[elpescado]

> Strangely enough there’s still enough native to the platform that even the best notebook that can run Electron is still actually a compelling advantage because I would still have Spotlight

You can't use Spotlight to find a channel in Slack

> I would still have Quick Look

You can't Quick Look a Google Docs document

> I would still have a POSIX environment

You can't `grep` any of your Google Keep notes

> I would still have Exposé

Not really useful if all your "apps" are really browser tabs

> I would still have Time Machine

Can you back up your Figma designs in Time Machine?

[SllX]

Are we just assuming that everything I didn’t list is also just magically gone? I wasn’t.

Or to clarify, my list was mostly (but not entirely) a unique combination of things that distinguish the Macintosh. I can run Emacs anywhere, and every platform more or less has a set of PIM applications like the ones that come preinstalled on Mac OS X, but there’s a core set of features that makes my experience doing stuff I could in theory be doing on other platforms better.

[Wowfunhappy]

> Are we just assuming that everything I didn’t list is also just magically gone? I wasn’t.

I'm not GP, but, well, I guess I'd be curious to hear what else you think is relevant, because this is generally along the lines of my thinking on the matter too. The features which make macOS special become increasingly less relevant as apps move away from the traditional macOS paradigm.

It's a spectrum, to be sure—Exposé is still useful even if all of my windows are Electron apps (although, not if they're browser tabs). But if I'm actually just working in Chrome all day, I really can do that on any machine and have the same (IMO, lesser) experience.

[SllX]

> I'm not GP, but, well, I guess I'd be curious to hear what else you think is relevant

I mean, presently, pretty much anything on a fresh install of a Mac in /Applications or /Applications/Utilities. The Catalyst crap aside that honestly may as well be Electron apps, Apple still has very good application software, most of which I’ve never felt compelled to replace and wouldn’t just magically disappear just because 3rd parties choose Electron. OmniGroup, Panic, Flying Meat, SmileOnMyMac and Bare Bones are still making excellent software that I use every day, and I have no indications that any of them are thinking Electron might be in their future.

Personally I still avoid Electron as much as possible, but when 1Password 8 hits, well, I’m not replacing it with something else unless it actually is somehow terrible. Agile Bits has made excellent Mac software for 15 years in Cocoa, if they went this route, I’m willing to chance it.

My real concern is that there’s no fresh blood developing new and interesting native apps. In the last 5 years, there has been IINA which replaced QuickTime 7 for me, Retrobatch from Flying Meat and I’ve been keeping an eye on nvUltra (a kind of expansion or rethinking or something of Notational Velocity) for a couple of years but it still hasn’t been released. Flying Meat is also basically just one guy and his wife who has a day job, so what happens to Acorn and Retrobatch when he retires?

My other concern is that a lot of the people at Apple that knew how to write good Mac software seem to have already retired, so I’m not holding out for good new and interesting app software on that front.

If there’s a future that’s mostly Electron for me, it’s probably from what I have atrophying and decaying with only Electron-based replacements.