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Goodbye, Native Apps

medium.com

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Re: Goodbye, Native Apps

#61

Post by jiofih »

athenot wrote: post #35
burtonator wrote: post #32

Here's the thing. Apple, Google, etc are trying to lock developers into specific platforms. This is why Apple has been so hostile towards PWAs. It's totally possible to build a PWA that behaves like a native app but Apple actively tries to destroy them. There will never be a viable hybrid app platform.

> It's totally possible to build a PWA that behaves like a native app but Apple actively tries to destroy them. It may look the part but it rarely feels like it. Something like OmniGraffle would not end up feeling the same. Even Microsoft's apps on mac feel better than their web-based counterparts in O365.

You should try Figma. Will open your eyes a bit.

Re: Goodbye, Native Apps

#62

Post by nicoburns »

emodendroket wrote: post #54

As much as anything else the growth of hybrid apps is a symptom of a couple of things: 1) people now expect apps to run on a million different devices and nobody has the time or resources to develop four or five native apps with feature parity between them 2) progress on UI frameworks is pretty much stalled. Just looking at .NET, because I'm familiar with it and traditionally desktop software has been a big area of c…

Indeed, my prediction is that native apps will make a comeback when the UI toolkits catch up. Flutter is in this vein. And some of the Rust UI ecosystem looks promising (although very early stage).

Re: Goodbye, Native Apps

#63

Post by heavyset_go »

nicoburns wrote: post #62
emodendroket wrote: post #54

As much as anything else the growth of hybrid apps is a symptom of a couple of things: 1) people now expect apps to run on a million different devices and nobody has the time or resources to develop four or five native apps with feature parity between them 2) progress on UI frameworks is pretty much stalled. Just looking at .NET, because I'm familiar with it and traditionally desktop software has been a big area of c…

Indeed, my prediction is that native apps will make a comeback when the UI toolkits catch up. Flutter is in this vein. And some of the Rust UI ecosystem looks promising (although very early stage).

> And some of the Rust UI ecosystem looks promising (although very early stage).

Can you recommend any projects to check out?

Re: Goodbye, Native Apps

#64

Post by ksherlock »

egypturnash wrote: post #34

I hate this trend so much. I just dug around in Time Machine for the old version of Evernote, after being frustrated by the Electron trash they are calling version 10. It's missing so many little touches that just magically happen when you make a real application instead of having to fake everything from inside a browser.

Have you tried Notational Velocity?

Re: Goodbye, Native Apps

#65

Post by nicoburns »

heavyset_go wrote: post #63
nicoburns wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, my prediction is that native apps will make a comeback when the UI toolkits catch up. Flutter is in this vein. And some of the Rust UI ecosystem looks promising (although very early stage).

> And some of the Rust UI ecosystem looks promising (although very early stage). Can you recommend any projects to check out?

Iced https://github.com/hecrj/iced and Druid https://github.com/linebender/druid

Iced is taking the "get something working now" approach, whereas Druid is taking the longer term "build it right" approach. I wouldn't recommend either of them for serious projects yet though.

I would also recommend Raph Levien's blog https://raphlinus.github.io/.

Re: Goodbye, Native Apps

#66

Post by kerbs »

thotsBgone wrote: post #42
wademealing wrote: post #5

I feel like writing a 'goodbye goodbyes' medium piece which talks about never listening to a 'goodbye' article again.

Can you find an example of a tech goodbye article which has been wrong?

I still hold this one close to my heart

https://medium.com/javascript-scene/native-apps-are-doomed-a...

Re: Goodbye, Native Apps

#67

Post by qayxc »

ilrwbwrkhv wrote: post #59
qayxc wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What kinds of wild things could we accomplish on this hardware if we weren't bogged down in gigabytes and teraflops of bloat? Not that many: An early 1990s PC platform could be thoroughly described in a 200 page book and you could write a boot loader for the CPU, a VGA driver, and drivers for the most common peripherals from scratch in a few weeks. In fact, games of that era shipped with their own audio drivers, (C…

I have a one word counter response. Winamp.

Funny you mention Winamp - I stopped using Winamp ages ago precisely because its 2002(?) rewrite was garbage and didn't support the one feature I was actually using at the time (SHOUTcast) The whole AOL/Time-Warner sellout debacle didn't help either.

Re: Goodbye, Native Apps

#68

Post by bitwize »

peatmoss wrote: post #21
gumby wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For decades people complained that Emacs was huge, bloated, etc. Now there are bigger web pages

“Eight Megabytes And Constantly Swapping” must be an alien sentiment to so many younger techies.

Emacs is an alien phenomenon to younger techies. Who would use an editor that's older than their dad?

Re: Goodbye, Native Apps

#69

Post by osrec »

athenot wrote: post #35
burtonator wrote: post #32

Here's the thing. Apple, Google, etc are trying to lock developers into specific platforms. This is why Apple has been so hostile towards PWAs. It's totally possible to build a PWA that behaves like a native app but Apple actively tries to destroy them. There will never be a viable hybrid app platform.

> It's totally possible to build a PWA that behaves like a native app but Apple actively tries to destroy them. It may look the part but it rarely feels like it. Something like OmniGraffle would not end up feeling the same. Even Microsoft's apps on mac feel better than their web-based counterparts in O365.

I think that can often be due to a lack implementation skill.

Our users (https://usebx.com) seem to appreciate the native performance and feel of our web app.

Re: Goodbye, Native Apps

#70

Post by fuball63 »

allo37 wrote: post #25

The cheapest laptop I could find on walmart.com right now has 4GB of RAM. "Low-end" isn't what it used to be! Only techies care about things like how much RAM a program is using. End users, from my experience at least, don't really care - as long as it works.

They may not care about how much RAM it is using, but the blatant disregard for resource usage manifests in other ways. Most people I know are just resigned to believe their 4GB RAM laptop will be obsolete in a few years. When things "get slow" it means chuck the whole computer. I do think that the recklessness to which we use our virtual resources contributes to e-waste, which is a physical problem.
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