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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?

#381

Post by stephc_int13 »

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…

Over time I've tried quite a few popular text editors, Notepad, Emacs, Vim, UltraEdit, Sublime Text, and of course VSCode.

VSCode is surprisingly good for a Microsoft product and they had to do some crazy smart engineering work to make it not sucks while being built on top of Electron.

That said, it still quite slow and memory hungry, I've gone back to Sublime 3 a few weeks ago and I am not coming back to VSCode.

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

#382

Post by madeofpalk »

digi59404 wrote: post #280
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…

Both VS Code and Atom use significant amounts of WebAssembly and low level libraries to achieve that performance. In addition to that they've written their own view layer for an IDE in modern JS which makes it more performant and stable. I despise electron and html-wrapper apps. But I gotta give credit where it's due. VS Code is pretty good. With the advent of the new WinUI, React+Native on Windows, and Blazer. I'm b…

I guess this is a semantics thing, but WinUI/React Native is not “web based”. It is JavaScript building “native UIs”.

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

#384

Post by mokus »

ebj73 wrote: post #288
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…

I think this has changed. People used to be very particular about how their apps looked on different native platforms, like you say. But I don't think it's like that anymore. People are more agnostic now, when it comes to how user interfaces look, because they've seen it all. Especially on the web, where there's really no rules, and where each new site and web app looks different. I believe this also carries over to…

Speaking for myself only, I haven’t changed my preference, I’ve just given up hoping that any company gives a shit about my preference.

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

#385

Post by neutronicus »

sime2009 wrote: post #180
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…

OnShape ( https://www.onshape.com/ ) offers professional level CAD which runs in a browser. Works great.

What's your use-case?

I work for an indirect competitor backed by the same commercial geometry kernel (Parasolid) and it did not do well with our models (which, granted, are pretty different from typical mechanical CAD models).

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

#386

Post by kanwisher »

Slartie wrote: post #103

We're building POS applications for major retailers, and for this kind of software, native is king and will stay for the foreseeable future (with a few exceptions confirming the rule, of course). These applications need tight integration with exotic hardware, must satisfy weird fiscal requirements often written with native applications in mind, must run rock-solid 24/7 with daily usage and predictable response times…

A lot of ATM machines and POs systems are glorified web apps. Not sure why a web app can’t be rock solid. Certainly easier to go native since you only have one platform, but I don’t see it being required

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

#388

Post by coronadisaster »

bhauer wrote: post #29

I 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…

> Thunderbird

The search is not very good on Thunderbird...

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

#389

Post by jcelerier »

nitrogen wrote: post #327
jcelerier wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Meanwhile, your web app may not be as good as native apps, but at least you don't have to write it 6 times. I must be living in a parallel world because I use a ton of desktop apps that aren't "written 6 times" - and write a few, including a music & other things sequencer ( https://ossia.io ). Just amongst the ones running on my desktop right now, Strawberry (Qt), Firefox (their own toolkit), QtCreator (Qt), Telegr…

Ossia looks pretty sweet! I'll be checking that out for sure.

thanks ! it's still kinda in alpha but making progress :)

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

#390

Post by flowerlad »

As things stand now there is no place for native desktop apps.

You have to give users a reason to prefer native desktop apps. But today, thanks to Flat UI, most end users can't even tell a native Windows app from an Electron app. If users don't demand native apps then developers have no reason to limit their customer base to Windows users (or Mac users).

For users to demand native apps, native apps must have a distinctive look and feel that is loved by end users. Before Apple switched to Flat UI, Mac OS X apps did have such a look & feel, and developers were making OS X native apps even when users could use a Web version.

If Apple or Microsoft dropped the Flat UI stupidity — which is both ugly and has usability issues — then one day demand for native apps may return.

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