Perhaps. I can absolutely see that being more attractive especially with things like the Duo where, I assume, SwiftUI gives you a number of things "for free".
That said, the massive downsides to native are:
- App Store Review time, this used to be hours to 1-2 days, now it can take a week or more
- In the same vein, you can do updates without waiting on native when using web technologies to build your app. We can go from a bug in the field to a fix in <1hr easy. Try doing that with a native app
- Cross-platform, yes LLMs mean you can create a native iOS and Android app but you have to keep those in sync to say nothing of web (if you want to offer a web app as well)
- Like the point above: Web, if you want to support web, why not get the other platform for cheaper (shared logic)
Your assumptions are very outdated. App Store review times are typically < 24 hours and have been for the last couple of years. And KMP makes cross-platform a real thing now, rather than hacking a web view into a native shell, which was always the worst possible user experience.
I'm afraid you are the one out of date here. App Store Review times have ballooned in the last few months. Marco Arment talked about this publically (on the ATP podcast) about how his app was stuck in review for over 2 weeks IIRC and I've seen 2 days as the minimum review time in the last few months with some taking a week or more.
Yes, for a while they were doing very well and I even once had an app reviewed in <1hr but the average has been creeping up. LLM/Vibe coding is what is often blamed for this increase though at the end of the day it's Apple's problem/fault for not staffing the review department better.
You get all of those, to some extent, if you use React Native. You still need to do reviews for significant changes due to app store rules but you can OTA update most changes without waiting on a review. Even web support is there.
There are cons to targetting web/PWA too. Push notifications work but Safari on iOS only allows them if the user adds your website to their home screen. It also doesn't support prompting the user to install the PWA so you have to instruct your users to tap the Share button, tap View more, and then tap Add to Home Screen. And as soon as they tap the Share button the menu opens on top of your instructions so they need to remember the steps to continue. It's hard to defend this behavior because the user will still need to allow notification permission when they open your PWA from their home screen. It's an unnecessary hurdle.
> I can absolutely see that being more attractive especially with things like the Duo where, I assume, SwiftUI gives you a number of things "for free".
Apple may not trumpet it as loudly, but these freebies are handed out in UIKit too, for cases where declarative UI is cumbersome.
Generally I've found that while SwiftUI is great for little self-contained bits of UI like table/collection view cells and simplistic template-like apps, it tends to become a bear with complex apps, so it's nice to have both options.
I'm sorry but that data does not at all square with my experience. I'm seeing 2 days+ as the average and I haven't seen sub-24hrs in months. I oversee ~20 apps and I can tell you iOS review times have been trending upwards for the last few months.
Definitely makes sense for a large org with massive resources (such as Shopify) to do this. But for everyone here pondering what to use for their startup or a smaller project, there are still important trade-offs. In the past few years I've launched multiple cross-platform Flutter apps and multiple native iOS and Android apps using Jumpstart iOS and Android (native templates from the GoRails guys which leverage web views from your Jumpstart Rails server). The latter gave me web, iOS and Android out of the box and was vastly less costly to build, even with AI. For entrepreneurs who like Ruby on Rails, Jumpstart is my favorite for launching rapidly, and since the mobile apps are easy-to-modify iOS and Android projects, it's designed so you can either add more custom Hotwire Native Bridge Components or just write Swift and Kotlin to replace functionality with native code. Eventually you could write away all of the Jumpstart webview stuff, but you'd only do that if you had more runway, like if you have plenty of time or you start making lots of money. I've worked for clients whose ideas failed--not because of my code, of course. :)
It's better to find out quickly if you can get traction rather than building something requiring more maintenance. For most bug fixes or enhancements, you make them in the Jumpstart Rails side and they should up instantly in the mobile apps without going through app review again! Most projects are not being built in companies the size of Shopify, so I caution anyone who wants to just get the project out there to use platforms that give them more leverage. And no, I'm still not a fan of low-code or no-code, because I know what it's like to have to maintain apps over many years.
Oh, and I still always warn clients to stay away from native mobile unless they absolutely need it, because even with AI, maintaining just a web app is still light years faster, and far more pleasant. I know from very, very, very recent experience that testing subscriptions is still annoyingly cumbersome in the flaky Apple and Google sandbox environments, and Stripe for web apps is night and day easier to test. Testing on mobile is better than it used to be, but sometimes when I'm waiting for builds onto a physical device or for confusing settings in App Store Connect or Google Play Console to take effect (or just fine where they've been moved to), I think about how a manager 20 years ago was telling me how slowly his development lifecycle was when he used to burn software onto ROM chips. So web is still the way to go, and native mobile only if you absolutely have to. And if you have tons of time or money, sure, start with plain native.
Edit: As a web developer for decades, I still find both Jumpstart iOS/Android and Flutter to be preferable to React Native.
I’m surprised we aren’t seeing it more already. LLMs suddenly make it reasonable to maintain multiple native apps. I’d love to see this start to supplant Electron and its ilk on the desktop.
Perhaps. I can absolutely see that being more attractive especially with things like the Duo where, I assume, SwiftUI gives you a number of things "for free".
