In the middle of this year Apple announced the infamous rule 4.2.6 which states:
“Apps created from a commercialized template or app generation service will be rejected.”
At that time many were not sure what this really entailed and when it was going to take effect.
But last week this article on TechCrunch states that many companies have recently been given a January 1, 2018 deadline by Apple, after which point any new apps they submit will be rejected by the App Store Review team.
Read the article to get more details on this issue.
Now why am I bringing this up in bubble forum which is definitely not an app generating service.
This is why. Today Dropsource is on Product Hunt and someone asked the founders whether apps created from Dropsource will be affected by this rule. As we all know many bubblers have started experimenting using bubble as their backend and dropsource as the frontend for their apps since bubble doesn’t provide native app support yet. Even around June this year @emmanuel in answering a user’s concern about mobile support stated:
Now the issue is that on the surface you may think apps created with dropsource with bubble backend may be rejected by Apple because after all dropsource is a drag-and-drop code generating service. But that is not the case. In answering this question on Product Hunt, this is what Nate ( CTO and co-founder of Dropsource) said :
-
We are not a template based solution. Each app is custom built by our users and Dropsource generates the code specifically for that app (every app is unique).
-
Our apps are 100% built with native Swift. It is not HTML5 / JS wrapped in a native webview."
And I totally agree with him as I’ve looked at the generated code.
I find his second point though to be interesting. Does this mean Apple’s ban will affect web app wrappers like gonative.io and the rest which essentially wraps your bubble application in a native webview. This is the route many bubblers have taking or are planning on taking. So this is something we should all consider in our app creation strategy.
This brings me to my last point, Progressive Web Apps (PWA). Given this Apple’s move and no one knows what will follow (maybe ban webview wrappers), there’s much focus now on PWA as a way to avoid Apple’s restrictions and strict guidelines. There has been some discussion on this forum on PWA and but it seems PWA is not on the immediate agenda of bubble. This is what @emmanuel said on a question about bubble’s support for PWA:
Given these recent development I think maybe it’s time bubble really start doubling their efforts on native apps and also look into PWA.
I’m even dreaming of maybe, just maybe a possible merger with Dropsource (that will be huge). This is because a lot of the app makers/generators have already started closing shops and several people will be looking for an alternative which I think both bubble and dropsource are in a position to provide.
Seriously Bubble should acquire/merge with Dropsource. Yes i know dropsource currently support bubble very well but a merger will make that whole integration seemless while still opening the doors for other 3rd party backends.
Happy bubbling