> had to run on old machines in a poor district Your problem space is much different than most people starting out, because you already know what hardware your

> had to run on old machines in a poor district Your problem space is much different than most people starting out, because you already know what hardware your software is running on, and could probably physically go there to test it out in person. In that case, a web or native app makes sense because you have already identified your market and it is not likely to change, nor are you likely to issue frequent updates. This is opposed to someone like Notion who does not know who their customers are or where they are coming from; they essentially offer a free service to anyone who can make it to their website. A bored user might click off the page and never encounter it again, while the district you worked for probably had a contract and bidding process that solidified the entire process ("we are going to budget money for this" vs "oh this looks cool, I might try it"). > Non-US markets too benefit from less memory hungry apps. Agreed. I send my grandparents in Eastern Europe a laptop every few years, and their current one is from 2014. They probably don't have as much RAM or CPU power as me. However, it's been quite a few years since 8GB became the standard, and I think you need a really inefficient web app to start seeing the machine struggling there. Most of the time when we complain about slow web pages, it's really because of all the ads, not the app itself. If you shoved that much adware garbage into a native app, it would use just as much memory and be just as slow. > VMs can help simulate more restricted or very different platforms Definitely! In Chrome and Firefox's devtools, you can also simulate a 3G or GPRS cell connection, in order to measure page load times and see what you could do to optimize them.