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They could simply solve this with a PWA, no? They already have a web client which is all server rendered with Rails and uses Turbolinks. If I'm not mistaken th
by pier25 6y ago
They could simply solve this with a PWA, no?
They already have a web client which is all server rendered with Rails and uses Turbolinks. If I'm not mistaken they also use this approach for the Basecamp iOS app [1].
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWEts0rlezA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWEts0rlezA
- jdxcode 6y agoit wasn't clear to me trying to skim the video, but is this the strategy where you add an app from safari to the home screen? That was always clunky and I don't think you can get notifications that way
- pier25 6y agoThe video is about turbolinks, which basically makes a request with JS to the server and then replaces the HTML in the body of the page. This results in a performance increase. Turbolinks is heavily used in Rails sites like Github for example. It also showcases a Turbolinks version for iOS which works differently as it connects with the native app for changing views etc. The guy in the video still works at Basecamp and worked on HEY too so I assume they used Turbolinks for iOS.
- jdxcode 6y agoI think I'm missing something. It's still in the App Store, right? Seems to me that they'd still happily reject it even if the rendering is done server-side.
- pier25 6y agoMy initial point was that since they are already using web technology they could probably move it to a web app for mobile outside the AppStore. But, as paulgb pointed out in another comment, Safari for iOS hasn't implemented push notifications from web apps which is probably a deal breaker for most users of an email app.
- paulgb 6y agoiOS remains a holdout on the Push Notifications API, which is pretty important for an email app. https://caniuse.com/#feat=push-api https://caniuse.com/#feat=push-api
- wayneftw 6y agoI was wondering... Can there be a native app on iOS that sets up notifications for all participating PWAs and then when a notification comes in, when the user views it - the native app simply launches the URL of the PWA? It could be called "Web Events Notifier" or something. Perhaps it could include a UI for managing which PWAs you want to receive notifications for and maybe even a catalog of publicly participating PWAs.
- claytongulick 6y agoThis is a really good idea. Maybe even a business model.
- crispyporkbites 6y agoTechnically yes, it’s a great idea- but Apple will just block it at some point. Or at least the threat of it being blocked is enough to make it a non starter.
- perryizgr8 6y agoThat would work great until Apple rejects it. You cannot get around Apple's intentions with technical loopholes.
- wayneftw 6y agoYeah I'm just wondering - on what grounds would they reject it? I don't see any TOS that would forbid it.
- Joeri 6y agoAny feed reader can be set up like this. Publish the notifications to an rss feed on a unique url, with each entry containing a link back to the pwa, have the feed reader app subscribe to it and use the notifications of the feed reader app. It is somewhat cumbersome though.
- lukifer 6y agoApple has not exactly been friendly to PWA architecture, and their incentives against improving that feature-set are pretty obvious. While web sites/apps can be saved to the home screen, have some data persisted [0], etc, iOS PWA capabilities aren't comparable to Android. And of course, there are all the standard objections to web apps / hybrid apps, re: performance, design language, etc. [0] Although local storage is actually now considered volatile in iOS: https://www.itnews.com.au/news/apple-cops-flak-for-deleting-local-browser-storage-after-7-days-539833 https://www.itnews.com.au/news/apple-cops-flak-for-deleting-...