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Firebase SDK is crashing all iOS apps since this morningtwitter.com
132 points•pranshuchittora•1 day ago•72 comments•
#since#firebase#sdk#apps#ios#morning#crashing#allll

72 comments

pranshuchittora1 day ago
Resolved - https://github.com/firebase/firebase-ios-sdk/issues/16728#is...
lol7681 day ago
Resolved, but can still affect customers for up to 4 hours...

So many problems here, and no signs of an updated SDK that behaves properly on malformed input.

alex_suzuki1 day ago
I remember first learning about Firebase when working on Android push notifications, a loooooong time ago (~2011 i think). Over time it grew into this full-featured app development platform, after an aquisition (don’t remember the name).

These days however it feels a bit neglected, and somehow poorly bolted on to GCP. I still have a few production apps running on it and news like this reinforces my belief that it’s in decline.

What are folks using these days that (ideally) is open source and self-hostable? I don’t want to lock in with another platform. Some of these apps use the offline sync feature of Firestore (apps used in basements and other low-connectivity areas).

wilsynet1 day ago
I was a new employee at Google when we started talking to Firebase. The founders are super smart and get stuff done.

However, I remember saying to the VP who was leading the acquisition, “shouldn’t we decide what market we want to be in, then evaluate if we should build, buy, or partner?”

He said “no, we should buy it first then figure out what to do”.

I’m not surprised Firebase feels like it’s bolted on. They never really knew what they wanted to do with it. That was true then and it’s true now.

pranshuchittora1 day ago
Yes that's the sad part, if you want to integrate Push Notification in your app, and you want to use a 3rd party vendor like OneSignal etc, you still need a fuckin FIREBASE account & FIREBASE dependencies in your app. So every app on the Play Store comes with firebase dependency.
hackernud3s1 day ago
Calling them a 3rd party push notification vendor is being generous. Google is still doing the push notification and I guess OneSignal offers a wrapper around the libs.
mcsniff1 day ago
Er no?

Be hyperbolic if you want, but there are LOTS of apps on the Play Store that do not have internet access, let alone a dependency on Firebase.

Leonard_of_Q1 day ago
Using UnifiedPush with ntfy [1] as push distributor, used Prosody as well with Conversations as distributor which did work but I prefer ntfy because it does its one thing well.

[1] https://github.com/binwiederhier/ntfy

ryan_beethe1 day ago
I'm working on an alternative (phaselock.io) which is still in alpha but it is open-source and self-hostable.

Offline mode and cross-platform support are some of the features most important to me.

teoruiz1 day ago
I guess Supabase is the obvious contender. It doesn't provide the actual frontend hosting though, which is a bit of a pain because now you have two problems.
alex_suzuki1 day ago
I wasn't aware that Supabase is self-hostable - thanks for pointing that out, will have a look. Customer is in Europe, if they decide to move away from Firebase, they don't want to migrate to another managed platform run by a US company (digital sovereignty etc.)
ChrisMarshallNY1 day ago
Ugh.

That's the dark side of these types of dependencies.

But they provide a great deal of utility, so I can understand the attraction.

amelius1 day ago
I guess it's time Apple sherlocked Firebase.
oefrha1 day ago
Apple's web services are shit, so I hope not. When it works it's great/okay, but when it breaks 5-10% of the time (that's about the rate AirDrop doesn't work for me) there's absolutely no indication what the hell is going on. Apple's allergic to progress indicators and useful error messages.
plorkyeran1 day ago
Apple has had various forms of iCloud sync that theoretically compete with firebase but are really awful for the entire life of firebase.
saagarjha1 day ago
You can write your own crash reporter now.
jaen1 day ago
Exactly the same thing also happened in 2020 with the Facebook SDK:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23097459

hnisjafx401 day ago
Yeah, and pinning versions doesn't save you when the config comes from their server.

Read the full thread on Hacker News →

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