Claude's Criminally Bad Electron Mac App Is an Inside Job • Hacker News Board

Re: Claude's Criminally Bad Electron Mac App Is an Inside Job

#21

Post by dzhiurgis » Mon, Jul 06, 2026, 8:05 AM UTC

rekabis wrote: post #17

dzhiurgis wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Browsers have been doing this well for over a decade and have tons of superiority. My favourite that kinda settles this debate is - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48168058

Browsers have been able to do this, but clear note: a single browser displaying many web pages in tabs. Think of how most any modern computer would grind to a halt if every tab was its own full-fat web browser. And THAT is the problem with Electron. It’s not one installed framework providing the foundation for whatever number of apps you want to use, it’s a single electron framework for each and every app . And that…

Writing on the wall is Apple needs to do something about it. Safari's Add to dock is decent start - I use it with Slack and Discord, but couldn't wait for Gemini and Anthropic to release their native apps (can't remember why). And of course once they did it was long wait for them to re-invent browser features.

Re: Claude's Criminally Bad Electron Mac App Is an Inside Job

#22

Post by nikwen » Mon, Jul 06, 2026, 1:37 PM UTC

As a fellow Electron maintainer, I want to say that Felix is a great engineer and an incredibly kind person. He is not an evil mastermind as portrayed in the article. We should be thankful for his contributions to the world of computing.

Re: Claude's Criminally Bad Electron Mac App Is an Inside Job

#23

Post by nikwen » Mon, Jul 06, 2026, 1:42 PM UTC

jayzer01 wrote: post #20

beyer wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope, it really is not.

I didn't think it was so bad either. I guess it is all a matter of perspective.

Electron maintainer here. Electron is performant if the app developer writes good code. It's slow if someone writes bad code. That's the same if you use Apple's native APIs.

The big advantage of Electron is that it takes so much less effort to write an application and bring it to all operating systems. Thus, we get applications that would not have been developed if Electron did not exist.

Re: Claude's Criminally Bad Electron Mac App Is an Inside Job

#24

Post by jayzer01 » Tue, Jul 07, 2026, 2:49 PM UTC

nikwen wrote: post #23

jayzer01 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't think it was so bad either. I guess it is all a matter of perspective.

Electron maintainer here. Electron is performant if the app developer writes good code. It's slow if someone writes bad code. That's the same if you use Apple's native APIs. The big advantage of Electron is that it takes so much less effort to write an application and bring it to all operating systems. Thus, we get applications that would not have been developed if Electron did not exist.

Interesting take. Yes this is very important in many go to market plans to be able to deploy on multiple operating systems without hiring new people that are experts in each one, or spending a lot of time on different deployments.