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Comment by Townley | Hacker News Reader

Another factor when evaluating platforms to build an app with includes ease of initial submission/submission of updates.

I've never used Xamarind or flutter, but easily one of the best parts of using Expo (React-Native) was their built-in certificate management, guidance through the submission process, and eventually immediate publication of updates through running `expo publish`

My client was pleasantly speechless when I was able to change code and have it appear on her device a few seconds later, as it had been her experience that updates have to go through another review process.

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Isn't there the danger that Apple just forbids/bans this remote code reloading/replacement to protect their users? I mean it's a loophole that can get abused (and likely is) for stuff that wouldn't make it through the review process in first place..

Not sure about the flutter/react native situation but dynamic code must only use webkit and JavaScript core so that Apple can ensure your application isn't accessing private APIa via a remote code update.

https://developer.apple.com/news/?id=09062019b

Definitely crossed my mind. It'd be easy enough to submit a legitimate app and then modify the content it serves to be something malicious. No idea if/when a follow up review might catch that outside of user reporting.

But in the scenario where apple decides to no longer allow OTA updates, you're just back to the extended review process that native apps have to go through, so I think the productivity gains make it worthwhile.

I always wondered why Someone doesn’t make a YouTube like app that connects to content repositories via end to end encryption so Apple can’t see what content you are accessing. You could connect to something like Khan Academy for educational videos. This would also allow you to connect to Pornhub or something similar in a native experience without Apple being able to stop it.

You mean something like a Web browser?

I think letting users find and select content is the only way to avoid getting banned. As soon as the app does anything to nudge users toward a particular kind of content it risks getting banned.

Yes you can do that, and get banned as soon as Apple finds out.

There's a huge area of seemingly obvious user-centric products that don't exist simply because there isn't a working business model to support it.

I mean VLC already exists and it can stream videos from the websites that you point it at. I’d guess the only think it’s missing at this point is youtube-dl integration.

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