I like a desktop app for uploading / syncing large files or directories to the cloud. I'm sure there's a good web implementation out there for the Dropbox-style sync thing, I just haven't seen it yet.
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Ask HN: Is there still a place for native desktop apps?
31–40 of 777 posts
Re: Ask HN: Is there still a place for native desktop apps?
#32CAD and BIM
webgl and wasm? Edit: I presumed that the context of the discussion was apps in a general sense. Obviously not every application is going to be on the web and there are a lot of niche software that will never make the switch. I was thinking more qucad or sketch 3d for woodworkers to plan their desks, not solidworks and all its plugins to handle complex fluid simulation in mission critical areas.
I worked in the EDA space for a while and even built an online circuit simulation tool [0] while there. I'm aware of couple of startups such as [1] that tried to move these tools to the browser. There are a number of challenges that make web apps difficult in this space such as"
1. Pricing model: For the simulation side of EDA, you need a lot of computing power. With desktop apps, the user already has a powerful machine available that you don't have to pay to use. With the cloud, you need to pay for all the machines so finding a pricing model that works is a challenge.
2. User expectations: The users who are willing to pay > $100k/seat/year expect very advanced features that would probably take 10s or 100s of engineering years to get working. These users also don't care as much about the UI/UX problems that a modern app would solve.
References
Re: Ask HN: Is there still a place for native desktop apps?
#33CAD and BIM
The new Autocad web app is pretty impressive. Feels native even with large CAD files: https://www.autodesk.com/products/autocad-web-app/overview
Re: Ask HN: Is there still a place for native desktop apps?
#34I prefer well-designed desktop applications to web applications for most things that don't naturally involve the web: * Email clients (I use Thunderbird) * Office suites * Music and media players * Maps * Information managers (e.g., password managers) * Development tools * Personal productivity tools (e.g., to-do lists) * Games As Windows starts on-boarding their unified Electron model (I can't recall what they have…
What is your maps desktop application?
Re: Ask HN: Is there still a place for native desktop apps?
#35I prefer well-designed desktop applications to web applications for most things that don't naturally involve the web: * Email clients (I use Thunderbird) * Office suites * Music and media players * Maps * Information managers (e.g., password managers) * Development tools * Personal productivity tools (e.g., to-do lists) * Games As Windows starts on-boarding their unified Electron model (I can't recall what they have…
What is your maps desktop application?
I just use Maps that ships with Windows.
Re: Ask HN: Is there still a place for native desktop apps?
#36Lots of software would be better (from the user's POV) as a desktop app. However as a developer and as a software business owner/investor, it's (much) better to write web apps. So it depends on what you're asking here. Should you invest in desktop dev skills to further your career? No. Should you write your software idea as a desktop app if you want to make a business of it? Not if you can avoid it. If you're asking…
> However as a developer and as a software business owner/investor, it's (much) better to write web apps. Why do you say that?
I think he is saying that because with webapps you have
- control over your software and updates
- no one can pirate your software/service
Re: Ask HN: Is there still a place for native desktop apps?
#37Not yet for music production. DAW's, software synthesisers, drum machines, latency matters here.
Re: Ask HN: Is there still a place for native desktop apps?
#38CAD and BIM
webgl and wasm? Edit: I presumed that the context of the discussion was apps in a general sense. Obviously not every application is going to be on the web and there are a lot of niche software that will never make the switch. I was thinking more qucad or sketch 3d for woodworkers to plan their desks, not solidworks and all its plugins to handle complex fluid simulation in mission critical areas.
We've had some success with 2D AutoCAD on WASM, but it's not as easy as just recompiling when you are dealing with a nearly 40 year old codebase and care about pixel level accuracy. Also, it will never be as responsive as native, mouse events lag on the browser even if you are doing nothing else. AutoCAD users care a lot about such lag.
The BIM stuff (i.e. Revit) is very Windows-specific so a straight port with WASM is a no-starter.
The actual 3D rendering with WebGL is the least problem, we have that nearly solved (in terms of performance relative to desktop -- we never really needed 60fps anyway). The problem there comes in when you have a huge design that does not fit in the allocated/allowed heap space.
(throwaway for obvious reasons)
Re: Ask HN: Is there still a place for native desktop apps?
#39On Office 365 (desktop version), sometimes when you click a dropdown like the "different kinds of bullet lists" the whole application freezes for a couple of seconds while it builds the menu content or something. This didn't happen with earlier versions, if memory serves me right. I'm not sure if this is web tech or some other kind of new framework under the hood, but it makes me sad that with the speeds and cores we have on modern processors old-fashioned things like word processing have got slower than they used to be.
Native Applications in the platform's toolkit (not some cross-platform abstraction on top) will always squeeze a little bit more performance and usability out of the corners.
Re: Ask HN: Is there still a place for native desktop apps?
#40Every single app that I use, I try and make sure it is native. I shun electron apps at all cost. It's because people who put in effort to use the native APIs put in a lot more effort in the app in general based on my anecdotal evidence. It is also more performant and smaller in size, things that I cherish. It also pays homage to limits and striving to come up with new ways of overcoming them, which hackers would have…
Bonus points if it includes offline documentation. As nice as it is to have "updated" online docs, the reality to me seems to be defined more by broken links than by actual up-to-date documentation.