[d--b]

I can't help but believe that the native vs crossplatform tradeoff will eventually go away when someone does a good enough crossplatform library...

Video games are cross-platform and polished and fast and they have been so for a while now.

When someone comes up with a Unity for desktop applications, that's when this problem is going to go away.

I hope Sciter.Js is going to be it.

[Zababa]

Video games often have not that much consistency between each others, aside from a few basic keys. Thus, they haven't really solved the tradeoff. Part of the complaint against the cross-platform apps is that you have to adapt yourself to the workflow of the app, instead of the app having to adapt itself to the workflow of the platform.

[d--b]

Sure, though it's debatable that it's a plus.

I switch between computers often, and I am happy that my spotify looks the same here and there. I really don't want my spotify app to feel like gimp on Linux and like Excel on Windows...

[Zababa]

That's true. I'm personally happy enough that I get to have almost all of the apps I need on Linux with this cross-platform trend. I also use Linux at home and Windows at work, so a cross-platform experience fits me. But I can see how it's frustrating to be left behind when you were used to your platform and people adapting their software to it.

For videogames, I think it makes sense that many have different controls. Trying to force the same controls would make some very hard to play. But I can see people arguing that most apps aren't as specialized as video games, and thus shouldn't need this level of personalization. There is the same argument to be made with special fonts for your apps, vs trying as much as you can to use the system ones.

[robertlagrant]

To give a counterexample, Microsoft Teams notifications on MacOS can't be dragged offscreen; I have to wait for them to vanish. They're not using the native notifications tech (who knows why), and so they're jarring compared to all the nice MacOS applications.

[mook]

Video games are immersive experiences: you're interacting with only the video game when you play it (or at least, that's the design), and you don't experience the jarring from task switching because you don't switch.

For desktop applications — especially a password manager whose main use involves switching to it quickly to find something to enter into a different application — there is a lot of that resistance when you go between apps that feel totally different.

(I currently work on an Electron app — but that's because it was already one when I joined the team, and it's in a space where time to market for multiple platforms is definitely more important than a good polished experience, at least at the stage we're at. Sad as that is.)

[JamesSwift]

And with that you will lose all sorts of quality-of-life. e.g. tab order, accessibility, hotkeys, etc. All of that has to be recreated to be a replacement.