Earlier quoted context omitted.
95% of a market that has shrunk nearly 50% over the last decade. In many ways, the consumer and non specialty business are post desktop. Turns out documents, email, and other communication apps cover 90% of use cases. Anything that requires major performance gets rendered in a cloud and delivered by these other apps.
really shrunk?
Ask HN: Is there still a place for native desktop apps?
711–720 of 777 posts
Re: Ask HN: Is there still a place for native desktop apps?
#712Earlier quoted context omitted.
I recently had to upgrade my RAM because I have Spotify and Slack open all the time. Today RAM is cheap but it is crazy those programs take up so much resources. Another program I use a lot is Blender (3D software). Compared to Spotify and Slack it is a crazy complicated program with loads of complicated functionalities. But it starts in a blink and only uses resources when it needs to (calculations and your 3D model…
It really surprised me when I downloaded Godot only to get a 32MB binary. Snappy as hell. Web apps masquerading as desktop apps are terribly slow and it's a surprise we've got so used to it. My slack client takes a few seconds to launch, then it has a loading screen, and quite often it will refresh itself (blanking out the screen and doing a full-blown re-render) without warning. This is before it starts spinning the…
LMMS (https://lmms.io/) is a full blown DAW that's only 33MB as well
Re: Ask HN: Is there still a place for native desktop apps?
#713Earlier quoted context omitted.
Targeting Windows alone gets you 90% of the desktop market. 95% if you make it run reasonably in Wine. This argument is often used, but it's an excuse. Anything that you need to run on a desktop can't be used effectively on a touch screen anyway, so phones and tablets don't really count for serious software. (Writing this comment is stretching the bounds of what I can reasonably do on an IPhone).
95% of a market that has shrunk nearly 50% over the last decade. In many ways, the consumer and non specialty business are post desktop. Turns out documents, email, and other communication apps cover 90% of use cases. Anything that requires major performance gets rendered in a cloud and delivered by these other apps.
Note: People questioning the stats
https://www.statista.com/statistics/272595/global-shipments-...
Note that this data is missing phones.
2010: 157mm Desktops, 201mm Laptops sold 2019 forecast; 88.4 + 166mm
Or, perhaps better, is in terms of internet use https://www.broadbandsearch.net/blog/mobile-desktop-internet...
Mobile went from 16.2% to 53% of traffic since 2013; nearly 4 fold. Which means since 2013, non mobile usage went from 84% to 47%; or nearly 50%
Re: Ask HN: Is there still a place for native desktop apps?
#714Earlier 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.
Nuance Dragon NaturallySpeaking
Re: Ask HN: Is there still a place for native desktop apps?
#715Earlier quoted context omitted.
I use windows (although not a heavy user, I mainly use Linux these days), and only outsider apps I have installed are lightweight open source ones and some "official" versions of software. You don't need an antivirus apart from built-in Windows Defender. And I don't notice any slowdown. I have a non-admin account which I regularly use and admin account is separate. Arguably many users don't know how to use a Windows…
You already can use UWP that has sandbox. Win32 apps can be converted to it. So no one cares about more security. Most vendor stuck at "just work" Win32.
Can convert does not mean thats only way to install , as long you give an insecure option your security is still weak .
It is not that OS developers are not improving , for example S mode on surface is a good feature, however as long as adobe’s of the world still abuse my system the problem is not solved .
It is just not older gen software either , Slack desktop definitely takes more resources than web version while delivering broadly the same features Sure it is electron abstraction , however if a multi billion company with vc funding can not see value in investing on 3 different stacks for windows,MacOS and Linux how can most other developers?
Re: Ask HN: Is there still a place for native desktop apps?
#716Native 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'm surprised nobody mentioned Emscripten. Unfortunately I have no experience with it but I get that you could write a native app and also get it to work in browser with this. I also get there could be a performance penalty but hey... There's also a native app! It feels like we could reverse steam and get 1st class native apps again.
Re: Ask HN: Is there still a place for native desktop apps?
#717Controversial opinion: Yes, native desktop apps are the future. Msft is pushing on react-native-windows and macOS has project catalyst. React-native is making cross-platforms native apps viable. Apps are way more immersive than the browser and it allows the developer to give a gamification experience.
What do you mean by “gamification experience?”
I had revolut or wealthsimple in mind that both make trading/exchanging money more like a game and a wholesome experience.
I think because of the app the user is "forced" to concentrate and use the whole screen of the app (especially for the phone) it enables a more immersive experience. Whereas most browser apps feel like a transactional thing.
Re: Ask HN: Is there still a place for native desktop apps?
#718Earlier quoted context omitted.
Targeting Windows alone gets you 90% of the desktop market. 95% if you make it run reasonably in Wine. This argument is often used, but it's an excuse. Anything that you need to run on a desktop can't be used effectively on a touch screen anyway, so phones and tablets don't really count for serious software. (Writing this comment is stretching the bounds of what I can reasonably do on an IPhone).
95% of a market that has shrunk nearly 50% over the last decade. In many ways, the consumer and non specialty business are post desktop. Turns out documents, email, and other communication apps cover 90% of use cases. Anything that requires major performance gets rendered in a cloud and delivered by these other apps.
What do you consider as a specialty business? There are hundreds of millions of professionals - scientists, engineers, accountants, animators, content creators, visual artists, chip design folks, folks writing drivers for equipment, photographers, musicians, manufacturing folks, etc who simply cannot earn a living without native apps. Sure, maybe when those people go home, they don't always need native apps, but IMHO its a mistake to only think about them in such a narrow scope.
Re: Ask HN: Is there still a place for native desktop apps?
#719Earlier quoted context omitted.
> only a few KB in size, a single binary, and that same binary will work across 25 years of OS versions A few kb for the binary + 20-40 gb for the OS with 25 years of backwards compatibility
The actual part of the OS providing that is a small fraction of the number you quoted.
And if it weren’t for all that rest of the OS, the small fraction wouldn’t get the funding to survive to today.