14 ms·

iOS indie app development looks like

68 points by satanworker 2y ago

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
peterallport 2y ago
Won't folks prefer to use native system features (e.g. password protected apps or the "hidden" album in Photos app)?
- JTyQZSnP3cQGa8B 2y ago
  That, and how did Apple managed to approve an application that hides its true purpose like that?
  - Twisell 2y ago
    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 2y ago
      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?
      - idolofdust 2y ago
        Some people hide their porn from their partner / significant other; I don’t know why people rationalize that, but it’s common enough.
      - brailsafe 2y ago
        I feel like encrypting and hiding personal private photos/video would be the point, not so much downloaded porn.
      - kalleboo 2y ago
        1. Intimate photos of your SO rather than generic porn 2. A lot of people live in a more prudish/religious society than you may
        NoMoreNicksLeft 2y ago
        >Intimate photos of your SO rather than generic porn I file those under "never worth it to take the picture in the first place since it will eventually be exposed to the internet no matter how careful one is".
    - brailsafe 2y ago
      I mean, I don't like JPGs as much as the next guy, but idk that I'd call them scary
  - satanworker 2y ago
    What's exactly wrong with that? We live in a society fully online, virt and nudes are literally a part of normal healthy communication
- gumby271 2y ago
  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 2y ago
    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 2y ago
      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 2y ago
      > 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 2y ago
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 2y ago
  People I know who are iOS developers say differently. The Swift language itself is bloated? Compared to what? Golang?
  - wahnfrieden 2y ago
    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
    - kridsdale1 2y ago
      IMO UIKit is not production ready without Core Animation hacks. At least you have the option in all cases.
    - internetter 2y ago
      Yeah. You can get far using SwiftUI as your scaffold but you'll need to have introspection and/or UIKit components to do any app of reasonable complexity.
  - emoII 2y ago
    Something like go, yes. Imo there is benefit to only being able to do things one way, and in swift there are a lot of ways to do everything. A trivial example: why can you bind variables in pattern matches with both case let .some(x) and case .some(let x)?
danielscrubs 2y ago
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?
- kridsdale1 2y ago
  Im guessing: The post Next Apple is entirely dependent on llvm. The hardware is tuned to its outputs. The devX is based on generating it. Apple 15 years ago was getting worried people are not learning C in school anymore. They were learning python and ruby and js. Swift exists as a way to market llvm as a tool chain to that market of programmers. My views are informed by years of talking to Apple and build-for-Apple engineers.
- int_19h 2y ago
  C# can also do that - there's a general problem there with combinatorial explosion when you combine function overloading with generics and lambdas.
- chabska 2y ago
  The Swift devs drank the koolaid that Java's method of implementing generics using type erasure is bad, so they implemented Swift's generics by concrete specialization. Turns out that caused a lot of complexity in type lookup.
  - danielscrubs 2y ago
    Interesting, I guess the language is now supervised by a committee which means there is no chance in hell it will be fixed.
999900000999 2y ago
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.
- wahnfrieden 2y ago
  This article is about making money from the App Store, not distributing hobby projects. App Store is great for making money when that is your goal. Some of the friction you mention is if anything a competitive advantage to those able to deliver quality work despite the challenges. I agree it's hostile to hobbyist development and early career learning.
- ToucanLoucan 2y ago
  I have a hard time taking people seriously who make such a huge deal out of the developer account pricing. A hundred bucks per year just isn't much money, I'm sorry, maybe it's my privilege talking, but if you're getting into iOS development you have, at base, one mac and one iDevice, if for NO other reason than development and testing of the app you want to make. The cheapest Mac available new is $600, and the cheapest iDevice is the iPad, for $349, or the iPhone SE, for $429. At minimum to get started as an iOS dev then requires an investment of just shy of a grand, and like, I don't particularly like that, but to then turn that around and be like "but this $99 per year subscription is ridiculous" is just... what!? I don't consider myself a huge "project guy" either but I do tinker, and I absolutely CRUSH $100 per MONTH in terms of buying shit to fiddle with, from Raspberry Pi's to 3D printer parts, to new PC peripherals I wanna try, etc. etc. I struggle to conceive of someone in this space to whom $99/year for an Apple dev account is just this unbearable outlay.
mertbio 2y ago
> 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.
- feifan 2y ago
  Positioning/messaging matters a lot!
- satanworker 2y ago
  we didn't all core metrics fall 3 times
choxi 2y ago
I like SwiftUI, reactive frameworks just make sense to me for UIs. It also interfaces with UIKit in a pretty nice way so you don’t have to commit to one or the other. I’m a newer iOS dev though, I’ve heard many complaints from more experienced devs.
- lawgimenez 2y ago
  I have encountered the infamous > The compiler is unable to type-check this expression in reasonable time; try breaking up the expression into distinct sub-expressions a lot. And it’s impossible to debug. https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/652691 https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/652691
  - floydnoel 2y ago
    that just means you have too many items together. break them up into smaller components or use something like a Group and that solves it. not a big mystery
    - lawgimenez 2y ago
      We all know it’s just the Swift compiler getting confused. In my cases I encountered this error in different scenarios in offset modifier, Strings, Colors.
    - danielscrubs 2y ago
      The mystery is not why it happens, but how compiler tech can go backwards and still win. Ps. I do like SwiftUI, just not the implementation.
satanworker 2y ago
Embarrassed to say, but I didn't know there are comments! I'll answer all of them asap and here is a second part https://safespace.is/blog/vilain-era-part-2 https://safespace.is/blog/vilain-era-part-2 Sorry, guys, HN noob

68 points by satanworker 2y ago

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

peterallport 2y ago

Won't folks prefer to use native system features (e.g. password protected apps or the "hidden" album in Photos app)?

