningful user acquisition, you're going to have to go look
| for the kind of people who might be interested in your product.
| The broader your potential audience is, the harder that's going
| to be (but that's why TikTok ads can work so well). In my case,
| choosing to focus on a somewhat niche area (tools for
| photography) is helpful; there's a strong photography community
| going on Threads and regularly posting on there yields good
| results (for now...)
|
| - $2.99 is dramatically underselling yourself, especially if
| you offer a quality product that you put time to craft to your
| standards and has no tracking, no subscription, no ads, etc.
| You should play with pricing to see what the sweet spot in
| terms of conversion is, but in my experience it's always worth
| it to start at least at $4.99/$7.99 for these sort of utility
| apps. Of course, the design of your funnel/paywall will make a
| huge difference (ie you'll likely sell more of an app marked as
| $4.99 at 50% off, than just $4.99)
|
| - learn about what makes for good App Store screenshots,
| descriptions, how keywords work, etc. Ariel from App Figures
| has some good videos on YouTube about what they see and what
| seems to work based on their data.
|
| The days where you could make a little app, chuck it on the App
| Store for $.99, and have it just blow up are well over. If you
| want to make any money on the App Store (even if to just pay
| back for your Apple Developer membership), you have to put as
| much effort, if not more, in the marketing and promotion of
| your product than you put in the design & development of it.
| It's a grind for sure -- and don't count on Apple to help you
| in any way (by and large they seemed more interested to promote
| games and dating apps with $49.99/mo subscriptions than small
| indies doing interesting things).
|
| Good luck! Eager to try your app :)
| vachina wrote:
| Took a look at your app, and would like to say you're
| competing in a very crowded space.
|
| It's not immediately clear to the layman, what value your app
| provides. Even to me, it got me asking what your app provides
| over Adobe Lightroom.
| nikolayasdf123 wrote:
| +1 agree with above. looks very accurate to what I see so far
| (1 month in App Store).
| bredren wrote:
| 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 quickly and find ways to get people to put a
| reasonable amount of recurring payment into the app to make it
| even remotely sustainable beyond a hobby.
|
| FWIW, AI may make this cost so much lower that this kind of
| thing can make sense now. Something to consider, I suppose.
| x0x0 wrote:
| Or just developing in Apple's crappy ecosystem.
|
| eg Apple publishes a new ios rev; debugging on it requires
| upgrading xcode; and that _requires updating your OS._. Good
| thing you don 't mind wasting a full day or more reinstalling
| every other devtool you may happen to use. Or xcode just
| doesn't connect to your ios device because reasons. (The
| reason is apple writes shoddy slapdash software because
| monopoly.)
|
| So now you're spending another $1500+ on a studio so you can
| do all this in VMs and see how bad the damage will be to
| avoid blowing up your main devbox. etc etc.
| F7F7F7 wrote:
| This sounds like Python development....and React.....and
| Svelte....and oh, remember Angular 2 to 3? Or people who
| invest time in Clojure? Were you a fan of the MEAN stack a
| decade ago? Build something on it? How's that app doing?
|
| What you're describing is not unique to Apple. It's a
| regular occurrence for anyone who's not writing for a
| enterprise SAAS company with a largely legacy codebase and
| a dozen DevOps guys mostly obscuring that stuff from you.
| tonyhart7 wrote:
| well atleast those react,angular apps still works
|
| ios app on apple store??? not so much
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| > This sounds like Python development....and
| React.....and Svelte....and oh, remember Angular 2 to 3?
|
| I can open a webpage written in Angular 1, or written in
| year 1990. I can run a program written for windows 95 on
| my new PC with windows 11. It's normal to keep
| compatibility for compiled/finished ebd user software.
| gofreddygo wrote:
| but, can you run npm install on your angular 1 codebase
| from 1990? or was it bower install ? remember grunt?
|
| my 2012 mac hardware works perfectly fine, even the
| battery is OG, apple stopped supporting it, chrome won't
| give update on the last supported os.
|
| software is fragile.
|
| i constrain myself to html and plain vanilla js. if i
| have to use deps, they are local or hosted .js lib files,
| minified. d3 is a great example of this pattern.
| aquariusDue wrote:
| I miss gulp, things seemed so much simpler back then in
| retrospect and the nature of JavaScript fatigue seemed to
| be the FOMO kind instead of this abstraction over
| abstraction that abstracts that other abstraction but you
| still have to the understand what it abstracted away kind
| we have going on today.
|
| Will TypeScript go the way of CoffeeScript in the future?
| Who knows.
| monkeyelite wrote:
| Yeah companies who care about this stuff use more mature
| ecosystems that don't break api every year.
| owebmaster wrote:
| Wait what? Isn't App Store and Play Store mature
| ecosystems yet?!
