Every time people say 'software is slow today: compare Spotify to Winamp/Xmms', the objectiion is that Spotify isn't Xmms, it's a music streaming service.

I think there's a lesson there for Microsoft, which got a good chunk of their lunch eaten by Zoom twice over (Skype and Teams, at least in video-conferencing - Teams is of course quite successful in team collaboration) and also for browser-based Google Meet: ignoring good UX in favour of a lowest-common-denominator interface just creates space for competitors. And they try to offer a decent native experience on Windows and iOS, as well as web, although of course the pure web experience could be far better. They have a reasonably good UX to start with, but they don't shy away from offering more options and features if you so want. Interestingly, Zoom (ignoring their various other issues) is a company that seems to do this well. It's the 'designer knows best' mentality that fails to strike a good balance between simplicity and customizability, and not taking the time to understand what users want. Gnome had it with Nautilus, for instance - it's definitely not solely an Electron thing. It actually runs much better inside a browser or in the native iOS app, which is a giant middle finger to Microsoft's platform ambitions - it's like they're not even incentivizing people to take advantage of Windows.ĭeleting or not including features is a separate 'thing' though, I feel. But when you're at the level of MS Teams, I absolutely agree - that app could be far better tuned. And to be fair, for simple use cases, it's works well. Electron is basically the Java Applets/AWT/Swing of our time, because it lets teams prioritize features and delivery speed over great, performant, UX. Good cross-platform UI is hard, and web technology is seen as an 'easy' way out because you can hire plenty of resources and yes - it does seem silly to reinvent the wheel when HTML/CSS have implemented something already. Everything is now a bloated Electron app where all the features have been deleted

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