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Ask HN: Is there still a place for native desktop apps?
601–610 of 777 posts
Re: Ask HN: Is there still a place for native desktop apps?
#602Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is not really accurate. Qt relies on a lower level windowing system (X Window, Wayland, Cocoa, win32 etc. etc.). Also worth noting that many creation-centric applications for the desktop (graphics, audio, video etc. etc.) don't look "native" even when they actually are. In one case (Logic Pro, from Apple), the "platform leading app from the platform creator" doesn't even look native!
What does “native” even mean? Put a in an HTML page and you get a platform-provided UI widget.
A GUI is a collection of elements with specific look and behaviour. A Desktop Environment is a collection of GUI(s), tools and services. Native means you have something which follows this look and behaviour 100% and can utilize all the tools and services.
Implementing the look is simple, adding behaviour quite harder and utilizing the service the endgame. WebUI usually does nothing from those or some parts, it all depends on the constellation. But usually there is a obvious difference at some point where you realize whether something is native or just made an attempt.
Re: Ask HN: Is there still a place for native desktop apps?
#603Earlier quoted context omitted.
QT is excellent, but C++ is quite a tough pill to swallow for many. Especially as QT layers a macro system on top. I predict that native desktop apps will make a comeback when there's QT-quality cross-platform framework in a more approachable language (Rust, nim, or similar).
Why not use Qt bindings for $YOUR_LANGUAGE_OF_CHOICE? https://wiki.qt.io/Language_Bindings
It's rather clunky and often requires writing like C++ in whatever language of choice you're using, the worst of both worlds.
I wonder what an API with both only C (or some other low level) bindings and designed to be easy to use externally might look like.
Re: Ask HN: Is there still a place for native desktop apps?
#604Native 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…
> 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…
I'd also love for Mac and Windows to make it really easy to get a vendor blessed version of QT installed.
Imagine if when trying to run a QT app on Windows a dialog box could popup saying. "Program X is missing the Y, install from the Windows Store (for free): Yes / No"
Re: Ask HN: Is there still a place for native desktop apps?
#605As 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, v…
> If we save developer-cycles, it's not wasted, just saved somewhere else.
In other words, pass the buck to the user (the noble word is "externality").
Re: Ask HN: Is there still a place for native desktop apps?
#606Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
The ability to trigger with any desired phrase is easy, but not done for privacy reasons, to reduce the chance of it accidentally listening to irrelevant conversations.
The inability to change it from Hey google is done for marketing / usability reasons.
Re: Ask HN: Is there still a place for native desktop apps?
#607Until the day the Professionals will use more mobile devices than desktop ones, the desktop native apps will simply rock.
Think to Photographers (Photoshop?), Designers (3DS Max, Blender), Gamers (Steam & co), Administrators (VirtualBox)
Re: Ask HN: Is there still a place for native desktop apps?
#608Earlier quoted context omitted.
Slack desktop app is almost 1 gig in size. On a whim I just checked how big the copy of Adium still lingering in my Mac is: 60 megs. And Ripcord (a native discord/slack client) is a mere 40.
ooh I'll have to check out ripcord!
I've found it's great for Discord, and pretty good for Slack (although I've been using Slack in my browser now that it's become critical during WFH).
Unfortunately it's proprietary, but there's another native client called gtkcord3 [0] that seems to be progressing well.
Re: Ask HN: Is there still a place for native desktop apps?
#609Earlier quoted context omitted.
I said that 20 years ago, but so far I've been proven completely wrong. Skype/etc just keep getting bigger and slower despite, from what I can tell adding absolutely no additional functionality. In fact if you consider it can't seem to do peer to peer anymore, its lost features. Very few companies are rewritting their electron apps in win32 (although they should be). Instead it continues moving in that direction, or…
Without a way for end-users to actually make judgements about application efficiency, there will never be any real pressure to make efficient, native apps. Though the only measurement I think people would actually care about is battery impact, and even that is pretty much hidden away on phones except to the few people who actually look. But the other problem is: who cares if Discord or a browser's HN tab aren't optim…
Instacart website has dreadfully slow search. Looks like instant search update takes forever to update with each character. The whole site is so slow. It makes my Mac Safari complain that the page uses significant resources.
This weekend I noticed that Amazon Fresh now delivers the same day—-for the past few months they had no slots. I switched to Amazon away from Instacart at once. The Amazon website lacks some bells and whistles compared to Instacart but it is completely speedy. If Instacart website were satisfactory I would never have switched.
Slow, bloated websites can absolutely cost companies money.
Re: Ask HN: Is there still a place for native desktop apps?
#610Earlier quoted context omitted.
Me neither, I'm not going to lie and say that I had 40 applications opened, but I DID have 5-10 apps using the web with 0 issues (A browser+IRC App + Email Client+MICQ+MSN Messenger+Kazaam/Napster+Winamp in stream mode). Very very few of the web and desktop applications of today are as snappy and user-friendly as classic Winamp.
And yet, people stopped using it. I used to use it all the time. Now I use Spotify instead. I'm not sure I want to go back to curating my own collection of mp3's again.
Sure, but if you could have Spotify as is, or a light weight player, like WinAMP, both with equal access to the Spotify service, which would you pick?
People aren't using Spotify because the player is fantastic, they use it because Spotify has a huge library, is reasonable price and the player is sort of okay.