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I can appreciate that as a developer, but as a user I don’t particularly care that some company wants to ship identical looking apps on every device under the s

I can appreciate that as a developer, but as a user I don’t particularly care that some company wants to ship identical looking apps on every device under the sun. I would prefer the apps I use to work and behave in a consistent way, using the same platform idioms I am used to. The software available and how it works was a large part of the reason I chose the platform I did. Of course, I recognise that, a. most people just don’t care about platform idioms, and b. the choice is often a non-native app or no app at all.

brewii 2y ago
Pretty sure most large succesful apps have their own UI and UI design teams. Cant remember the last time i saw anything cupertino in an app. Even Apples own 'Home' app only loosely use cupertino. Id say the most noticable effect is the bottom modal sheet slide up effect. on ios the original screen animates into the background a little bit. Apps that dont implement this can be spotted but thats not unique to flutter at all and flutter even offers a pretty good cupertino scaffold package that does this animation.
- deergomoo 2y ago
  You’re completely right, but that doesn’t change the fact that I think it’s a bad idea. For a company that used to care so much about user experience, Apple has been throwing a lot of it out the window in recent years.
- jwells89 2y ago
  The two things that stick out the most to me are navigation behavior and text fields. Cross platform frameworks seldom get either right, with react native being particularly bad on the navigation front. There are variances between Apple’s apps but they’re all using some combination of UIKit and SwiftUI regardless which limits how “wrong” they can be.
- dwaite 2y ago
  "cupertino" is the name of a Flutter widget set, not of the native platform controls or L&F. Few Flutter apps are going to use cupertino because the whole goal of using Flutter is to create cross platform codebases to save development effort. To use an alternative widget set per platform is a huge amount of additional work, and having a cupertino app running on Android is even more of a sore thumb than a material app on iOS.
  - seanw444 2y ago
    > and having a cupertino app running on Android is even more of a sore thumb than a material app on iOS. That is a bizarre fact.
ToucanLoucan 2y ago
> I would prefer the apps I use to work and behave in a consistent way, using the same platform idioms I am used to. The software available and how it works was a large part of the reason I chose the platform I did. There are DOZENS of us!!! I try my absolute best to find apps that use the native Apple language, both design and code. I can't stand these framework apps. I will Pepsi challenge this with anyone who asks, I can smell a framework app.
- dwaite 2y ago
  > I will Pepsi challenge this with anyone who asks, I can smell a framework app. The platforms ship with things like keyboard shortcuts for navigation and text entry, minimal accessibility features like screen reading of text and navigation, common idioms like drag and drop and the clipboard - none of which are typically handled by cross-platform widget frameworks by default. Only gigantic projects like Chrome and VS Code will take on the effort of (partially) reimplementing these in their codebases to match platform behavior.
- satvikpendem 2y ago
  Do you only use Apple devices? That may be why, because statistically most of the world's population uses Windows and Android where there really isn't a concept of "native" because they each have a few different UI frameworks.
- stuaxo 2y ago
  There was a time it looked like cross platform GUI toolkits would get us there, but things went in reverse.
knifie_spoonie 2y ago
> Of course, I recognise that, a. most people just don’t care about platform idioms This is the big one. HN commenters are not representative of the average user. You'd have to specifically point out the differences for them to even notice, and even then they simply don't care.
- int_19h 2y ago
  Casual users don't care about the app "looking wrong". They do care about the app not working like other apps on their phone, though.
  - knifie_spoonie 2y ago
    I've not found this to be the case at all. They only seem to care whether the app does what they want or not. Granted this is my personal experience, I can't say this is the case for every single user out there.
  - drdaeman 2y ago
    Casual users do care about app behaving wrong, though. If you can't copy or paste things, or if the navigation is backwards, or if the calendar looks weird etc etc - it all causes some minor frustrations, when things don't behave as user wants them to behave. They don't know what "native" means, obviously - they don't have that knowledge. They just know crappy apps from well-behaving apps, because they have a frame of reference (vendor-supplied native apps).
    - satvikpendem 2y ago
      Is there a concrete example of this? I still only hear this on HN where some mythical user gets annoyed about copying and pasting (most apps don't allow that, even, like TikTok or Instagram, which are the apps where most users spend the most time). Like the sibling commenter, I only have seen whether the app does what they want or it doesn't, most don't notice any annoyances unless they're really looking for them, which they're not.
satvikpendem 2y ago
Only on HN do I hear anyone talking about platform native controls versus unified UI across devices. I have not once heard of such a complaint in the real world and indeed, I have more often heard users wanting a unified UI over one that changes with each platform, simply because these days we have multiple devices where we expect apps to work the same.
- pastage 2y ago
  You have to listen to the details, like "where is the back button", "Why does text work differently". There are some people that understand that it is different from the standard, but most just get annoyed. The discussion here is from a technical perspective why it is better, conformity of the app on different platforms vs standard behavior between different apps. There are very few people that care about the technical reasons why, but when you talk about the annoyances it is easier.
  - milch 2y ago
    I'd also like to meet all these mythical users that have devices from every platform and want all their apps to look the same across all platforms. 99% of people I know IRL are in one ecosystem, with the exception of some that have an iPhone/iPad + Windows PC
    - basilgohar 2y ago
      It's not the end users that care about the uniformity but the fact the corporate design team wants there to be uniformity across all their platforms they support. This is part of branding and user experience. I'm not arguing for or against, just stating that is where the push for this comes from. It would make support, for example, easier, if all versions of your app user experience were similar.
      - robertlagrant 2y ago
        I'm not quite sure why this was downvoted. It's true.
amelius 2y ago
Do you hear people complain that __websites__ have different aesthetics? I used to share your opinion but since the web I think it is great that designers can have original designs and I started to worry about more important things.
- fauigerzigerk 2y ago
  I agree. What doesn't get enough attention in these often dogmatic debates is that there are some native conventions that are hugely important for usability while others are mostly irrelevant. E.g, I have to use a Java app on the Mac that uses Ctrl+V rather than Cmd+V for paste as well as other Windows/Linux keyboard conventions. This is extremely jarring. Web apps never do that. Browsers are pretty good at using native conventions where it matters by default. Of course web devs sometimes go out of their way to vandalise the browser's perfectly good defaults - e.g. by overriding scrolling behaviour. Surprisingly, some of Apple's own native apps (such as Numbers) break platform conventions in ways that makes the app extremely inconvenient to use.
- deergomoo 2y ago
  The web is interesting because we never had rich components provided by the browser to begin with. Web applications have always had to draw everything but the most basic inputs themselves, and the design of web apps has evolved accordingly. In an alternate universe, where web apps were embraced by the platform from the start rather than something people had to shoehorn into a document sharing mechanism, and we had rich components built-in, then yes I would probably be annoyed if people insisted on rolling their own versions. After all, I am annoyed when people use a span with a click handler instead of a proper anchor tag, because it usually breaks middle clicking or opening a link in a new tab—a platform convention I have internalised and expect to work. Note this only applies to web apps, not sites. Much like how I do not have any problem that magazines don’t share a common layout.
dangus 2y ago
I think the problem with the same app following native app idioms is that now the support and instructions behind that app will have to be different on every platform. E.g., if you have Instagram on your iPhone, an Android user won’t be able to tell you “just click on this, this, then this to change your XYZ setting” because it will be in a different place than the Android app if developers follow native conventions 100% of the time. The fact that Spotify or Instagram or any of those other platform-agnostic apps look and function the same on every platform is a huge benefit to practical usability. I think the only time when nativeness matters is when you have an app that’s doing stuff that’s closer to being “low level” to operating system features. For example, an app that performs file system management, I don’t want that to have the exact same UI on Mac, Windows, and Linux, because those platforms have different conventions for where things go and how files are represented.

