Electron apps are ruining the Windows 11 experience, and even the JavaScript creator has warned against ‘rushed web UX over native,’ but it doesn’t look like that will change Microsoft’s plans. In a post on X and other places, Microsoft reaffirmed its commitment to AI in Windows 11 and encouraged Electron developers to consider using AI in their apps.

  • 34 seconds

    Every damn fucking time MSFT is mentioned: Install Linux, Problem Solved.

  • 6 minutes
    1. Not really surprising considering Windows seems to be increasingly swapping their native shell components for Web Views (you can tell because sometimes they randomly fail to load (: )

    2. You know it’s bad when Brendan fucking Eich is the reasonable one

  • 5 hours

    Sure, I love it when a 50KB app takes 50MB because some cunt designer only knows HTML.

  • 5 hours

    I would actually be for keyboards having a dedicated AI key, because then I would always have a key to remap to my voice PTT without loosing anything useful.

  • this solidifies two of my predictions from 15-20 years ago.

    1. Microsoft is moving to an “internet required” OS, likely meaning cloud based OS
    2. all apps will become web apps

    1000003241

    my final prediction from then was subscription based access to your operating system, apps, and data. you own nothing. your data is constantly consumed and used to train their products. you will never be able to extract your data and will be forever locked-in to their product. this also means that you will have to pay extra for app use. need to use Photoshop? that’s an extra fee. need to use 3D rendering software? thats the ultra package with GPU fees per hour.

    most of this is actually happening under the covers, but nothing is locking us in.

    I would say we have about 5-7 years before the above happens and there’s no way back.

  • 12 hours

    -> push software that needs tons of ram

    -> cause ram shortage

    -> ???

    -> …profit?

    • At least for Enterprise where the real money is, “???” seems to be https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-365/windows-365-enterprise

      This isn’t some grand plan 5d chess. The people running these companies are dumb as hell and lucky. They get convinced from one silicon valley thought leader’s blog post that ai and electron are the future and then direct the entire company in that direction thinking they’re a great leader who will be remembered for pushing the company in a novel direction at just the right time. They attend a talk by a different thought leader who talks about a future of ai cloud computers that anyone can access from anywhere with more computational power than could ever fit into the shitty laptop they’re accessing it from, then they go to the board meeting the next day with their bright new idea to do cloud personal desktops.

      These companies are entirely responding to (nonsensical) market forces and the whims of high ranking individuals within their ranks. It’s painful and ridiculous.

      • Posting scammy Amazon links feels like cheating when having these discussions, but I kinda get where they’re coming from. The fact that people can try to sell a laptop with only 64gb disk is absolutely mental to me, because that’s not even enough to let the BASE OS run normally and update reliably. And that’s before you start doing anything on it.

  • the worst thing about electron apps besides everything about election apps are the fact that there’s no shared libraries so you basically have to have a billion of the same node modules on your system for every electron app that you have.

  • Move to Linux while you still can (unless you are living already in California and it’s forbidden)

  • 13 hours

    Microsoft also make the one app that actually shines in electron: vs code. It’s really quite optimised. But somehow they didn’t bother learning lessons from that and keep rolling out terrible slop like teams and new outlook.

    It’s weird how one company can do things right and also be do incompetent at the same time.

    • It’s weird how one company can do things right and also be do incompetent at the same time.

      The way MS is structured internally, this is like being surprised that some NFL teams win the Super Bowl and some teams are the Cleveland Browns.

      • I just realized I’ve been staring at this picture for over a minute, trying to figure out what it means. What does this picture mean?

        • 9 hours

          Even thought Microsoft is one company, all the internal teams are separate, don’t communicate and usually do what they want with no regard to anything else the other teams are doing. Been an issue with Microslop for years, and its especially noticeable in their office/email divisions.

        • 8 hours

          Part of a old joke about various big tech org charts. Microsoft divisions are purported to be in not only fighting with each other but also within themselves.

    • I can’t stand VScode, whoever decided a text editor should be written in HTML/CSS and JavaScript deserves to be shot

    • 13 hours

      Tbf vscode has opensource contributors and they had the code for atom text editor (by developers of electron and github) to look as reference code.

      Rip Atom, it’s a shame microsoft bought github and ended your development to promote their IDE. Who could have known they have no morals.

    • 13 hours

      Isn’t VS Code open-sourced? Can those optimizations be contributed to the wider community of electron experts?

      I guess my point is VS Code works well because the users can fix it and they have the ability to do so. The same cant be said for Teams & Outlook. No one can fix that PoS.

  • 13 hours

    Javascript creator thinks they are rushing things.
    Javascript creator thinks they are rushing things.

  • The next step in app delivery is shipping a full VM with the operating system and the app.

  • We could view this as “MS pushes for stupid direction that clued-in tech people are opposed to,” or we could view this as “MS gives up on native apps because everyone else of consequence already has.” I hate it but I have eyes.

    If AI enhanced coding is really so great, we might expect to see a Renaissance of small, efficient native apps, even on platforms like Android. I’m not holding my breath, though.