Why Build Native Mac Apps?

Okay, so I’d have to start with an initial user base of 100,000 installs to account for attrition. :smiley:

Although FWIW I don’t know that I’ve ever seen somebody honestly gripe about a $5/year subscription. Usually it’s when a $20 “pay once” app goes to $40/year subscription.

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So 100 million potential user, results acc. the above reduction still into 35 million paying user, results into 165 Mio. Dollar/year.
Would be enough for me as a Developer… :wink:

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Based on this comment I looked into spellcheck for Electron apps. SpellChecker | Electron - It turns out at least that is using the native system.

My hope is that this community prevails on cross platform app developers until they add more native support in their apps.

FWIW Readwise is building a full webapi into their app, so with some elbow grease that could be wrapped in code and turned into Shortcut Actions.

I think the lines will blur further.

A lot of non-native app issues are due to Electron’s lack of native bridges. There is no technical reason why Electron could not integrate, say, the Share Menu on a Mac, but it sure would need significant developer effort and up to this day this is a weakness.

…and I’m not sure it’s even really a goal of the Electron project. It’s not just a little bit of effort once - it’s the effort every time an OS releases. For Windows, that’s probably not as big of a deal. But macOS (at least potentially) rejiggers everything every year. That’s a lot of work for a minority software platform.

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I won’t say it’s easy, but if you’ve built your app the Mac way, your first recompile on the new dev kit gets you pretty close to what you need to release to match aesthetic updates. Adding support for new features/APIs can take a lot more time (though Apple is getting better here, especially with SwiftUI and cross-platform widget/ocmplication code, IMO.)( Developers of a typical basic Electron app would have to spend more time on the same features than the Mac developer, but they don’t have the same expectations to meet.

I agree. The first network I assembled in the early 90’s consisted of PCs, Macs, a Novell server, a DEC midrange, and an out of state IBM mainframe. And every other place I worked was much the same. Even all Mac departments depended on things like Windows Servers, Adobe Creative Cloud, and custom applications.

It’s the same with software. Frequently the solution you need may not be available as a native app on your platform. And sometimes, like with Excel for Mac, the native app doesn’t have the features that you need. All we can do is pick the best tools available and find a way to make them work.

“and find a way to make them work.” is the power user part.

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It can be. I spoke to one software rep that said they replaced their native Windows app with a web solution because “every time Microsoft updates SQL Server” we had to rewrite our software.

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This. Is. Truth. :point_up:

As a Mac Power User ™ I use the best tool for the job.

I prefer macOS and native Mac apps. My main machine is a Mac Studio running macOS Monterey. Most of my apps are native, but I’ve nine electron apps (run find /Applications -name "Electron Framework.framework" from the terminal to see how may you have!).

And on the Studio I have a Parallels instance of Windows 11 (arm), as one of my hobbies is amateur astronomy, and as noted in a recent thread, many astronomy programs are Windows only (but it is getting better, and I use Windows less and less these days). I also use UTM to run Ubuntu Linux as we’ve started using Linux at work and this is a test bed/playground.

Speaking of work I have a Windows 10 laptop on my desk. It shares a monitor with my Studio. I’ve three other monitors to use with the Studio when Windows claims one so it’s all good.

I use an HDMI switch to share the monitors, and there are two other computers hooked up through that switch. A 2018 Mac mini running macOS Ventura. And a 2014 Mac mini running Kubutnu Linux. Two more test beds.

Other than that Windows laptop for work, everything is running on Mac hardware.

All from the same desk chair (two keyboards though, Keychron K8 Pro and K3 Pro).

Which I guess begs the question, What makes one a “Mac Power User”? A question which has been asked before:

What's the Tipping Point for Being a "Power User"?


I also have a Mac 512KE, on a bookshelf next to the desk, although I don’t use it all that much. :slight_smile:

Suggestions for an iOS/iPadOS Mastodon app? - #79 by MevetS.


Yeah, I might have an OS problem …

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This is a really important point. I sold cross platform Mac/Windows software for nearly 15 years. Windows was never more than 22% of sales. The percentage of Windows computers with third party software is at least an order of magnitude smaller than for Mac computers. Many Windows computers are in corporate environments where small developers have no chance. And even for individual Windows users, a majority are unaware that it is even possible to install 3rd party software.

Eventually I decided that Windows was not worth it and went back to native Mac only development. Significantly more overall sales because the Mac software is better than was possible with cross platform tools.

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Ha! It’s well known that Java is actually “write once DEBUG everywhere!”

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+1

It’s nice to get some empirical data to back up my observations of many of the Windows users that I worked with over the years. So many, even some of the other programmers, rarely used Windows software that was not supplied with their PC.

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I agree. However I encountered a great number of people who also had Microsoft Office applications, which were usually installed from a copy they had “borrowed” from work.

Based on the end users I’ve interacted with, that’s probably because the platform didn’t have that stuff built in, and it’s probably the single biggest reason people buy a computer.

Or put differently, users expect that stuff to come with a PC, and Windows not having it was considered a deficiency and “Microsoft being cheap”.

Apple bundles their set of apps, so non-issue on Apple platforms unless somebody needs solid Office interoperability.

Thanks, I didn’t know you could do this! I’m surprised I only have four – 1Password, HEY, Dropbox, and Raindrop – and I only spend a good portion of time in half of those. That probably signals my preference for native apps because they are a joy to spend time in. Despite the examples given, I’ve yet to find an Electron-based app that tricks me into thinking it’s native. I can always tell it’s Electron. Obsidian might be the outlier.

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No electron apps here. Zero. Zip. Nada. :slightly_smiling_face:

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Mine ranked in order of importance to me.
Obsidian - Absolutely critical must have with features not duplicated in ANYTHING else
GitKraken - Another critical one, hands down the best Git helper I’ve tried
Slack - I use mostly from the browser but the app is fine. Regular use but not many of the features of the platform
Datasette - playing with it as a DB explorer Not sure I like it but it’s not the Electron nature that is bothering me.
Dropbox - still used by GoodNotes to move stuff between Pac and iPad
Type Fu - Been using it to learn Dvorak keyboard typing
Microsoft teams - Only used because I have to to attend my Federal Scrapie Committee meetings.

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I have two:
1Password
Hoobs - Always seems very slow - don’t know if this is because it’s an electron app.

Acc to this Terminal command, I have none.
But as I have at least Obsidian, this command seems not to work for my system, for an unknown reason…?

Curious, it finds Obsidian on my system. Is Obsidian in the /Applications folder on your system?