> On the one hand, yes Electron eats a lot of RAM and native apps are more efficient, BUT you can buy 16GB for $100 (and that will only get cheaper/more abundant), and we do finally get to have nice things on Linux, which is new and exciting.
I'm on the fence about Electron. While I do love how it's made portability easier (especially to Linux) I do think people outside of our tech circle get forgotten about.
For example $100 might be pocket money for us but we do need to remember that not everyone in the world has that luxury. I think sometimes peoples obsession with making pretty things with Electron leads them to forget about people on low income or countries where computers are expensive resources.
There's also an argument to be made for how native applications are generally better for people who depend on accessibility features too.
I went to my bank one hour ago and was just reminded of that reality. While I was waiting for my turn, I couldn't help but hear the man before me. He thought his card was broken, but the bank worker told him there were only 9 € on his main account. So he transferred 50 € from his savings account. Overall, he had 189 € at his bank. He was in a hurry, he had to buy a toy for his daughter.
Ok I am sorry I assumed you did - so thank you for not dragging me down :-D It must have been some anonymous jerk who doesn't have the balls to tell me what upset him and give me the chance to argue with him.
In comparison the MBP 2012 and a MBP 2016 do not differ in weight so much (1.4kg vs 2kg which is basically a package of flour) and if I am honest I don't really recognize the difference when carrying them in my backpack.
But it depends on the bag as well, because if you use a messenger bag for example the strain on the shoulder and the back is probably noticeable. Also many people like to carry their notebooks around with one arm / hand and of course this will be a huge difference then.
Some people like to use the Thinkpad X1 or the Dell XPS as a replacement but I don't have any hands-on experience with those.
I hope someone will recognize the gap in the market and jump in to produce 13 inch, retina screen uni-body metal notebooks with the ability to upgrade the parts and with all the ports you still need when not living in some bubble where magically everything was converted into USB-C overnight.
Author here. Yes I do realize I'm quite privileged to be talking about $100 that way. I was hoping more to illustrate that RAM will only get more abundant, and Electron only more RAM efficient, as time progresses. I would have liked a world where there was a perfect native app for every app on every platform, but I'm happy that while that world does not exist, I now get to use Linux for all of those apps. Also when you're less fortunate but managed to save up for a machine, you now have the option to spend the money that would have otherwise gone to deepen Apple/MS pockets, on more RAM instead.
> Also when you're less fortunate but managed to save up for a machine, you now have the option to spend the money that would have otherwise gone to deepen Apple/MS pockets, on more RAM instead.
For many people it's not even a case of "saving up for a machine," because they might be using donated hardware. For example the OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) project that runs Fedora on low powered machines[1].
Even for people who can save up for new machines and do install Linux on them, that $100 is still an additional expense they wouldn't have needed irrespective of any comparisons to Microsoft nor Apple "taxes".
For these people, particularly the first group, Electron simply isn't an option. So at best developers are depriving themselves of a future growth market but at worst they're excluding deprived sections of society who are already isolated from the IT industry as it is.
That all said, I don't mean any of this as a criticism of yourself nor what you had written. None of what you said it technically nor morally wrong despite the points I've made. I see this as similar to the discussions made about non-English speakers being disadvantaged when learning programming languages.
> For example $100 might be pocket money for us but we do need to remember that not everyone in the world has that luxury.
We're comparing to a Mac though, so that sentiment really has no place in the conversation. The cost of more RAM in the world of Apple is much, much more than $100.
I'm on the fence about Electron. While I do love how it's made portability easier (especially to Linux) I do think people outside of our tech circle get forgotten about.
For example $100 might be pocket money for us but we do need to remember that not everyone in the world has that luxury. I think sometimes peoples obsession with making pretty things with Electron leads them to forget about people on low income or countries where computers are expensive resources.
There's also an argument to be made for how native applications are generally better for people who depend on accessibility features too.