| trinix912 wrote:
| I can easily do those on my Late 2013 MBP running
| Catalina, but not iOS development for the App Store,
| because it has a minimum Xcode version requirement, which
| in turn requires a newer OS, which requires buying a new
| Mac.
| x0x0 wrote:
| Nonsense. Upgrading python using standard tools does not
| regularly require OS upgrades. asdf, rbenv or various
| other tools will happily pull in new releases from their
| ecosystems.
|
| Go requires macos from 2016 or kernel 3.2 which I think
| is over a decade old. I can't find any limit for jvm 25,
| though I'm sure there is one. No competently-built tool
| requires OS upgrades like xcode.
| gumby271 wrote:
| I think a lot of what Apple has added to their App Store in
| the name of security is really just to get developers to move
| to recurring revenue models, which in turns makes Apple a lot
| more money. An old app that hasn't been updated in a couple
| years isn't inherently dangerous, but if Apple can convince
| users that it is, then devs will have to rethink how they do
| business. It's a shame to watch Google copy this move too on
| the Play Store.
| bredren wrote:
| There are changes that can be valuable to users. Like the
| privacy attestations. I was not publishing at that time but
| I presume that was part of the mandatory dev march.
| m3kw9 wrote:
| Apps will work if you don't update it I have apps that are 10
| years old not updated and still work
| bredren wrote:
| Some last, some don't. I think it may depend on how the app
| is implemented and what it depends on.
| ensignavenger wrote:
| At 3 days to develop, the author could make 100 of these apps a
| year. Of course, they will probably spend additional time
| developing and fixing bugs, _IF_ the app gets any traction. And
| if it becomes something more substantial, they could up the
| price or release a preium in app purchase to upgrade with new
| features.
| 9d wrote:
| Pure iOS apps stopped being profitable in 2009 or so.
| MBCook wrote:
| It's not just that. Companies who are anywhere between
| unethical and outright complete scams have discovered how
| incredibly easy it is to get people to sign up for a free trial
| for something that milks them of tons of money they don't
| realize.
|
| Despite the fact that Apple tells you when your subscription
| will renew it doesn't seem to help enough people. So they buy a
| scientific calculator app because they don't realize that it's
| built into the one on the phone and then end up paying five
| dollars a week for it. And even if they find out after the
| first renewal that means the app developer got five dollars
| (minus fees).
|
| There's tons of subscriptions out there that are just
| completely out of whack with their prices. And Apple just
| doesn't seem to care.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Isn't this why most apps are a front end for a data hoovering
| process so that they can monetize that as well as using ads?
| fractallyte wrote:
| I released my game for free on the App Store. 1.5 years of
| effort - for free?
|
| Well, it's a calling card that I can flaunt whenever needed. So
| far, it's helped me land two jobs, and I can confidently
| leverage it in future too.
|
| I never bothered with rankings or marketing, since I can send
| out the link to anyone.
|
| So, that's how I get value out of the App Store.
| nikolayasdf123 wrote:
| true to that. App Store is flooded with junk. it is hard to get
| to users even with legit free good app. and marketing is
| unbelievably expensive. users trust into random apps on App
| Store is very low too. getting iOS apps to work is very very
| hard.
| nikolayasdf123 wrote:
| it should go without saying that development cost, and rest of
| operational cost (design, legal, etc.) should be considered as
| zero. meaning do yourself with no pay. with all money goes into
| marketing. only then there is slight hope to break even.
| criddell wrote:
| > Making reasonable money on iOS is hard
|
| It's also difficult to be a solo dev on Android, Linux, macOS,
| Windows, the web, etc...
|
| The safest way is to work as a developer for a company that
| will pay you to do it.
| kaptainscarlet wrote:
| With the recent Expo SDK 53 update that introduced a slew of
| breaking changes, I've been contemplating switching my app to
| native. I could perhaps vibe code features on both android and
| iOS and ship features as fast as crossplatform react native devs.
| tcoff91 wrote:
| Could you share which issues you had with the upgrade to 53? I
| just recently migrated my employer's app to sdk 52. We are
| still on legacy arch for now. I'd love to know more about what
| I'm in for when it comes to upgrading to 53.
| cyberax wrote:
| The switch to the new rendering architecture is really
| massive, a lot of libraries have subtle bugs that are not yet
| fixed.
| tcoff91 wrote:
| Oh yeah for sure. Not going to adopt new architecture yet.
| It's a little rough of a transition but once we get through
| I do believe it will be a game changer for react native.
| Until reanimated v4 is dialed in I'm staying away.
|
| Have you tried turning off new arch for now?
| cyberax wrote:
| 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.
| tcoff91 wrote:
| It's not so much the performance that has me excited,
| just the synchronous vs asynchronous communication with
| the renderer.
| cyberax wrote:
| 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.
