Hacker News Reader

Comment by Hamuko | Hacker News Reader

>Still unsure how Apple & co. will make their proprietary video and messaging platforms "interoperable". I doubt they'll be writing an RFC any time soon.

I'd be pretty happy if I could integrate iMessage and Signal together, since I hate the fact that iMessage is the only messaging platform with a native macOS app.

View on HN

What's Signal on Mac, Electron?

Yes.

Signal.app/Contents/Frameworks/Electron Framework.framework

What's stopping Signal from creating their own native MacOS app?

paying developers to do it. Electron vastly cuts down on the amount of time to product with apps like signal. To replicate the results native would require a engineering team.

Why? Signal is a very simple application.

It used to be very common for individual developers, or small teams, to publish native programs. WinZip, Winamp, 7Zip, TreeSize, Tag & Rename, Beyond Compare, Nero, PuTTY, all just off the top of my head.

It is very, very possible to create performant, maintainable native software with no larger a developer team than it takes to build web software. We're just collectively too lazy to try.

Telegram is also native on macOS

Which might sound well on paper but would be hell to actually do. iMessage and Signal are not 1-to-1 in their feature set nor is iMessage a superset of Signal. Also I find it odd that you are pushing for shoving a square peg in a round hole vs signal actually writing a native mac app. I'm not sure why it's iMessage's "fault" they have the "only" native messaging platform app for macOS.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com