[machello13]

> Does it need to be? Not anymore.

I disagree. The fact that most users don't explicitly care is irrelevant — platform conventions are important. They teach a user how to use a new app without having to poke around. Users can drag and drop from one app to another and it just works.

I certainly see the argument that for many companies, it's simply too expensive to write native apps for every platform. But I don't think we need to pretend that non-native apps aren't worse — they're just economical and generally, even at their best, just _okay_.

[munificent]

> The fact that most users don't explicitly care is irrelevant — platform conventions are important. They teach a user how to use a new app without having to poke around.

I agree that's important. But I think it's much less important these days now that operating system developers seem happy to churn their platform's UX every couple of years too. The days when you could read the Apple Human Interface Guidelines and understand how all Mac apps would behave for the next decade are long gone, unfortunately.

For reasons I don't totally understand, the platform vendors are themselves constantly invalidating the information in users' heads, so there's simply less in there for application developers to build on anyway.

[mwcampbell]

> operating system developers seem happy to churn their platform's UX every couple of years too

Since the top-level comment in this subthread is about accessibility, I should mention that the churn is especially bad for blind people using screen readers. That's why I'm apprehensive about Windows 11.

When Windows 10 came out, I was the developer of a third-party screen reader. I did what I could to deal with the platform churn, in the limited time that I could give to it. But I was happy that no critical applications (even Office) were following where the Windows team was trying to go with the platform; once you started up your applications, your PC basically worked the same as before -- even more or less the same as Windows 7.

Then I joined the Windows accessibility team at Microsoft. I suspect that if there had been any significant UI churn in Windows while I was there, the cognitive dissonance that I felt during that time would have been stronger. Perhaps I could have done some good for the experience of using Windows 11 with a screen reader if I had stayed, but then again, an individual developer in an org that big usually doesn't have a lot of power. Anyway, I had my reasons for leaving, and I'm glad to be free to share my honest opinions on Windows again (within the bounds of my NDA).

[machello13]

> For reasons I don't totally understand, the platform vendors are themselves constantly invalidating the information in users' heads, so there's simply less in there for application developers to build on anyway.

To be honest, I'm not sure this is true. macOS has had pretty much 1 major redesign in recent memory (Big Sur), and even that is mostly a visual update -- functionality is all still there and works the same. Toolbar buttons are still toolbar buttons, you can still drag and drop them around, etc etc. In practice, the amount that actually "churned" is pretty small.

[munificent]

Off the top of my head:

- Resizing windows from any edge

- Flipping the scrollbar direction

- Automatically hiding scrollbars

- Traffic light colored buttons on windows

- Whatever the three window buttons are now

- The dock

- "Close without saving" becoming "Delete" in some apps

- Floating alerts versus slide-down anchored alerts

These are all fairly minor, but there's a lot like this and it all adds up to things not quite working the way you expect over time.

[afavour]

I think that ship has already sailed with the prevalence of the web. Users are already very used to learning a new UI for a new app, their online bank doesn't work like Gmail does, nor does Netflix, etc. etc.

Sometimes it feels like OS UI is literally just window dressing these days.

[pseudalopex]

Being common doesn't mean it's good.

[afavour]

Sure but the argument being made was that native UI helps users learn to use apps. My point is that users are very used to learning entirely new UIs on a regular basis.

[pseudalopex]

My point is the 2nd statement doesn't contradict the 1st.

[cunthorpe]

Generally I prefer an app that exists to an app that doesn't exist. Companies that can afford multiple teams are still going the multi-platform way and those who can't, still do it. At the end of the day, you can choose the best app available.

I too would like every app to be a 2MB Swift app, but those are rare for a reason.

[machello13]

Right, it sounds like we're on the same page. My point is that those apps are _worse_. They're just also cheaper to build.