| rhodysurf wrote:
| I doubt it. I maintain both RN apps and other ones with both
| iOS and android versions and if you are not a company and your
| app does anything more than a todo list your iteration velocity
| grinds to an absolute halt. RN is just faster and that matters
| RASBR89 wrote:
| The Photos app has a delicates option - not that I want to piss
| on your parade but the functionality is already present? Or am I
| missing something?
| tabarnacle wrote:
| Didn't realize this existed, nice.
| m3kw9 wrote:
| This is how a lot of apps make money. People don't know
| something free existed. It's a lot of marketing and is super
| important
| radicality wrote:
| Except you don't seem to be able to filter by actual
| duplicates, it shows you both exact dupes and visually similar
| matches
| sebasvisser wrote:
| Funny how the same desire got both of us into building more or
| less the same app:
|
| https://apps.apple.com/nl/app/xyz-photo/id6602894199
|
| Yours looks sleeker though. One thing I learned quickly after
| having friends use it..other people want different things and
| catering to more than just myself takes soooo much time.
|
| So I stick to building what I want and releasing it for free.
| ryandrake wrote:
| 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 sustainably release
| free apps unless you're willing to just ignore that you're
| burning $100 a year forever.
|
| Other frustrations: Apple makes it difficult to maintain support
| for older devices. They insist you keep updating your tools, but
| the updated tools tend to drop support for older SDKs and
| devices. You have to kind of go out of your way to keep your app
| targeting them. You can see how this plays out by getting a
| second hand iPhone 7 today and go to the AppStore looking for
| apps. It will be very difficult to find an app that will run on
| it. This phone is _not that old_ , but the ecosystem abandons you
| pretty quickly.
|
| They also deprecate things like crazy, so every time you update
| your tools, you get more warnings about APIs Apple would rather
| you stop using. It's tough to just write an app once in 2016 and
| keep it limping along forever. They clearly favor developers who
| are 1. doing it for a living, 2. targeting latest and greatest
| devices, 3. updating their app and their tools frequently, and 4.
| don't mind doing surgery every year to move away from deprecated
| stuff.
| peterburkimsher wrote:
| The solution for code signing is coming: through jailbreaks or
| appdb.to, it's possible to sideload apps without the official
| app store process. The EU even mandated that there should be
| other app stores.
|
| Building for older models is possible using a collection of
| virtual machines, or even a multi-boot old laptop.
| threeseed wrote:
| a) You still need to code sign on alternative app stores.
|
| b) All of your users are still going come through the Apple
| one.
| ensignavenger wrote:
| Reg B... Will they? From what almost everyone I have heard
| from says, most of their users come thru their own
| marketing efforts, not Apples.
| jkestner wrote:
| Yeah, I hate the code rot that the push for the latest SDKs
| brings. I've kept old Xcode versions around, and don't jump for
| every OS update so _those_ don't rot. Kept an app (useful to
| dedicate old devices to) running on iOS 9 until last year.
| Probably could've gone longer with containers.
| gyomu wrote:
| > the updated tools tend to drop support for older SDKs and
| devices. You have to kind of go out of your way to keep your
| app targeting them. You can see how this plays out by getting a
| second hand iPhone 7 today and go to the AppStore looking for
| apps. It will be very difficult to find an app that will run on
| it. This phone is not that old, but the ecosystem abandons you
| pretty quickly.
|
| Well, you're mixing 2 things here: Apple's tooling support for
| older versions of iOS, and what developers choose to do.
|
| Today, you can create a new app in Xcode, choose "iOS 15" as
| the minimum deployment version for your project, and you'll
| have an app that runs on devices going back to the iPhone
| 6S/first generation iPhone SE.
|
| Even supporting back to iOS versions prior to that is fairly
| straightforward (you'll just have to edit a plist by hand
| rather than use the UI picker if creating a new project) - I
| have some older iOS 9 projects that still compile without any
| issues (just tested for the sake of this comment).
|
| But to your issue of most apps not working on an iPhone 7 -
| that's because many developers will choose to only support iOS
| 16/17 or later (and the iPhone 7, a 9 year old device, stops at
| iOS 15). That's their choice though, not a failing of Apple's
| tooling.
| trinix912 wrote:
| Apple requires developers to build the apps with at least
| Xcode 16 targeting the SDK of least iOS 18 to submit new apps
| / updates to the App Store [1]. This limits how far back you
| can go with the iOS version, thus dropping older phones.
|
| Yes, you can definitely download older SDKs and target older
| iOS versions, but you cannot publish those apps on the App
| Store anymore.
|
| [1] https://developer.apple.com/news/upcoming-requirements/
| gyomu wrote:
| That phrasing is misleading.
|
| You can absolutely publish apps that target versions of iOS
| prior to iOS 18; eg all my apps are iOS 15+, I published
| one as recently as last week.
|
| You can build an app with the iOS 18 SDK that target
| previous versions just fine (as long as your calls to APIs
| posterior to the version you're targeting, if any, are
| wrapped in the proper macros) and submit them to the App
| Store.
