frontpage.
newsnewestaskshowjobs

Made with ♥ by @iamnishanth

Open Source @Github

fp.

Open in hackernews

Meta Replaced the Native WhatsApp for Windows 11 with a Shitty Web App

https://daringfireball.net/2025/11/meta_whatsapp_windows_shitty_web_app
26•SoKamil•2mo ago

Comments

dizhn•2mo ago
Whatsapp is almost non-existent in North America so they can do whatever the hell they want with it and we'll take it.
anta40•2mo ago
So what do Android users on that area use, then? Telegram? Signal? FB Messenger?
roumenguha•2mo ago
Mostly FB Messenger, or SMS/MMS
moralestapia•2mo ago
Not true. Their numbers are pretty solid.
jorvi•2mo ago
The answer is that developers mainly use Macs, and they don't want to deal with a crappy Electron application in daily use so they give themselves the privilege of a better experience even if it makes no business sense.

You can see the same with Telegram, which has first party Electron applications for Windows / macOS / Linux, a first party native macOS application, and a bunch of third party blessings including a Windows UWP application.

Note that there needs be an environment for this. You don't see a native version of VSCode or 1Password 8 because those orgs actually care about their applications and take great effort to make them feel good despite being built on Electron.

dadoum•2mo ago
Telegram Desktop is using Qt as far as I can see.
jorvi•2mo ago
Ah, well, honestly there goes to show that well-engineered Electron applications (VScode, 1Password) can feel pretty much as good as native or near-native applications (Telegram).
chistev•2mo ago
Are you sure that developers mainly use Macs?
alephnerd•2mo ago
Absolutely in US and Canada, and partially true in Israel, India, and China.

The *nix and DevTooling community is better for MacOS compared to Windows, and a large portion of the software industry is iOS native apps, which requires a Mac to develop on.

stevesimmons•2mo ago
WSL gives a pretty great Linux dev experience under Windows.

As for "a large portion of the software industry is iOS native apps"... How about plugging in some assumptions here and then multiplying them together:

1. Mobile app share of total software development. 30%

2. iOS share versus Android: 30%

3. What % of iOS app dev is native apps? 40%

My assumptions here give something like 4%. You should put whatever numbers you feel are right here, and I'm pretty sure it won't be close to "a large portion".

alephnerd•2mo ago
You can develop Android apps on a Mac, but you can't develop iOS apps without a Mac.

Furthermore from an app market perspective, Apple's App Store saw around $140-150B in spending in 2025 versus $60-65B in spending on Google Play during the same time period [0].

As such, procurement teams coalesced around purchasing MacBooks because it opened the most doors.

> WSL gives a pretty great Linux dev experience under Windows

It's decent, but the a major blocker for enterprises adopting WSL is it's unsupported by most XDR tools, making it a no-go from a risk/audit perspective.

I can't speak for WSL's developer experience, but the fact that I know L64+ employees at MS using "the Scottish laptop" is telling.

[0] - https://backlinko.com/iphone-vs-android-statistics

porridgeraisin•2mo ago
I don't know why iOS share vs Android is relevant? Any company that's making a mobile app will not ignore (a very affluent) 30% of the market. So all consumer apps _will_ have an iOS version.

I don't know anything about mobile share of overall SW development.

hu3•2mo ago
It's not true as can be evidenced in any developer anual survey like GitHub's, Jetbrains or Stack Overflow's. Most developers use Windows.
frou_dh•2mo ago
If you consider the pipeline for new employees in big tech, I doubt many of them have experience of (or much interest in) true native Windows app development. They have probably been marinated in web-style development and so that's what they are good at and indeed prefer to do.

In a way, the blame lies with Microsoft (and not e.g. Meta) for failing to keep new generations interested in its native frameworks.

cyanydeez•2mo ago
The web browser route could be what Java was promised to be if we stopped treating it like a subsidized product and instead saw it as a public good and a multinational cooperative utility.
iamflimflam1•2mo ago
Pretty clear what’s happened from reading the article. The native Mac application comes for free as a result of their native iOS application.

The same is not true of the native windows application.

jowea•2mo ago
The native windows application comes for free as a result of the Windows Phon... oh right.

Now it makes sense why Microsoft would get concerned that losing mobile might lead to losing the desktop.

