Curious, what do you have against Electron built apps? I feel like the last few apps I've used that were built on Electron actually worked quite nicely. Wondering what you found bad with them...
Their UI feels alien on every platform. The startup time, memory consumption and general performance is subpar to native applications.
Generally, I feel like developers who make software for platforms individually care more for user experience. Like this app, for example, it feels polished, uses the native OS X UI elements and performs super fast (much due to Swift in its nature being faster than JavaScript).
I certainly see the point and some use cases for Electron, however I dislike the recent trend of reinventing the wheel of every application using Electron.
I'm developing an Electron application and I have to agree with you. Although I do not care much about memory consumption, the startup time on a Windows laptop I have sucks too much. Also, I've been doing web development for the last 5 years but web frontend tools are such a PITA even comparing to desktop crossplatform tools, let alone platform specific frameworks..
I think it's a pretty nice option when you don't have the time and resources to develop native applications for a few platforms, or for enterprise apps that are mostly a web front end with a few nice to haves.
As a JavaScript developer, I use and don't dislike Electron apps (currently running Atom!) but one thing I do have to say is that they use a lot more battery power and CPU. As much as I like Feross' work, I tried using WebTorrent Desktop[1] but after some hours of running it my Macbook's fans turned on. To me, a torrent client should always sit quietly in the background taking up as little resources as possible.
I certainly see the point and some use cases for Electron, however I dislike the recent trend of reinventing the wheel of every application using Electron.