That said, the massive downsides to native are:
- App Store Review time, this used to be hours to 1-2 days, now it can take a week or more
- In the same vein, you can do updates without waiting on native when using web technologies to build your app. We can go from a bug in the field to a fix in <1hr easy. Try doing that with a native app
- Cross-platform, yes LLMs mean you can create a native iOS and Android app but you have to keep those in sync to say nothing of web (if you want to offer a web app as well)
- Like the point above: Web, if you want to support web, why not get the other platform for cheaper (shared logic)
Your assumptions are very outdated. App Store review times are typically < 24 hours and have been for the last couple of years. And KMP makes cross-platform a real thing now, rather than hacking a web view into a native shell, which was always the worst possible user experience.
Apple has started automating them a while ago so a lot of them are indeed <24 hrs. I wouldn't say they are wrong though.
Just this week I've had an app stay for 9 days in review and another one for 8 hours. Same dev account, same niche.
2 replies →
I'm afraid you are the one out of date here. App Store Review times have ballooned in the last few months. Marco Arment talked about this publically (on the ATP podcast) about how his app was stuck in review for over 2 weeks IIRC and I've seen 2 days as the minimum review time in the last few months with some taking a week or more.
Yes, for a while they were doing very well and I even once had an app reviewed in <1hr but the average has been creeping up. LLM/Vibe coding is what is often blamed for this increase though at the end of the day it's Apple's problem/fault for not staffing the review department better.
3 replies →
Doesn't KMP assume your team is comfortable working in Kotlin?
2 replies →
You get all of those, to some extent, if you use React Native. You still need to do reviews for significant changes due to app store rules but you can OTA update most changes without waiting on a review. Even web support is there.
There are cons to targetting web/PWA too. Push notifications work but Safari on iOS only allows them if the user adds your website to their home screen. It also doesn't support prompting the user to install the PWA so you have to instruct your users to tap the Share button, tap View more, and then tap Add to Home Screen. And as soon as they tap the Share button the menu opens on top of your instructions so they need to remember the steps to continue. It's hard to defend this behavior because the user will still need to allow notification permission when they open your PWA from their home screen. It's an unnecessary hurdle.
> I can absolutely see that being more attractive especially with things like the Duo where, I assume, SwiftUI gives you a number of things "for free".
Apple may not trumpet it as loudly, but these freebies are handed out in UIKit too, for cases where declarative UI is cumbersome.
Generally I've found that while SwiftUI is great for little self-contained bits of UI like table/collection view cells and simplistic template-like apps, it tends to become a bear with complex apps, so it's nice to have both options.
https://www.runway.team/appreviewtimes
I'm sorry but that data does not at all square with my experience. I'm seeing 2 days+ as the average and I haven't seen sub-24hrs in months. I oversee ~20 apps and I can tell you iOS review times have been trending upwards for the last few months.
2 replies →
Definitely makes sense for a large org with massive resources (such as Shopify) to do this. But for everyone here pondering what to use for their startup or a smaller project, there are still important trade-offs. In the past few years I've launched multiple cross-platform Flutter apps and multiple native iOS and Android apps using Jumpstart iOS and Android (native templates from the GoRails guys which leverage web views from your Jumpstart Rails server). The latter gave me web, iOS and Android out of the box and was vastly less costly to build, even with AI. For entrepreneurs who like Ruby on Rails, Jumpstart is my favorite for launching rapidly, and since the mobile apps are easy-to-modify iOS and Android projects, it's designed so you can either add more custom Hotwire Native Bridge Components or just write Swift and Kotlin to replace functionality with native code. Eventually you could write away all of the Jumpstart webview stuff, but you'd only do that if you had more runway, like if you have plenty of time or you start making lots of money. I've worked for clients whose ideas failed--not because of my code, of course. :)
It's better to find out quickly if you can get traction rather than building something requiring more maintenance. For most bug fixes or enhancements, you make them in the Jumpstart Rails side and they should up instantly in the mobile apps without going through app review again! Most projects are not being built in companies the size of Shopify, so I caution anyone who wants to just get the project out there to use platforms that give them more leverage. And no, I'm still not a fan of low-code or no-code, because I know what it's like to have to maintain apps over many years.
Oh, and I still always warn clients to stay away from native mobile unless they absolutely need it, because even with AI, maintaining just a web app is still light years faster, and far more pleasant. I know from very, very, very recent experience that testing subscriptions is still annoyingly cumbersome in the flaky Apple and Google sandbox environments, and Stripe for web apps is night and day easier to test. Testing on mobile is better than it used to be, but sometimes when I'm waiting for builds onto a physical device or for confusing settings in App Store Connect or Google Play Console to take effect (or just fine where they've been moved to), I think about how a manager 20 years ago was telling me how slowly his development lifecycle was when he used to burn software onto ROM chips. So web is still the way to go, and native mobile only if you absolutely have to. And if you have tons of time or money, sure, start with plain native.
Edit: As a web developer for decades, I still find both Jumpstart iOS/Android and Flutter to be preferable to React Native.
Still loving flutter over here!
The vastly undersold topic to all of these is how many developers do you have?
We have the option of using flutter, or not launching an app at all. The concept of going full native is a non-starter.
I basically could not care what Shopify is doing because they have hundreds or thousands of people.
I’m surprised we aren’t seeing it more already. LLMs suddenly make it reasonable to maintain multiple native apps. I’d love to see this start to supplant Electron and its ilk on the desktop.