You cover more points than I had in mind. > If you have experience of shipping desktop apps to end users I used to work on desktop applications in the early 2

You cover more points than I had in mind. > If you have experience of shipping desktop apps to end users I used to work on desktop applications in the early 2000s built with VB, VC++ and Java, recently (for fun) with PWAs. > what are your biggest pain points? Inconsistencies between platforms and irreconcilable user expectations. I think the web experience ironed out both. > And what sort of solution would you prefer for them? I've programmed progressive web apps which can be installed by a browser as an offline app in both Android and Linux - I don't know how well they are supported on other platforms. They aren't great but they mostly work since browsers expose many local client resources (camera, filesystem, drag & drop etc). I never, ever, want to work on desktop applications again. The only reasons I can think of that justify a desktop application are regulatory, performance or technology integration. These justify a degraded user experience imho.