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> It's totally possible to build a PWA that behaves like a native app but Apple actively tries to destroy them. It may look the part but it rarely feels like i

> It's totally possible to build a PWA that behaves like a native app but Apple actively tries to destroy them. It may look the part but it rarely feels like it. Something like OmniGraffle would not end up feeling the same. Even Microsoft's apps on mac feel better than their web-based counterparts in O365.

giantDinosaur 6y ago
OmniGraffle could be fine; hasn't Figma shown us the way?
- durandal1 6y ago
  Figma falls into the trap of all other claimed high performing web apps, conflating maintaining a 60fps refresh rate with responsiveness. Try dragging any object around (even simple shapes) and you'll see it trail the mouse cursor in Figma. Does not happen in OmniGraffle. The result is a distinct difference in feel.
  - lucasverra 6y ago
    Can any person in the planet edit the same document than you in real time, for free, running hardware up to 5 to 10 years old, in < 3 min after receiving a link with Omnigraff ? Because that is the main feature of figma. Latency of mouse issues is a good trade off from my POV.
  - giantDinosaur 6y ago
    Fair point! I might file this under 'latency' which is often ignored for improvement so long as it's tolerable.
wtallis 6y ago
Yeah, proponents of cross-platform frameworks love to ignore the second half of "look and feel". It's ridiculous to claim that a web app can behave like a native app when even Qt apps still tend to have obvious tells.
- Silhouette 6y ago
  The important question is, does that matter? Slick web apps are taking over the software world, whether the likes of Apple want them to or not. Looking like any specific native platform is less important, if it's even relevant at all, in an era when users are working with different web apps each with their own look-and-feel all the time anyway.
  - wtallis 6y ago
    Does it matter? Yes, of course. The desire for consistency and usability may not be strong enough to reverse the current trend away from native apps, but that doesn't remove their advantages. And I find it very telling that even your own comment continues the trend of over-emphasizing look over feel. I'd be happy with apps randomly launching in night mode, if they would just have all the right controls in the right places, and have the performance and memory footprint of native apps.
    - Silhouette 6y ago
      The problem with that argument is that you're assuming consistency with native platform standards is the dominant consideration. I contend that, today, it often is not. Many users are spending much of their time using web sites and applications rather than native ones; this trend does not appear to be in dispute here. Moreover, the basics of how web sites (and by extension web apps) work have a longer history of established conventions than any of the major native platforms; the likes of Jakob Nielsen were making the case for consistency and following user expectations more than two decades ago, long before the likes of iOS and Android and whatever we're calling Windows' UI today were glints in their respective creators' eyes. Also, web technologies can perform just fine the vast majority of the time. Modern JS engines have excellent performance, obviously not rivalling expertly coded C and assembly, but certainly comparable to your average native application for most purposes. Modern browsers also have good support for hardware acceleration and can render UIs that respond quickly enough to user interactions that again for most purposes there is no perceptible delay or jank. Today we're looking towards WebAssembly as a vehicle for potentially more efficient languages and runtimes, though clearly that technology is still in its infancy and its future is far from certain. Now, you can undermine all of that potential if you bloat your web site/app with tens of megabytes of junk scripts that are all competing for resources and blocking stuff and phoning home and whatever, but that's not really the fault of the web technologies, it's just bad developers and/or bad managers creating a bad application.
jiofih 6y ago
You should try Figma. Will open your eyes a bit.
- wdb 6y ago
  Yeah, you can only use it when you got internet
osrec 6y ago
I think that can often be due to a lack implementation skill. Our users (https://usebx.com https://usebx.com) seem to appreciate the native performance and feel of our web app.
emodendroket 6y ago
The fact you can just run it without installing anything makes up for a lot of faults (doubly so when the vendor isn't Microsoft but somebody nobody's ever heard of).
- wtallis 6y ago
  On the flip side, most web apps don't offer their full feature set without requiring you to go through a sign-up process that is at least as onerous as downloading and unzipping a Mac app bundle. Even when a web app outsources authentication to something like Facebook, there are still at least as many clicks.
  - emodendroket 6y ago
    It's not about clicks so much as sandboxing.
    - pseudalopex 6y ago
      Mac apps are sandboxed.
      - emodendroket 6y ago
        I'd nevertheless sooner visit an unknown Web site than install an unknown application.
kgin 6y ago
It easily could feel like it, given a very reasonable amount of support by platform owners. There is nothing magical about Ui powered by compiled vs interpreted code. It is limitations in the platforms that are the roadblocks.
- leadingthenet 6y ago
  I always hear about these theoretical web apps that are just as good, nay, better, than native apps. Where are they?! Certainly no web app I ever used would qualify...

