Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

As a mobile dev, it should be the same for mobile apps?

If you are on iOS, you could just use what Apple gives you with very little customizations. The app would feel right, dark mode, font sizes, screen traders, etc. accessibility would "just work" 98% of the time, the app would be fast.

On Android, things are a tad bit more complicated, but it still applies that the closer you are to the OS, the better things work out of the box.

But for some reason, companies, their designers, product owners, developers want to get creative, use their brand but eventually they always run out of time to implement things properly, so apps are slow, user's font scale settings are not respected, dark mode is a feature, and the app doesn't feel like part of the same phone / OS.




They also often want to use web technologies and/or cross-platform GUI toolkits, to avoid reimplementing their UIs.


And all because they fundamentally believe that their development time and expense is worth way more than their customer’s time and expense.


I strongly believe that the amount of ironing they have to do for that crossplatform toolkit takes more time than just going with a common core and different UI shells.


Netflix took this to an extreme, apparently porting WebKit to the PS3 just to power their app's UI.

With apologies for linking to such an appallingly spammy website, as I couldn't find a better one:

https://www.engadget.com/2010-12-07-netflix-ported-webkit-to...




Consider applying for YC's Summer 2025 batch! Applications are open till May 13

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: