from Hacker News

We’ll stop selling our Code Editor app for iOS soon

by krzyzanowskim on 5/11/21, 10:02 AM with 436 comments

• by saagarjha on 5/11/21, 11:10 AM

  > The biggest technical hurdle is the inability to run external processes on iOS and iPadOS.

  > Apps on iOS and iPadOS must use Apple’s Javascript interpreter, JavaScriptCore.

  Both of these really suck because they are policy, not technical, decisions. Even setting aside the arguments of whether JIT code is a security concern (it is not unless your security model is one where codesigning exists to prevent the addition of new native code) that you cannot spawn a new process, nor can you ship another JavaScript interpreter, is really unfortunate.

  Allowing apps to spawn new processes is easy (I mean, just inherit sandboxing rules and resource limits…) and allows for a lot of new usecases, like robust crash reporting, web servers, privilege separation, and more. That Apple allows this on macOS and even uses it for its own apps on iOS just shows how useful this can be and how little it affects the security model of iOS.

  Likewise, not allowing other JavaScript interpreters is just…annoying. Regardless of your opinions of JavaScriptCore, this is an unfair limitation on an already slanted playing field. Coupled with the fact that the JavaScriptCore interpreter (which the framework uses for anything you run in-process) is literally designed for low resource consumption instead of than performance makes this even more infuriating.

• by Pulcinella on 5/11/21, 3:32 PM

  I have a different view of this than most in this topic. I am disappointed, though not surprised, that Panic is abandoning yet another of their iOS apps. They’ve done it several times before and while I am grateful they’ve continued to provide some bug fixes, feature work stopped years ago.

  In my view, the biggest hurdle does not seem to have been technical, but ideological/business. These old school Mac developers like Panic and Omni have had a very difficult time adapting to (or failing to) the iOS/mobile era. I know we all hate subscriptions, but continued app development and management requires continued labor so subscriptions seem like the only business option that makes any sense to me. Panic and Omni want paid upgrades but Apple has never, ever even hinted at providing that as an option. The option is subscriptions. Even on desktop Sketch, Adobe, and Microsoft are going with subscriptions. (We’ll see how Affinity does. They charge a lot more for their apps and seem to be in a growth phase so I imagine their sales at the moment are fast enough to make up for the fact that each sale is only a one time source of revenue).

  Honestly, Panic and Omni and other old school Mac developers really, really need to adapt to the modern era. They’ve had years and it feels like the runway is about to end (see Omni’s recent layoffs.) Wishing for paid upgrades and writing “only AppKit apps are real Mac apps” blog posts isn’t going to change anything.

• by deergomoo on 5/11/21, 11:26 AM

  It’s a real shame that the otherwise very capable iPad cannot sustain an enormous subcategory of professional grade software, solely because of Apple’s policies.

  People know this going in of course, but it doesn’t make it any less of a shame, especially now you can spec out an iPad Pro with the exact same specs as the laptop I use for work.

• by taylodl on 5/11/21, 1:25 PM

  And this is why I'll be buying a MacBook Air over an iPad Pro. I'm not even going to complain - it is what it is and this article simply illustrates some important differences between the two platforms. I'm not even going to say iOS is bad - I love my iPhone and my wife absolutely loves her iPad Pro.

  Apple has targeted iPadOS to casual computer users who mainly consume content and require light content generation and editing capabilities, and as it turns out there's a HUGE market for that. But it's not for me. I'm a developer by profession and my hobbies are music and photography. All of these push the limits of what iPadOS is capable of delivering - but MacOS delivers with aplomb.

  And now thanks to Catalyst if there's some must-have iPadOS app I want to run then I can run it. The MacBook Air may be the most versatile machine Apple has ever made for users like me.

• by WA on 5/11/21, 11:27 AM

  > The app should continue to function for a long time, but won’t receive further updates

  Just a warning for users and devs alike: Nope, it probably won't. Apple's track record for backwards compatibility isn't terrible, but it's also not flawless. I had an app in the store from 2011 until the end of 2017.

  iOS 14.5 broke this app for some reason (I don't know why). No warning for users and if Apple follows some kind of SemVer, it's weird that a minor version breaks an old app.

