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Gee, I wonder why. Publishing on the Play Store for indie devs or hobby projects just doesn’t make any sense. You need to jump though so many hoops and doxx y

Gee, I wonder why. Publishing on the Play Store for indie devs or hobby projects just doesn’t make any sense. You need to jump though so many hoops and doxx yourself in the process, only to make basically no money with the apps, and even if you miraculously do, risk getting kicked out of their platform without any way to contact a competent human. Even before all this, the general consensus amongst solo app devs was that “don’t waste your time with Android”, now add about a hundred hour of bureaucracy to even get started with your first app, the choice is obvious for many. I was a long time Android user and switched to iOS because the apps there are just better, I honestly think that Google of running the Android ecosystem into the ground and only the big players will want to go though this mess. As a Flutter developer, it makes me want to switch to other technologies, because if Android loses its appeal, Flutter, another Google product, offers basically nothing. On web, it scks, on iOS SwiftUI will always have an advantage, Android as discussed is in steady and fast decline, and who the hell needs Flutter desktop apps that have poor integration with the operating system…

throwaway743 1y ago
Ugh I'm so fucking fed up with the Play Store and Admob, and how they have no meaningful recourse for solving issues or providing support. It makes me feel hopeless and helpless knowing I have little options outside of relying on them (don't have any apple devices to test on or build my app) and knowing they could give two shits. Especially seeing that their contact options for Admob have been broken for years now and they refuse to fix it or provide actual help. And there seems like there's no way to get them to budge, like even through our reps. Fuck them. I hope they collapse.
shakabrah 1y ago
Amen. I write Flutter at my day job and am working toward an exit ramp every day.
- xdfgh1112 1y ago
  And here I am writing flutter as a hobby and dreaming I could do it as a day job! That sucks
  - muzani 1y ago
    I do both lol. Flutter is fun to play with and vibes very well with AI. But as a day job, things like dependencies, animations, design systems, and super customized things like Xiaomi are the bane of my day.
fidotron 1y ago
I expect Google will attempt something highly amusing, like launching the Play Store on iOS in the EU, with the apps running via a port of the VM (and libraries) to iOS.
- flykespice 1y ago
  You aren't too farfetched off with Google rolling out Google play PC so users can run playstore games on PC. They really think they can capitalize on desktop gaming with their ad-riddled p2w casual games.
kyle-rb 1y ago
What exactly is the advantage of Swift UI over Flutter? Maybe it's slightly more efficient since Flutter does its own rendering, but in my experience I've never run into issues with performance. And I think everything should be web apps anyway (ideally PWAs), but I like that Flutter lets you produce a desktop app from your mobile app with very little effort. Even without any special "integration" with the OS, it's better than packaging a web app in Electron, right?
- lawgimenez 1y ago
  Our app is written in SwiftUI because of the ease between iOS, iPadOS, macOS and Apple Vision. There is just minimal configs to make it work between them. I don't this can be done with any cross-platforms.
  - kyle-rb 1y ago
    Flutter doesn't really need any special configs either. Going by platforms, I think most developers would rather target Windows + Android + Linux over Apple Vision.
Andrex 1y ago
I've been hemming and hawing over whether to explore new PWA tech or catch back up on Flutter/Android with a current small-scale personal project... Sounds like I'm going PWA. This seems too onerous for any non-corporate developer.
ttd 1y ago
No real comment on mobile, but I disagree with your take on Flutter web. I've deployed a moderately complex Flutter web app (SPA) and have been pleasantly surprised at every turn with how capable it is, from performance to complexity management to testing. And the flexibility to produce an AOT-compiled desktop app from the same codebase, should I choose, is nice to have.
- shakabrah 1y ago
  Not intended as a gotcha question but how is your a11y?
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - serial_dev 1y ago
    On web? Officially it’s good. I think they hope people won’t actually care to test accessibility. Well, I did test it and it was comically terrible.

throwaway743 1y ago

Ugh I'm so fucking fed up with the Play Store and Admob, and how they have no meaningful recourse for solving issues or providing support. It makes me feel hopeless and helpless knowing I have little options outside of relying on them (don't have any apple devices to test on or build my app) and knowing they could give two shits. Especially seeing that their contact options for Admob have been broken for years now and they refuse to fix it or provide actual help. And there seems like there's no way to get them to budge, like even through our reps. Fuck them. I hope they collapse.

shakabrah 1y ago

Amen. I write Flutter at my day job and am working toward an exit ramp every day.

xdfgh1112 1y ago
And here I am writing flutter as a hobby and dreaming I could do it as a day job! That sucks
- muzani 1y ago
  I do both lol. Flutter is fun to play with and vibes very well with AI. But as a day job, things like dependencies, animations, design systems, and super customized things like Xiaomi are the bane of my day.

fidotron 1y ago

I expect Google will attempt something highly amusing, like launching the Play Store on iOS in the EU, with the apps running via a port of the VM (and libraries) to iOS.

flykespice 1y ago
You aren't too farfetched off with Google rolling out Google play PC so users can run playstore games on PC. They really think they can capitalize on desktop gaming with their ad-riddled p2w casual games.

kyle-rb 1y ago

What exactly is the advantage of Swift UI over Flutter? Maybe it's slightly more efficient since Flutter does its own rendering, but in my experience I've never run into issues with performance. And I think everything should be web apps anyway (ideally PWAs), but I like that Flutter lets you produce a desktop app from your mobile app with very little effort. Even without any special "integration" with the OS, it's better than packaging a web app in Electron, right?

lawgimenez 1y ago
Our app is written in SwiftUI because of the ease between iOS, iPadOS, macOS and Apple Vision. There is just minimal configs to make it work between them. I don't this can be done with any cross-platforms.
- kyle-rb 1y ago
  Flutter doesn't really need any special configs either. Going by platforms, I think most developers would rather target Windows + Android + Linux over Apple Vision.

Andrex 1y ago

I've been hemming and hawing over whether to explore new PWA tech or catch back up on Flutter/Android with a current small-scale personal project... Sounds like I'm going PWA. This seems too onerous for any non-corporate developer.

ttd 1y ago

No real comment on mobile, but I disagree with your take on Flutter web. I've deployed a moderately complex Flutter web app (SPA) and have been pleasantly surprised at every turn with how capable it is, from performance to complexity management to testing. And the flexibility to produce an AOT-compiled desktop app from the same codebase, should I choose, is nice to have.

shakabrah 1y ago
Not intended as a gotcha question but how is your a11y?
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- serial_dev 1y ago
  On web? Officially it’s good. I think they hope people won’t actually care to test accessibility. Well, I did test it and it was comically terrible.