ChrisArchitect•2mo ago
More discussion:

Meta replaces WhatsApp for Windows with web wrapper

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45910347

Queueing Theory v2: DORA metrics, queue-of-queues, chi-alpha-beta-sigma notation

https://github.com/joelparkerhenderson/queueing-theory
1•jph•11m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Hibana – choreography-first protocol safety for Rust

https://hibanaworks.dev/
3•o8vm•13m ago•0 comments

Haniri: A live autonomous world where AI agents survive or collapse

https://www.haniri.com
1•donangrey•14m ago•1 comments

GPT-5.3-Codex System Card [pdf]

https://cdn.openai.com/pdf/23eca107-a9b1-4d2c-b156-7deb4fbc697c/GPT-5-3-Codex-System-Card-02.pdf
1•tosh•27m ago•0 comments

Atlas: Manage your database schema as code

https://github.com/ariga/atlas
1•quectophoton•30m ago•0 comments

Geist Pixel

https://vercel.com/blog/introducing-geist-pixel
2•helloplanets•33m ago•0 comments

Show HN: MCP to get latest dependency package and tool versions

https://github.com/MShekow/package-version-check-mcp
1•mshekow•40m ago•0 comments

The better you get at something, the harder it becomes to do

https://seekingtrust.substack.com/p/improving-at-writing-made-me-almost
2•FinnLobsien•42m ago•0 comments

Show HN: WP Float – Archive WordPress blogs to free static hosting

https://wpfloat.netlify.app/
1•zizoulegrande•44m ago•0 comments

Show HN: I Hacked My Family's Meal Planning with an App

https://mealjar.app
1•melvinzammit•44m ago•0 comments

Sony BMG copy protection rootkit scandal

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootkit_scandal
1•basilikum•46m ago•0 comments

The Future of Systems

https://novlabs.ai/mission/
2•tekbog•47m ago•1 comments

NASA now allowing astronauts to bring their smartphones on space missions

https://twitter.com/NASAAdmin/status/2019259382962307393
2•gbugniot•52m ago•0 comments

Claude Code Is the Inflection Point

https://newsletter.semianalysis.com/p/claude-code-is-the-inflection-point
3•throwaw12•53m ago•1 comments

Show HN: MicroClaw – Agentic AI Assistant for Telegram, Built in Rust

https://github.com/microclaw/microclaw
1•everettjf•53m ago•2 comments

Show HN: Omni-BLAS – 4x faster matrix multiplication via Monte Carlo sampling

https://github.com/AleatorAI/OMNI-BLAS
1•LowSpecEng•54m ago•1 comments

The AI-Ready Software Developer: Conclusion – Same Game, Different Dice

https://codemanship.wordpress.com/2026/01/05/the-ai-ready-software-developer-conclusion-same-game...
1•lifeisstillgood•56m ago•0 comments

AI Agent Automates Google Stock Analysis from Financial Reports

https://pardusai.org/view/54c6646b9e273bbe103b76256a91a7f30da624062a8a6eeb16febfe403efd078
1•JasonHEIN•59m ago•0 comments

Voxtral Realtime 4B Pure C Implementation

https://github.com/antirez/voxtral.c
2•andreabat•1h ago•1 comments

I Was Trapped in Chinese Mafia Crypto Slavery [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zOcNaWmmn0A
2•mgh2•1h ago•0 comments

U.S. CBP Reported Employee Arrests (FY2020 – FYTD)

https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/stats/reported-employee-arrests
1•ludicrousdispla•1h ago•0 comments

Show HN: I built a free UCP checker – see if AI agents can find your store

https://ucphub.ai/ucp-store-check/
2•vladeta•1h ago•1 comments

Show HN: SVGV – A Real-Time Vector Video Format for Budget Hardware

https://github.com/thealidev/VectorVision-SVGV
1•thealidev•1h ago•0 comments

Study of 150 developers shows AI generated code no harder to maintain long term

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9EbCb5A408
2•lifeisstillgood•1h ago•0 comments

Spotify now requires premium accounts for developer mode API access

https://www.neowin.net/news/spotify-now-requires-premium-accounts-for-developer-mode-api-access/
1•bundie•1h ago•0 comments

When Albert Einstein Moved to Princeton

https://twitter.com/Math_files/status/2020017485815456224
1•keepamovin•1h ago•0 comments

Agents.md as a Dark Signal

https://joshmock.com/post/2026-agents-md-as-a-dark-signal/
2•birdculture•1h ago•1 comments

System time, clocks, and their syncing in macOS

https://eclecticlight.co/2025/05/21/system-time-clocks-and-their-syncing-in-macos/
1•fanf2•1h ago•0 comments

McCLIM and 7GUIs – Part 1: The Counter

https://turtleware.eu/posts/McCLIM-and-7GUIs---Part-1-The-Counter.html
2•ramenbytes•1h ago•0 comments

So whats the next word, then? Almost-no-math intro to transformer models

https://matthias-kainer.de/blog/posts/so-whats-the-next-word-then-/
1•oesimania•1h ago•0 comments