Hacker News Reader

Comment by elithrar | Hacker News Reader

Note that it's a web app using NW.js (like Electron) to turn it into a 'desktop' app.

(Which I'm personally OK with for applications like this, where native gains may not be as big)

I'd be interested in seeing a benchmark of something like cmus or even Winamp vs something using browser-based tech like Spotify or this. My hunch is that it's a huge difference. I typically use my phone to play Spotify / SoundCloud to wireless headphones to save the CPU overhead at work.

I do wish the more mainstream companies stopped the JS-based-app trend. Spotify was snappy a few years ago and is now a resource hog. And don't even mention the Slack Mac app...

I agree with you but unfortunately that doesn't seem to be happening in a near future. With this BigData thing where companies want to keep track of your data, likes, etc web is their way. I do miss old times native and robust desktop applications.

There's no reason they couldn't collect that data on 'native' apps though; we've got Google Analytics integrated in our mobile app which sends events to the same account as the website.

I gave it a search and you're actually right[1]! I was aware of the web/android/ios analytics apis, didn't know this one.

Thanks for that! :)

Although, this even makes it more difficult to understand this path.

[1]https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection...

Usually I would choose a native app over a website for the performance and better memory management, unfortunately all that is lost with node & friends.

@mondo, is the advantage really gone? Seems like cutting out the browser would eliminate a lot of overhead.

The browser isn't really cut-out, but that's not to say the the performance isn't better. In fact, with a lot of the "browser" side stuff, like bookmarks, extensions, etc. gone there is performance gains to be had using node-webkit/Electron, etc. in my experience using them. It also allows you to get around some security contexts that running untrusted code in a browser environment requires.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com