101–110 of 211 posts
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This points to our failure as an industry to design a universal app engine that isn't a browser.
We have failed to design a universal app engine…except for the one that dwarfs every other kind of software development for every kind of device in the world.
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Attitudes like these is why non-developers don't want to use open source software. These concerns may not matter to you, the developer, but they absolutely matter to end-users. If your prospective user can't find the setup.exe they just downloaded, they won't be able to use your software. If your conversion and onboarding sucks, they'll get confused and try the commercial offering instead. If you don't gather analyti…
This presupposes that the OSS creator even wants users in the first place, which might not always be the case as it could be personal software; and that these users actually want these features, as many do not want analytics, ads, and A/B tests in your app.
If a piece of software doesn’t have users and the developers don’t care about the papercuts they are delivering, I would argue what they have created is more of an art project than a utility.
I wonder what the numbers say about desktop applications now, and how much the arrival of Electron changed things up here. Nowadays, it seems to be that mobile apps have the "best metrics" for b2c software. I'd be interested to read a contemporary version of this article.
Some of us are still making a living from desktop apps, 17 years later.
Nothing in this article is wrong , but worth noting that pre-AI, the companies that most significantly transformed the way we use our computers (Slack, Spotify, VS Code, etc.) did ship desktop apps.
“Desktop Apps”? I’d say pre-Electron, the ones that existed that far back shipped desktop apps, but for the past 10-15 years it’s all been Electron slop, which hardly qualify as “desktop apps” in my book. If anything, it’s my very faint hope that AI would give companies - especially non-software companies - the bandwidth to release two real native apps instead of just 2 builds of a shitty Electron app. Fat chance tho…
Anthropic has the resources of a fully armed and operational Claude Mythos (eyeroll), but they still choose to shit out an electron app on all of their users instead of going native like their competitors have done.
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What 'best metrics'?
I think in this case it can be approximated as 'largest market' I'd wager there are more people paying for software for their smart phone than any other platform they use.
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Early in Google's history, I took that sentiment as saying that they were one of us (Internet people), and weren't going to act like Microsoft (at the time, regarded by Internet people as an underhanded and ignorant company). Even though Google had a very nice IR function and general cluefulness, and seemed destined to be big and powerful. And if it were the altruistic Internet people they hired, the slogan/mantra co…
I took it to mean, prioritize long-term growth over short-term income. But the slogan was silly even back then, like obviously an evil company would claim to not be evil.
For example, my impression at the time was that people thought that Google would be a responsible steward of Usenet archives:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Spencer#Preserving_Usene...
FWIW, it absolutely was believable to me at the time that another Internet person would do a company consistent with what I saw as the dominant (pre-gold-rush) Internet culture.
For example of a personality familiar to more people on HN, one might have trusted that Aaron Swartz was being genuine, if he said he wanted to do a company that wouldn't be evil.
(I had actually proposed a similar corporate rule to a prospective co-founder, at a time when Google might've still been hosted at Stanford. Though the co-founder was new to Internet, and didn't have the same thinking.)
That's a job for a web page. It doesn't need to be installed.
The author (who is a frequent commenter here) started a company called Appointment Reminder after writing this, which for years was my favorite example of an independent small company that identified a niche, served it well, and then went on to be acquired. There's an interview with him on the subject that is sadly behind a paywall now: https://www.indiehackers.com/post/how-i-grew-my-appointment-... The world has cha…
The majority of software products don't work out.
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This points to our failure as an industry to design a universal app engine that isn't a browser.
Counterpoint: is the web browser not already fulfilling the "universal app engine" need? It can already run on most end user devices where people do most other things. IoT/Edge devices don't count here, but this day most of their data is just being sent back to a server which is accessible via some web interface. Ignoring the fragmentation of course; although that seems to be getting less and less each year (so long…
The impact on people's time, money and on the environment are proportional.
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its just waaaaaay easier to distribute a web app For some things a desktop app is required (more system access) or offers some competitive UX advantage (although this reason is shrinking all the time). Short of that user's are going to choose web 95% of the time.
This points to our failure as an industry to design a universal app engine that isn't a browser.
You've reminded me of the XKCD comic about standards: https://xkcd.com/927/
Do you really want a universal app engine? If you don't have a good reason for ignoring platform guidelines (as many games do), then don't. The best applications on any platform are the ones that embrace the platform's conventions and quirks.
I get why businesses will settle for mediocre, but for personal projects why would you? Pick the platform you use and make the best application you can. If you must have cross-platform support, then decouple your UI and pick the right language and libraries for each platform (SwiftUI on Mac, GTK for Linux, etc...).