Comment by mrweasel | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mrweasel | Hacker News Reader

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One major mistake Google also makes is assuming that everything is web, it's not. Google have world class engineers, they have the ability to develop infrastructure that scales globally, yet they apparently can't write desktop application.

A few days ago I tried to install Google Chat, for work. There's no download buttons to be found, you're just logged into Chat directly and is greeted by a "You need Chrome to download Chat". Well that just weird, but okay, I can uninstall Chrome afterwards, no problem. Imagine my surprise when launching Chat also launched Chrome. I disregard this as being something Chat just do on first launch. Existing Chrome however also closed Chat.... Okay. Uninstall Chrome then, that should teach Chat to no fool around with Chrome. Now Chat doesn't work, because what Google doesn't tell you is that Chat is now a progressive web app. The icon is pretty though.

Chat can be a web app all it want, but it doesn't get to launch Chrome, I don't want that abomination running all day. The current fix is apparently to install via Home Brew, that downloads a stand-alone app. Google claims the new version is stand-alone, but if it was to launch Chrome it's not really stand-alone is it.

What struck me about all this is that Google doesn't actually have the ability to develop real desktop application. That's really weird, why wouldn't they want to have the best performing, most powerful applications possible on the desktops? Because they can't. Google as an organisation doesn't have the mental capacity and patience to do real desktop programs.

> What struck me about all this is that Google doesn't actually have the ability to develop real desktop application. That's really weird, why wouldn't they want to have the best performing, most powerful applications possible on the desktops? Because they can't. Google as an organisation doesn't have the mental capacity and patience to do real desktop programs.

Because it's a waste of very expensive time to develop native desktop apps in 3 different platforms?

> Because it's a waste of very expensive time to develop native desktop apps in 3 different platforms?

Facebook gave up on the one app and does native apps for the major phones for a reason: native is faster, ultimately more powerful and you have more control to fix bugs.

Electron is a nice option these days. Slack and VS Code are first-in-class applications, and while there's a slight performance hit compared to native, it's still a better experience than web (otherwise, people would have stuck with slack.com)

I think Electron is bloated garbage, and it's a massive waste to shove a Chrome install into your chat client to be a chat client...

...But it's still better than Google telling the parent they have to install Chrome to install Google Chat.

Fwiw, I use discord.com, slack.com, and teams.com. So at least some folks prefer chat in browser to Electron. I do this to preserve system resources, but because they somehow seem to work better for whatever reason when run from within the browser.

Counterpoint: Electron is a terrible option these days, and while I'd be okay with a "performance hit", it's actually UI lagginess that I can't deal with (and makes it a horrible frustration to deal with).

Isn't that just your opinion, versus the fact that it's the most popular IDE out there, so the plurality of programmers find that it's good enough?

Isn’t that just their opinion? I know many developers using Emacs because it’s insanely powerful and lightning fast, unlike modern IDEs.

Just like it’s a waste of time to develop 3 different chat platforms?

Is it really that expensive though? Again, take Chat, how many developers would that really require? My guess is three to five for each platform. One skilled Mac developer would be enough to be honest, but let's say five for redundancy and speed. I fairly sure Google have more than 15 developers on the PWA.

Plus given the similarities between APIs/languages, the same team of developers could likely handle iOS, iPadOS, and macOS without significantly more work than just iOS and iPadOS (assuming the developers are comfortable with all three platforms).

The majority of the underlying libraries wouldn't necessarily need to be changed; "only" the UI layer and some of the APIs (which is non-trivial, but doable).

> Because it's a waste of very expensive time to develop native desktop apps in 3 different platforms?

and yet the latest-and-greatest cross platform framework is supposed to be Flutter

It's mobile first, desktop and web versions are in alpha, and it's not supposed to replace generic web apps.

In fairness, the "Can't write desktop applications" issue doesn't seem to be restricted to Google. The Microsoft Teams app for iOS is fine, nothing special but it works. The Microsoft Teams app for Microsoft Windows is just complete and utter garbage. It's laggy, it's missing features that the mobile clients have, and it's just kind of a mess all around.

In case anyone was wondering why Apple is going with the "iOS/iPadOS apps on the desktop" route, it's because this is so incredibly common; great, first-class mobile apps and nearly unusable, garbage Electron-based desktop apps.

Edit: Plus, in regards to Google, something about Chromebooks. A good desktop app on a Chromebook is just a web app that works well in Chrome. Why make a desktop app for what they seem to think is just an outdated computing metaphor using APIs they don't control?

Oh Teams on the Mac is a tyre-fire too, don’t worry.

There was a recent conversation between my aunt and I about her being able to video call my 86-year-old grandmother. Because we need video calls to just "pop up" for her, expecting her to accept an invite from her email (which she forgot exists...) or open a new tab for a new chat app (which she won't remember either...), isn't an option.

My aunt is pretty locked to Google platforms, she is the person who trains their platforms at her work... and you know what, the idea that she could "just use Skype" didn't even strike her mind:

It's already installed on my grandma's Windows PC, she already has a Microsoft account anyways, and it "just works", popping up a "[aunt] is calling] dialog when she gets a call. Skype worked great, and it's available on every platform.

It really starts to amaze me that Google doesn't understand the importance of that level of integration and simplicity considering their supposed market being "everyone". My aunt had been considering buying a Google Home/Nest/whatever it is today or an Android tablet, just to use one app to call my grandmother.

But my grandmother already has her PC open, and Skype "just works". It rings like a phone and it has a big green button to answer it.

Google wants everything to run on Chromebooks for the education market, so writing native desktop apps goes against their own interests.

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