> Phone apps can be good desktop apps with minimal modification
I don't really agree here. Phones and desktops are very different, and have very different UI needs.
> Stop it, please. Smartphones are computers. They're used for the same things, even increasingly so. Stop pretending they're that fundamentally different.
Navigating with a mouse and keyboard is not the same thing at all ad navigating with your fingers on a touchscreen.
The UI features required are different, but like on websites, mobile-first works very well. There are some pretty native-feeling Catalyst apps on macOS: Voice Memos (has flaws), Jira (very native feel), Vectornator (pretty full featured and perfectly native feeling Mac app) and even unmodified iOS apps (Metatext) that run great, as well as smartphone-styled Apps (Telegram) that are great to use.
Sure. Keyboard shortcuts for text. Right click instead of long press. More precision. Hoveing. Swiping back on the trackpad instead of the screen. There are differences - but they're really not that fundamental. Minimal differences.
We can certainly argue about whether mobile first allows an app to use the full potential of the desktop. Maybe not. But I honestly don't care that much if the alternative is no app.
Ah yes. Because an app optimized for touch on a tiny screen will scale beautifully to work with precise controls via keyboard and mouse/trackpad on large and huge screens.
As evidenced by all the professional apps that require little to no modifications.
Small primitive apps with little functionality and barely anything beyond text. Or really limited in their functionality. Or have to hide the absolute vast majority of their interface behind multiple clicks.
Also. Telegram isn't "smartphone-style". It's a native app.
> It sounds like you’re imagining Photoshop in a mobile form factor
Yes, I am. Because here's the list of apps I actually use daily:
- IntelliJ IDEA
- Figma/Sketch
- GitUp
- Terminal/iTerm
Oh, look. All of them cannot be "it's just mobile apps, just blow them up, they will work with little to no midification"
You’re talking about turning desktop apps into phone apps. I’m talking about turning phone apps into desktop apps. The former is hard, the latter is easy.
> Telegram isn't "smartphone-style". It's a native app.
With 95-100% (depending on usage) smartphone UX. If the iOS apps on M1 macs situation wasn’t such a fiasco I’d like to compare the two. My prediction: Loss of keyboard features, drag & drop, not much else (GAIN of image editing).
> Or have to hide the absolute vast majority of their interface behind multiple clicks.
It’s arguable whether this is a good thing or not, but that’s exactly where desktop software is going, likely to reduce clutter. It’s not a necessity for a convergent approach to work, however. Of course you can expand menus and such depending on your platform (one might say in a “responsive” fashion).
> You’re talking about turning desktop apps into phone apps.
I'm talking about the expectations of a desktop app.
> The former is hard, the latter is easy.
It definitely isn't easy.
There's no easy way to transform an app optimised for imprecise touch on small screens into an app requiring precision inputs on a large screen.
There's no easy way to transform an app optimised to display information on a small screen into an app optimised to display information on a large screen.
> With 95-100% (depending on usage) smartphone UX.
It doesn't matter how much usage it gets on the phone. Telegram app on Mac OS is a native app (it's a native app on Windows, too).
> If the iOS apps on M1 macs situation wasn’t such a fiasco
You can't even comprehend why it's a fiasco.
> It’s arguable whether this is a good thing or not, but that’s exactly where desktop software is going, likely to reduce clutter.
It's not "reducing clutter". It's people who spend most of their lives on the phone not understanding how desktop software works and its requirements. You are a prime example of one such person.
> Of course you can expand menus and such depending on your platform
There's no easy way to "just expand the menus". Then you either get a bad experience on the small screen or a bad experience on the big screen, because requirements are completely different.
> Navigating with a mouse and keyboard is not the same thing at all ad navigating with your fingers on a touchscreen.
I wonder how many computer users are actually using a mouse in 2021. I reckon most people use laptops now, which means that people are navigating by touch, either with a trackpad or a touchscreen (I think lots of window laptops have touch screens?)
There’s no way to get actual numbers on this…. is there?
IMHO using a touchpad on a laptop is still much closer to using a mouse than using an iPhone or iPad with touch input. I think it's mainly because the touchpad is so closely integrated with the keyboard. For instance a touch-screen MBP (with the touch screen as replacement of the touchpad) would destroy this close keyboard/touchpad relationship.
I don't really agree here. Phones and desktops are very different, and have very different UI needs.
> Stop it, please. Smartphones are computers. They're used for the same things, even increasingly so. Stop pretending they're that fundamentally different.
Navigating with a mouse and keyboard is not the same thing at all ad navigating with your fingers on a touchscreen.