  Note for devs: Find a way how people can export their data from the app even if it's not working anymore (for example, by writing to the Documents folder and exposing it to the Finder)

  Note for users: Assume that an unsupported app can and will break in an unpredictable way. Backup your data regularly.

• by mysterydip on 5/11/21, 11:10 AM

  I tried editing code on a mobile, even tablet, before, thinking "I have all this downtime where I'm mindlessly browsing on my phone, think of how productive I could be if I could code during that time!"

  The reality becomes that those places are usually too distracting for me to be in a coding mindset, and even when not, typing code using a non-physical keyboard is tiring and cumbersome. Even just the occasional mistype stops my flow as I have to back up and fix the letter or number now that I'm several characters past it.

• by whywhywhywhy on 5/11/21, 11:50 AM

  Kinda absurd how much effort Panic has put trying to fit into Apple's vision of the future of computing and operating systems almost to backtrack again at every turn a few years later when the initial investment doesn't translate into money.

  Definitely feel for their engineering team.

• by lifty on 5/11/21, 11:32 AM

  One good thing is that today you can run VS Code on an iPad, in the browser, with all the dev tools running in a remote container. Not a bad experience.

  Edit: I've always thought that Panic could take a similar approach with Nova. Run locally on the iPad, as a native app, while connecting to a remote machine to compile, debug and run the actual code.

• by stblack on 5/11/21, 11:14 AM

  I love iPad but for many things. But as a software developer, creating on iPad scores pretty close to zero. Thank you, Panic Software, for hanging in for as long as you did.

• by TazeTSchnitzel on 5/11/21, 3:05 PM

  How does Apple's Swift Playgrounds on iOS handle compiling code? Aren't the Swift compiler and linker also separate binaries? I'm wondering whether Apple excepted themselves or whether they actually forced that subset of Xcode to fit into the normal requirements somehow.

• by ladyanita22 on 5/11/21, 11:30 AM

  I'm probably be gonna laughed at, but I don't understand why these developers don't publish their apps on Android.

  If you get screwed by Apple, why not go to the other field?

• by gameswithgo on 5/11/21, 4:26 PM

  It really makes me sad. Apple used a lot of free and open technologies like FreeBSD to build their business, and they created these amazing, small computers. The people that developed these amazing small computers and their operating systems, as kids, likely had some desktop pc that shipped with a language like QBasic where they could learn programming and build things and share with friends.

  Kids who buy these new small computers from Apple, not only does it not ship with such a thing, but its not even possible to download or buy a programming environment!

  We built computers with brains the size of a planet, they fit in our pocket, and they have been castrated such that they are no good for creating anything, for no good reason.

• by navait on 5/11/21, 5:35 PM

  I really enjoy using Transmit, and feel bad that I don't know about many Mac devs making great products. I also like Many Tricks and Alfred. Anyone have a list of other top mac developer houses?

• by robertk on 5/12/21, 12:49 AM

  HN does not seem to have a DM feature, and the OP does not have any contact credentials listed.

  This is off topic, but OP, do you happen to be White in this game? https://lichess.org/0dv2oS4f It recently came up while I was prepping the French from Aagard’s book, and if so: cool, and small world!

• by Asmod4n on 5/11/21, 11:44 AM

  Hm, you can run alpine Linux on iOS. With background tasks. (https://apps.apple.com/de/app/ish-shell/id1436902243)

  I wonder what it would take to make a Code development tool to take advantage of that.

• by mosselman on 5/11/21, 7:54 PM

  It says something about a refund when bought in the last 60 days. Does that mean I’d buy it now I’d be able to get my money back and still have access to the app?

  Seeing as there is a risk it might not work within a few months that isn’t that bad of a deal I guess.

• by btgeekboy on 5/11/21, 8:26 PM

  > (For comparison, even Transmit iOS, discontinued in 2018, continues to work fine today for those who purchased it.)

  This is not true. A recent iOS update broke Transmit; it no longer launches and says it needs an update.

