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Comment by manuelabeledo | Hacker News Reader

> Final thoughts: The web always wins. It defeated Flash. It killed Silverlight. It destroyed native apps on desktop. The browser is the rich client platform. The OS is merely a browser-launcher and hardware-communicator.

I really hope this is not the case.

The web is fine, but nothing beats native implementations. Web apps are slow and bloated in comparison to a true native app. And I for one cannot believe that we have accepted that simple things like note taking or chat apps need several hundreds of megabytes of RAM to run. Madness.

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> Web apps are slow and bloated in comparison to a true native app.

The webapps you have used are slow.

This generalization is changing and will continue to change the better Apple/iOS treat PWAs.

Apple App Store appears to be widely removing apps that still work, but have not been recently updated, like native apps and PWAs, so treating better would be very welcome:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31148708

This kind of guidelines also kind of do not treat PWA style apps well, or could even prevent adding app that is similar to another app already existing at App Store:

https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/

> 4.2 Minimum Functionality

> Your app should include features, content, and UI that elevate it beyond a repackaged website. If your app is not particularly useful, unique, or “app-like,” it doesn’t belong on the App Store. If your App doesn’t provide some sort of lasting entertainment value or adequate utility, it may not be accepted. Apps that are simply a song or movie should be submitted to the iTunes Store. Apps that are simply a book or game guide should be submitted to the Apple Books Store.

Slack, the new Outlook, and Spotify, are slow and bloated. VSCode is not really much better.

Are there any widespread apps that are more efficient than these? I really would like to know.

>>note taking or chat apps need several hundreds of megabytes of RAM to run.

I have a fairly big app and while I'm not sure how to measure that I ran "about:memory" in Firefox and added up everything I saw for the app and it came out to be about 30mb.

My Mac's Finder says the directory with all the code is 9.9 MB.

That app is plenty fast, even on my old late `09 Mac Mini Mac running 10.11.6 with just 4gb ram.

That sounds anecdotal to me.

Widespread apps like Slack, routinely use several hundred megabytes of RAM.

PS Search "Electron alternative", because that's the root of the issue you're describing, and there are a couple now.

JavaScript is not going to suddenly become as fast and efficient as native frameworks. That's not going to happen, ever. So what kind of improvements are we looking at here?

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