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Stop Building Closed Ecosystems

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Re: Stop Building Closed Ecosystems

#51

Post by catiopatio »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #45
klodolph wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are multiple explanations for why cross-platform toolkits are kind of awful. I'm treating "cross-platform toolkits are kind of awful" as an observation here, because I've used them, I've worked with them. And my measurement for awful is poor UX, relative to native apps. Different platforms are just slightly too different from each other to make it work well. So you end up with a bunch of cross-platform apps whi…

> It is costly to just reimplement your UI for multiple platforms, but that's where the "closed ecosystems" come in. React Native is kind of a compromise between the Qt-style approach (cross-platform UX) and the native approach. You're given a framework which works with multiple native toolkits, and you can have a mix of cross-platform UI code and platform-specific UI code. I don't understand this claim at all. Qt (o…

> So basically, you're denying that it's possible to do excellent cross-platform apps at all. OK. I'm not sure I agree with that, but it's a position.

Can you name a single cross-platform application that is indistinguishable from a native application?

Re: Stop Building Closed Ecosystems

#52

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

klodolph wrote: post #48
scarface74 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn’t that a problem that Linux only has crappy cross platform apps that are not as good as native apps? Why would I run a Linux box as my daily driver instead of a my Mac that is real Unix, has a 16 hour battery life and I can get great polished native apps?

I mean, it depends on how much time you're spending in great, polished native apps. For work, I spend all of my time in VS Code, Chrome, Slack, and the terminal. It's hard to justify any platform as being better if those are the apps you use, since they basically work the same on any platform. And then there are the people who spend day in, day out in programs like Photoshop, InDesign, Pro Tools, etc.

At least two of the final three you mentioned run on Windows and macOS, meaning that somewhere there's a cross-platform layer for the GUI. And yet apparently, that works.

There's a lesson there, though I'm not sure what it is.

Re: Stop Building Closed Ecosystems

#53

Post by scarface74 »

klodolph wrote: post #48
scarface74 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn’t that a problem that Linux only has crappy cross platform apps that are not as good as native apps? Why would I run a Linux box as my daily driver instead of a my Mac that is real Unix, has a 16 hour battery life and I can get great polished native apps?

I mean, it depends on how much time you're spending in great, polished native apps. For work, I spend all of my time in VS Code, Chrome, Slack, and the terminal. It's hard to justify any platform as being better if those are the apps you use, since they basically work the same on any platform. And then there are the people who spend day in, day out in programs like Photoshop, InDesign, Pro Tools, etc.

True.

But even then the reason I prefer my Mac is that it integrates with my personal hardware. I do log in to my personal account on my work Mac But I am careful about what gets synced.

Re: Stop Building Closed Ecosystems

#54

Post by Waterluvian »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #9

The native side of this has long been addressed by cross-platform toolkits including but not limited to: Qt, GTK, FLTK, WxWidgets (note: all FLOSS, at least optionally). Alas, web development "decided" to completely reinvent the wheel for all this stuff, leading to a new generation of heading-to-native toolkits derived from browser-based technologies, such as Electron, React Native and Flutter. Unless you believe the…

I don’t necessarily disagree with any of this. But the toolkits first listed are all pretty poor if you care about aesthetics and UX.

It’s like making furniture with framing lumber and OSB. It’ll work fine and be durable. But it just always feels not great. They generally feel, to me, a semitone sharper than portability with 90s Java applications.

Re: Stop Building Closed Ecosystems

#55

Post by s1k3s »

I strongly disagree with most of the points in this article. Why does he blame small app developers for vendor lock-in? Why is everyone casually avoiding the fact that vendor lock-in comes from.. vendors? You think I want to rewrite the same app 3 times for it to work on Apple, Google and Microsoft systems? When is the last time these 3 major platform owners have done anything but locking you in their ecosystem?

Such a weird take on this, really.