giantDinosaur 6y ago

OmniGraffle could be fine; hasn't Figma shown us the way?

durandal1 6y ago
Figma falls into the trap of all other claimed high performing web apps, conflating maintaining a 60fps refresh rate with responsiveness. Try dragging any object around (even simple shapes) and you'll see it trail the mouse cursor in Figma. Does not happen in OmniGraffle. The result is a distinct difference in feel.
- lucasverra 6y ago
  Can any person in the planet edit the same document than you in real time, for free, running hardware up to 5 to 10 years old, in < 3 min after receiving a link with Omnigraff ? Because that is the main feature of figma. Latency of mouse issues is a good trade off from my POV.
- giantDinosaur 6y ago
  Fair point! I might file this under 'latency' which is often ignored for improvement so long as it's tolerable.

wtallis 6y ago

Yeah, proponents of cross-platform frameworks love to ignore the second half of "look and feel". It's ridiculous to claim that a web app can behave like a native app when even Qt apps still tend to have obvious tells.

Silhouette 6y ago
The important question is, does that matter? Slick web apps are taking over the software world, whether the likes of Apple want them to or not. Looking like any specific native platform is less important, if it's even relevant at all, in an era when users are working with different web apps each with their own look-and-feel all the time anyway.
- wtallis 6y ago
  Does it matter? Yes, of course. The desire for consistency and usability may not be strong enough to reverse the current trend away from native apps, but that doesn't remove their advantages. And I find it very telling that even your own comment continues the trend of over-emphasizing look over feel. I'd be happy with apps randomly launching in night mode, if they would just have all the right controls in the right places, and have the performance and memory footprint of native apps.
  - Silhouette 6y ago
    The problem with that argument is that you're assuming consistency with native platform standards is the dominant consideration. I contend that, today, it often is not. Many users are spending much of their time using web sites and applications rather than native ones; this trend does not appear to be in dispute here. Moreover, the basics of how web sites (and by extension web apps) work have a longer history of established conventions than any of the major native platforms; the likes of Jakob Nielsen were making the case for consistency and following user expectations more than two decades ago, long before the likes of iOS and Android and whatever we're calling Windows' UI today were glints in their respective creators' eyes. Also, web technologies can perform just fine the vast majority of the time. Modern JS engines have excellent performance, obviously not rivalling expertly coded C and assembly, but certainly comparable to your average native application for most purposes. Modern browsers also have good support for hardware acceleration and can render UIs that respond quickly enough to user interactions that again for most purposes there is no perceptible delay or jank. Today we're looking towards WebAssembly as a vehicle for potentially more efficient languages and runtimes, though clearly that technology is still in its infancy and its future is far from certain. Now, you can undermine all of that potential if you bloat your web site/app with tens of megabytes of junk scripts that are all competing for resources and blocking stuff and phoning home and whatever, but that's not really the fault of the web technologies, it's just bad developers and/or bad managers creating a bad application.

jiofih 6y ago

You should try Figma. Will open your eyes a bit.

wdb 6y ago
Yeah, you can only use it when you got internet

osrec 6y ago

I think that can often be due to a lack implementation skill. Our users (https://usebx.com https://usebx.com) seem to appreciate the native performance and feel of our web app.

emodendroket 6y ago

The fact you can just run it without installing anything makes up for a lot of faults (doubly so when the vendor isn't Microsoft but somebody nobody's ever heard of).

wtallis 6y ago
On the flip side, most web apps don't offer their full feature set without requiring you to go through a sign-up process that is at least as onerous as downloading and unzipping a Mac app bundle. Even when a web app outsources authentication to something like Facebook, there are still at least as many clicks.
- emodendroket 6y ago
  It's not about clicks so much as sandboxing.
  - pseudalopex 6y ago
    Mac apps are sandboxed.
    - emodendroket 6y ago
      I'd nevertheless sooner visit an unknown Web site than install an unknown application.

kgin 6y ago

It easily could feel like it, given a very reasonable amount of support by platform owners. There is nothing magical about Ui powered by compiled vs interpreted code. It is limitations in the platforms that are the roadblocks.

leadingthenet 6y ago
I always hear about these theoretical web apps that are just as good, nay, better, than native apps. Where are they?! Certainly no web app I ever used would qualify...