Genuine question, why does it matter? Why shouldn't a project choose a production ready method of creating cross platform compatible code to avoid duplication of efforts and cost?
because most people use more than one program at the same time? fire up that one along with, I dunno, Spotify and Discord and Slack, and suddenly your midrange laptop's RAM is all but gone.
Oh the fact it's cross platform is not the issue, the issue is that Electron sucks. There are better alternatives available like Tauri, yet companies keep using Electron because that's what their developers know and they're afraid to try something new.
But if the app is just a bundled web browser that goes to a single web page why don't I go to that page with my regular web browser and save the RAM / disk space / bandwidth?
Because when I'm looking for where all my RAM went and realise I'm running 7 instances of Chrome browser for no reason. Meanwhile an actual instance of Chrome with ~20 tabs is still a single instance, but with multiple threads.
Which is... Also a real desktop app. This shallow take is getting incredibly old, and doesn't even contribute to actual valuable discussion... If you don't see the value in this being shipped, then why try and tear the value down for others?
I main C#, and even I would rather build cross platform full applications with electron than any of the other options available. I'm definitely choosing it over QT or gtk. Why? Because I can actually ship the project with all the necessary features, in good time, and bake in a great user experience.
That's the difference here. Practical problems vs reality. Shipping the project & features vs not.
Yes, there are many successful applications not built with electron, ofc there are, that's not my point. My point is that the productivity difference is such that it's the difference between not building the thing vs building it and successful shipping it to users. You can argue and shit on the difference, but at the end of the day the above is what really matters.
Electron apps are not real apps. They're web apps and in that case I can have even a better experience with a browser since I can use extensions, tabs, saving favorites and so on.
There are really few electron apps that deserve to be called "desktop app" and from what I'm seeing from the screenshots, this isn't one of them.
If I really wanted to have a separate icon and window for this website I can tell my browser to install the pwa icon in the start menu. Wow, instant made desktop app!
They will never open their apps. The whole business model of Proton is centered around user lock-in.
Who wants to bet they'll discontinue the IMAP/SMTP desktop bridge after the desktop app has been out for a while? At which point you will not be able anymore to use an IMAP tool to extract your mail and go to another service.
If you store a lot of email on Proton take a backup now.
That's my problem with these encrypted services: they lock you in. It makes me feel queasy, but at the same time, it ain't google or yahoo or whatever.
Privacy focused people use more often Linux so the percentage of Linux users for proton services might be a bit higher. I don't care about a calendar or mail app but I think a proton drive client for Linux would be important.
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Proton’s desktop app, on the other hand, will let you access emails offline without having to set up that bridge, which should be more convenient.
(The program will cache a large number of emails for offline use, Proton says.)
It’s important to note that you’ll still need internet access to both send and encrypt your emails on Proton.
But the offline feature will let you view and draft emails while traveling, during a power outage, or any other situation where you don’t have access to the internet.
Proton is also bringing encrypted auto-forwarding to paid users, both on its desktop and browser versions, though the encryption for forwards will only apply when the forwarded emails go to other Proton users.
The company says it has made improvements to Proton Calendar, too, including a fully searchable web version.