brewii 2y ago

Pretty sure most large succesful apps have their own UI and UI design teams. Cant remember the last time i saw anything cupertino in an app. Even Apples own 'Home' app only loosely use cupertino. Id say the most noticable effect is the bottom modal sheet slide up effect. on ios the original screen animates into the background a little bit. Apps that dont implement this can be spotted but thats not unique to flutter at all and flutter even offers a pretty good cupertino scaffold package that does this animation.

deergomoo 2y ago
You’re completely right, but that doesn’t change the fact that I think it’s a bad idea. For a company that used to care so much about user experience, Apple has been throwing a lot of it out the window in recent years.
jwells89 2y ago
The two things that stick out the most to me are navigation behavior and text fields. Cross platform frameworks seldom get either right, with react native being particularly bad on the navigation front. There are variances between Apple’s apps but they’re all using some combination of UIKit and SwiftUI regardless which limits how “wrong” they can be.
dwaite 2y ago
"cupertino" is the name of a Flutter widget set, not of the native platform controls or L&F. Few Flutter apps are going to use cupertino because the whole goal of using Flutter is to create cross platform codebases to save development effort. To use an alternative widget set per platform is a huge amount of additional work, and having a cupertino app running on Android is even more of a sore thumb than a material app on iOS.
- seanw444 2y ago
  > and having a cupertino app running on Android is even more of a sore thumb than a material app on iOS. That is a bizarre fact.

ToucanLoucan 2y ago

> I would prefer the apps I use to work and behave in a consistent way, using the same platform idioms I am used to. The software available and how it works was a large part of the reason I chose the platform I did. There are DOZENS of us!!! I try my absolute best to find apps that use the native Apple language, both design and code. I can't stand these framework apps. I will Pepsi challenge this with anyone who asks, I can smell a framework app.

dwaite 2y ago
> I will Pepsi challenge this with anyone who asks, I can smell a framework app. The platforms ship with things like keyboard shortcuts for navigation and text entry, minimal accessibility features like screen reading of text and navigation, common idioms like drag and drop and the clipboard - none of which are typically handled by cross-platform widget frameworks by default. Only gigantic projects like Chrome and VS Code will take on the effort of (partially) reimplementing these in their codebases to match platform behavior.
satvikpendem 2y ago
Do you only use Apple devices? That may be why, because statistically most of the world's population uses Windows and Android where there really isn't a concept of "native" because they each have a few different UI frameworks.
stuaxo 2y ago
There was a time it looked like cross platform GUI toolkits would get us there, but things went in reverse.

