Boilerplate for turning a mobile website into an iPhone app (opens in new tab)

Cordova does indeed do this, and gives you access to iOS hardware APIs. This doesn't.

With this in mind, the reason I made it was for projects which don't require those things. There is no middleware here, just a very simple Xcode project with a couple of code modifications.

You can literally drop an existing web app into this and get going! :D

When I looked at Cordova it was a complete mess and pain to deal with. The docs where confusing and out of date. I just needed a simple x-code project, not a kitchen sink that was installed in the attic for some reason.

Agreed. This just seems like a homebrewed version of Cordova lacking the ability to add plugins that provide a JS bridge to native OS features.

First app I ever built was a Cordova-based database of visa requirements for US Citizens. You could find a country by Name or see all countries that you could visit without a visa or with instant visa at the border.

I had dreams of using it myself when wandering the world without a local internet connection and seeing where I wanted to fly to next.

Apple rejected it saying it was nothing more than a web page wrapped in an app.

I submitted a JavaScript/Canvas based game, created on a game jam, and it got approved without any problems. [1] https://appsto.re/de/hxAB5.i

To add another anecdote, we just wrapped a webapp [0] and it was accepted. It's pretty easy to get into the app store, it's my understanding that Apple stopped truly vetting apps (there are some pretty terrible, broken apps on the app store approved by Apple).

[0] http://hextris.github.io/hextris/

Well, I think it depends on the content of the application. If you take your website and straight up drop it into this, it will probably be rejected.

If you build something that fetches train times, or a game like 2048, then you have an iOS app that just happens to be built in HTML.

This boilerplate is useless without some good content put inside it :)

Slowed rendering! Lower responsiveness! Non-native controls widgets! No good way to monetize them! Not able to take advantage of all native APIs! Can't use offline except with the limited storage APIs! Worse battery performance for demanding code!

No problem! I've forked the Android version from somebody else on Github and haven't made many changes to it yet, so the credit for that one should go to http://github.com/slymax.

I plan to make an Android one as simple as this. Google are working hard to make development easier but it's still a very poor experience compared to Xcode.