Desktop apps are supposed to be: native code, well integrated in the OS, still working when the net is down and using system widgets and OS look&feel.
For me desktop apps are apps that run on my desktop computer, requiring an installation process instead of being loaded via an URL and not subject to the browser's sandbox.
I've had access or owned desktop computers in various shapes and sizes ever since 1993 and let me tell you, since then until now the notion that desktop apps have a unified look and feel is a really recent phenomenon, that happened due to Apple, OS X and the iPhone.
Yes, even Windows 3.1 had standard widgets but historically standard widgets haven't been expressive enough and many developers did not care anyway, especially since most apps were reincarnations of former DOS apps or ports from other platforms. And then the birth of Java made it much worse.
E.g. the most popular MP3 player ever on Windows has been Winamp. Besides the file opening dialog, there was nothing standard about it. Most popular chat apps several years back? ICQ and Yahoo's Messenger. Have you been acquainted with their UIs? In terms of nativeness, let me tell you, the web-enabled Facebook Messenger and Hangouts are improvements, because at least they don't mess up the text rendering.
The Apple HIG dates as far back as the Macintosh. That’s 1987[0]. Visual and behavioral consistency have always been a staple of good design for those who cared.
[0]: https://guidebookgallery.org/books/applehumaninterfaceguidel...
there is a certain section of third party app-developers that argue that app ux should absolutely emulate the host operating system. when this isn't sufficiently expressive, new interface elements should be designed such that they blend in naturally (ie, resemble what likely would have been the os-developer's choices).
That excludes every single .NET application.
> well integrated in the OS
Don't even know what you mean by this.
> still working when the net is down
Not necessarily, a "native" app for Signal still wouldn't work if the net was down.
> and using system widgets and OS look&feel
I guess that excludes pretty much anything built with Qt.
Sure I can understand the reasons behind it, it's JavaScript, programmers for that are abundant, is multi platform because web, but still. If you look at the functionality offered versus the resources used it's just ridiculous.
I'd like to see a graph of code/memory used vs unused in such binaries.