|
| So yes, you have to build your apps with the latest SDK to
| publish them - but that doesn't restrict the target OS
| version in any way (ie I can build apps that target iOS 9
| with the iOS 18 SDK).
|
| Where it starts to be a pain for new apps built in 2025 is
| if you want to target pre iOS 13, as you'll have to use the
| older AppDelegate mechanism, but still totally doable.
| (That's getting deprecated with the next release, but
| deprecated APIs still build just fine).
| tidbeck wrote:
| This is different from the Minimum Deployment, which I
| current have set to iOS 12.0 in Xcode 16.2.
| nicoburns wrote:
| The "target SDK" and "minimum SDK" versions can be set
| separately. It's mostly just a cultural norm in the Apple
| ecosystem not to support older versions.
|
| This is supported by 1. Apple being relatively good at
| releasing new versions iOS for older hardware. 2. Users (at
| least historically) typically being on a ~2 year upgrade
| cycle. But it's also just the case that the Apple ecosystem
| (including on macOS) tends not to value backwards
| compatibility as much as other ecosystems.
| seviu wrote:
| I just submitted a bug to Apple because of an api that
| crashes the simulator unless you target the latest version of
| iOS. On device you can target any previous version of iOS
| easily.
|
| This is just one annoyance of many I encounter on regular
| basis.
|
| They do go to great extend to allow you to support older
| versions, but they don't make it always easy.
|
| Last versions of iOS have been specially rough because
| SwiftUI has been constantly evolving, and keeping backward
| support is just a nightmare.
| Daedren wrote:
| >and what developers choose to do.
|
| I disagree. Developers are VERY strongly encouraged by Apple
| to move their minimum deployment versions up.
|
| New APIs and frameworks are never backported (Swift
| Concurrency and the COVID tracking API were notable
| exceptions), and additionally if you dipped your feet into
| SwiftUI, you've essentially jumped into river rapids. Despite
| its age at this point, SwiftUI is still very immature, and
| all the new stuff to fix its holes requires you to jump up
| versions or fall back to UIKit.
| zeeeebo wrote:
| There's also the frustration where an Xcode can target iOS
| versions lower than the iPhone simulator's minimum. I was
| targeting iOS 12 for a while but it was a pain having to get
| UTM and an older version of Xcode just to debug/test it.
| xnyan wrote:
| I had to respond, not because I think you are wrong, but
| because I have had almost exactly the opposite experience and
| conclusions from you apparently.
|
| > iPhone 7
|
| I still have one as a TV device for me and my son to watch paw
| patrol. I can only speak for the set of apps I use on it, but
| as of a few hours ago they all still work (streaming, email,
| browser. no banking or other apps in that class). I am looking
| to replace it as it's no longer getting updates as of this
| march.
|
| >This phone is not that old
|
| Kind of very confused by this. It's 9 years old, it just
| stopped getting security updates three months ago. Is there
| anything even close to that outside of the iphone world? I do
| own android devices, I don't have anything android and nine
| years old that can turn on much less run an application.
| ryandrake wrote:
| I think it's weird how confused people get when you suggest a
| 9 year old electronic device should work. Every computer in
| my house is over 10 years old. My A/V receiver and home
| theater speakers are 15 years old. My TV is 18 years old. My
| electronic thermostat is 11 years old. While they no longer
| receive firmware updates, they all continue to work as well
| as they worked on the day I bought them.
|
| For some reason, nobody expects this of phones and tablets.
| The manufacturer cuts you off from updates and now somehow
| you're obsolete! The 3rd party developer ecosystem pulls
| their old-device-supporting apps, and suddenly the device is
| useless. I don't know why we accept this!
|
| What is so special about phones where we allow them to be
| considered obsolete so quickly?
| abtinf wrote:
| > My TV is 18 years old ... they all continue to work as
| well as they worked on the day I bought them.
|
| This is unlikely to be true. The process is slow so you may
| not have noticed it, but the tv is probably much dimmer
| than when it was brand new.
|
| You may have a reasonable point about device longevity, but
| comparing full blown, internet connected, general purpose
| computing devices to an A/V receiver is obviously
| intentionally obtuse.
| ryandrake wrote:
| It's a Hitachi 42 inch plasma and it still looks
| absolutely beautiful. Not a single problem with it in
| almost two decades.
|
| Want to know what failed first? The goddamn Mac Mini I
| have attached to it as a HTPC, where, after "upgrading"
| to Big Sur or Monterrey, suddenly Apple just _up and
| decided_ to drop 1080i resolution support (the TV only
| supports 1080i, not 1080p).
|
| The weakest link, in terms of longevity, is _always_ the
| software developer.
| pasc1878 wrote:
| You have undercut your case here.
|
| The TV works and had not been upgraded. The mac mini
| works if you did not upgrade it.
