Diet Coda Discontinued
Michael Buckley (Hacker News):
Unfortunately, like Transmit iOS and Status Board before it, we’re discontinuing Code Editor as it doesn’t generate enough revenue to cover its continued development.
[…]
The churn of new web tools and tech is rapid and constant. This is why having a flexible extension system is essential for a modern web-focused IDE. But that’s where the trouble lies.
The biggest technical hurdle is the inability to run external processes on iOS and iPadOS. There’s just no way around it: this is required for modern web development.
[…]
Even if it were viable, we’d likely run afoul of App Store policy as well. Apps on iOS and iPadOS must use Apple’s Javascript interpreter, JavaScriptCore. Although JavaScriptCore is excellent, many developer tools rely on features or behaviors only present in Google’s V8 JavaScript interpreter. Similarly, WebKit is the only allowed web rendering engine on iOS.
And still, even if we could find some clever technical way around all of these limitations, we wouldn’t know if our approaches would be allowed on the App Store until we’d fully built and submitted them for review. So, we’d be facing a huge investment of time with the possibility that it would all ultimately get rejected.
Panic has tried to crack this nut multiple times without success, but it is hard to see how any developer can make iOS work for apps like these. We all know that Panic makes great software, it has enthusiastic users, and it has long been a high-profile independent developer. Even if iOS is out of the question, evidence is mounting that Apple is kneecapping iPadOS by continuing to treat it with the same kinds of developer and app distribution rules as a smartphone.
I probably sound like a broken record at this point, but this is yet another example of why Apple needs to open up the platform. Not just so developers can explore other options for monetization, but to loosen up the arbitrary restrictions on what is even possible on the platform. How many apps like Code Editor do we have to lose before Apple wakes up?
Previously:
- Mac and iPad Aren’t Meeting in the Middle Yet
- iPad Pro 2021
- Coda to Become Nova
- The Hotel Cupertino Clause
- Panic Discontinues Transmit for iOS
- Status Board Discontinued
- The 2015 Panic Report
- The 2014 Panic Report
- The Future of Unison
- Coda 2 and Diet Coda
3 Comments RSS · Twitter
And Transmit stopped working with 14.5, Apple didn’t get around to “signing” it. With this, I can’t do business wtih Panic anymore even though I want to.
Apple is making it REALLY EASY for me to drop (some good, some ‘going bad’) developers left and right. And since I’ll only do 1-2 subscriptions for “always in front of me” apps I’m going to be saving even MORE money.
Sorry dev guys n gals, but subscriptions and MOST of what’s in the AppStore is overrated. And this is 100% Tim Cook & Phil Schiller’s fault.
It’s bizarre that it’s easier to be a software developer on a $300 Chromebook than it is to be one a $1,000+ Pro iPad.
@Leo
Some people have, within the past few days, reported success with deleting Transmit iOS and re-downloading it from the App Store. It appears Apple was able to re-sign it.
