5 ms·

Electron hasn't stopped Spotify from making the most widely used music client and VSCode from making the third most popular IDE.

by johnfn 10y ago

gkya 10y ago
I'd audaciously guess that it's the songs you play in it that makes the spotify app popular, not the pack of ones and zeroes that the developers thereof like better.
- dopamean 10y ago
  Speaking just for myself here... I use Spotify every day and I can guarantee that I would switch if the software experience was bad. I honestly can't think of a time the app crashed. It can switch between my mobile devices and the desktop seamlessly almost every time. The overall design is intuitive enough _and_ it happens to come in a color scheme that I love. I used to find my music elsewhere and could do it again if I had to.
  - lj3 10y ago
    Switch to what? Everything else costs quite a bit of money (buying songs individually). Or you could pirate your music. Either way, it takes a shit ton of time to build up a halfway decent music library from scratch. Especially when the convenience of 'just search on spotify and add the entire artist to a playlist' is right there for free. I've had the spotify app crash my computer a few times. And then there was that fiasco a while back about it writing many, many gigs of data to SSDs and shortening their lifespan. Convenience will always trump software quality, but as soon as there is a competitor with better working software at a decent price, I'm jumping ship.
    - dopamean 10y ago
      I'd switch to Apple Music or Google Music. Both are services I've tried that work for me.
- johnfn 10y ago
  Ever hear of the Napster audio app? Not the p2p thing, the paid subscription app? It was just like Spotify, way before Spotify? Oh really, no, you hadn't? Could it be because the UI was terrible? Hm. What about rdio? Back in the day, I remember noticing they had a much better music archive than Spotify in some areas like prog. Still, I never made the switch. (The way they organized music was terrible.) Apparently, neither did anyone else. I could go on. All these Spotify competitors, all with decent libraries. How did Spotify end up winning? I'm not saying that songs are unimportant, but if you have trash ux people are going to find an alternative.
  - gkya 10y ago
    So not electron = trash UX? (edit: I'm an amateur musician, I do know quite a bit about the online music sphere, and I've been a paid user of both Deezer and Spotify in the past. You usually don't know who you're talking to on the internet, so better don't assume things.)
    - johnfn 10y ago
      Did I make assumptions? My bad. Well, I guess I made the assumption that you were unfamiliar with the napster app, so my bad. Other that that I dunno. (I happen to be an amateur musician as well. Fun coincidence.) Anyways, what I'm saying is that using electron is not really correlated to "bad app" and not using electron is not correlated to "good app".
markovbling 10y ago
Slack is built on Electron too.
- zzalpha 10y ago
  And there's constant talk of them going native because of how poor the current client performs...
gue5t 10y ago
Let's confront "worse is better" directly: more-popular software is not the same as better software. The Web is a race to the bottom in the quest for eyeballs. If eyeballs aren't what you desire, you can give the set of users you do have a much better experience: smoother interactions, better adaptation to system preferences, automated security and functionality updates to components via the OS distribution, better accessibility, etc.
- johnfn 10y ago
  I would make a counter-argument that software that gets used is indeed better than software that does not get used. Say what you want about the deficiencies of Electron, but it's proven to make software that people use. And like! If you and OP want to disagree with the premise that used software is good software, and go in the opposite direction, that's fine - that's the point where we agree to disagree and go home.
StavrosK 10y ago
I can't say I've ever used VSCode, but I like Spotify despite its UI, not because of it. That having been said, I don't use Spotify a lot, as the UI is really cumbersome and puts me off the entire thing.
laumars 10y ago
IIRC when Spotify switched to Electron there was a massive outcry from the general computing masses saying how much worse the new Spotify client was. You also have to bare in mind that Spotify is winning in it's market due to licencing (providing a range of music that other competitors haven't been able to licence). It's got naff all to do with the quality of the client.
jedikv 10y ago
People use spotify for their library/features - they'll put up with the client because there's no alternative clients to stream their spotify.
scarface74 10y ago
And thinking like this is why iTunes for Windows exists....