|
| The weakest link is doing an upgrade, it does not matter
| which hardware.
| ndiddy wrote:
| I think it's unreasonable that Apple sold a device that
| is capable of displaying 1080i and then disabled it in a
| software update. Doing stuff like that encourages users
| to not update and leave themselves vulnerable to security
| threats.
| dcow wrote:
| It may be an unfortunate relic of the carrier upgrade
| economics. Most people, in the US at least, on a
| subscription phone plan get essentially a new phone for
| free every 2 years. Things are changing a little lately and
| now it's not quite a free phone but a heavily discounted
| one, but it's still pretty reasonable to expect most of
| your uses won't have phone much more than a few years old.
|
| I guess that means if we want to see this change we need to
| stop trading up every other year. Which would mean carriers
| need to stop charging $70/mo for a phone line. Etc. I don't
| upgrade my thermostat yearly, the economics are different,
| and so the product approach is too. My thermostat also
| doesn't come everywhere I go on a daily basis and doesn't
| run apps (it's not a general purpose computing platform
| that needs to grow more powerful as software becomes more
| demanding.
|
| Also I have to add: phones are a fashion statement. Old
| phones _do work_ , they're just not cool. Nobody cares
| about the AV receiver sitting in your tv console as long as
| it's amplifying audio. The tech hasn't changed in years.
| Well unless your receiver does video, in which case I am
| certain your 15 year old audio receiver is not capable of
| 4k 120 HDMI handling. Update that TV to a 4k panel and your
| receiver will need a bump too.
| matwood wrote:
| The one thing in phones that was pulling people along to
| upgrade was the camera, but even that is leveling off
| now.
| testing22321 wrote:
| > _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.
| dcow wrote:
| 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.
| testing22321 wrote:
| 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.
| socalgal2 wrote:
| I am sympathetic to the argument/feeling that somethings
| last a long time therefore all things should last a long
| time.
|
| > What is so special about phones where we allow them to be
| considered obsolete so quickly?
|
| The phone / computer works exactly as it did when you
| bought it. What changed is everything around it. That's not
| true of those other things. New video codex, new services,
| new sites, new apps. Let's pick ChatGPT. They have app.
| It's about 2 years old? It strictly costs them more money
| to cover older hardware than just not supporting it. And,
| going forward, each year they want to support the newest
| phones/OS but keeping support for both strictly increases
| costs. I work on a project that run on nearly every device
| (Windows/Mac/Linux/iOS/Android) and we are always
| evaluating which devices we can stop supporting and what
| new devices we need to add to our testing infra going
| forward.
|
| Your 18yr old TV is great. It works exactly as it did when
| you bought it. But for example, let say your TV was 25
| years old. It wouldn't have HDMI and there for, without
| expensive adapters, would not work with an XBox, PS5,
| Switch (afaik).
|
| The point is, your TV does exactly what it did when you
| bought it. No changes. For a smartphone to keep working
| requires constant changes. As a simple example, HEIF images
| didn't exist before. JPEG's with gain maps didn't exist.
| Zoom didn't exist. Etc... Your phone needs constant
| updating. Your TV, A/V receiver, speakers, thermostat do
| not. It costs money to keep the phone up to date. It costs
| nothing to keep the TV, A/V receiver, speakers and
| termostat up to date because there is nothing to update
| chii wrote:
| But apple explicitly tries to make the environment around
| the old phone obsolete. They have an incentive to do so.
|
| Your old TV still works even with an adaptor - but
| there's no such a method for the phone.
|
| I want my phone to work until the hardware fails, not
| when apple decides they want to push people to buy a new
| one next quarter.
| Terretta wrote:
| > _" I want my phone to work until the hardware fails...
| But apple explicitly tries to make the environment around
| the old phone obsolete."_
|
| As of December 31, 2022, U.S. telcos* decommed the 3G
| tech phones of the mid-2000s used.
|
| As long as your iPhone can still use the telco network,
| it still does the functions it shipped with just fine.
|
| A phone's environment depends on a lot more than its
| hardware maker.
|
| (FWIW, thanks to its different incentives than other
| handset makers, Apple continues to offer the longest
| average OS support of the hardware and OS giants.
| Google's Pixel 8 is the first to bump Google's 3 years to
| match Apple's 7, and Samsung's S24 also finally matches 7
| years. So on current devices, they stepped up, but on
| devices before 2023, Apple's support is more than double
| theirs. Arguably, these two finally stepping up were in
| response to the "environment" of Apple's incentives and
| EU regs.)
|
| * Verizon was the last. AT&T turned off its 3G network on
| February 22, 2022. T-Mobile dismantled Sprint's 3G CDMA
| network on March 31, 2022, and its own 3G UMTS network on
| July 1, 2022.
