Ask HN: Why do you prefer native desktop apps? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Why do you prefer native desktop apps?

4 pointssandruso16 comments

And would it really make difference if all web apps were native?

I think the question is vague. Native compared to what? Are Electron apps considered native under this paradigm?Native desktop apps have permissions and API access that are generally denied to anything running in a sandbox. On some platforms (Apple) they're also trusted (certified by the hardware or OS manufacturer) to have those perms. Users are generally not competent to decide what permissions to grant applications, and thanks to some major efforts at educating them most users know that, so they prefer apps that are signed and approved and which run "natively". That means there's incentive for developers to continue building native applications.

To clarify, I meant native as build with native platform gui . No electron no web views.

I’m curious because everytime a topic about desktop pop ups GUI I see passion about it and sentiment native good and electron bad.

For apps I use frequently I prefer native: better performance, loads quicker, etc.

For apps I use rarely, I'd prefer to just use a web app if possible: always up to date, not taking up disk space, etc.

If an app requires internet access for data, then it might as well be a web app: e.g. I don't use native apps for social media.

I often prefer command-line, although GUI is also sometimes useful.

Native programs can often have improved capability interacting with other files/programs on the computer better, including user configuration, and can often be made more efficient, and files can be stored locally (working without an internet connection, although sometimes this is possible with HTML too); however, in many modern programs they tend to avoid such things so it is often just as bad (or maybe even worse) than web apps. WWW also has many problems with its design; some things simply do not work with it, and even some things that could theoretically work, don't work well due to web browsers being badly written.

Even for things using internet, there are better alternatives than web apps, e.g. NNTP, Telnet/SSH, IRC, etc. (However, web apps can still be made available too for users who prefer them)

Regardless of that, FOSS is much better. But, even when I do want to run non-native programs, they will often be NES/Famicom, DOS, etc, rather than HTML.

When you write a Windows Program in Lazarus/Free Pascal, you know exactly what it's going to look like when it runs. You know it will continue to run for decades. Its not subject to the whim of an app store or changes to javascript, chrome, internet censorship, or any other forces. It just does its job, quickly and efficiently .

It's not going to break because of some breaking change to Python or a library like WxWindows. (Which makes WikidPad unusable in Linux)

It's not going out of service because a vendor doesn't want to keep the support hosts online any more.

It just keeps working, reliably.

Now it should be possible to run any executable in a secure manner, but we don't have CabSec (Capability based security), so we're stuck with web apps instead.

They run offline and (presumably) keep data local.

and a greater chance of them not disappearing if the company goes out of business

For me the big one is performance. It doesn't have to load every UI screen as HTML over the wire, it has it all locally. In theory.

Although these days even the desktop apps can also be very slow. Spotify is very slow for me compared to how Winamp was, for example, even though my computer is probably fifty times faster. Not sure how much of that is due to Electron. Even the native Windows apps are slow now, especially the ones that use the newer Microsoft frameworks.

Honestly I prefer Android native apps more than anything. Android apps have the lowest rate of Stuff Not Working I've seen so far.

I prefer local apps because the data is local and they can't be taken away if the cloud goes down.

For inherently cloudful things like banking I'll use an app if it loads faster than the site, which it usually can because they have stuff like the ability to just quickly check balances without a password.

But I don't really mind sites instead.

> Android apps have the lowest rate of Stuff Not Working I've seen so far.

As an Android user, this has not been my experience, I must say...

Some people don't explore much of the app store, obviously.

I use apps pretty extensively, and when making purchases I usually prefer to buy things that have an associated app because it's only a few bucks more expensive.

My big complaint with android as a user(From a dev perspective the SAF is maddening) is that you can't have apps open in the background ready to go like you can on a desktop, Android kills them at the first opportunity if they're not tiny, and it causes problems for taking notes.

Other than that stuff generally works well.

I've only taken brief looks at the less common more indie type apps, and the level of polish and functionality is definitely way lower than open source on the Desktop(Probably because all the hoops you have to jump through that make things reliable also drive away anyone not getting paid), but they mostly work.

And there is SyncThing and BitWarden, so it's not like FOSS is totally impossible.

> And would it really make difference if all web apps were native?

If something is a web app how can it be native? Am I missing something?

Presumably OP means “would it really make a difference if all web apps were rewritten as native apps?”

I can image the machine it is on and it can become my "Forever Tool". Buy it for life.

Faster, take less disk space, better integrated into OS experience...

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