Electron hasn't stopped Spotify from making the most widely used music client and VSCode from making the third most popular IDE.

by johnfn 10y ago

Electron hasn't stopped Spotify from making the most widely used music client and VSCode from making the third most popular IDE.

gkya 10y ago

I'd audaciously guess that it's the songs you play in it that makes the spotify app popular, not the pack of ones and zeroes that the developers thereof like better.

dopamean 10y ago
Speaking just for myself here... I use Spotify every day and I can guarantee that I would switch if the software experience was bad. I honestly can't think of a time the app crashed. It can switch between my mobile devices and the desktop seamlessly almost every time. The overall design is intuitive enough _and_ it happens to come in a color scheme that I love. I used to find my music elsewhere and could do it again if I had to.
- lj3 10y ago
  Switch to what? Everything else costs quite a bit of money (buying songs individually). Or you could pirate your music. Either way, it takes a shit ton of time to build up a halfway decent music library from scratch. Especially when the convenience of 'just search on spotify and add the entire artist to a playlist' is right there for free. I've had the spotify app crash my computer a few times. And then there was that fiasco a while back about it writing many, many gigs of data to SSDs and shortening their lifespan. Convenience will always trump software quality, but as soon as there is a competitor with better working software at a decent price, I'm jumping ship.
  - dopamean 10y ago
    I'd switch to Apple Music or Google Music. Both are services I've tried that work for me.
johnfn 10y ago
Ever hear of the Napster audio app? Not the p2p thing, the paid subscription app? It was just like Spotify, way before Spotify? Oh really, no, you hadn't? Could it be because the UI was terrible? Hm. What about rdio? Back in the day, I remember noticing they had a much better music archive than Spotify in some areas like prog. Still, I never made the switch. (The way they organized music was terrible.) Apparently, neither did anyone else. I could go on. All these Spotify competitors, all with decent libraries. How did Spotify end up winning? I'm not saying that songs are unimportant, but if you have trash ux people are going to find an alternative.
- gkya 10y ago
  So not electron = trash UX? (edit: I'm an amateur musician, I do know quite a bit about the online music sphere, and I've been a paid user of both Deezer and Spotify in the past. You usually don't know who you're talking to on the internet, so better don't assume things.)
  - johnfn 10y ago
    Did I make assumptions? My bad. Well, I guess I made the assumption that you were unfamiliar with the napster app, so my bad. Other that that I dunno. (I happen to be an amateur musician as well. Fun coincidence.) Anyways, what I'm saying is that using electron is not really correlated to "bad app" and not using electron is not correlated to "good app".

markovbling 10y ago

Slack is built on Electron too.

zzalpha 10y ago
And there's constant talk of them going native because of how poor the current client performs...

gue5t 10y ago

Let's confront "worse is better" directly: more-popular software is not the same as better software. The Web is a race to the bottom in the quest for eyeballs. If eyeballs aren't what you desire, you can give the set of users you do have a much better experience: smoother interactions, better adaptation to system preferences, automated security and functionality updates to components via the OS distribution, better accessibility, etc.

johnfn 10y ago
I would make a counter-argument that software that gets used is indeed better than software that does not get used. Say what you want about the deficiencies of Electron, but it's proven to make software that people use. And like! If you and OP want to disagree with the premise that used software is good software, and go in the opposite direction, that's fine - that's the point where we agree to disagree and go home.

StavrosK 10y ago

I can't say I've ever used VSCode, but I like Spotify despite its UI, not because of it. That having been said, I don't use Spotify a lot, as the UI is really cumbersome and puts me off the entire thing.

laumars 10y ago

IIRC when Spotify switched to Electron there was a massive outcry from the general computing masses saying how much worse the new Spotify client was. You also have to bare in mind that Spotify is winning in it's market due to licencing (providing a range of music that other competitors haven't been able to licence). It's got naff all to do with the quality of the client.

jedikv 10y ago

People use spotify for their library/features - they'll put up with the client because there's no alternative clients to stream their spotify.

scarface74 10y ago

And thinking like this is why iTunes for Windows exists....