Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Meta replaces WhatsApp for Windows with web wrapper

windowslatest.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

331–340 of 402 posts

Re: Meta replaces WhatsApp for Windows with web wrapper

#331

Post by wobfan »

stilley2 wrote: post #287
redbell wrote: post #228

I feel this trend is going to stick for the upcoming years! It's not just Meta, every big player there is adopting this mentality. Take Microsoft for instance, they have been pushing heavily what they called the New Outlook , which is basically a web-based client mirroring Outlook on the web (OWA) , packed into an EXE file (not sure if it is Electronized or not)! Then, they renamed the real native Outlook app as Clas…

Speaking of new outlook, has anyone else had search just...not work? I'll search for emails sent from myself, to myself (of which I know there are hundreds) and get 7 results. Same in the web app, but outlook classic works fine. Mind boggling

I mean they need the resources to switch from native, to UWP, to web, and then start over again in 2 years. How do you think should they manage to fix such a unnecessary thing like search in the meantime?

But fear not! As we learnt from Microsoft, Meta and OpenAI, in early 2026, 100% of the code will be created by GenAI. Finally we can have native apps with working core-functionality. Can't wait for it!

Re: Meta replaces WhatsApp for Windows with web wrapper

#332

Post by baq »

mghackerlady wrote: post #321
tsimionescu wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While the old APIs keep working, Microsoft does like to come up with completely new APIs every five years or so. If you want to do basic UI on Windows today, you can use: - Win32 UI - MFC - .NET WinForms - WinFX - .NET WPF - WinRT - UWP And I'm sure there are many others that I'm forgetting.

If I ever need to make a windows GUI I'm gonna do it in win32, it seems like the only one that's reliably there

Funny thing is this is also true on Linux nowadays

Re: Meta replaces WhatsApp for Windows with web wrapper

#333

Post by jmkni »

pta2002 wrote: post #59

I do want to point out, as someone who uses the WhatsApp app (to me, it’s slightly more convenient than the web version) that the old native windows app was /awful/. It looked native enough, but it just didn’t work. For as long as I remember it would randomly stop accepting input into the text field and I’d have to restart the app, and this was insanely frequent. Typing dead keys was also randomly broken with accents…

I don't think it is Electron, it's WebView2 https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/Microsoft-edge/webview...

Re: Meta replaces WhatsApp for Windows with web wrapper

#334

Post by mostlyk »

iamcalledrob wrote: post #126

As the person who designed and fought for this app, I am a bit sad about the change. The native app was by no means perfect, but it felt like a real productivity tool that was trying to be respectful of it's environment. I've come to the conclusion that native desktop apps are just not viable from large companies, even if there is headcount. The problem is coordination cost. If you want to launch new features and exp…

Why kill people who are trying to reverse engineer and write native apps for this? WhatsApp just bans you :(

Re: Meta replaces WhatsApp for Windows with web wrapper

#335

Post by neya »

72deluxe wrote: post #190
iamcalledrob wrote: post #126

As the person who designed and fought for this app, I am a bit sad about the change. The native app was by no means perfect, but it felt like a real productivity tool that was trying to be respectful of it's environment. I've come to the conclusion that native desktop apps are just not viable from large companies, even if there is headcount. The problem is coordination cost. If you want to launch new features and exp…

I am baffled by this. I wrote a cross-platform GUI for an audio signal processor in wxWidgets that rendered all of its own widgets (own Draw calls, for faders, graphic EQ, compressors, drag/drop linking of nodes for a layout, knobs, meters/scopes) and incorporated Horde3D as a 3D rendering of the arena. It ran on macOS and Windows. Another chap handled the network control code that included joining multicast groups t…

You're proving exactly why this is the case. With 2 people, it's easy to coordinate, agree upon a lot of things, accept compromise, meet face to face. Try 20 people. Infinite meetings, pushback from managers, resource allocation clashes, politics top to bottom.

I'm not defending any large company, they could if they wanted to, they just don't care. If this is "cheaper" and they can cut costs, this is what they'll do.

Re: Meta replaces WhatsApp for Windows with web wrapper

#336

Post by nkrisc »

simoncion wrote: post #306
wongarsu wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Classic case of shipping the org chart (in case anyone needs a reminder of Microsoft's org chart: https://www.globalnerdy.com/2011/07/03/org-charts-of-the-big... )

> in case anyone needs a reminder of Microsoft's org chart: ... To be a little glib: As someone who has worked for a few Big Software Companies, I guarantee that Microsoft's org chart has changed significantly at least once in the last fourteen years. Re-organizations aren't referred to as "shuffling the deck chairs [on the Titanic]" by the rank and file for no reason, yanno?

At every large company I worked at, they began planning the next org change right after the last one concluded.

Re: Meta replaces WhatsApp for Windows with web wrapper

#337

Post by dmix »

pragmatic wrote: post #303
pjc50 wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So you're saying that it is impossible for a large company to somehow use native toolkits to draw text bubbles and emojis?? One weird thing about software development is that there are plenty of things which motivated individual developers can achieve which large companies can't even write the requirements for, let alone achieve.

Hacker News just recreated startups from first principles! /s But seriously folks, this is why there will always be room for startups. Megacorps are slow lumbering beats that suffer from entropy and signal loss at every edge on the graph. The example here is that some marketing function gets the signal from Zuck to put Lego duplo characters everywhere because metaverse. Of course 90% of the company knows its dead on…

> Management however uses this money from the good ideas to fund boondoghles (see metaverse).

I'm not sure we should be critical of risk taking in large companies because there was some notable failures. But maybe it is the sort of thing that doesn't scale well in a large org, they want big immediately.

Re: Meta replaces WhatsApp for Windows with web wrapper

#338

Post by rvz »

pjc50 wrote: post #232
72deluxe wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am baffled by this. I wrote a cross-platform GUI for an audio signal processor in wxWidgets that rendered all of its own widgets (own Draw calls, for faders, graphic EQ, compressors, drag/drop linking of nodes for a layout, knobs, meters/scopes) and incorporated Horde3D as a 3D rendering of the arena. It ran on macOS and Windows. Another chap handled the network control code that included joining multicast groups t…

> So you're saying that it is impossible for a large company to somehow use native toolkits to draw text bubbles and emojis?? One weird thing about software development is that there are plenty of things which motivated individual developers can achieve which large companies can't even write the requirements for, let alone achieve.

I guess this is a way of saying it is a skill issue at Meta.
Post reply on HN