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Comment by sarsway | Hacker News Reader

A few years ago I would have agreed that the native subtleties must be a top priority for user experience, but these days I don't think it matters that much anymore.

Flutter's UI can't match native components exactly, but they do a very good job, and I don't think the vast majority of users would be able to notice the difference or cares that much.

The reality is, the native UI homogeneity is long dead anyway. Every app, website, brings it's own set of UI components and styling. It's all inconsistent and people are used to it.

It really does not matter whether your modal dialog is native or not, as long as it follows basic abstract UX conventions of looks and behavior.

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Native UI parity went extinct because platforms kept changing UI guidelines in every major release to keep things feeling "fresh" and new. A native app might inherit a lot from the toolkit but it'll still look weird without an update.

At some point, you're better just doing your own thing rather than be dragged around on the leash of some product manager looking to make a splash at the next conference.

I develop with React Native in my day job and I'm observing all the UI changes that are happening in the systems. So far there aren't many problems with the differences, for example in the alpha version of Android 12, Google introduced a sparkly ripple effect (they eventually removed it again). But this change was automatically propagated to all our interactive components of our React Native app, no changes to our codebase necessary. And this is the case for many other changes, since React Native uses actual native elements.

> I don't think the vast majority of users would be able to notice the difference or cares that much.

Users do notice these things. They just can't explain it in technical terms like "i feel like this app is built with a non-native toolkit that is why animations are wrong".

They explain it as "this feels off" and "why doesn't it run like X" and "I don't like it" etc.

Exactly this. For example when I started playing Wordle the first time, I was like what is this keyboard this just feels kind of odd!

I think long-time users of Apple's various platforms will notice, especially. I bought my first Performa back in 1996. That old OS -- especially up against Windows 95/2000/XP apps -- conditioned people to be UI snobs. If I download an app from the App Store, and something rubs me the wrong way within the first few seconds, I will almost always ditch it. I want a native experience, and I don't think I'm alone.

It boggles my mind that anyone invests precious time and effort chasing such a fickle group of users. Anything less than Apple's vision of perfection and harmony or you'll be dumped in a heartbeat. "Think Different" indeed.

The people willing to put up with mediocre and bad software aren't willing to spend money on it either. Just look at the revenue gap between iOS and Android. It makes sense that people put time and effort into pursuing the fickle users willing to pay money.

> It boggles my mind that anyone invests precious time and effort chasing such a fickle group of users

This "fickle group of users" is eager to spend money, moreso than other groups of users.

It's not "fickle" to want competently built apps made by developers who respect their users.

Or, you know, developers could be thoughtful enough to create a half decent UX. That's not asking for a lot.

I'm happy a significant portion of consumers have been trained to expect better than the bare minimum in terms of UX.

Look how loyal those users are. If you can keep them long enough... they may develop their own loyalty to you.

Also they're rich.

If you've been around that long, you know that Apple changes their UI guidelines sometimes and not always for the better. I no longer know what a "native experience" is supposed to be. (I haven't even used Monterey yet.)

Yup, the downfall of Apple's UI is obvious, public, and heat-breaking.

This is valid criticism. Apple's taste isn't what it used to be.

And then Kai's Power Tools came along with its completely unique UI and everyone loved it. And other developers decided to emulate that idea - that a funky UI is a differentiator.

I don't think it's fair to blanket blame Flutter though. What you are noticing are poorly made apps. What you are not noticing are well made Flutter apps, that are almost indistinguishable from native apps. I guarantee you we all interact with way more different UI frameworks then we are aware of on a daily basis.

Some apps also fail by trying to emulating native UI so hard, when it would be better advised to just adopt a more abstract style. Today's flat UI is just simple shapes after all.

From technical a standpoint, Flutter definitely is performant, capable of delivering smooth scrolling and 60 fps. Your experience may vary of course, but I've been shipping an app with it for 2 years now and things been working out well. Can only really say great things about it.

> What you are not noticing are well made Flutter apps, that are almost indistinguishable from native apps. I guarantee you we all interact with way more different UI frameworks then we are aware of on a daily basis.

That is, indeed true. So the question becomes: does the framework nudge you towards and help you with making well-made apps almost indistinguishable from native apps, or the opposite :)

I'd wager these sentiments have more to do with performance/responsiveness than they do with whether or not UI elements and animations are system defaults. Pretty much every wildly popular application in the market has a totally custom UI.

I kind of disagree. I don't mind apps that bring their own visual styling and don't reuse OS components/styling, but I get _really_ annoyed by apps where gestures behave slightly differently. Things such as the exact tolerances required to activate the "fling" getsure, or to swipe from the edge, are really frustrating when they're not quite right. Beyond basic conventions, the minute details of how the user input/output responses work are really really important.

I hate when apps implement the swipe-back gesture for anywhere on the screen, rather than just the left edge.

It’s far too easy to be scrolling, accidentally go slightly too horizontal and end up popping the view and losing your place.

I hate it when swipe is inconsistent. Even using two Microsoft products (Todo and Outlook) on my iPhone, in Outlook you swipe right to delete a message from the list, in Todo you swipe left to delete a task from the list :-/ . Lucky "undo" is easy to find.

No. I'm a hardcore iOS user and i can recite off-hand specific apps that run "wrong" and why i hate using them (because if their UI). I tend to actively minimize using them when possible too. If your app doesn't support the "scroll to top" gesture when i tap the top bevel of my screen, i will stop using it if i can find alternatives.

Yes, i know that it runs wrong because its ReactNative and not SwiftUI, but you don't need to know why its wrong to know its wrong.

Eg: Alexa App doesn't go back a frame when you swipe from left, you have to click back button.

In the React Native app I'm working on, I actually noticed this gesture on an iOS simulator (I didn't know about it before) and it worked well. React Native uses native components to render the UI, but it uses JS for the logic of what and where should it put the native components. I think this might be an issue in Flutter though.

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