Web Apps
I’m listening to Connected #578, and there is a discussion about native apps vs. web apps, in the context of supporting the iPad. As a web developer and iPad enthusiast, I have some thoughts on this.
There is a big time (and potentially money) investment into learning how to develop native apps for any specific platform. In my personal experience, Apple is on the high end of both of those. In addition, I’ve heard my share of horror stories from and about developers and their experience working with Apple. The hosts of Connected themselves even point this out in their episode; to paraphrase from memory, Apple doesn’t seem interested in promoting a good working relationship with the third-party developers that make apps for the App Store.
On the other hand, and again pointed out by the hosts, web technology has come a long way in the last ten years. I myself have written a WebAssembly-based app that I know is being actively used by some number of people. I’d love to have a native app, but this web app is already capable of running offline on basically any modern-ish platform that has a web browser.
That’s not even mentioning that I could use a technology like .NET MAUI to create a native shell around such a web app. But then I’d still need to deal with the whims of App Review, and that just doesn’t seem terribly inviting.
