Adobe PhoneGap falls between the cracks thanks to new Apple requirements, developers fume
- Reference: 1585579506
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/03/30/adobe_phonegap_stumbles_over_new/
- Source link:
PhoneGap is Adobe's commercial version of [1]Apache Cordova , an approach to cross-platform development based on using web browser technology. [2]Adobe acquired Nitobi , the company that created PhoneGap, in 2011, the year after Steve Jobs pronounced his [3]thoughts on Flash , fatally wounding Adobe's efforts to establish it as a kind of universal runtime. PhoneGap seemed a natural alternative but since then the company has shifted its attention away from developers, focusing on design, marketing and digital documents instead.
The PhoneGap product, with its cloud-based Build service, [4]still exists though , and has some customers that are now unhappy, thanks to a recent [5]Apple directive that states:
"Apps that use a third-party or social login service (such as Facebook Login, Google Sign-In, Sign in with Twitter, Sign In with LinkedIn, Login with Amazon, or WeChat Login) to set up or authenticate the user's primary account with the app must also offer Sign-in with Apple as an equivalent option."
The problem is that PhoneGap Build still uses the iOS 12.1 SDK, and it is impossible to create compliant apps. "It seems you can't build apps using apple sign in (protocols, codes or plugins) as they are from iOS SDK 13", [6]said one developer. We also note the UIWebView component is now deprecated in favour of WKWebView. Apple originally said that non-conforming apps would be blocked from 1st April 2020, but has now [7]extended this to June 30th. This latest guidance states that "Apps for iPhone or iPad must be built with the iOS 13 SDK or later."
Chris Griffith, an Adobe community member who has contacted Adobe, [8]claimed the company has nobody working on the product and that "the only reason it is still alive is for Android publishing."
Some developers may have their Android signing keys only in PhoneGap build and need the service for that reason. This rationale has not been publicly stated by Adobe though, and developers feel that the service should either be officially shuttered or at least kept minimally up to date.
We have asked Adobe for an update but in the meantime, Griffiths has [9]some guidance . "Let me be 1,000 per cent clear: MIGRATE!!!!"®
[1] https://cordova.apache.org/
[2] https://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/10/03/adobe_max_announcements/
[3] https://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/06/02/steve_jobs_at_all_things_digital/
[4] https://phonegap.com/products/
[5] https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/#sign-in-with-apple
[6] https://community.adobe.com/t5/phonegap/ios-13-sdk-for-phonegap-build/td-p/10816613?page=1
[7] https://developer.apple.com/news/
[8] https://community.adobe.com/t5/phonegap-build/adobe-phonegap-official-statment-needed-deprecated-or-not/m-p/11003545#M8672
[9] https://community.adobe.com/t5/phonegap/ios-13-sdk-for-phonegap-build/m-p/11003496#M5116
Yeah...
I'd say half-ass ia a pretty good assessement. There are a lot of better alternatives that may be fairly easy to implement depending on how people have built their Phone Gap apps. React Native and Nativescript off the top of my head. Phone Gap was V1 for packaging web apps for phones, there are many better options now.
Adobe do have a habit of abandoning their old frameworks...it happened to AIR on Linux a while back...
The lesson here seems to be don't trust Adobe with your software. They're perfectly capable of putting together a team to update their software to comply with the new rules...they just choose not to.
Yep.
Remember, these are the same chuckleheads that thought putting a full-featured scripting engine into a document viewer intended for rendering postscript on a computer instead of a printer with zero thought or planning about the security implications surrounding it was a good idea...
(No, I'm not letting that one go. Ever.)
What you don't constantly upgrade your build environment?
What, you don't constantly upgrade your build environment? XCode 11.3.x and ios 13 sdk has been out for almost 6 months.
In all seriousness... I'm not commenting on the quality of PhoneGap or Codova (I assume it's just as ThomH says..), but Apple really does keep their developers on quite the treadmill.
I do keep my copy of Android Studio up to date and make sure my software will build on it; but, I "could" still build for like Android 2, with the studio software from way back then, and my app would still run on Android 10, and Google would not show up and say that it's against the rules to do so if I put that app up on Google Play. In my case, I followed normal programming practices and my apps are not complicated, so I've only had to update a line or two in my build properties, no code. But, the potential downside of course is someone who finally updates their build environment after years then have loads and loads of build problems and (since they haven't had to work around them over time, one at a time) having to fix them all at once could be overwhelming.
Migrate?
To what?
I want to build Cordova apps for iOS and Android, in the cloud, with my keys.
Ie run command, get back to packages.
What are the options?
Re: Migrate?
Give Apple the finger, of course. Forcing developers to adopt their useless Apple login is just the latest of their stupid shenanigans. They need to be taught a lesson, but until developers rebel, that's not going to happen.
Good riddance
As someone who once struggled through maintaining once such project, PhoneGap/Cordova is an absolutely terrible framework — it's a web view with a bunch of half-hearted JavaScript emulations of system UI components, plus a random grab bag of other components you might remember from desktop computers in the 1990s, with a bridge into Objective-C that occasionally works to some limited extent. Good luck to you when it doesn't, since there is no way to attach a debugger.
If you want to provide your UI via the web, just do that. Your tools will be better, the user experience will be better, everyone will be happier.