{"id":33521,"date":"2021-09-06T16:04:55","date_gmt":"2021-09-06T20:04:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=33521"},"modified":"2024-12-05T10:00:31","modified_gmt":"2024-12-05T15:00:31","slug":"the-persistent-gravity-of-cross-platform","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2021\/09\/06\/the-persistent-gravity-of-cross-platform\/","title":{"rendered":"The Persistent Gravity of Cross Platform"},"content":{"rendered":"

Allen Pike<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

Each time a cross-platform app has found itself in the crosshairs of the internet, I hear a variant of this question: “What is it about enterprise companies that make so many of them abandon native apps, when they could surely afford to develop one app for each platform?”<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

At the highest level, cross-platform UI technologies prioritize coordinated featurefulness over polished UX.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

Where things get interesting is when you look at customer-facing software. Products where the experience is a big contributor to success or failure, and the higher “UX ceiling” that platform-specific UI code enables can help retain paying users. It seems, conceptually, that a big company willing to spend big money to build really nice native Mac and Windows apps would be in a position to outcompete the Electron-based Slacks, Figmas, and Spotifys of the world. Right? So why isn’t that happening?<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

When you’re rapidly hiring, rapidly adding client features, and adding support for a third, fourth, and fifth platform, things start to get dicey. […] Hiring more engineers makes for a non-zero improvement, but the exponential – or at least super-linear – nature of coordination overhead means the additional product velocity per new hire can get disturbingly low.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Gus Mueller<\/a>:<\/p>\n

More and more apps written with web tech (such as Electron) are showing up on the Mac desktop everyday. I understand why, but I don’t have to like it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

Previously:<\/p>\n