JTyQZSnP3cQGa8B 2y ago
That, and how did Apple managed to approve an application that hides its true purpose like that?
- Twisell 2y ago
  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 2y ago
    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?
    - idolofdust 2y ago
      Some people hide their porn from their partner / significant other; I don’t know why people rationalize that, but it’s common enough.
    - brailsafe 2y ago
      I feel like encrypting and hiding personal private photos/video would be the point, not so much downloaded porn.
    - kalleboo 2y ago
      1. Intimate photos of your SO rather than generic porn 2. A lot of people live in a more prudish/religious society than you may
      - NoMoreNicksLeft 2y ago
        >Intimate photos of your SO rather than generic porn I file those under "never worth it to take the picture in the first place since it will eventually be exposed to the internet no matter how careful one is".
  - brailsafe 2y ago
    I mean, I don't like JPGs as much as the next guy, but idk that I'd call them scary
- satanworker 2y ago
  What's exactly wrong with that? We live in a society fully online, virt and nudes are literally a part of normal healthy communication
gumby271 2y ago
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 2y ago
  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 2y ago
    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 2y ago
    > 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 2y ago

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 2y ago
People I know who are iOS developers say differently. The Swift language itself is bloated? Compared to what? Golang?
- wahnfrieden 2y ago
  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
  - kridsdale1 2y ago
    IMO UIKit is not production ready without Core Animation hacks. At least you have the option in all cases.
  - internetter 2y ago
    Yeah. You can get far using SwiftUI as your scaffold but you'll need to have introspection and/or UIKit components to do any app of reasonable complexity.
- emoII 2y ago
  Something like go, yes. Imo there is benefit to only being able to do things one way, and in swift there are a lot of ways to do everything. A trivial example: why can you bind variables in pattern matches with both case let .some(x) and case .some(let x)?

danielscrubs 2y ago

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?

kridsdale1 2y ago
Im guessing: The post Next Apple is entirely dependent on llvm. The hardware is tuned to its outputs. The devX is based on generating it. Apple 15 years ago was getting worried people are not learning C in school anymore. They were learning python and ruby and js. Swift exists as a way to market llvm as a tool chain to that market of programmers. My views are informed by years of talking to Apple and build-for-Apple engineers.
int_19h 2y ago
C# can also do that - there's a general problem there with combinatorial explosion when you combine function overloading with generics and lambdas.
chabska 2y ago
The Swift devs drank the koolaid that Java's method of implementing generics using type erasure is bad, so they implemented Swift's generics by concrete specialization. Turns out that caused a lot of complexity in type lookup.
- danielscrubs 2y ago
  Interesting, I guess the language is now supervised by a committee which means there is no chance in hell it will be fixed.

999900000999 2y ago

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.

wahnfrieden 2y ago
This article is about making money from the App Store, not distributing hobby projects. App Store is great for making money when that is your goal. Some of the friction you mention is if anything a competitive advantage to those able to deliver quality work despite the challenges. I agree it's hostile to hobbyist development and early career learning.
ToucanLoucan 2y ago
I have a hard time taking people seriously who make such a huge deal out of the developer account pricing. A hundred bucks per year just isn't much money, I'm sorry, maybe it's my privilege talking, but if you're getting into iOS development you have, at base, one mac and one iDevice, if for NO other reason than development and testing of the app you want to make. The cheapest Mac available new is $600, and the cheapest iDevice is the iPad, for $349, or the iPhone SE, for $429. At minimum to get started as an iOS dev then requires an investment of just shy of a grand, and like, I don't particularly like that, but to then turn that around and be like "but this $99 per year subscription is ridiculous" is just... what!? I don't consider myself a huge "project guy" either but I do tinker, and I absolutely CRUSH $100 per MONTH in terms of buying shit to fiddle with, from Raspberry Pi's to 3D printer parts, to new PC peripherals I wanna try, etc. etc. I struggle to conceive of someone in this space to whom $99/year for an Apple dev account is just this unbearable outlay.

mertbio 2y ago

> 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.

feifan 2y ago
Positioning/messaging matters a lot!
satanworker 2y ago
we didn't all core metrics fall 3 times

choxi 2y ago

I like SwiftUI, reactive frameworks just make sense to me for UIs. It also interfaces with UIKit in a pretty nice way so you don’t have to commit to one or the other. I’m a newer iOS dev though, I’ve heard many complaints from more experienced devs.

lawgimenez 2y ago
I have encountered the infamous > The compiler is unable to type-check this expression in reasonable time; try breaking up the expression into distinct sub-expressions a lot. And it’s impossible to debug. https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/652691 https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/652691
- floydnoel 2y ago
  that just means you have too many items together. break them up into smaller components or use something like a Group and that solves it. not a big mystery
  - lawgimenez 2y ago
    We all know it’s just the Swift compiler getting confused. In my cases I encountered this error in different scenarios in offset modifier, Strings, Colors.
  - danielscrubs 2y ago
    The mystery is not why it happens, but how compiler tech can go backwards and still win. Ps. I do like SwiftUI, just not the implementation.

satanworker 2y ago

Embarrassed to say, but I didn't know there are comments! I'll answer all of them asap and here is a second part https://safespace.is/blog/vilain-era-part-2 https://safespace.is/blog/vilain-era-part-2 Sorry, guys, HN noob