(2021-11-01) Rosano Why I'm Leaving IOS Development To Go Fully Web After 12 Years

Rosano: Why I'm leaving iOS development to go fully web after 12 years. After twelve years on the App Store, I've decided it's time to go all-in on the web and would like to share what that means and outline the tradeoffs involved.

most of the Colombians I met in person were not able to access it because Apple devices are prohibitively expensive there

In place, I worked on various web components and put them together to create about a dozen web-based projects. Contrasting the experience between the web and native (i.e. iOS) worlds, I feel more enthusiastic about how the web is evolving

Just to review, in case it's not obvious, there are some more commonly understood reasons for choosing the web over native:....

The challenges of the web for developers like myself is to help people 'cross the chasm' that exists due to a lack of common patterns for interacting with apps:

There is no obvious 'App Store'... but maybe there could be one that celebrates the 'instant' nature of this platform

The idea of an 'install' button isn't ubiquitous, and some web apps may not be mobile-friendly or local-first, but for the rest there are libraries like a2hs.js that help guide people to make accessing web apps a more familiar experience

What it’s like making Native Apps... Feel free to skip this section if you'd rather not hear me complain about Apple

Developing for Web... Despite the web's challenges, there's much that excites me about its future and some of these characteristics are intrinsic to the platform:...