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Twitter Killing Its Mac App

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Re: Twitter Killing Its Mac App

#71
post #9
post #3

What does this app provide that a browser tab doesn't, other than a prominent spot in the Dock?

Better battery life? Lower memory usage? Integration with the platform conventions? I don’t want to use Twitter in a tab. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Websites, wrapped web views, react native, et al solve a developer’s problem. They do not solve any problem I as a user have. They make things worse, the only question is how much worse. How much better are you forcing me to pay? How much cognitive tax am…

The Twitter app in no way has lower memory usage than a browser. It leaks GPU buffers like crazy.

Re: Twitter Killing Its Mac App

#72
post #47

As a latecomer to macOS, Tweetie feels like a bygone era back when the default didn't seem to be Electron and web views. I want to believe in online apps, but god, they all just suck so much, if not at launch, then a few years down the line.

Given the sociopathic aspects of Twitter, maybe this is a good time to kiss it off. Maybe this is just the nudge we need.

Re: Twitter Killing Its Mac App

#73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm working on a desktop client for Twitter, FB, Slack etc. It's pretty snappy and weighs only 90 KB (!) https://eul.im Twitter support is coming later this month.

I'm calling bullshit on you, your shenanigans and all of the blind idiots. 1. I can't download past versions and there's no current version to download till tomorrow. Why... 2. You have no github and hn history besides spamming the shit of eul and I can't trust no proprietary third party shit. 4. Do you really think you can open source something that could bite your ass legally (whatsapp)? Will you partially open sou…

Ok, I'll bite.

After checking out the guy and his project, it seems like he's really truly passionate about making minimal, fast software. I love it: I do a similar thing myself (I made the smallest, fastest CSS framework.) I can tell it in his comments and the effort he's put into this. It's a totally unique project, and as far as I can google, it's the only one of its kind. In a world of massive, bloated apps that eat gigs of RAM for breakfast it's a refreshing change.

The audience for something this minimal is fairly niche, and HN probably has the densest concentration of people for it. He's been mentioning it not very often, and only when it's relevant, which seems fair to me.

He's also clearly a very talented developer and put a ton of work into it. I have a feeling he'd like to make some money off it. I've been in a similar position myself, years ago: not sure whether to open-source or not because of the perpetual doubt in the back of your mind. I don't blame him: he's getting $11/month off Patreon.

The past versions thing doesn't matter IMO - after checking the Github, he says they don't work anymore. And the previous versions downloaded _half_ a gigabyte, apparently now it only downloads a few megabytes. Personally, the biggest thing that concerns me is the source: I'd have to see the source before I used it for anything.

Alex, if you'd like to talk about the world of FOSS, fast, minimal software, open-sourcing, and how to make money, feel free to send me an email - it's in my profile :)

Re: Twitter Killing Its Mac App

#74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm calling bullshit on you, your shenanigans and all of the blind idiots. 1. I can't download past versions and there's no current version to download till tomorrow. Why... 2. You have no github and hn history besides spamming the shit of eul and I can't trust no proprietary third party shit. 4. Do you really think you can open source something that could bite your ass legally (whatsapp)? Will you partially open sou…

Ok, I'll bite. After checking out the guy and his project, it seems like he's really truly passionate about making minimal, fast software. I love it: I do a similar thing myself (I made the smallest, fastest CSS framework.) I can tell it in his comments and the effort he's put into this. It's a totally unique project, and as far as I can google, it's the only one of its kind. In a world of massive, bloated apps that…

As far as I can tell from the issues, previous versions of his software loaded the chat service in question's website in a browser, and then either applied a custom stylesheet to the webpage or attempted to extract portions of the HTML content for display.

eul.im literally never was minimal. He can keep saying it's minimal software, but until he produces something that both consistently works and doesn't consume orders of magnitude more storage than claimed, his words mean nothing. Again, current, literal reality is an issues page documenting myriad problems from crashes, blank screens, mangled displays, absence of advertised features, and claims of updated versions that still have not arrived.

Re: Twitter Killing Its Mac App

#75

Can we channel all the anger and frustration this has caused into switching to Mastodon/GNU Social? Open standards, run your own if you want, nobody deprecating or discontinuing anything.

Personally if I have to jump from Twitter, I'm more likely to switch to Micro.blog [1]. Everything is posted to your own site as an RSS post, and it already has iPhone and Mac apps. And of course, it has an API for making your own apps.

[1] https://micro.blog/about

Re: Twitter Killing Its Mac App

#76

Also strange: on the iOS app, you can add multiple accounts. On the web version not. Tweetdeck doesnt feel snappy at all. Twitter is, very broken - for a very long time now.

You can use twitcher in Chrome. Works very well, but to your point I don't understand why Twitter hasn't baked this in to the website yet.

Re: Twitter Killing Its Mac App

#77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, I'll bite. After checking out the guy and his project, it seems like he's really truly passionate about making minimal, fast software. I love it: I do a similar thing myself (I made the smallest, fastest CSS framework.) I can tell it in his comments and the effort he's put into this. It's a totally unique project, and as far as I can google, it's the only one of its kind. In a world of massive, bloated apps that…

As far as I can tell from the issues, previous versions of his software loaded the chat service in question's website in a browser, and then either applied a custom stylesheet to the webpage or attempted to extract portions of the HTML content for display. eul.im literally never was minimal. He can keep saying it's minimal software, but until he produces something that both consistently works and doesn't consume orde…

Look, it's an issues page, and it's one-man free software. He's a few days late with the update for a free piece of software, so what? The dude's earning $11 a month on Patreon. Give him a damn break.

Not to be grumpy to you, but I'd like to defend him. He's got an extremely noble goal. Those that "get it" really get it, and those that don't don't. I'm fed up with using several different shitty closed source apps that take up gigs of ram at a time, and I've tried to write my own version of what he's done, and I've failed at it. It's incredibly hard. Particularly because the companies are locked in a neverending cat and mouse trying to stop apps like this.

Also, based on everything I've seen off of RAM/CPU usage while running there's absolutely no way he's using an embedded webpage. I'd be happy to be corrected here though.

Re: Twitter Killing Its Mac App

#79

Can we channel all the anger and frustration this has caused into switching to Mastodon/GNU Social? Open standards, run your own if you want, nobody deprecating or discontinuing anything.

I tried Twitter a long time ago, and never enjoyed it.

I've been quite active on Mastodon (@loke@functional.cafe) for the last several months, and enjoying it a lot.

It's not perfect, but it gives me more satisfaction than Twitter ever could.

The biggest problem with Mastodon at the moment is discoverability. It takes some effort finding the right people to follow but I've found a reasonable group of people who are interested in things like Emacs, Lisp etc.

Re: Twitter Killing Its Mac App

#80
post #63
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately. Personally I much prefer apps that provide a native experience.

The broader ecosystem doesn't seem to think so. All kinds of software like Atom, VSCode, the desktop Slack client, Discord, etc are all just Electron or React apps wrapped in native installers and launchers.

I think this is a case of everything looking like a nail if all you have is a hammer.

A lot of programmers these days have been brought up on JS and web technologies so they literally do not see any other solutions, regardless of how much better they may be.

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