

Enhancing Angular.js with Trigger.io Forge - amirnathoo
http://trigger.io/cross-platform-application-development-blog/2012/08/30/enhancing-angular-js-with-trigger-io-forge/

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biscarch
Trigger.io has been a great platform, counting reliability, ease of use and
support. We're having no platform related issues with a
forge/backbone/requirejs approach to our app. I highly suggest a look if
you're currently using something like Sencha Touch/PhoneGap.

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rockyj
Well, I even made an app on this a while back. <https://github.com/rocky-
jaiswal/rafflerv2> would have blogged about it if I knew it would make it to
the front page of HN. #Facepalm

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hamxiaoz
No one thinks their price is too high for indies?

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lukifer
Their pricing is high, but not infeasible; in theory, if you ship over 50k
units, you hopefully have the resources to afford $300/month (though perhaps
not, if your model is based on free + network effects).

What I find interesting is that the key differentiator between plans is the
number of "Reloads". This implies that when you reach the cap, the app
continues to work, but doesn't update for another month. This isn't great for
users, and it kills much of the benefit they offer for sub-$300 plans,
especially if you wish to update often, or you've built your server-side
around all users always being up-to-date.

Brass tacks: their platform looks great, and the cost isn't a deal-breaker,
but the level of moral hazard and vendor lock-in spooks me a bit. If they were
to start raising rents or misbehaving, moving the codebase away from their
platform would represent a non-trivial amount of work. For the client mobile
project I'm starting soon, I'll probably use PhoneGap coupled with a homebrew
dynamic updating system. And it's a shame, because I'd much rather use Trigger
Forge.

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amirnathoo
We were concerned with keeping our platform affordable when we launched our
pricing: we added the $19 / month tier specifically for indie developers.

We grandfather plans so if you sign-up now you've locked in that pricing,
which most people think is fantastic value relative to the time they will
spend developing and iterating their app :)

Reload is a unique feature not available on other mobile platforms, but it is
perfectly possibly to launch an app with us without ever using it or upgrading
higher than the $19 / month tier.

~~~
lukifer
Thanks for the reply. Can you tell me the exact behavior when Reloads run out?
Even 50k seems like a small number, especially if iterating frequently. (A 2nd
question: do Reloads block UI, or continue using the old version until
background updating is done?)

It looks like I could potentially roll my own updating solution on Trigger
using the File API. I didn't realize that Trigger was feature-comparable with
PhoneGap + plugins. I'll evaluate a little further.

~~~
amirnathoo
No problem, thanks for your interest!

Reloads will still be applied beyond the limit - you'll just get a nice email
from us :). In the future we will charge an overage rate.

Reloads do not block the UI, by default the old version is used until the
updating is done. We check and apply updates when the app gains or loses
focus, but you can modify the update behavior using the Reload API:
[http://current-
docs.trigger.io/modules/reload.html#modules-r...](http://current-
docs.trigger.io/modules/reload.html#modules-reload)

