And the “makes sense or not” part can change based on a bunch of factors.
It’s actually pretty common for a new company to start fully native (only iOS, few features, limited scope), then switch ro react native/electron (need to support more surfaces, features are being developed too quickly), then back to fully native (can afford individual dev teams for each platform).
The main cost of two engineering teams shipping identical products in my opinion isn't the cost of those extra engineers, it is in the product and organizational challenges of keeping those two products that need to be identical in sync. I am very bullish on coding agents but would be wary of this turning into a mess.
But here's the thing, across operating systems the products should not be identical.
When you get to the point that your have a significant enough number of users across multiple platforms, generalizing everything into a shared UX doesn't make sense; giving those classes of users the best experience requires embracing their platform.
A simple example: Android has a system-wide convention for a `back` button. iOS has no such standard. Users on each platform have different expectations for how to navigate an app fundamentally, and holding tightly onto the concept of identical gives both camps a compromised experience.
I took "identical" as in feature wise. The user should be able to accomplish the same things, no matter what platform they're using.
I do think that the way the features are implemented should be platform dependent, i.e. use common UX pattern on each platform, fit in with the UI, and be good platform citizens.
The solution is to make the common features a part of a statically-linked library that you can pull into your apps. A web app is, IMO, never the answer when you want to address multiple audiences. It is bad for accessibility (because 99.999 percent of web app developers never consider accessibility) and it doesn't solve the problem that web apps are trying to solve (having 8 code bases all that have to remain in sync) because you will inevitably need your code to handle platform-specific differences, standards/conventions and whatnot.
Why does Shopify need to use Apple's or Google's branded design language in their app?
Because if I’m an iOS user and used to that and you give me a conventional Android app UX, I’m going to feel that as jank.
Same as if I’m an Android user and you give me the conventional iOS experience.
It’s like if I gave a swing or Gtk+ or Xwindows app experience on Windows 11 or MacOS. It would be usable, but feel conspicuously sub-standard.
What specifically are the ux differences?
I don't know iOS so I can't say, but a good UX does depend in part on platform expectations and every system historically been different. The compromises mean the each have good reason for what they do (sometimes anyway), but switching is hard.
I've used both in the past 2 years and can tell you these particular systems aren't meaningfully different in any way that affects third party apps.
It shows the sad state of user experience that applications completely ignore how different platforms function. For websites, I would expect them to follow the web conventions of UX. However, as soon as you're in a "native" application, you need to function like the device you're running on wants to function. Otherwise, it's going to be a jarring user experience for everyone in there. The whole system becomes harder to use.
That's because you must be using cross-platform apps.
I'm only familiar with iOS and this is the type of question that an LLM could answer better than this specific human.
There is an implication here that the back button is a microcosm that represents the differences holistically but it's not. It's a small one-off exception that doesn't even affect the design choices made for the various apps. As I open up app over app on my Android (Audible, Spotify, ChatGPT, etc.), they all have clear in-app "back" functionality where needed. No apps I have installed rely on the Android back button exclusively. Also, none of these apps have any design elements that follow Android's design language.
The back button works at its best when it closes an app and it restores the one that opened the previous one. There could be no in app back button to do that. However the back button used to be an always available hardware button or a touch one on the bottom bezel. It's optionally visible now (I'm on an old Android phone so I'm not up to date with the latest OS) or a gesture, right? So app designers must design as if it does not exist.
I agree. Design as if it doesn't exist incidentally is also how they design for iOS where it doesn't exist.
Also, the back 'button' is mostly a thing of the past in Android and it's more similar to iOS now with the predictive back gesture.
The Android back button is legacy.
> keeping those two products that need to be identical in sync
I agree that most companies do that, but in my opinion that's not really all that important. Some drift between the iOS and Android apps should be expected and accepted.
This is a great point that I wish the Shopify article went into in more depth! Would love to hear if they considered this
I believe they have a more in-depth posting that talks about it
https://shopify.engineering/shop-app-migration
The blog post doesn't mention the personnel-related challenges with having two native platform teams working on the app.
