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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?

#591

Post by jcelerier »

userbinator wrote: post #462
Decade wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are looking back at the past with rosy goggles. What I remember from the time was how you couldn’t run that many things simultaneously. Back when the Pentium II was first released, I even had to close applications, not because the computer ran out of RAM, but because the TCP/IP stack that came with Windows 95 didn’t allow very many simultaneous connections. My web browser and my chat were causing each other to er…

A Pentium II could barely process DVD-resolution MPEG-2 in realtime. According to http://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?p=423016#p423016 a 350MHz PII would've been enough for DVD, and that's 720x480@30fps; videoconferencing would more commonly use 320x240 or 352x288 which has 1/4 the pixels, and H261 or H263 instead as the codec. Being able to Zoom call and see up to 16 live video feeds simultaneously is an amazing adv…

I have an iMac G4 from 2003 (the sunflower things) on which I installed Debian PPC and it is able to stream 720p content from my local network and play it back smoothly on VLC

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

#594

Post by qwerty456127 »

djhaskin987 wrote: post #417
userbinator wrote: post #396

As a long-time Win32 developer, my only answer to that question is "of course there is!" The efficiency difference between native and "modern" web stuff is easily several orders of magnitude; you can write very useful applications that are only a few KB in size, a single binary, and that same binary will work across 25 years of OS versions. Yes, computers have gotten faster and memory and disks much larger. That does…

> Yes, computers have gotten faster and memory and disks much larger. That doesn't mean we should be wasting it to do the same or even less functionality we had with the machines of 10 or 20 years ago. With Moore's law being dead, efficiency is going to get a lot more popular than it has been historically. I think we're going to start seeing an uptick in the popularity of more efficient GUI programs like the ones you…

> Similarly, I predict we will see an uptick in popularity of actually native frameworks such as Qt over Electron for the same reason.

I would predict that if only Qt didn't cost a mind-boggling price for non-GPL apps. They should really switch to pay-as-you-earn e.g. like the Unreal engine so people would only have to start paying as they start earning serious money selling the actual app. If they don't Qt popularity is hardly going to grow.

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

#595

Post by slightwinder »

Decade wrote: post #427
userbinator wrote: post #396

As a long-time Win32 developer, my only answer to that question is "of course there is!" The efficiency difference between native and "modern" web stuff is easily several orders of magnitude; you can write very useful applications that are only a few KB in size, a single binary, and that same binary will work across 25 years of OS versions. Yes, computers have gotten faster and memory and disks much larger. That does…

You are looking back at the past with rosy goggles. What I remember from the time was how you couldn’t run that many things simultaneously. Back when the Pentium II was first released, I even had to close applications, not because the computer ran out of RAM, but because the TCP/IP stack that came with Windows 95 didn’t allow very many simultaneous connections. My web browser and my chat were causing each other to er…

To be fair, 10-20 years ago was the age of Windows XP and Windows 7, not Windows 95. There barely was anything good about Windows 95, and there are likely not many people missing it, but it was also a complete different era from the later "modern" desktops, hardware as also software-wise. If anything I would call that era the alpha-version, problems included.

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

#596

Post by Slartie »

kanwisher wrote: post #386
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

Notice that I didn't say anything about that being impossible. I just said it's harder to meet most of these requirements with a web app, because you have to solve problems that you simply wouldn't have otherwise while gaining practically no advantage whatsoever, which is why most people decide to keep building native applications. Some people happily shooting themselves into the foot does not invalidate this assertion.

Also especially ATMs are notorious for hanging inexplicably for seconds, not reacting swiftly to user input, and generally providing a rather poor UI experience. The performance and quality standards for POS systems, at least our standards, are quite a bit higher.

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

#597

Post by slightwinder »

userbinator wrote: post #396

As a long-time Win32 developer, my only answer to that question is "of course there is!" The efficiency difference between native and "modern" web stuff is easily several orders of magnitude; you can write very useful applications that are only a few KB in size, a single binary, and that same binary will work across 25 years of OS versions. Yes, computers have gotten faster and memory and disks much larger. That does…

> Yes, computers have gotten faster and memory and disks much larger. That doesn't mean we should be wasting it to do the same or even less functionality we had with the machines of 10 or 20 years ago.

If we save developer-cycles, it's not wasted, just saved somewhere else. In the first place we should not go by numbers, because there always will be someone who can complain for a faster solution.

> For example, IM, video/audio calls, and working with email shouldn't take hundreds of MB of RAM, a GHz-level many-core processor, and GBs of disk space. All of that was comfortably possible --- simultaneously --- with 256MB of RAM and a single-core 400MHz Pentium II.

Yes, no. The level of ability and comfort at that time was significant lower. Sure, the base-functionalitify was the same, but the experience was quite different. Today there are a gazillion more little details which make life more comfortable, which you just don't realize there are there. Some of them working in the background, some being so naturally that you can't imagine them not being there since the beginning of everything.

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

#598

Post by slightwinder »

jotm wrote: post #551
Decade wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are looking back at the past with rosy goggles. What I remember from the time was how you couldn’t run that many things simultaneously. Back when the Pentium II was first released, I even had to close applications, not because the computer ran out of RAM, but because the TCP/IP stack that came with Windows 95 didn’t allow very many simultaneous connections. My web browser and my chat were causing each other to er…

Most of those have nothing to do with OP's point, which is that some software uses way too much processing power than it should. While on the topic, let's remember the speech recognition software available for Windows (and some for Android 2.x) that was completely offline and could be voice activated with, gasp , any command! Google with its massive data centers can only do "OK/Hey Google". Riiight. I can't believe t…

Do you mean Dragon Speech or how it was called?

Anyway, old speech recognition software was quite horrible. Most did not even worked without prior training. And Google does have now offline-speech recognition too. But true, the ability to trigger with any desired phrase is something still missing.

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

#600

Post by jwr »

Definitely, for apps where you can invest the money. Desktop development is really expensive, even more so if you want to support more than one operating system.

This means either apps with general mass appeal, or niche apps in specialized markets, but not small markets either.

Taking a quick look at my computer right now, I have a bunch of specialized apps that are considered "expensive" by many, and there is NO WAY I would want to use them as web apps: Ulysses, Camtasia, 2Do, Bear, Fantastical.

The other side of that coin, however, is that people do not appreciate how expensive desktop development is. For my SaaS, I would love to offer desktop apps (as in, not Electron apps), but the cost is prohibitive and this will likely never happen.

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