Interesting from Apple’s earnings report

Heads-Up! in the News
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Hi Andy. I know this is an older thread (I just signed up today), but I wanted to highlight and support your quote above. I agree 100%. In my opinion, there are 3 or 4 options as far as deploying a FileMaker-backed mobile app.

  1. Native development with iOS or Android, using in Swift/Obj-C or Java/Kotlin, resepctively. This is somewhat slower than FileMaker development, but the feature set and performance are light years ahead of FileMaker Go. Native apps provide the fastest performance and no compromises.

  2. React Native can deploy cross platform apps, and they're still compiled using (mostly) native UI objects. They're a small step behind option 1, performance and feature wise. If you need to deploy to both iOS and Android and want the fewest compromises, this is the best way to go, IMO.

  3. FileMaker Go (and FIAS)

  4. Xojo, LiveCode, etc.: These are pseudo apps built using a proprietary IDE and language. The UX and feature set is pretty far behind what's available in real iOS or Android apps. That may not be critical to your deployment, and that's fine. Xojo and LiveCode can satisfy a demand for cross platform deployment, and I applaud their efforts in filling that need, but these apps can require a fair amount of compromise. In my case, more than I'm comfortable giving up.

A few years ago I took option 1. I opted to learn Swift and build real iOS apps in Xcode, with automatic sync, offline use, horizontal collection views, etc., etc. My primary example being the Art Con app – http://artcon.app. It has over 1K users and is backed almost entirely by the Data API. For anyone who has the time and aptitude to learn Swift (or Java, or React), I would point folks that direction if their priority is deploying zero-compromise mobile apps. All of the options are fine, just be aware of what you're getting (and not getting) with each.

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