So what is a useful way to think about the tradeoff? Unintuitively, sometimes native tech can actually be the cheapest way to achieve a certain goal, and sometimes cross-platform technologies actually lead to better products, even for very well-funded companies. In practice, the tradeoff is about more than “cheap vs. Well excellent question, synthetic rhetorical person! Each time a cross-platform app has found itself in the crosshairs of the internet, I hear a variant of this question: “ What is it about enterprise companies that make so many of them abandon native apps, when they could surely afford to develop one app for each platform?” But it is wrong enough that this mental model tends to obscure exactly why the latest large, profitable company has gone down this path. Like, it’s true enough for a hand wavey explanation of why cross-platform tools are popular. Now, the discourse around cross-platform app technologies has traditionally revolved around a simple idea: cross-platform development is cheaper, while native development leads to better apps.Īnd this is kinda true. Like many developers, I love and appreciate a well-crafted native UI, and I’ve been somewhat skeptical of the consistent trend towards cross-platform app UIs. Agilebits recently caused a stir with their announcement that they’ve rewritten 1Password 8 as a cross-platform Electron app, replacing their well-loved native Mac app.
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