So awesome, reminds me of Wired's Found from Future series (I don't know why they ever retired it...continuing that series as a sort of fan fiction was the first thing I did with gen AI when image generators started to get good)
Great write up. Really appreciate the work from the teams at Shopify, Expo, and countless OSS maintainers pushing the ecosystem forward. Looks like the coast is mostly clear to upgrade to the new architecture, but as a solo dev who only just made it to Expo 52 / Xcode 16, I can’t say I’m excited. With RN/Expo it often feels like a race to build features before the bottom drops out and you’re forced into another round of foundational upgrades just to keep the app building. Even with good migration tools and guides, any non-trivial app will likely hit unique challenges. I don’t think that’s on Expo or Facebook - it’s just the reality of mobile development and reflective of the way Apple and Google shape the ecosystem. Imho mobile platform churn is much worse than developing for web, and working on a mobile app makes me appreciate the web more every day.