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The answer is that developers mainly use Macs, and they don't want to deal with a crappy Electron application in daily use so they give themselves the privilege

by jorvi 11mo ago

The answer is that developers mainly use Macs, and they don't want to deal with a crappy Electron application in daily use so they give themselves the privilege of a better experience even if it makes no business sense. You can see the same with Telegram, which has first party Electron applications for Windows / macOS / Linux, a first party native macOS application, and a bunch of third party blessings including a Windows UWP application. Note that there needs be an environment for this. You don't see a native version of VSCode or 1Password 8 because those orgs actually care about their applications and take great effort to make them feel good despite being built on Electron.

chistev 11mo ago
Are you sure that developers mainly use Macs?
- alephnerd 11mo ago
  Absolutely in US and Canada, and partially true in Israel, India, and China. The *nix and DevTooling community is better for MacOS compared to Windows, and a large portion of the software industry is iOS native apps, which requires a Mac to develop on.
  - stevesimmons 11mo ago
    WSL gives a pretty great Linux dev experience under Windows. As for "a large portion of the software industry is iOS native apps"... How about plugging in some assumptions here and then multiplying them together: 1. Mobile app share of total software development. 30% 2. iOS share versus Android: 30% 3. What % of iOS app dev is native apps? 40% My assumptions here give something like 4%. You should put whatever numbers you feel are right here, and I'm pretty sure it won't be close to "a large portion".
    - alephnerd 11mo ago
      You can develop Android apps on a Mac, but you can't develop iOS apps without a Mac. Furthermore from an app market perspective, Apple's App Store saw around $140-150B in spending in 2025 versus $60-65B in spending on Google Play during the same time period [0]. As such, procurement teams coalesced around purchasing MacBooks because it opened the most doors. > WSL gives a pretty great Linux dev experience under Windows It's decent, but the a major blocker for enterprises adopting WSL is it's unsupported by most XDR tools, making it a no-go from a risk/audit perspective. I can't speak for WSL's developer experience, but the fact that I know L64+ employees at MS using "the Scottish laptop" is telling. [0] - https://backlinko.com/iphone-vs-android-statistics https://backlinko.com/iphone-vs-android-statistics
    - porridgeraisin 11mo ago
      I don't know why iOS share vs Android is relevant? Any company that's making a mobile app will not ignore (a very affluent) 30% of the market. So all consumer apps _will_ have an iOS version. I don't know anything about mobile share of overall SW development.
- hu3 11mo ago
  It's not true as can be evidenced in any developer anual survey like GitHub's, Jetbrains or Stack Overflow's. Most developers use Windows.
dadoum 11mo ago
Telegram Desktop is using Qt as far as I can see.
- jorvi 11mo ago
  Ah, well, honestly there goes to show that well-engineered Electron applications (VScode, 1Password) can feel pretty much as good as native or near-native applications (Telegram).

by jorvi 11mo ago

chistev 11mo ago

Are you sure that developers mainly use Macs?

alephnerd 11mo ago
Absolutely in US and Canada, and partially true in Israel, India, and China. The *nix and DevTooling community is better for MacOS compared to Windows, and a large portion of the software industry is iOS native apps, which requires a Mac to develop on.
- stevesimmons 11mo ago
  WSL gives a pretty great Linux dev experience under Windows. As for "a large portion of the software industry is iOS native apps"... How about plugging in some assumptions here and then multiplying them together: 1. Mobile app share of total software development. 30% 2. iOS share versus Android: 30% 3. What % of iOS app dev is native apps? 40% My assumptions here give something like 4%. You should put whatever numbers you feel are right here, and I'm pretty sure it won't be close to "a large portion".
  - alephnerd 11mo ago
    You can develop Android apps on a Mac, but you can't develop iOS apps without a Mac. Furthermore from an app market perspective, Apple's App Store saw around $140-150B in spending in 2025 versus $60-65B in spending on Google Play during the same time period [0]. As such, procurement teams coalesced around purchasing MacBooks because it opened the most doors. > WSL gives a pretty great Linux dev experience under Windows It's decent, but the a major blocker for enterprises adopting WSL is it's unsupported by most XDR tools, making it a no-go from a risk/audit perspective. I can't speak for WSL's developer experience, but the fact that I know L64+ employees at MS using "the Scottish laptop" is telling. [0] - https://backlinko.com/iphone-vs-android-statistics https://backlinko.com/iphone-vs-android-statistics
  - porridgeraisin 11mo ago
    I don't know why iOS share vs Android is relevant? Any company that's making a mobile app will not ignore (a very affluent) 30% of the market. So all consumer apps _will_ have an iOS version. I don't know anything about mobile share of overall SW development.
hu3 11mo ago
It's not true as can be evidenced in any developer anual survey like GitHub's, Jetbrains or Stack Overflow's. Most developers use Windows.

dadoum 11mo ago

Telegram Desktop is using Qt as far as I can see.

jorvi 11mo ago
Ah, well, honestly there goes to show that well-engineered Electron applications (VScode, 1Password) can feel pretty much as good as native or near-native applications (Telegram).