Re: Stop Building Closed Ecosystems

#56

Post by RodgerTheGreat »

Devasta wrote: post #47
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #9

The native side of this has long been addressed by cross-platform toolkits including but not limited to: Qt, GTK, FLTK, WxWidgets (note: all FLOSS, at least optionally). Alas, web development "decided" to completely reinvent the wheel for all this stuff, leading to a new generation of heading-to-native toolkits derived from browser-based technologies, such as Electron, React Native and Flutter. Unless you believe the…

If quality mattered then maybe the other toolkits would have a chance, but no one is looking at the web for that, they are looking to the one advantage that the web has that the others cannot hope to beat: They work around bureaucrats. At least in the enterprise, with desktop applications you need to deal with IT security losers who freak out when you ask that computers actually have useful applications, and god help…

This is also one reason why users in corporate environments solve so many problems with Excel: it's a powerful, easy-to-use tool for making custom "applications" (within certain constraints) that is already installed on your work machine. No approval process, no procurement, no IT staff involvement; just users getting things done with what they have.

Re: Stop Building Closed Ecosystems

#57

Post by scarface74 »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #52
klodolph wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, it depends on how much time you're spending in great, polished native apps. For work, I spend all of my time in VS Code, Chrome, Slack, and the terminal. It's hard to justify any platform as being better if those are the apps you use, since they basically work the same on any platform. And then there are the people who spend day in, day out in programs like Photoshop, InDesign, Pro Tools, etc.

At least two of the final three you mentioned run on Windows and macOS, meaning that somewhere there's a cross-platform layer for the GUI. And yet apparently, that works. There's a lesson there, though I'm not sure what it is.

Adobe and Microsoft both have spent 30 years optimizing their development around supporting both Macs and Windows.

But how much of the GUI is actually cross platform? Adobe famously used Apple’s Carbon API and was very upset that it wasn’t ported to 64 bit. There is a lot of Cocoa in both products.

Microsoft use to brag that they had more Mac developers than Apple did.

Re: Stop Building Closed Ecosystems

#58

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

scarface74 wrote: post #49
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you don't actually want cross-platform apps at all, but either single-platform apps, or apps developed independently for both platforms (because otherwise you're just talking about some in-house cross-platform toolkit).

Why do I as a Mac user care about cross platform apps? Even as a long time Windows user, why would I care about cross platform apps? I chose a platform because the platform and the apps meet my set of priorities. As far as how that affects Linux users, even if I did prefer Linux as a developer platform, why make it my daily driver instead of running it in a VM or with something like WSL2?

Well, you're obviously welcome to do whatever you want, but I personally regard this as backwards. I believe in libre software, because I believe it is ultimately going to be better for users (over what timescale, I can't say for sure, but longer rather than shorter), and better for developers and better for technology. So I want to work on a libre platform, to some extent regardless of the applications I need/want to use, and thus I pick Linux first and apps second.

When the app is not there (e.g. a DAW), I merely choose to spend a few decades of my life developing it, thus destroying my ability to do what I originally wanted to :)

As for why would you prefer Linux as the daily driver, that would depend a lot on what you were doing/needed. It is a technically superior in almost every respect (not every, but close). It has better audio latency performance, should that matter, better bandwidth for most things, is generally more customizable to your own preferences (though obviously other platforms may be customizable enough). Upgrades and maintainance is generally simpler and smoother. I like being in control of my technology in a way that Microsoft and Apple increasingly do not allow me to be.

I'm not saying that you have to care about any of that. I do, that's all.

Re: Stop Building Closed Ecosystems

#60

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

catiopatio wrote: post #51
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is costly to just reimplement your UI for multiple platforms, but that's where the "closed ecosystems" come in. React Native is kind of a compromise between the Qt-style approach (cross-platform UX) and the native approach. You're given a framework which works with multiple native toolkits, and you can have a mix of cross-platform UI code and platform-specific UI code. I don't understand this claim at all. Qt (o…

> So basically, you're denying that it's possible to do excellent cross-platform apps at all. OK. I'm not sure I agree with that, but it's a position. Can you name a single cross-platform application that is indistinguishable from a native application?

I don't even know that this question means.

Is Photoshop a cross-platform application? Protools? Chrome?

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