Hacker News Reader

Comment by gherkinnn | Hacker News Reader

Electron has killed it. Fast browsers have killed it. Saas killed it.

There are many problems with Apple’s stores, but I don’t see how this is one.

I can't say this view has it entirely backwards because part of the phenomenon is due to the strengths of the web today and of Electron. But the 'backward' part of the argument is that native Apple software could, but no longer does, provide its own strengths to counter the web and Electron.

I love (old) Mac software and I hate Electron software yet if I sat down to create a commercial app today, I'd use Electron. Here's why:

- I don't feel the Mac's UX is great these days. If my app doesn't benefit from a consistent and elegant GUI, I might as well do it with web tech.

- I can't keep up with Xcode and the OS changing constantly. There was a time when you'd get a couple years between OS upgrades, when Apple's documentation wasn't (entirely) useless

- Desktop software on the Mac involves so much complexity today (eg: sandboxing, certificates, iCloud, icon formats and sizes, etc) that I don't want to deal with it

The Apple ecosystem doesn't offer enough advantages for me anymore to warrant the effort.

Agree. I hate every electron app I use, but even my longtime macOS favorites are beginning to feel only marginally better. They keep spicing up the UI, removing things that used to be reliable constants across applications and hiding more and more things behind ... menus like I'm on a mobile device, revealing or moving UI elements on mouse hover.

Little details like the title bar of of every window behaving the same were great like ten years ago. You always knew if a dot was in the red close button it meant your work wasn't saved. You could drag and drop the tiny icon just like it was an icon in Finder. It was almost always consistent.

Preview used to be a simple app for viewing documents. I welcomed the addition of annotation tools like adding a signature, but why did they axe the standard titlebar behavior? Now you have to hover over the filename of the document and wait almost a second before the title slides to the right and reveals the little icon. How is that possibly an improvement over just leaving it alone? Did they think saving 16px to show a longer filename without ellipses was more valuable?

Notes is kind of a new app in my mind so it hit the scene when macOS was already starting to feel more like an iPhone, but it's still worth talking about. They keep making it more powerful, like adding checklists and tables and such, but they hide the most basic functionality, text formatting, under a flyout menu. I really like the iOS feature to scan documents. The cropping and contrast adjustments are so good that I can usually quickly scan several pages of handwritten homework within a couple minutes. However, exporting a scanned PDF out of a document on macOS is a mess. Right click on the scan and it take seconds for a context menu to appear. At first I thought it must be my computer got hung, but it's like this consistently. How did they ship a product that make something as basic as a context menu hang for several seconds?

I could gripe with more examples, but the overarching feel I get is that macOS is being pushed more and more towards feeling like iOS, the emphasis on programs editing files is disappearing, and one day everything will be sandboxed and I'll have to click through "share" menus to transfer data from one app to another, provided those apps are kind enough to let me import or export.

> Now you have to hover over the filename of the document and wait almost a second before the title slides to the right and reveals the little icon. How is that possibly an improvement over just leaving it alone? Did they think saving 16px to show a longer filename without ellipses was more valuable?

This appears to be the standard behaviour of document windows now. It also occurs in the title bar of Finder windows, for example. It is excruciating.

Worse: if you try to rename a file by clicking the drop-down chevron, typing into the Name box, and pressing Return, there will be no effect and the name you entered will be lost. Yes: they broke rename in every standard application! The only method I've found that works is to resist my natural urge to hit Return and press Tab instead.

I agree with the sentiment that macOS UI is on a severe decline. Here’s one bit of possible comfort for you. Get the proxy icon back without having to hover over window titles:

defaults write -g NSToolbarTitleViewRolloverDelay -float 0

https://mjtsai.com/blog/2020/10/05/big-surs-hidden-document-...

I generally agree. MacOS appears to be stagnating in its capabilities, even if there is a constant churn of UI and features. The Human Interface Guidelines-based approach of old seems to have been blurred thanks to the iOS mashups we are now seeing, and native apps that used to feel substantially better aren't really better enough anymore.

However, for me the big issue with Electron or other web-tech apps is the performance - they all feel incredibly slow and laggy, engorge themselves on my machine's resources, and generally slow down substantially the longer they have been open.

Considering my main gripe about macOS when compared to say, Windows, has been the general performance of the UI and apps, this isn't a particularly welcome phenomenon.

Huge agreement to keeping up with the iOS and arbitrary app update requirements. My personal projects are in a place that releasing even minor updates is an endeavor I just don't have time for anymore.

Why did Electron kill it? And don't say size, because people gladly install 0.5TB games at the drop of a hat.

ElectronJS is brilliant, it just needs to go on a diet. It truly is write-once-run-everywhere, which makes my life worlds easier as a dev supporting three OSes.

But it doesn't make your GUI pretty: you still need a designer. And because of that, I miss native GUIs where the design is consistent.

I would ding Electron because it facilitates a diaspora of GUI design when we actually need consistency.

Apple seems to have driven the cost of all (mobile) software to 99c or free, roughly. How can anyone really make any money just making something solid and usable without turning it into a "service" or something at that price? And I as a user don't want any of that stuff because I don't want a service to lock me in, I want to pay up front for something good and leave it at that.

Pro/power user apps still cost a bit. Apps like Procreate and Luma sell for >$10 and seem to have great sales. I guess the issue comes when you have sold your app to almost everyone who is willing to buy it and then you are unable to make any more sales which forces you to either go to subscription model or to create a new listing "Procreate 2" to charge everyone again. Both of these options make people pretty upset though.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com