How is Electron doing btw? I'm itching to use it in one project but it doesn't feel like it's getting any traction in the community for a long time now. Since it's a long term project I kind of get mixed feelings about using it.
What makes you say that it isn't getting traction? AFAIK, some huge companies are using it to create their apps.
I think it gets a lot of underserved hate, just because it's JS and because it isn't "truly native". People also love to chime in about its performance but 9/10 times that's down to a bad implementation, in my humble opinion.
The main advantages (over executing your app in-browser) to my knowledge:
1. You can execute native code outside normal browser sandbox
2. You get your own application window
God forbid you want to be in two Slack orgs at the same time, perhaps on different virtual desktops. Off to the browser version with you!
Re: moving away from Electron, not as far as I know. They had a major update a year or so ago to make some big efficiency gains by not running a separate Electron instance for each organization, but the new version is still in Electron: https://slack.engineering/rebuilding-slack-on-the-desktop/
One can hope that they'll take the iPad version and make some improvements to let ARM Mac users get that instead, but currently they've chosen to disable downloading it from the Mac App Store.