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Ask HN: Is there still a place for native desktop apps?

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Re: Ask HN: Is there still a place for native desktop apps?

#241

Post by whowhatwhy »

PopeDotNinja wrote: post #193
burke wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an Electron hater, I’m constantly surprised at just how much VS Code doesn’t suck.

My personal evolution has gone from Sublime Text 3 to Atom to VS Code to Sublime Text 3. I've never been a heavy plugin user, mainly sticking to code highlighting. The thing I really like is speed. Sublime Text rarely chokes on me. I love being able to type `cat some_one_gigabyte_file | subl` and getting it to open up with little difficulty. VS Code chokes on files of non-trivial size, and that was the thing I liked…

i just use less for big files, convenience is a matter of taste

Re: Ask HN: Is there still a place for native desktop apps?

#242

Post by camccar »

fartcannon wrote: post #234
jrockway wrote: post #221

Native desktop apps are great. The reason that people don't write them is because users aren't on "the desktop". "The desktop" is split between OS X and Windows, and your Windows-app-compiled-for-Mac is going to annoy Mac users and your Mac-app-compiled-for-Windows is going to annoy Windows users. Then you realize that most users of computing devices actually just use their phone for everything, and your desktop app…

And therefore, beware any OS attempts to break cross platform browser compatibility. Also I think you can deploy to all those things with Qt.

And pay QT like 5,000 $ a year to keep it closed source. No thank you. Would rather write it 6 times. Or just use electron.

Re: Ask HN: Is there still a place for native desktop apps?

#243

Post by blehn »

ZoomZoomZoom wrote: post #191
robin_reala wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Figma is pretty much replacing all web design applications precisely because it’s leveraging web tech for collaboration on a single document at the same time.

I think we can safely exclude 'collaborative web design' applications from the set of hardcore tools not gaining much from being implemented as web apps for understandable reasons.

Huh? Why? Designers had previously been using native apps for ages — Photoshop, Illustrator, Sketch... Figma has been successful not just because it's collaborative but also because it's performant, powerful, and reliable. Not sure why you think that can't be achieved with other kinds of software

Re: Ask HN: Is there still a place for native desktop apps?

#244

Post by CamperBob2 »

jrockway wrote: post #221

Native desktop apps are great. The reason that people don't write them is because users aren't on "the desktop". "The desktop" is split between OS X and Windows, and your Windows-app-compiled-for-Mac is going to annoy Mac users and your Mac-app-compiled-for-Windows is going to annoy Windows users. Then you realize that most users of computing devices actually just use their phone for everything, and your desktop app…

Windows-app-compiled-for-Mac is going to annoy Mac users

And they'll let you know it, too. Unfortunately this has been an issue since the first Macs left the assembly line in 1984. If you point out that based on their share of the software market they're lucky they get anything at all, the conversation usually goes south from there.

Re: Ask HN: Is there still a place for native desktop apps?

#245

Post by thewebcount »

I go out of my way to avoid web apps. They're uniformly awful. They also have a tendency to require an internet connection, even when they don't need to. Some can use local storage, but the other problems with web apps don't make up for it. I don't want an OS running on my OS. I want to just use my apps.

Re: Ask HN: Is there still a place for native desktop apps?

#246

Post by camccar »

psds2 wrote: post #212
ZoomZoomZoom wrote: post #144

I'm going to be slammed for using these two words, but for any real work you need to have as few layers of indirection between the user and the machine as possible, and this includes the UX, in the sense that it is tailored to the fastest and most comfortable data entry and process monitoring. I don't see any `web first` or Electron solution replacing Reaper or Blender in a foreseeable future. One exception I'm intri…

VSCode, because of electron, doesn't allow you to have multiple windows that share state while working on a project. This makes it terrible with multiple screens.

It’s not because of electron. They could have multiple windows but it would be a massive over haul of the architecture . So they say just use another instance

Re: Ask HN: Is there still a place for native desktop apps?

#247

Post by blehn »

ZoomZoomZoom wrote: post #236
CharlesW wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet it is a hardcore tool, and does gain a lot from being implemented as a web app. Another example might serve your point better.

Ok, I see my point being not so understandable, after all. I didn't mean Figma isn't a hardcore tool, I meant that we exclude it because it specifically concerns with web technology (being a tool for web design) and leverages web to implement collaborative usage. So it's probably logical for it to be a web app.

You're still way off. It's not a "web" design tool; it's a visual design and prototyping tool. Folks are designing a lot more than websites and web apps with Figma.

Re: Ask HN: Is there still a place for native desktop apps?

#248

Post by doteka »

fbelzile wrote: post #124

I make a living developing software only available on Windows and macOS. That said, if I didn't need to interact so much with the operating system, I'd be making a web app. It all depends on what you want to make though. Video editing software? Native app. CRUD app? Web app. You may also want to consider pricing implications of both. Desktop software can usually be sold for a higher up front cost, but it's tough sell…

For a personal project I am currently using this approach and can confirm it works great.

I wrote just enough PyObjC to get myself a trayicon in the Mac menu bar, which shows a popover containing a wkwebview to localhost. Then I have all the app logic in Python, exposed to the webview through a bottle server, and Svelte for the UI. Highly recommended.

Re: Ask HN: Is there still a place for native desktop apps?

#249

Post by CharlesW »

brachi wrote: post #174
ur-whale wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blender in the browser. Ugh.

I don't find it that crazy, if properly compiled with web assembly. The thing is that Blender's UI is all synchronous python, so, yeah, that and the addons system would be to need rewritten. Python in the browser is a no-go performance-wise, of course.

> Python in the browser is a no-go performance-wise, of course.

"Running the Python interpreter inside a JavaScript virtual machine adds a performance penalty, but that penalty turns out to be surprisingly small — in our benchmarks, around 1x-12x slower than native on Firefox and 1x-16x slower on Chrome. Experience shows that this is very usable for interactive exploration."[1][2]

[1] https://hacks.mozilla.org/2019/04/pyodide-bringing-the-scien... [2] https://alpha.iodide.io/notebooks/300/

Re: Ask HN: Is there still a place for native desktop apps?

#250

Post by jfkebwjsbx »

ssimono wrote: post #151
Memosyne wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> no one can pirate your software/service Huh? Given how most web applications these days are using client-side rendering there's nothing stopping someone from just downloading all of the frontend assets. You can also connect to a server from your desktop application so I don't understand how desktop makes it easier to pirate anything.

Web applications have lots of essential parts on the server-side even if they do client-side rendering. And each paying user is logged in when using it, so the company can accept/deny requests depending on the user. Proprietary desktop applications are usually downloaded after a payment, and then the full software is available locally. By hacking the security parts of it one can then have a totally free version and d…

Not anymore!

Games and even productivity apps are known to be moving small pieces to their servers so that you cannot run the entire application on your own...

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