3 ms·

Is there an actual good use case for these desktop apps vs the web?

• hombre_fatal 2y ago
  (I hope this thread doesn't go anywhere. I just feel like complaining.) There's been some inflection point where the desktop version is now often worse than the web app. And you can't blame web tech because the web app in the browser is usually quite good. WhatsApp on macOS has catastrophic bugs for years. I regularly can't focus the input field and have to relaunch it. Until recently, its image modal would regularly bug out and leave behind a global dimmed window that eats all input so you can't even close it. Poe's desktop app is less polished than poe.com. Off the top of my head, its desktop app scrollbar becomes so tiny that you can't even click and drag it. ChatGPT's desktop app is simply worse than its web app or was when I stopped using it months ago for that reason. Youtube Music is another pointless desktop app since it's just the web app inside a web view, though at least it embraces that. It's like the only thing going for these desktop apps is that you can alt-tab to them individually. It's time to come up with a trivial one-click first-class OS-level way to turn websites into apps and put all these sad desktop apps out of their misery. Oh well, it's come at a good time because I've mostly soured to the idea of having to install software at all. 90% can be run in a sandboxed browser away from my file system.
  • steveoscaro 2y ago
    Yeah agreed on all of this. Most desktop apps that come after their web-based versions feel like an afterthought.