Quote:
Originally Posted by Jim Chapman
At the time that I decided to do the Android port, I saw a lot of my users moving from Windows 10 Mobile to Android (and actually I personally was doing the same) - so I reckoned that most of the market for Freda would be people wanting an app that ran on Windows desktop/tablet and Android. An iOS port is possible in principle, because I used the Xamarin platform to build the Android port - and Xamarin does also support iOS. But in practice, it would probably take a couple of months of fairly concerted effort to get an iOS version of the app done.
Also I would, thanks to Apple's annoying policies, have to buy an Apple machine as a build-server.
So, up until now, the iOS build has been off the agenda because it would take a lot of time, and require me to spend a fair amount of money, and I'm not really sure how big a market there would be for an iOS Freda (Marvin is a *very good* alternative, and quite hard to beat).
But I am watching the Microsoft roadmap quite closely because .NET 5 might offer a really straightforward way to move my Windows app over to iOS within the coming year.
In short: it may happen. Particularly if it becomes easier, or if I come to think there's a big market for it.
|
A Windows version is not really all that useful. How many people read eBooks on a desktop or laptop? Not many. I don't. And most users on MR don't.
An iOS version would have a lot more users. As for Marvin, it's basically abandoned. Marvin has a number of issues that have been brought up to the author who chose to ignore them. So an ePub reading app for iOS that's got active support and is well written would get a lot of people to go for it.
As for Windows vs iOS, iOS would be a lot more readers. The choice of Android (IMHO) should have come after iOS. As we knew from the Surface with ARM processor that Windows Phone was going to tank. So that wasn't (IMHO) a good idea to write for. iOS has the most users with the iPhone and the iPAD. Personally, I know very few people with an Android phone. Most are using an iPhone.