Live data from Hacker News

Proton Mail gets a desktop app for encrypted email and calendar

theverge.com

31–40 of 100 posts

Re: Proton Mail gets a desktop app for encrypted email and calendar

#31
post #25
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That ship has sailed. If I look at my Dock right now, from left to right I'm running: - Nautilus - Brave (Chromium) - Gnome-terminal - VSCode (Electron) - Telegram Desktop (̶E̶l̶e̶c̶t̶r̶o̶n̶ QT)[1] - WhatsApp (web wrapper in Electron)[1] - Discord (Electron) - Spotify (Chromium Embedded Framework) - Betterbird (Gecko, might as well be Electron) - TickTick (Electron) - Steam (Chromium Embedded Framework) In a way it i…

How is telegram Electron if it's https://github.com/telegramdesktop/tdesktop C++/QT?

Thanks, for letting me know, edited!

Its performance has always felt very "webby" to me. Goes to show native is not a silver bullet for all our UI responsiveness woes :)

Re: Proton Mail gets a desktop app for encrypted email and calendar

#32
post #8

Out of curiosity, what makes people prefer desktop apps for mail over just visiting the browser version? The idea of downloading a desktop app for something I can do in the browser makes no sense to me. At least on mobile, the ergonomics of apps tend to make the experience better than the mobile-web version.

Pretty happy here with Apple Mail. It uses MacOS' Spotlight for indexing. It's just more applike, quick and responsive than the web version.

Re: Proton Mail gets a desktop app for encrypted email and calendar

#33
post #20

I wish they had a real IMAP/SMTP support and not some kind of unreliable service you have to run locally that does a bridge. GPG key management is also a disaster. So they made it easy to communicate with others using proton fine, but communicating with non-proton users with GPG is a horrible experience.

Is it worst that other GPG solutions, or is it a bad experience due to GPG being… let’s say complicated? I’ve been using proton a lot because I like their products but don’t have a use case for GPG.

Re: Proton Mail gets a desktop app for encrypted email and calendar

#34
post #13
post #2

Let's hope it's not just another Electron-based abomination.

That ship has sailed. If I look at my Dock right now, from left to right I'm running: - Nautilus - Brave (Chromium) - Gnome-terminal - VSCode (Electron) - Telegram Desktop (̶E̶l̶e̶c̶t̶r̶o̶n̶ QT)[1] - WhatsApp (web wrapper in Electron)[1] - Discord (Electron) - Spotify (Chromium Embedded Framework) - Betterbird (Gecko, might as well be Electron) - TickTick (Electron) - Steam (Chromium Embedded Framework) In a way it i…

> Kind of makes me wish GNU and Apple would do what Microsoft has done, integrate a Chromium-based WebView into the OS and optimize it to the gills.

For MacOS, you can almost always get high quality native apps. I don't know why this isn't the case on other platforms.

Strangely enough, it is mostly the mega-corps that insist on not making native apps, even though they should have all resources for it: VSCode, Spotify, YouTube, WhatsApp. Through and through laggy garbage apps if you don't have the latest machine.

Re: Proton Mail gets a desktop app for encrypted email and calendar

#35
post #8

Out of curiosity, what makes people prefer desktop apps for mail over just visiting the browser version? The idea of downloading a desktop app for something I can do in the browser makes no sense to me. At least on mobile, the ergonomics of apps tend to make the experience better than the mobile-web version.

Fast and reliable, don’t update without me knowing about it, keep copies locally (pretty important for emails imho)

Re: Proton Mail gets a desktop app for encrypted email and calendar

#36
post #13
post #2

Let's hope it's not just another Electron-based abomination.

That ship has sailed. If I look at my Dock right now, from left to right I'm running: - Nautilus - Brave (Chromium) - Gnome-terminal - VSCode (Electron) - Telegram Desktop (̶E̶l̶e̶c̶t̶r̶o̶n̶ QT)[1] - WhatsApp (web wrapper in Electron)[1] - Discord (Electron) - Spotify (Chromium Embedded Framework) - Betterbird (Gecko, might as well be Electron) - TickTick (Electron) - Steam (Chromium Embedded Framework) In a way it i…

> And I don't really buy the "Chromium gives Google power over the web", as it is permissively licensed, and there is at least one other giant stakeholder in the form of Microsoft.

Google completely controls Chromium, it is their project, they decide what patches are accepted into the code. Microsoft Edge just like Brave and the other forks all depend on Google for the actual code, all they do is add some minor features. Google does not care about Microsoft's opinion regarding Chromium's direction.

Re: Proton Mail gets a desktop app for encrypted email and calendar

#38
post #8

Out of curiosity, what makes people prefer desktop apps for mail over just visiting the browser version? The idea of downloading a desktop app for something I can do in the browser makes no sense to me. At least on mobile, the ergonomics of apps tend to make the experience better than the mobile-web version.

I feel the opposite. The desktop app makes the data – my data – local. If it's a web app, the data and access to it is controlled by the service provider. If you stop paying, if they decide they don't like you, if they go bankrupt or something else happens on their end, your data is gone. And no connection to the internet means no data. I prefer to keep truly personal stuff such as (some) emails and other messaging, pictures and passwords local. Of course, not everyone is as technical and for many it might be a better idea not to worry and rely on the cloud.

Re: Proton Mail gets a desktop app for encrypted email and calendar

#39
post #8

Out of curiosity, what makes people prefer desktop apps for mail over just visiting the browser version? The idea of downloading a desktop app for something I can do in the browser makes no sense to me. At least on mobile, the ergonomics of apps tend to make the experience better than the mobile-web version.

I use a mail client for offline access, backups, and faster search I stopped using Proton largely because the bridge was unreliable - this may have kept me around My browser does too much already, too. I appreciate actual applications that have an identity beyond a favicon

Same. I love the idea of ditching the Proton Mail bridge app on my Macs. It's been a frequent source of configuration and update headaches for me.

Re: Proton Mail gets a desktop app for encrypted email and calendar

#40
post #13
post #2

Let's hope it's not just another Electron-based abomination.

That ship has sailed. If I look at my Dock right now, from left to right I'm running: - Nautilus - Brave (Chromium) - Gnome-terminal - VSCode (Electron) - Telegram Desktop (̶E̶l̶e̶c̶t̶r̶o̶n̶ QT)[1] - WhatsApp (web wrapper in Electron)[1] - Discord (Electron) - Spotify (Chromium Embedded Framework) - Betterbird (Gecko, might as well be Electron) - TickTick (Electron) - Steam (Chromium Embedded Framework) In a way it i…

So we need to to better optimise Electron to lower memory usage and CPU resources.
Post reply on HN