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The web is swallowing the desktop whole (2017)

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Re: The web is swallowing the desktop whole (2017)

#171

Post by swiley »

anoncow wrote: post #157

This also represents that Windows and Mac OS are no longer the only operating systems. Chrome and Firefox are closely equivalent. And Chrome is the leader with its dominance on Android and Desktop systems. iOS is the only threat left and if any of the anti-trust measures against Apple are able to break Apple’s grip on the iOS enough to let Chrome or an equivalent browser act as an OS equivalent to what Chrome could d…

The crap dev environments for iOS and Android are the real reasons people gave up on native.

Re: The web is swallowing the desktop whole (2017)

#172

Post by ziml77 »

sciprojguy wrote: post #155
bumbada wrote: post #144

Don't drink the Kool Aid. We have been doing multiplatform development for a long time. It is in our company's interest not to depend on a single provider(like Apple, MS or Google) for anything. It is also in those single provider interests to make you depend on them as much as they can, because every company wants to become a monopoly. If you can not change provider overnight, they have a virtual monopoly over you.…

"Technologies like objective C, C sharp, Azure or swift are designed so you can not escape the company platform. So easy to get in, so hard to move your code to other platforms once you have been programming for years on them." FYI, Swift is available on Linux and Windows along with a significant chunk of its core libraries (e.g. https://github.com/apple/swift-corelibs-foundation ) and app frameworks such as Vapor (u…

C# is also cross-platform. .NET Framework has been completely replaced with .NET Core now (and renamed to simply .NET).

The only part of cross-platform support that's a little wonky is the GUI, but that's because Forms is just a thin wrapper over the Win32 forms API and WPF was built around DirectX. But that should get a lot better in a couple months when Microsoft releases MAUI (Multi-Platform App UI).

Re: The web is swallowing the desktop whole (2017)

#173

Post by pwdisswordfish0 »

skc wrote: post #101
spaetzleesser wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft has destroyed the Windows desktop singlehandedly on their own. Since Win8 and “Metro” they moved away from having consistent UI widgets like it was in Windows 2000 or XP but instead made the Windows desktop a Wild West if different UI paradigms. Even the ribbon introduced a new UI paradigm that wasn’t available to third party devs. If even MS themselves doesn’t bother to be consistent then developers certai…

Well that's all well and good but it doesn't explain why even Mac OS devs are moving en masse to building for the web.

Mac devs have been complaining for a long time that Xcode and the entire developer experience sucks. It sucks (1) in the way that most native development sucks, and (2) an extra layer of suck on top of that.

The Mac platform also used to be very insulated; the culture meant that the prospect of creating an app or simple utility and selling it was viable much longer than it was on Windows, where the culture is that everything is either gratis-style free or warez-style free. The invasion of the Web means that Mac users are increasingly being conditioned to get things for free, too, so the viability of paid apps has taken a big hit. SaaS is the way to make money now.

Re: The web is swallowing the desktop whole (2017)

#174

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

barrenko wrote: post #105

Desktop is coming back.

I wish it were true, but I don't think it is. Personal computing as a mainstream concept is dead. The modern developer no longer seeks to enable users to leverage the power of computing, they seek to corral users and farm their eyeballs for ad revenue. The future is appliances that will only ever be used when and how the developer wants them to be used, because the modern developer has no respect for users. Nothing will interoperate, nothing will respect user choices, nothing will be free of ads, everything will suffer latencies due to the network, nobody will be able to store their data locally under their own control.

This is the future we've built for ourselves, and we don't even have the decency to be ashamed of it.

Re: The web is swallowing the desktop whole (2017)

#175

Post by junon »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #156
junon wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This comment saddens me.

When I see Chromebooks being mentioned, I always think about "One Tablet Per Child" charity from Person of Interest show. (Slight spoiler for season 4) Giving every child in the country a free tablet with Internet access, loaded with quality educational software sounds like a great good, but is it so good if it also comes loaded with surveillance equipment and is controlled by a malicious AI attempting to control hum…

Pretty much exactly my concern. This isn't some philanthropic group doing this. It's Google, and everything that comes with it.

Re: The web is swallowing the desktop whole (2017)

#176

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

saagarjha wrote: post #109
davidgerard wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yes, this sort of objection is always fake

It's not fake, it's just that it's been drowned out by a wave of people who are indifferent or ignorant.

Or have simply learned helplessness. Developers actually listening to users is so 90s.

Re: The web is swallowing the desktop whole (2017)

#177

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

jcelerier wrote: post #100
emkoemko wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yea but chromium has been ported to everything so your app will work exactly the same on any device chromium runs, that's the issue with writing native apps.. you then have to port it to all the devices and update on OS changes.

Qt works in more places than chromium and is much more native - it's even the native platform for multiple OSes

Case in point: Qt works on Haiku, Chrome doesn't.

Re: The web is swallowing the desktop whole (2017)

#178

Post by ByteWelder »

refactor_master wrote: post #153

Are there any solid statistics on what “users” demand? This keeps being thrown around: “users want, demand and need native desktop applications”. Who are these users? Under what circumstances do they “want” such things?

I want native apps because I want a native experience: Keyboard shortcuts and UX patterns should be consistent throughout most applications. I'm fine with some exceptions (e.g. video editing, photo editing, etc.), but generally I want consistency.

I want native apps because my bought RAM and CPU cycles are precious resources: they shouldn't be treated like a "free for all" by lazy devs. Not every native dev uses these sparingly, but in my professional experience, web devs often don't even consider it being a factor during development.

I want web apps to run in my web browser, so I can apply privacy-enabling plugins to them like uBlock. I also don't want web apps implementing dark patterns to get me into their hybrid app. (e.g. MS Teams forcing me to reconsider every time I open the website)

Re: The web is swallowing the desktop whole (2017)

#179

Post by jiggawatts »

What a lot of people don't appreciate is that a GUI platform is a essentially a marketplace like eBay.

There are "sellers" and "buyers". The sellers are the developers. The buyers are the users. Real money is often involved in the transaction.

Where do sellers go? Where there are the most buyers!

Where do buyers go? Where there are the most sellers!

Hence, marketplaces with no physical constraints are natural monopolies. This includes auction houses (eBay) and GUI platforms.

Previously, Windows had an over 90% market share, and it was glorious as a developer. You write your code once, and it works "everywhere", because everywhere is just Windows. The 9% Mac users are out of luck, and nobody cared about the mish-mash of 1% other.

Now the web is the new 90%. Or more specifically, Chromium is, with over 80% and climbing.

What saddens me is that Microsoft threw what they had away, and continue to do so. I've never seen a company more keen to undermine their own market position.

Re: The web is swallowing the desktop whole (2017)

#180

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

asperous wrote: post #51
MisterBastahrd wrote: post #27

The Linux desktop finally succeeded even though nobody is running Linux on their desktops. Hooray indirect wins!

40 million Chromebooks will be shipped in 2021!

Calling a Chromebook (or Android) "Linux" is disingenuous for the purpose of "The Linux Desktop" "winning". We all know that a proprietary user-land stapled on top of the Linux kernel and all the applications running in a web browser is not what was meant by "year of the Linux Desktop". Hell, Google will likely replace Linux with Fuchsia within the decade.
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