My own views on this have evolved in the last 10 or so years. I used to vastly prefer applications using the platform's native UI controls, but at some point recently I realized I no longer really care all that much, and I don't think it factors in to my purchase or usage decisions anymore. I was actually surprised when I realized this.
Curious of others' opinions or perspectives.
If it isn’t useful, it doesn’t matter.
Sure some developers have strong opinions about this…and if you are selling to developers those opinions matter (most commonly, a job interview ).
But apps are gonna be shit for other reasons and the attraction of native-or-not is that fixing those reasons are much harder. Even when you choose to use theory to make GUI choice to add to complexity of development).
Or to put it another way, the simplest thing that might work means you stay working instead of thinking (thinking != working). Good luck.
There were always outliers and ugly UIs, but it always felt like there was a uniformity that made it easier to get around in an unfamiliar app. Whereas now, electron apps look and work very differently (comparing slack to Spotify to VSCode and so on).
That said, I think very few people care as much as I do about it, and cross-platform UIs save a ton of development work.
They’re great to get started, and when what you need is already available. But they’re a pain for everything else.
One idle thought I had: when computer interfaces were still new, using physical analogies like file cabinets was good practice for teaching new users. Maybe GUIs are now commonplace enough that people are able to speak the different "languages" without as much trouble.
Tbh it doesn’t matter really. As I implied in the previous comment, I can’t imagine many people bemoan the fact they can’t press Alt-f to get an illustrative menu drop-down, even if I do.
A good enough team can handle all of this with any platform but I think the issue is that people who respect the experience use native, and those who want to cut costs don't.
Frankly, I couldn't care less about the UI looks or whether it's native or whatever. I get in, perform a task, get out.
As long as I can do what I need to do, the buttons can be anything.
I think developers care deeply about this. I think if you're in a competitive space then it matters. But I don't think Joe Public cares in the slightest.
Performance yes. Usability yes. Ability to quickly do what I want, yes. Whether it uses native check boxes or owner-drawn check boxes? Nobody cares (for some definition of nobody. )
Put another way, Usability is important. Yes it should look "nice". But at this point I probably don't know what the 'native UI' looks like. Nor do I care.
not_your_vase•7mo ago
perilunar•7mo ago
My bank's mobile app is 200 MB. The website is 10 MB, but most of that is wasted — it could realistically be built in less than a 1 MB. Start-up times and performance are similar.
Why should I lose/waste 200 MB for something that i have to be online to use anyway?
not_your_vase•7mo ago
On the other hand, I also believe that this 200 MB comes mainly from 2 sources: bad engineering from the application developer, and bad engineering from the platform developer. These are not toolkit dependent, however. Bad engineering will create bad products, regardless of the tools used, even when some tools are harder to misuse to create bad products.