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Comment by ogre_codes | Hacker News Reader

Unfortunately, it feels like everything is turning into what Linux was 10 years ago. MacOS is better, but the increasing dominance of Electron and Java apps which bring their own UIs into whatever eco-system they encounter is very frustrating. If you are stuck running MS apps on the Mac, they are their own micro-cosm as well.

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This was always the case: MS Office used its own widgets since about 1995 on both platforms; Adobe has their own UI controls, and even Apple used custom/dark themes and controls for their pro apps since about forever.

The current state of Apple App Store app is just the cherry on the top.

I don’t use Adobe, so for me, the big culprit has always been MS Office and I’ve been able to mostly avoid it for years. I’m looking more at Slack, VSCode, and other “Essential” apps which have displaced Mac Native tools like BBEdit and if you squint hard, Adium.

I don't think it's inconsistency that bothers me in this case - I don't really care if an app isn't using the same kind of widget design as long it's functional (I spend most of my days in apps that are entirely non-native and I'm fine with them).

The problem is more with GTK design which is crap for 80% of PC applications with dense control layouts, the high padding touch style widgets it offers out of the box work for low density stuff not complex editors).

Even non-native OSX apps integrate into OS in a predictable manner (use toolbar, shortcuts, native file dialogs, etc.)

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