| Angostura wrote:
| I have an iPhone 3GS from 2009. It still makes and
| receive phone calls and will pick up email. Some web
| pages will still render
| butlike wrote:
| I miss my 3GS. Jumped in a pool back in high school and
| fried it instantly. No water-resistance back then!
| ryandrake wrote:
| > The phone / computer works exactly as it did when you
| bought it. What changed is everything around it.
|
| I consider that "everything around it" (The Ecosystem, as
| they say) to be part of the product I bought. When I
| bought my OldPhone N years ago, I could go to the app
| store and download versions X, Y, and Z of apps A, B, and
| C, and they worked. I expect today that if I factory
| reset that OldPhone back to fresh, I'd still be able to
| re-download those compatible versions of those apps, and
| that those apps continued to work as they did N years ago
| (barring some obvious, but still unfortunate cases like
| companies going out of business or turning down online
| services). That's my bar for "working."
|
| If the world moves on, and people are sharing image
| formats that my phone was never able to read in the first
| place, or writing web pages my browser was never able to
| render correctly, then I have to accept that. But what I
| don't accept is the device manufacturer, or (usually the
| case) 3rd party apps telling me "your phone is too old,
| and we're no longer going to let you use it as you have
| for the last N years anymore!"
| adamwk wrote:
| I'm confused, that is how it works. If a developer
| increases their target version to say iOS 18, a user
| running iOS 16 would be able to download the last app
| version that supported it, even after factory resets. If
| the third party developer dropped support for APIs or
| whatever to break that version, it'd be broken regardless
| to whether or not you had the app downloaded already.
| ryandrake wrote:
| I'm pretty sure what I've seen is: If you backup and
| restore your apps, the version you previously had gets
| copied back over. But, if you wipe and try to re-
| download, only the versions that the developer has up on
| the AppStore are available to you, and if none of them
| support your OS, you're hosed. This is definitely true if
| you set up the device with a new account.
| kristianp wrote:
| I agree. Phones aren't increasing in performance all that
| fast any more and the use cases haven't really changed. OS
| and sdk makers should start to consider their tools
| "mature" and stop breaking compatibility with each and
| every update.
|
| Something like the Go 1.0 compatibility promise.
| eviks wrote:
| > It's 9 years old, it just stopped getting security updates
| three months ago. Is there anything even close to that
| outside of the iphone world?
|
| Of course there is, just take a look at any computer/laptop.
| deadbabe wrote:
| > _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.
| TheDong wrote:
| 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 kids, idealistic OSS hackers, and people in the global
| south who see the $100/year and give up.
|
| It's also just plain dumb rent-seeking that no other OS does.
| I can make an APK for a friend for free, I can make an exe
| for a friend, an elf for a friend, etc.
|
| Yet, even if I live in the EU and thus can distribute apps to
| my friends to sideload directly, even then I'm required to
| pay $100/year or my app stops working.
| deadbabe wrote:
| The AppStore is not the internet. There is no reason for it
| to be polluted with everyone's throwaway side projects.
| tebbers wrote:
| Even more of an argument for free sideloading then. Ping
| your friends a URL, they click it and can install your
| app. All without the need for an App Store.
| TheDong wrote:
| The $100 isn't just required for the things published to
| the AppStore.
|
| It's required for a sideload app in the EU. It's required
| to make a testflight app that isn't discoverable on the
| app store, but people can opt-in to running (though apple
| still heavily restricts what apps you can publish via
| testflight, it's not a substitute for sideloading).
|
| > There is no reason for it to be polluted with
| everyone's throwaway side projects.
|
| Too late for that, the app store already has a huge
| amount of trash on it.
|
| If apple insists that the appstore is the only way to get
| software on a computer in my pocket which I paid for and
| own, then yes, they are obligated to let me put trash on
| it.
|
| If apple won't let people put anything on it (as they
| don't), then they should be obligated to let me install
| devices in another way.
|
| It's already incredibly silly that if I want to just have
| my own simple app (like idk, a native app that lets me
| upload a photo to my personal archive over a custom
| protocol I use), I have to jump through hoops as if I
| want the whole world to use it, even if I never intend
| for anyone outside literally just me to touch it.
| deadbabe wrote:
| It's a phone, not a computer. It's not sold as a platform
| for developers to tinker around doing whatever they want.
| It's primarily a lifestyle device and businesses can
| produce apps for it. That's it. You don't get to put your
| own software on everything that has a computer in it:
| cars, consoles, appliances, etc.
| bboygravity wrote:
| You're speaking of kids.
|
| What kids? We don't really make much kids anymore in the
| developed world :p
| 1718627440 wrote:
| Just wait 30 years and the problem will be fixed.
| chii wrote:
| > a bunch of kids learned to program by picking up flash
|
| flash does not have a free version (and i recall a trial
| version is locked after some days of usage). Guess where
| they got their flash development/program from?
