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How do you square this with Apple's new model of desktop Mac apps being repackaged iOS/iPad apps? Is that native or is it half-mobile half-native? What distingu

How do you square this with Apple's new model of desktop Mac apps being repackaged iOS/iPad apps? Is that native or is it half-mobile half-native? What distinguishes that from Electron, in principle? It sounds like what you want is for every application to be hand-written for the target platform using target-specific APIs, because code reuse and cross-platform tech are 'not native' and thus bad. QT and GTK? Not native. Java's UI toolkits? Not native. HTML? Not native. Perl, Ruby, Python? Well, they're not C or Obj-C and their standard libraries aren't libc so they're not native.

jeroenhd 7y ago
I'm fine with Javascript itself, but I want the application render code to use native system APIs. QT and GTK use native system code on most platforms to layout controls. This means the controls are mostly consistent with the rest of the system, even when Microsoft or Apple decides to add more functionality to existing components, for example. If I'm hovering over a button and a tooltip appears, I want it to show in my OS colour theme and font instead of whatever flavour of Helvetica the web designer who made the application found fashionable today. The developer may not like that I can set my system to be in ugly high-contrast mode when I'm tired and don't want all the OS fluff, but please be nice enough to just follow the system theme instead of being the special little app that thinks it knows better. Electron uses an HTML renderer instead of the system compositor. This is the main difference between what I call native and what I don't. If you write an application in Python using standard operating system controls (say, with Gnome/Cacao/Win32 bindings), I'd call it more native than an Electron app, even if the Electron system is more deeply integrated into the system API. I'd also call Java non-native as it decides to drop all system UI components and draw its own. The repacked iOS apps being released on macOS are somewhere in the middle of the void between native and non-native in my opinion: while they use the OS compositing and controls, the layout is often not designed for the platform they run on. Perhaps "badly-designed native" is the best way to describe them.
ci5er 7y ago
It's Apple's call, isn't it? On what they allow and don't allow on their stores and platforms. It is the end-consumer's call, that they are happy with the product functionality and ecosystem that Apple enabled/allowed. Then the developer's call is to support a platform or not - a business decision, really. I prefer not to support Apple, personally, but if it represents a 40%~60% uplift in sales, and after their rake, 25%~50% in earnings, at some point, I'm probably going to invest in that. If not, then, not. I'm baffled that anyone thinks that any corporation "should" operate any particular way (as long as they are not breaking the law). Government, sure - everyone is probably entitled to that, but otherwise, why not just "walk away"?

jeroenhd 7y ago

I'm fine with Javascript itself, but I want the application render code to use native system APIs. QT and GTK use native system code on most platforms to layout controls. This means the controls are mostly consistent with the rest of the system, even when Microsoft or Apple decides to add more functionality to existing components, for example. If I'm hovering over a button and a tooltip appears, I want it to show in my OS colour theme and font instead of whatever flavour of Helvetica the web designer who made the application found fashionable today. The developer may not like that I can set my system to be in ugly high-contrast mode when I'm tired and don't want all the OS fluff, but please be nice enough to just follow the system theme instead of being the special little app that thinks it knows better. Electron uses an HTML renderer instead of the system compositor. This is the main difference between what I call native and what I don't. If you write an application in Python using standard operating system controls (say, with Gnome/Cacao/Win32 bindings), I'd call it more native than an Electron app, even if the Electron system is more deeply integrated into the system API. I'd also call Java non-native as it decides to drop all system UI components and draw its own. The repacked iOS apps being released on macOS are somewhere in the middle of the void between native and non-native in my opinion: while they use the OS compositing and controls, the layout is often not designed for the platform they run on. Perhaps "badly-designed native" is the best way to describe them.

ci5er 7y ago

It's Apple's call, isn't it? On what they allow and don't allow on their stores and platforms. It is the end-consumer's call, that they are happy with the product functionality and ecosystem that Apple enabled/allowed. Then the developer's call is to support a platform or not - a business decision, really. I prefer not to support Apple, personally, but if it represents a 40%~60% uplift in sales, and after their rake, 25%~50% in earnings, at some point, I'm probably going to invest in that. If not, then, not. I'm baffled that anyone thinks that any corporation "should" operate any particular way (as long as they are not breaking the law). Government, sure - everyone is probably entitled to that, but otherwise, why not just "walk away"?