I was getting real close to starting a new task app. I was pretty set on just doing it SwiftUI on iOS and macOS with CloudKit. Then Apple rejected a little game I made for my daughter.

It made me a little upset.

They rejected it for “Guideline 4.2 - Design - Minimum Functionality.” I tried to explain that my three-year-old loves it. It's the first thing she asks to do when she wakes up. It's simple on purpose to reduce distractions. People have asked me to release it so they could share it. Apple's response "We encourage you to consider ways to make your app stand out. We understand that it can be difficult to determine what the best experience is to offer your users." I could more to it and try again. But I have no idea where the minimum functionality line is. I've put apps that do less than this game on the App Store and I've had other apps that do more get rejected for the same reason. I built the app I wanted to build and am in no mood to please the App Review people. I decided not to invest any more time into a native version. Sunk cost. I polished up the web version instead.

Maybe I'm being overly dramatic, but this experience is having me question my thoughts about building apps. My idea for a task app is for a fairly simple app built for the way I want to manage tasks. It will likely take me months to build. After all that investment, there is no guarantee it will get approved. Might be too simple for them. They might call it spam since there are already a couple task apps on the store.

So I'm trying to decide, native or not?

Native

When possible, I mostly use native apps on iOS and macOS. I like them. I've built a couple myself. I would mostly want to use this app on macOS, but would want it available on iOS as well.

Pros

Cons

Web

I would probably use my perfect stack to build this. I enjoy it. Buts, some of the equation would change if I used something like SvelteKit and Supabase or PocketBase. I may look into those options.

Pros

Cons

So, I don't know. I've really good at making decisions. I think I could make a pretty compelling app for iOS and macOS, but at what cost? There is also a hybrid approach, make 3 apps—iOS, macOS, and web with my own backend. The most expensive and ambitious option of all. I would have fun building either. Both would be a lot of work. I'm sure this is an easy decision for a lot of people. But it's not for me.

What do you think? What do you think I am missing?