The post DOES give more information as to why they looked at switching from React Native to native Platform APIs.
React Native is forcing a major refactor of React Native apps in switching to the React Native "New Architecture" (see https://reactnative.dev/architecture/landing-page).
So if Shopify had to do major refactors of all their React Native apps, maybe they could look at what it would take to go back to native Platform APIs.
from https://shopify.engineering/shop-app-migration
The result of that native platform APIs side project involving six devs converting the app's major user workflows?- startup time reduced: iOS by 23%, Android by 50%
- crashes - 10x reduction
- app size - iOS increased by 1MB (67MB -> 68MB), Android reduced by 109MB (37.2%)
- build time - Android release build time fell ~75%.
- runtime perf - Android builds could draw at 120fps while scrolling feed and switching screens
Agree to a point, but human resource is literally the main cost in most businesses, so there's that
Conway's law also plays a big part here and it's kind of TBD to see if agentic development will minify or magnify its effects
Very true, especially when there are different turn around times and review policies for the various app stores, things can get out of sync quickly
Assuming they have a robust feature flag and experiment pipeline in place they are trying to solve a much more complicated version of this
> it is in the product and organizational challenges of keeping those two products that need to be identical in sync.
They're two different platforms where the capabilities and UI patterns differs, so I don't see why they should be in sync. The web platform is not in sync with them. And using native features can give you a nice boost in maintenance and speed, unlike React Native where you always needs to align library semantics.
The capabilities of Android and iOS don't meaningfully differ for the purposes of Shopify; Shopify doesn't need LIDAR. Most large brands throw the UI design patterns of the platforms out the window in favor of their own UI guidelines.
Saying the web platform is not in sync with mobile is not a relevant metaphor to justify why Android and iOS should be considered separately.
> Most large brands throw the UI design patterns of the platforms out the window in favor of their own UI guidelines.
I really wish they would not do that.
The best thing you can do to make your app trustworthy and friendly is to adhere to the host operating system UI guidelines and expectations.
Nobody wants your unique take on the checkbox or textarea please.
They vary in terms of architectural patterns and ui widgets. RN tries to prevent a single interface, but you quickly reach the point where it becomes a pain. You can use Expo to help, but their libraries are unstable.
Yeah, massive parts of our community and ecosystem miss that something can be right today, and wrong tomorrow, and having to change along with your users and needs is OK. You'll never be able to anticipate what the business needs in the future, so stop pretending your software design can be done once and then just coast on that, because that's typically not how a software project should be run long-term or even medium-term.
The problem with tomorrow is sunk costs. There are many places I wish we had made a difference decision in the past - but we need to balance that with cost to make changes when what we have works okay.
There's also a recency bias, where you ignore how valuable some decision was in the past and ignore the fact that you maybe wouldn't even get to the place you are if "you made a different decision in the past".
I can't count how many times I've said "this is really bad, I it is worth rewriting to fix all the issues", only to discover that there were good reasons for all the past decisions and so we end up with the same mess as before - except that now I know what it must be that way.
Not always, but very often people in the past had good reason for what they did.
Those are the comments that should persist in the code. I hate when the AI edits and removes my "why" comments. I want the refactor to make it less messy but keep why it's that kind of mess.
Too Soon often we thought those were obvious and didn't comment. Meanwhile there are detailed comments about things nobody cares about.
I just put a comment in yesterday for this very reason - there was a flag I had set to false, and then looking at the library docs for something else thought maybe it should be true but that doesn't work how I would have implemented it if I had created the library and written the docs how I did.
It is a very capable library, and when I first started using it the docs were more Oracle docs looking - but I could find what I wanted easily. Now, it is much more annoying to delve through but looks more modern.
As relevant today as it was 26 years ago: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/06/things-you-should-...
See also: Chesterton's Fence
In my experience it comes from the business and people who think if we need to touch the same code twice in the same month it is somehow a moral failing of some kind.
Another factor is design.
A lot of companies go to React Native, etc, because they want one single non-native design on both platforms.
Which IMO can be a mistake most of the time, especially from the POV of a user.