| kalleboo wrote:
| > _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._
|
| You can create apps on the iPad and share the source
| bundles with friends without a paid account
| https://developer.apple.com/swift-playground/
|
| edit: To be clear, I'm not defending Apple here, I'm still
| 200% in favor of "let people run the code they want on the
| device they own", what I'm trying to say is just if you're
| a kid who wants to do this, you already can!
| basisword wrote:
| 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.
| josephcsible wrote:
| The difference is that LLMs are optional, but the Apple tax
| is mandatory.
| anta40 wrote:
| For me, the some of biggest annoying about mobile app
| development is how the dev environment is space/RAM hungry:
|
| - gradle folder easily reach 7 or 8 gigs per project (more
| external dependencies = bigger) - Android/iOS emulator also
| need something like 7 GB (per device). Imagine if you have 3
| emulators: Pixel 3 running Android 13, Pixel 4 running Android
| 14, etc etc
|
| Also agree code deprecation is something often happen. Most of
| my experience is Android, and yes I've seen emails from Google
| saying something like "if you don't need this feature, don't
| call API X and use Y instead. Failure to comply to this within
| 1 month will result your app is taken down." Oh well..
| bboygravity wrote:
| I'm in embedded development right now (switched from EE,
| because higher pay, easier to find clients and more
| flexibility).
|
| Would you recommend the switch from embedded to app writing?
|
| What I'm looking for: more location independence (no on-site
| work) and more clients/work/jobs.
| zerr wrote:
| What about switching from app dev to embedded? Is an EE
| knowledge required?
| monegator wrote:
| yeah, no. I do both (and to the user asking for an opinion
| wether to switch from embedded to app.. don't!) and i loathe
| making apps. Sure, the dev tools are supposedly better, more
| modern.. but they are also an evermoving target. You can never
| declare a project done.
|
| This is because every new OS update breaks compatibility in
| subtle ways, or new requirements or behaviour changes remove
| capabilities you were using before and were essential for your
| app, or simply: the new major update breaks BLE / Wifi /
| Background operation and you waste three weeks of your life
| trying to make it work again, only to find that an OS update
| restored things. This happens every single year, at least once.
|
| Then you have the store policy (Play store for example) that
| changes the Target SDK so you MUST recompile the app with the
| new SDK or else, and the iOS certificate expiring every year so
| you have to pay for the privilege, then you have to recompile /
| resign... which means that the project must be compilable at
| all times, and every year the SDK version changes, the
| toolchain changes.
|
| In the embedded world i can effectively freeze the development
| environment, with my ancient GCC version, and it will work
| forever. Well, that's not really true anymore if you use
| Zephir, IDF or other framework monters :(
| jhatemyjob wrote:
| $100 a year is nothing
| DrammBA wrote:
| > $100 a year is nothing to me
|
| Added missing context.
| homebrewer wrote:
| It's a week's salary for a typical junior developer in my
| neck of the woods.
| jhatemyjob wrote:
| Is your junior developer ChatGPT pro? It's either that, or
| you live in Zimbabwe
| basisword wrote:
| >> 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).
| jll29 wrote:
| The Apple ecosystem is polished, but controlling and unforgiving.
|
| Tool upgrades are enforced and so are regular hardware upgrades,
| whether you like it or not. That's hardware that is still
| working, which Appled decides you will no longer be able to use
| some software on, just because.
|
| And after Apple sells you a computer and developer subscription,
| it makes you work for them on their share of any app sale.
|
| I like some aspects of Apple's hardware, and I liked their older
| OS and software (when it became preemtive, but UX was more simple
| and systematic than now), but overall, I prefer open ecosystems.
| deverman wrote:
| Congrats on building with Swift!
| mvkel wrote:
| A great article that stops right where iOS development becomes a
| hassle: actually getting it published in the App Store.
| rcarmo wrote:
| The author hasn't yet realized that will need to re-download
| their app to the phone once a week even if they don't make any
| changes, which is the main reason I just don't bother with iOS
| development.
|
| Not being able to easily maintain apps on hardware I own and
| having to check in with Apple every few days is insane, and the
| workarounds are ridiculous and unwieldy. It's the principle of
| the thing that gets to me.
| bowsamic wrote:
| Yes I don't mind the App Store fee but the fact I can't write
| my own apps for my own phone is insanity. I'd write little apps
| for myself otherwise. Apple do not care about such things of
| course. There is no modern HyperCard
| Gisbitus wrote:
| This post was a wake up call. Last year I spent a week learning
| Swift the "old fashioned way" following Apple's tutorials, with
| not much to show for it when I was done. Even though I use AI for
| coding daily, since XCode doesn't natively support it, I just
| decided to not use it.
|
| Seeing how far you went in just a couple of days, I realize now
| how much I missed out.
|
| Congrats on the app!
| nottorp wrote:
| > I'm about 90% done, I think.
