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Meta replaces WhatsApp for Windows with web wrapper

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Re: Meta replaces WhatsApp for Windows with web wrapper

#41

I remember doing voice and video calls, and of course IM, on a PC with 128MB of RAM and a single core CPU around the turn of the century. It's amazing how far we've regressed in efficency.

I had a think pad with 32 mb of RAM and it did everything fine

Re: Meta replaces WhatsApp for Windows with web wrapper

#42

I remember doing voice and video calls, and of course IM, on a PC with 128MB of RAM and a single core CPU around the turn of the century. It's amazing how far we've regressed in efficency.

> It's amazing how far we've regressed in efficency.

I don’t think we have. This is always what efficiency leads to, higher resource consumption. The phenomenon was described already in the 1800s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox

JS and the web has seen performance improvements. They lead to more ads being served and more code being released faster to users.

Re: Meta replaces WhatsApp for Windows with web wrapper

#43

I use WhatsApp web and avoided the apps on desktop. Yet, I really don't understand why WhatsApp would need app especially with the state mentioned here (which is a basic wrapper) There are no calls in the web app, but modern web stack is more than enough to provide all the real functionality needed for it.

Indeed, the desktop app provides absolutely nothing. If it allowed me to do video calls from a laptop, that could be useful but obviously that can't be a feature they therefore offer.

> If it allowed me to do video calls from a laptop

It does though?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r3FkkHyvw8M

Re: Meta replaces WhatsApp for Windows with web wrapper

#45

You can use WhatsApp in your browser: web.whatsapp.com No 1 GB or installation needed Why is the desktop app even a thing?

The desktop app is very good for quickly attaching pictures and documents, or receiving them, I find it harder to do that on the phone app , and a web app just doesn’t work very well when you want it open all the time. Same with Slack, having a desktop app really improves things.

Re: Meta replaces WhatsApp for Windows with web wrapper

#47
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, the desktop app provides absolutely nothing. If it allowed me to do video calls from a laptop, that could be useful but obviously that can't be a feature they therefore offer.

> If it allowed me to do video calls from a laptop It does though? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r3FkkHyvw8M

Yeah, calls are the only I installed the Windows desktop app instead of using WhatsApp Web.

Re: Meta replaces WhatsApp for Windows with web wrapper

#48

Well, the reason for the replacement seems pretty obvious: they're shipping new features on the web that aren't matched by the native client, and apparently that was just too hard to update for a multibillion AI-powered behemoth. So, a wrapper it is! You may not like that from a 'native look and feel' point of view, but the question 'what is a native Windows app these days anyway' is very much unanswerable, and you c…

I've been wondering whether it's time to reserve browsers for their original purpose of reading documents and move web applications to a different paradigm: perhaps native controls/windows rendered and controlled by cross-platform markup served over the web, running on a "headless" sandbox. Perhaps a bit like React Native, but JIT compiled on the client. Not sure if this already exists. I'd really like to have native UI controls back for applications.

Re: Meta replaces WhatsApp for Windows with web wrapper

#49
post #45

You can use WhatsApp in your browser: web.whatsapp.com No 1 GB or installation needed Why is the desktop app even a thing?

The desktop app is very good for quickly attaching pictures and documents, or receiving them, I find it harder to do that on the phone app , and a web app just doesn’t work very well when you want it open all the time. Same with Slack, having a desktop app really improves things.

> a web app just doesn’t work very well when you want it open all the time.

Pin tab, problem solved?

Re: Meta replaces WhatsApp for Windows with web wrapper

#50
> You’d realise how bad this is when I tell you the benchmarks for the native WhatsApp for comparison. I tested the old/native WhatsApp, and it uses just 190MB most of the time, dropping to less than 100MB when it’s completely idle. At worst, it would reach 300MB, which can happen only when the chat is really active.

Well sounds like a lot of useless work was being done then, how does it gobble 100MB when idle? Are the protocols that complex?

Just do as I do and open web.whatsapp.com in your favorite browser

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