knifie_spoonie 2y ago

> Of course, I recognise that, a. most people just don’t care about platform idioms This is the big one. HN commenters are not representative of the average user. You'd have to specifically point out the differences for them to even notice, and even then they simply don't care.

int_19h 2y ago
Casual users don't care about the app "looking wrong". They do care about the app not working like other apps on their phone, though.
- knifie_spoonie 2y ago
  I've not found this to be the case at all. They only seem to care whether the app does what they want or not. Granted this is my personal experience, I can't say this is the case for every single user out there.
- drdaeman 2y ago
  Casual users do care about app behaving wrong, though. If you can't copy or paste things, or if the navigation is backwards, or if the calendar looks weird etc etc - it all causes some minor frustrations, when things don't behave as user wants them to behave. They don't know what "native" means, obviously - they don't have that knowledge. They just know crappy apps from well-behaving apps, because they have a frame of reference (vendor-supplied native apps).
  - satvikpendem 2y ago
    Is there a concrete example of this? I still only hear this on HN where some mythical user gets annoyed about copying and pasting (most apps don't allow that, even, like TikTok or Instagram, which are the apps where most users spend the most time). Like the sibling commenter, I only have seen whether the app does what they want or it doesn't, most don't notice any annoyances unless they're really looking for them, which they're not.

satvikpendem 2y ago

Only on HN do I hear anyone talking about platform native controls versus unified UI across devices. I have not once heard of such a complaint in the real world and indeed, I have more often heard users wanting a unified UI over one that changes with each platform, simply because these days we have multiple devices where we expect apps to work the same.

pastage 2y ago
You have to listen to the details, like "where is the back button", "Why does text work differently". There are some people that understand that it is different from the standard, but most just get annoyed. The discussion here is from a technical perspective why it is better, conformity of the app on different platforms vs standard behavior between different apps. There are very few people that care about the technical reasons why, but when you talk about the annoyances it is easier.
- milch 2y ago
  I'd also like to meet all these mythical users that have devices from every platform and want all their apps to look the same across all platforms. 99% of people I know IRL are in one ecosystem, with the exception of some that have an iPhone/iPad + Windows PC
  - basilgohar 2y ago
    It's not the end users that care about the uniformity but the fact the corporate design team wants there to be uniformity across all their platforms they support. This is part of branding and user experience. I'm not arguing for or against, just stating that is where the push for this comes from. It would make support, for example, easier, if all versions of your app user experience were similar.
    - robertlagrant 2y ago
      I'm not quite sure why this was downvoted. It's true.

amelius 2y ago

Do you hear people complain that __websites__ have different aesthetics? I used to share your opinion but since the web I think it is great that designers can have original designs and I started to worry about more important things.

fauigerzigerk 2y ago
I agree. What doesn't get enough attention in these often dogmatic debates is that there are some native conventions that are hugely important for usability while others are mostly irrelevant. E.g, I have to use a Java app on the Mac that uses Ctrl+V rather than Cmd+V for paste as well as other Windows/Linux keyboard conventions. This is extremely jarring. Web apps never do that. Browsers are pretty good at using native conventions where it matters by default. Of course web devs sometimes go out of their way to vandalise the browser's perfectly good defaults - e.g. by overriding scrolling behaviour. Surprisingly, some of Apple's own native apps (such as Numbers) break platform conventions in ways that makes the app extremely inconvenient to use.
deergomoo 2y ago
The web is interesting because we never had rich components provided by the browser to begin with. Web applications have always had to draw everything but the most basic inputs themselves, and the design of web apps has evolved accordingly. In an alternate universe, where web apps were embraced by the platform from the start rather than something people had to shoehorn into a document sharing mechanism, and we had rich components built-in, then yes I would probably be annoyed if people insisted on rolling their own versions. After all, I am annoyed when people use a span with a click handler instead of a proper anchor tag, because it usually breaks middle clicking or opening a link in a new tab—a platform convention I have internalised and expect to work. Note this only applies to web apps, not sites. Much like how I do not have any problem that magazines don’t share a common layout.

dangus 2y ago

I think the problem with the same app following native app idioms is that now the support and instructions behind that app will have to be different on every platform. E.g., if you have Instagram on your iPhone, an Android user won’t be able to tell you “just click on this, this, then this to change your XYZ setting” because it will be in a different place than the Android app if developers follow native conventions 100% of the time. The fact that Spotify or Instagram or any of those other platform-agnostic apps look and function the same on every platform is a huge benefit to practical usability. I think the only time when nativeness matters is when you have an app that’s doing stuff that’s closer to being “low level” to operating system features. For example, an app that performs file system management, I don’t want that to have the exact same UI on Mac, Windows, and Linux, because those platforms have different conventions for where things go and how files are represented.