DIY iOS Music Player: A Developer's Revolt Against Apple's Lock-in

Frustrated with Apple Music's limitations and subscription model, a developer built their own iOS music player from scratch. The player boasts local file playback, iCloud sync, and full-text search, cleverly leveraging SQLite's FTS5 for efficient fuzzy search. The development journey saw a shift from React Native to SwiftUI, employing a backend-like architecture for streamlined data flow and concurrency. While the final product fulfills the developer's needs, the experience highlights Apple's restrictive developer tools and app distribution policies, hindering personal app development in stark contrast to the ease of software creation in the AI era.