4 ms·

That mostly is accurate, except for "Super fast", where I've seen many exceptions with slow and crashy desktop apps and extremely fast web apps, and "User owns

That mostly is accurate, except for "Super fast", where I've seen many exceptions with slow and crashy desktop apps and extremely fast web apps, and "User owns the data", in which the browser stores the data locally and the desktop app sends back telemetry. In fact it's often easier to determine whether your privacy and data are being respected with a browser app than with a desktop appp.

jlongster 6y ago
Bad code can be anywhere. It's definitely the exception for web apps to store data locally in a way that works though. They might try to cache a bunch of stuff, but you always run into problems where 1. the cache is stale or 2. your working through something and it ends up having to hit the network anyway. But yeah, I definitely agree that it's easier to profile the network activity of a web app. It's pretty cool that you can just open the browser devtools and see all the network requests, and there's no way for a page to "fake" it. I like the web for that reason, and it's also why I leave the devtools on in the electron version on desktop (users could open it and do the same, but it's not as trustworthy, i.e. I could hack electron and fake it)
throw_m239339 6y ago
> where I've seen many exceptions with slow and crashy desktop apps and extremely fast web apps, Such as? Apps that do exactly the same thing on the desktop version and the web version? desktop using what tech?
- MaxBarraclough 6y ago
  I've never seen a desktop application slower than the web application, at worst the desktop version is the web version, as with Electron. Pinboard is a good example of a fast web solution.
koube 6y ago
In addition to understanding what data is being sent back, also the amount of data an application has access to is wildly different between browser and desktop apps. There's basically no asking permission to your files with a desktop app, it just always has access to all of the data on your computer in most cases. Yesterday I got a call from a tech support scam, claiming to be comcast security. The very first thing they instructed me to do was to download a desktop app, teamviewer. When I refused to do so, there was nothing else they could do besides read my name and address to me.
- willyt 6y ago
  That’s not true on recent versions of macOS. Apps have to ask the first time and you can grant them access to specific folders / services only.
viraptor 6y ago
I believed the apps will often get optimised for what can be seen as an issue. If you distribute a desktop app, you'll often not see the results of large datasets people accumulate over time, so the permanence sucks. But if you're running a webapp, then the performance directly impacts your costs / availability. You will have to solve those, or pay for more hardware.
slmjkdbtl 6y ago
Native apps are inherently faster, because the browser is much more bloated than the native windowing system (it's millions lines of code on top of that), it's just it's very easy to write slow software in any environment.

jlongster 6y ago

Bad code can be anywhere. It's definitely the exception for web apps to store data locally in a way that works though. They might try to cache a bunch of stuff, but you always run into problems where 1. the cache is stale or 2. your working through something and it ends up having to hit the network anyway. But yeah, I definitely agree that it's easier to profile the network activity of a web app. It's pretty cool that you can just open the browser devtools and see all the network requests, and there's no way for a page to "fake" it. I like the web for that reason, and it's also why I leave the devtools on in the electron version on desktop (users could open it and do the same, but it's not as trustworthy, i.e. I could hack electron and fake it)

throw_m239339 6y ago

> where I've seen many exceptions with slow and crashy desktop apps and extremely fast web apps, Such as? Apps that do exactly the same thing on the desktop version and the web version? desktop using what tech?

MaxBarraclough 6y ago
I've never seen a desktop application slower than the web application, at worst the desktop version is the web version, as with Electron. Pinboard is a good example of a fast web solution.

koube 6y ago

In addition to understanding what data is being sent back, also the amount of data an application has access to is wildly different between browser and desktop apps. There's basically no asking permission to your files with a desktop app, it just always has access to all of the data on your computer in most cases. Yesterday I got a call from a tech support scam, claiming to be comcast security. The very first thing they instructed me to do was to download a desktop app, teamviewer. When I refused to do so, there was nothing else they could do besides read my name and address to me.

willyt 6y ago
That’s not true on recent versions of macOS. Apps have to ask the first time and you can grant them access to specific folders / services only.

viraptor 6y ago

I believed the apps will often get optimised for what can be seen as an issue. If you distribute a desktop app, you'll often not see the results of large datasets people accumulate over time, so the permanence sucks. But if you're running a webapp, then the performance directly impacts your costs / availability. You will have to solve those, or pay for more hardware.

slmjkdbtl 6y ago

Native apps are inherently faster, because the browser is much more bloated than the native windowing system (it's millions lines of code on top of that), it's just it's very easy to write slow software in any environment.