1Password recently announced that they rewrote their longstanding Mac application as an Electron application, and as one might expect, Mac users rightfully lost their shit. A lot of digital ink has been spilled on Electron apps, but to summarize, Electron applications are slow, use a ton of resources, and perhaps worse of all, they don’t look like native applications or follow native conventions. In just about every way, using an Electron application is a degraded experience.
The obvious question is if Electron is so bad, why do companies keep shipping Electron applications? There’s a set of common theories, which do have merit, but I don’t think they explain why Election is gaining so much traction. Before I give you my take, let’s break these down.
The lazy developer theory goes like this: Most developers already know how to build things with web technology. Why would they invest the time to learn how to make a good application for MacOS, iOS, iPadOS, Windows, Android, etc when an Electron application is good enough?