|
| ... and the rest will take the other 90% of the time :)
| monodot wrote:
| Fascinated to read this post as I'm doing almost exactly the same
| thing. Just started using Xcode for the first time, a month ago.
| I'm not inexperienced with software development, but having to
| rely mostly on Xcode, Apple's Developer documentation,
| information embedded inside WWDC videos, and random forum posts,
| has been a pretty rough experience.
|
| So Claude has been a massive help, to get to a working app
| quickly. I am using it in a similar style to the author. Discuss
| in the UI, try really hard to cherry-pick from the code it
| generates, while trying to understand what it's doing. Claude is
| not clever enough to realise it's selling you out-of-date APIs,
| so i feel I need to be super vigilant, which chimes with what
| folk are saying here about the iOS upgrade treadmill. I've
| supplemented with a couple of technical ebooks as backup.
|
| But the feeling of having your own app, that does something which
| improves your own life, running on that computer you've been
| carrying in your pocket for years, is extremely rewarding! (In my
| use case it needs to be an app not a PWA because it needs to
| integrate with device APIs.)
| dirkc wrote:
| > But the feeling of having your own app, that does something
| which improves your own life, running on that computer you've
| been carrying in your pocket for years, is extremely rewarding!
|
| It's great that you did this, kudos to you!
|
| At the same time it is a little sad to read a statement like
| this. It used to be so natural for anyone doing software
| development to write things that improves their lives running
| on their own devices. Mobile has made this so much more tedious
| and then you need to ask for permission if you want to share
| the app.
|
| Last year I also launched my own app on the app store [1], and
| briefly reflected on the experience [2].
|
| [1] - https://dingdongdoorbell.com/ [2] -
| https://www.thebacklog.net/2024/10/22/building-and-releasing...
| jacobp100 wrote:
| I do iOS dev as a side-hobby too (https://jacobdoescode.com/)
|
| People are right it isn't anywhere near a salary, but I have fun
| and it has opened job opportunities too
|
| For marketing, I found /r/Apple very receptive to self promotion
| posts - just make sure you meet the criteria. You can also do a
| discount period and advertise on /r/AppHookup. Last Black Friday
| I reduced a $2 to 29c (lowest allowed price) and made just shy of
| $500, and it boosted my place in the store search
|
| Best of luck!
| cAtte_ wrote:
| what a beautiful website
| w10-1 wrote:
| The OP makes a surprising amount of progress.
|
| As other comments note, it's easy to get caught in the weeds of
| Apple API's and tooling, but AFAICT they generally do as good as
| possible at the hard problem of compatibility.
|
| The worse problem is that you will get blocked after significant
| investment.
|
| It's because of Apple's scale and focus. They have millions of
| developers, but only about a thousand really significant ones
| driving the latest APIs. To avoid delay and noise, Apple ships
| and demos the happy path, but fails to warn about all the
| surrounding pitfalls.
|
| You will hit one, sooner or later.
|
| And any pitfall can be a complete blocker. Unlike web,
| enterprise, or back-end work, where Java, python, and
| javascript/typescript libraries and apps are readily available in
| open-source, bugs present as inscrutable binary blobs that are
| mostly ignored in the black hole of feedback assistant unless you
| have some real pull.
|
| It's easy to get started as a solo, but to manage the infinite
| space of mine fields, you'd need to be in a large organization
| where people have learned where not to step.
| sltr wrote:
| > 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.
| st3fan wrote:
| 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.
| gregoriol wrote:
| 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.
| nkotov wrote:
| 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.
| bob1029 wrote:
| For B2B scenarios, I was able to wiggle my way out of learning
| the iOS ecosystem by using PWAs in Safari.
|
| If you have access to a mobile device management system, it's
| trivial to push "apps" to the Home Screen of each device using
| this technique.
|
| For B2C, I don't have any good alternative. You're going to need
| to be in the App Store.
| andrewmcwatters wrote:
| The App Store does great business, but its customers aren't the
| people downloading the apps, their real customers are the
| developers.
|
| It's incidental that the largest businesses in the world have
| apps on the Apple App Store, but it's not because the App Store
| is a great platform.
|
| If no one is selling annual $100/yr apps, but Apple is charging
| you that much, you're the customer.
|
| There is absolutely no world where polished software that you can
| own is $2.99, sorry folks. Coffee costs more.
| thenthenthen wrote:
| Back in the day, 2017? I made a silly app, not wanting to pay the
| premium, I tried to release it on the Bigboss jailbreak repo
| (cydia). Their checks where more ruthless than the Appstore. That
| was my first and final attempt.
| QuelqueChose wrote:
| Is there a repo link to checkout and explore how this all came
| together? Since using Cursor, been dabbling about getting back
| into coding areas I've always had some interest in in the past
| but never developed into a hobby project; Swift is at the top of
| list.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2025-06-09 23:02 UTC)