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Comment by Razengan | Hacker News Reader

> SwiftUI is by default an iOS only program.

and macOS, tvOS, watchOS (and soon I suppose, AROS?), all counting for over a billion devices.

You can literally run the same SwiftUI code on all of them, then make small changes to adopt each OS's unique paradigms (like menus on macOS, the crown on watchOS, the remote on tvOS) and get the most native performance via Metal etc. for free.

It's ideal for publishing to services like the new Apple Arcade and macOS/iPadOS Catalyst.

How is Flutter for accessibility features? Those seem really effortless to adopt in SwiftUI.

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> ideal for publishing to services like the new Apple Arcade and macOS/iPadOS Catalyst

I was just looking into this yesterday but found no info - so you're saying it's now possible to write an iPadOS app with SwiftUI and use Catalyst to port it to macOS? It used to be a "known issue" in the beta that this was not supported... does this work now?

I haven’t tried it but it must be one of their top priorities to get it working soon, as Mac/iPad hybrid apps are one of the use cases where SwiftUI makes the most sense.

You can of course write regular (non-Catalyst) projects that share a lot of the same code between Mac and iPad. In that case you may not even need Catalyst, so maybe Catalyst is only UIKit-on-Mac.

Yes, I did it earlier today and it was literally as simple as clicking the ‘macOS’ button under build targets.

That said, the app running out of the box needs a lot of work to feel like a proper macOS app.

I guessss.....except if I want to make an app (and not a web page) I would probably make it in electron, because again I don't have to code everything twice. Making apps for apple watch or an iPad just doesn't appeal to me I guess - they always seemed like devices that were invented so people could spend more money on needless crap. Is a watch with a touch screen really that much more useful than a smart phone? Seems like just another way to suck people into a walled garden. Your watch sinks to your iPad, iTV, iWhatever...Yeesh, who cares?

As a user, I wish nothing but the eternal torment of nineteen hells upon Electron, for that is what it inflicts upon me.

SwiftUI gives me my device's native performance and UI.

For others nothing. Yeah electron is a better option then nothing.

> they always seemed like devices that were invented so people could spend more money on needless crap

As a view on the other side; I develop business apps. They are distributed via a local enterprise store, and never appear in the public App Store. Often, my apps replace paper in old-fashioned businesses. It's very honest and satisfying work.

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