Announcing the Ink mobile framework | Hacker News Reader

Announcing the Ink mobile framework

blog.inkmobility.com

35 pointsbrettcvz18 comments

This is an incredible application, very cool. Hope all iOS developers begin working together to make the iOS app space more powerful than ever. Are you guys planning to expand to the Android space? -- It is just as fragmented when it comes to inter app file sharing. Wish you guys the best!

Definitely! Let us know which apps you'd like us to work with.

Android has been a discussion for us - it has Intents, so at least there is a baseline for doing inter-app communication, but it's still not as good as it could be.

Well, android is soooo fragmented, between os versions and their api that its a bit embarrassing. I am sure once you guys kill in the iOS space, Android will be an easy conquest. Congrats again!

I don't think it's necessary on Android. I started out using the original Filepicker.io library (and actually tried to improve it a bit: https://github.com/Ink/filepicker-android/graphs/contributor...), but had better results using native Intents.

In my case I had to build a system where it pulls from particular services (Dropbox, Box, Google Drive, Gallery, etc) or takes a picture from the camera. That is pretty straightforward with intents and you can either show every available app or specify exactly what other apps to allow. Also, we added an intent receiver so any app can share into ours. I have tested it across about 20 devices and have had 0 issues with the inter-app intents. The camera took more work but there are lots of libraries out there to solve the problems (mainly: where to store the file generated by the camera cleanly in all cases). Gallery also causes some issues because various vendors have re-implemented the gallery in non-standard ways, and remote URLs for Picassa or Google+ need to be dealt with, but it's not too bad.

If you are writing good quality code, fragmentation is completely overblown.

For iOS this is a very big step. The current dogma is app based multitasking which has a 1 to 1 relationship with data. Ink gives documents a 1 to many relationship so we can have data based multitasking. Very smart

Congratulations!

I played with an early prototype of this; it feels like it should have always been there very, very quickly. Worth trying the demos if you've not had a chance yet.

Application interoperability is a big problem in the iOS ecosystem. This looks like a great solution - I'm surprised Apple hasn't released something like this with native OS support.

That's kind of the issue here, right?

If Apple decides to levy a new API for doing interapp data sharing, doesn't this put Ink in a rough spot? Like, especially if it comes down from on-high that this is now the only way apps are allowed to talk to one another?

Yes and no. First off, people have been clamoring this for a while, and so far Apple hasn't moved. So we said enough waiting, let's make this happen.

Second, people use products that are made by a variety of companies, not just apple. Being able to send content between apps and between devices requires an independent, multi-platform approach.

So, if I am parsing this correctly:

Yes, it's a concern, because Apple hasn't made your product core functionality yet, and no, it's not a big deal, because your larger product roadmap sounds like a platform for sharing content between apps on different ecosystems.

Looking for an acquisition by Dropbox?

EDIT: Don't get me wrong--sharp product, and good luck to you!

Well, on one front it's a business risk. On another front, it's an avenue to open acquisition talks. Ink isn't an app, it's a core feature.

I'm quite excited to see this though - the end user experience looks great.

Not to draw comparisons, but there's another rather large YC company that drew the same early critique

Very good point. :)

This probably uses Pasteboard (http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/general...), which is Apple's little-advertised, low-level, horrible API for doing inter-app data sharing. I can't see them deprecating Pasteboard; quite a lot of stuff depends on it.

It's always a good sign when the sentiment shared is "why didn't I think of that?" I agree Apple should've created something like this, but I'm glad their inaction has benefited an innovative crew. Go Ink!

Congrats to Brett and team! Demo's awesome, very excited to see where this is headed.

Isn't this what filepicker.io turned into?

We like to say expanded, but yes: http://techcrunch.com/2013/08/15/inks-new-mobile-framework-l...

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