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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

#361

Post by array_key_first »

modo_mario wrote: post #156
sunaookami wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is wrong. The "recommended" section of the start menu is written with React Native but compiled to native XAML and not running web technologies. See also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44125217

Wait.....why develop that small part so differently than the rest?

Kind of related, but a lot of designers only understand a react point of view these days. Which is why you will see react, specifically, turn up in the most random fucking places.

Every place I've worked which did not use react had steady pushback from UI/UX to move to react. It took active resistance to not use react, even though it didn't make any sense to use.

Re: Meta replaces WhatsApp for Windows with web wrapper

#362

Post by dangus »

mrweasel wrote: post #291
dangus wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree about this potential of most WhatsApp users residing in markets with less powerful median hardware. Still, I think the experience reported is very similar to running Chrome, and I think any laptop with 8GB of RAM can handle the application plus Excel and a web browser (or just run WhatsApp in the browser) just fine. A complete mini PC with 16GB RAM, 512GB storage, and a relatively modern processor goes for li…

It would be interesting in knowing how many feel like I do. Running an application in a browser window or tab is measure of last resort. People already have tens of tabs, if not hundreds, and multiple browser windows open, stuffing an application into one for those are terrible for the user experience. That's a worse solution than a web wrapper. It's much easier to locate an application that has it's own process and…

I mean, this brings up a good point, which is that WhatsApp is the only Meta social media platform with a desktop app at all.

The author of the article would have noting to complain about if this was Facebook.

Re: Meta replaces WhatsApp for Windows with web wrapper

#363

Post by mschuster91 »

rangestransform wrote: post #329
pragmatic wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Warren Buffett would rather have dividends than autonomous driving. Investors like him are the enemy of long term moonshot R&D like deepmind and Waymo. I’m glad Google shareholders don’t think like him

> Investors like him are the enemy on long term moonshot R&D

That's because he comes from a generation who has "the government and universities take care of R&D" as a mindset. A lot of the stuff we take for granted today - *nix, TCP, IP, the Internet itself, lasers, microwave, radar - came out of universities, government grants or the military.

The idea that the government is incapable of R&D is relatively new and originates in small-state / lean-state / starve-the-beast ideology.

And personally, I rather believe the wisdom of an old man who made a metric shitload of money by being a good honest citizen than others who got rich on advertising and stonk market shenanigans.

Re: Meta replaces WhatsApp for Windows with web wrapper

#364

Post by jeroenhd »

ale42 wrote: post #351
jeroenhd wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is, and it's a good reason to avoid the platform, but they do support E2EE _and_ have a good, native desktop application.

> have a good, native desktop application. Indeed. I'm not actively using Telegram, but I tried the desktop application (made with Qt if I remember well), and it's way ahead of what Whatsapp offers. Not to mention it's fast and relatively light.

It's made with Qt indeed, the source code is here: https://github.com/telegramdesktop/tdesktop

Facebook could just take the app, change the colour's to make it green, and replace the messaging protocol with their WhatsApp library, and they'd get an actually usable chat client practically for free.

Re: Meta replaces WhatsApp for Windows with web wrapper

#365

Post by [deleted] »

wackget wrote: post #353
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 is the UX around photos and videos in WhatsApp Web so incredibly poor? I have clients who regularly send me photos/videos to publish on websites. There are many usability issues around this: 1. There is no option to "download all", which means you need to click through every photo manually and hit the download icon. 2. When navigating through photos, the download icon is often hidden behind a submenu which means…

[deleted]

Re: Meta replaces WhatsApp for Windows with web wrapper

#366

Post by csoups14 »

rvz wrote: post #338
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.

I guess this is a way of saying it is a skill issue at Meta.

It's not a skill issue, it's an organizational issue. The engineers at Meta are world class but they're nerfed by organizational constraints.

Re: Meta replaces WhatsApp for Windows with web wrapper

#367

Post by rangestransform »

mschuster91 wrote: post #363
rangestransform wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Warren Buffett would rather have dividends than autonomous driving. Investors like him are the enemy of long term moonshot R&D like deepmind and Waymo. I’m glad Google shareholders don’t think like him

> Investors like him are the enemy on long term moonshot R&D That's because he comes from a generation who has "the government and universities take care of R&D" as a mindset. A lot of the stuff we take for granted today - *nix, TCP, IP, the Internet itself, lasers, microwave, radar - came out of universities, government grants or the military. The idea that the government is incapable of R&D is relatively new and or…

Imagine having to tell voters that the government is going to spend 11b (Waymo funding since 2020) on automating an entire profession away, good luck winning your next election. It is inherently infeasible to have popular support for the most revolutionary technologies that will cause societal upheaval. Voters have voted to preserve their lifestyles in amber over positive revolutionary change every time, see: public transit, building dense housing, corn subsidies, etc.

Re: Meta replaces WhatsApp for Windows with web wrapper

#368

Post by mschuster91 »

rangestransform wrote: post #367
mschuster91 wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Investors like him are the enemy on long term moonshot R&D That's because he comes from a generation who has "the government and universities take care of R&D" as a mindset. A lot of the stuff we take for granted today - *nix, TCP, IP, the Internet itself, lasers, microwave, radar - came out of universities, government grants or the military. The idea that the government is incapable of R&D is relatively new and or…

Imagine having to tell voters that the government is going to spend 11b (Waymo funding since 2020) on automating an entire profession away, good luck winning your next election. It is inherently infeasible to have popular support for the most revolutionary technologies that will cause societal upheaval. Voters have voted to preserve their lifestyles in amber over positive revolutionary change every time, see: public…

> Imagine having to tell voters that the government is going to spend 11b (Waymo funding since 2020) on automating an entire profession away, good luck winning your next election.

So what, NASA spent billions on the new space race, with everyone knowing the true aim was to kick Boeing's ass and Boeing being widely known as a pork distributor first and foremost and rocket/plane manufacturer second.

The job of politicians isn't to cater to the whims of reactionaries, the job of politicians is to do the right thing and sell it to the voter base.

Re: Meta replaces WhatsApp for Windows with web wrapper

#369

Post by rvz »

csoups14 wrote: post #366
rvz wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess this is a way of saying it is a skill issue at Meta.

It's not a skill issue, it's an organizational issue. The engineers at Meta are world class but they're nerfed by organizational constraints.

> It's not a skill issue, it's an organizational issue.

We can say that for the majority of companies with large teams that already have this. Everyone knows Meta is no different.

In this case, it's a skill issue to ship low quality software which is what whoever that team at Meta just did and knowingly approved.

> The engineers at Meta are world class but they're nerfed by organizational constraints.

That doesn't mean anything given that shipping regressions to billions of users is not of "world class" calibre.

If fact, that is of amateurs behaviour and way below the expectation of a multi-trillion dollar company hiring the "best" engineers which they can certainly afford.

Re: Meta replaces WhatsApp for Windows with web wrapper

#370

Post by Klonoar »

nicr_22 wrote: post #356

There's a whole spectrum of options between super-fat React-in-Electron and expert-optimized platform-specific (perhaps GPU-rendered) apps. VS Code and Zed are close to opposite ends of this spectrum. - slim down to a more efficient, non-virtual-DOM web stack (e. g hypermedia) - move to a wrapper around native webview (Tauri) - use one of the excellent cross-platform frameworks (Flutter, or that new one just open sou…

> move to a wrapper around native webview (Tauri)

WhatsApp now is using a native webview, at least they're using Webview2 on Windows.

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