• by warpspin on 5/11/21, 11:19 AM

  Only remotely related: How good is their Nova editor by now compared to Sublime Text? Currently wondering if trying it once more is worth the time.

• by perardi on 5/11/21, 11:31 AM

  Here I go, being skeptical about getting work done on iPads again…

  …but is there any “pro” software like this that is succeeding on iPad that isn’t part of a larger cloud/subscription service?

  I believe Office gets some actual use on iPad, and Adobe sure keeps trying, but is there really any notable pro apps that are succeeding on their lonesome?

• by karaterobot on 5/12/21, 12:13 AM

  I have no opinion on the discontinuation of Code Editor, since I didn't use it. I just wanted to say that I wish more companies would handle similar situations like this. This article is comprehensive, articulate, respectful, and not written like a press release.

• by mensetmanusman on 5/11/21, 11:25 AM

  The big question is will the new M1 iPad be allowed to be a real computer if the user wants it to.

• by huhtenberg on 5/11/21, 11:37 AM

  > We’re working on a new version of Prompt, though!

  Ugh-oh. Not again. The last time it happened, they took the old version off the AppStore and ultimately forced everyone to re-purchase their new and shiny remake for the full price. I'm still bitter about it. You want to make a new version - fine, but taking the old one off was a real shitty move (* see EDIT below).

  So despite of how it sounds, that ^ part is the exact opposite of good news.

  EDIT - I misremembered, my bad. They refused to rebuild the original prompt for x64 target. That's what it was. They didn't take it off the store, they just claimed that rebuilding for 64-bit platform was such an immense hassle and monstrously complicated task that they just can't. But! Lucky for you we just happened to have this brand new version that is 64-bit. It has few things improved, but largely the same. You'll love it. $15.

• by cjohansson on 5/11/21, 8:48 PM

  Librem 5 is the way forward for programmers, Apple is not for truck-drivers anymore, only for electric hooverboarders (reference to Steve Jobs talk about post-pc devices)

• by intellix on 5/11/21, 11:12 PM

  I don't understand who would pay for an editor nowadays when free ones have been amazing for years and years.

  Is this to appeal to those who haven't heard of visual studio code?

• by jmull on 5/11/21, 3:30 PM

  I don’t think we need iOS to be able to do everything MacOS does. We already have MacOS!

  Add touch support to MacOS and let it run on the “pro” iPads. Done.

• by ctdonath on 5/11/21, 12:48 PM

  Odds of Xcode for iPad arriving right around then?

• by superkuh on 5/11/21, 5:40 PM

  iOS is not for doing work. It is for consuming media. Apple has made it very clear what their target demographics and priorities are.

• by ilovecaching on 5/11/21, 3:08 PM

  Just want to say that Prompt 2 is the best terminal app on iOS. I love Panic products and am curious about how good Nova has gotten.

• by zubairq on 5/11/21, 5:15 PM

  This is why I haven’t release my own dev tool on iPad actually, but OS X does let you run a process and sub processes

• by solarkraft on 5/11/21, 12:27 PM

  RIP.

  Is the source code going to be published so people can keep running it on jailbroken devices?

• by WesolyKubeczek on 5/11/21, 8:56 PM

  Does it cost them to keep the final version in the store so that people could, say, restore it after their device was wiped?

  I remember losing quite a couple apps this way. Can't be downloaded anymore, too bad you didn't have a full backup.

• by noloblo on 5/11/21, 11:22 PM

  why don't you make it free? transmit ios and diet coda?

• by torstenvl on 5/11/21, 3:43 PM

  Good riddance. Coda for iOS never worked correctly and was a scam app. It's utterly unjustifiable that Panic sold a "full-featured" editor that only works on "Sites" and not files.

• by javajosh on 5/11/21, 3:41 PM

  If the front-end build is the key sticking point, then I think there's hope, in at least 2 dimensions: first, people SHOULD mockup their apps using static HTML - is a best practice that has for some reason gone out of favor, but it will come back. Second, native modules are new, but I think they will play a BIG part in eliminating the front-end build nonsense that has saddled the web dev community for too long.