Comment by layer8
13 days ago
> It makes web apps first class productivity applications.
They won’t be first-class as long as native UI still has the upper hand.
13 days ago
> It makes web apps first class productivity applications.
They won’t be first-class as long as native UI still has the upper hand.
This battle is long won in favor of webtech in every realm but 3d/video editing/audio work/things that do gpu heavy lifting like game engines.
Outside those sort of spaces it’s hard to name a popular piece of software still on native that isn’t a wrapped webapp.
Microsoft Office apps, Java IDEs, text editors in general. Most of the time I spend with software is with non-web-UI applications.
To the extent that the battle has been won, the apps it has been won with are nevertheless second-class compared to native-level usability.
> Microsoft Office apps
Thought these were web wrappers now if you use the latest
> text editors in general
Definitely not in general, VSCode and Cursor are both webtech and are extremely popular. Only terminal editors are native and then beyond that you have things like SublimeText, Textmate which are extremely niche now.
> Java IDEs
Yeah those and XCode I guess, Java IDE is extremely niche compared to webdev.
> video editing
cough CapCut cough
In which way does native UI have the upper hand, do you think? To me it seems like a lot of users are largely indifferent to this aspect (e.g. so many applications nowadays being Electron/browser based). If browsers keep gaining capabilities then it seems like this gap will get even smaller.
I’ve never used a webapp that felt nicer than native software, it’s always very clearly a compromise.
I can't tell what's a web app and what's native these days. Are you sure you can?
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