[markbao]

I do like the old JS Gmail UI. But the current JS Gmail UI doesn’t feel any slower. It is cluttered with more features, but some of them I find useful. (Displaying my calendar and being able to accept invites right in Gmail being a big one.)

[avhon1]

As someone who used the HTML gmail interface right up until google pulled the plug: the JS version is much slower to load. Every morning, I get to have about 10 seconds thinking about how it used to be faster.

[Narishma]

It absolutely is slower. To an extreme degree even. It takes 10 to 20 seconds to load and is incredibly sluggish to use on some low-end machines I use regularly.

[markbao]

I disagree that we should be optimizing for low end machines and holding back on product improvements for the 80% mass market. Technology improves, it’s one of its best traits. We don’t need to be stuck in the past.

[ndriscoll]

Low-end machines aren't necessarily stuck in the past. e.g. $150 minipcs that use 5W to give you a perfectly snappy desktop Linux experience.

[markbao]

I think those machines are super fun and a snappy Linux experience is very satisfying. I use a lightweight WM myself on Linux and prefer it over the heavy ones. But this segment is 0.1% of technology users and we shouldn’t constrain applications to the limited hardware that this population chooses to use.