If you consider the pipeline for new employees in big tech, I doubt many of them have experience of (or much interest in) true native Windows app development. They have probably been marinated in web-style development and so that's what they are good at and indeed prefer to do.
In a way, the blame lies with Microsoft (and not e.g. Meta) for failing to keep new generations interested in its native frameworks.
The web browser route could be what Java was promised to be if we stopped treating it like a subsidized product and instead saw it as a public good and a multinational cooperative utility.
The answer is that developers mainly use Macs, and they don't want to deal with a crappy Electron application in daily use so they give themselves the privilege of a better experience even if it makes no business sense.
You can see the same with Telegram, which has first party Electron applications for Windows / macOS / Linux, a first party native macOS application, and a bunch of third party blessings including a Windows UWP application.
Note that there needs be an environment for this. You don't see a native version of VSCode or 1Password 8 because those orgs actually care about their applications and take great effort to make them feel good despite being built on Electron.
Ah, well, honestly there goes to show that well-engineered Electron applications (VScode, 1Password) can feel pretty much as good as native or near-native applications (Telegram).
Absolutely in US and Canada, and partially true in Israel, India, and China.
The *nix and DevTooling community is better for MacOS compared to Windows, and a large portion of the software industry is iOS native apps, which requires a Mac to develop on.
WSL gives a pretty great Linux dev experience under Windows.
As for "a large portion of the software industry is iOS native apps"... How about plugging in some assumptions here and then multiplying them together:
1. Mobile app share of total software development. 30%
2. iOS share versus Android: 30%
3. What % of iOS app dev is native apps? 40%
My assumptions here give something like 4%. You should put whatever numbers you feel are right here, and I'm pretty sure it won't be close to "a large portion".
I don't know why iOS share vs Android is relevant? Any company that's making a mobile app will not ignore (a very affluent) 30% of the market. So all consumer apps _will_ have an iOS version.
I don't know anything about mobile share of overall SW development.
You can develop Android apps on a Mac, but you can't develop iOS apps without a Mac.
Furthermore from an app market perspective, Apple's App Store saw around $140-150B in spending in 2025 versus $60-65B in spending on Google Play during the same time period [0].
As such, procurement teams coalesced around purchasing MacBooks because it opened the most doors.
> WSL gives a pretty great Linux dev experience under Windows
It's decent, but the a major blocker for enterprises adopting WSL is it's unsupported by most XDR tools, making it a no-go from a risk/audit perspective.
I can't speak for WSL's developer experience, but the fact that I know L64+ employees at MS using "the Scottish laptop" is telling.
Pretty clear what’s happened from reading the article. The native Mac application comes for free as a result of their native iOS application.
The same is not true of the native windows application.
The native windows application comes for free as a result of the Windows Phon... oh right.
Now it makes sense why Microsoft would get concerned that losing mobile might lead to losing the desktop.
If you consider the pipeline for new employees in big tech, I doubt many of them have experience of (or much interest in) true native Windows app development. They have probably been marinated in web-style development and so that's what they are good at and indeed prefer to do.
In a way, the blame lies with Microsoft (and not e.g. Meta) for failing to keep new generations interested in its native frameworks.
The web browser route could be what Java was promised to be if we stopped treating it like a subsidized product and instead saw it as a public good and a multinational cooperative utility.
More discussion:
Meta replaces WhatsApp for Windows with web wrapper
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45910347
Whatsapp is almost non-existent in North America so they can do whatever the hell they want with it and we'll take it.
So what do Android users on that area use, then? Telegram? Signal? FB Messenger?
Not true. Their numbers are pretty solid.
The answer is that developers mainly use Macs, and they don't want to deal with a crappy Electron application in daily use so they give themselves the privilege of a better experience even if it makes no business sense.
You can see the same with Telegram, which has first party Electron applications for Windows / macOS / Linux, a first party native macOS application, and a bunch of third party blessings including a Windows UWP application.
Note that there needs be an environment for this. You don't see a native version of VSCode or 1Password 8 because those orgs actually care about their applications and take great effort to make them feel good despite being built on Electron.
Telegram Desktop is using Qt as far as I can see.
Ah, well, honestly there goes to show that well-engineered Electron applications (VScode, 1Password) can feel pretty much as good as native or near-native applications (Telegram).
Are you sure that developers mainly use Macs?
It's not true as can be evidenced in any developer anual survey like GitHub's, Jetbrains or Stack Overflow's. Most developers use Windows.
Absolutely in US and Canada, and partially true in Israel, India, and China.
The *nix and DevTooling community is better for MacOS compared to Windows, and a large portion of the software industry is iOS native apps, which requires a Mac to develop on.
WSL gives a pretty great Linux dev experience under Windows.
As for "a large portion of the software industry is iOS native apps"... How about plugging in some assumptions here and then multiplying them together:
1. Mobile app share of total software development. 30%
2. iOS share versus Android: 30%
3. What % of iOS app dev is native apps? 40%
My assumptions here give something like 4%. You should put whatever numbers you feel are right here, and I'm pretty sure it won't be close to "a large portion".
I don't know why iOS share vs Android is relevant? Any company that's making a mobile app will not ignore (a very affluent) 30% of the market. So all consumer apps _will_ have an iOS version.
I don't know anything about mobile share of overall SW development.
You can develop Android apps on a Mac, but you can't develop iOS apps without a Mac.
Furthermore from an app market perspective, Apple's App Store saw around $140-150B in spending in 2025 versus $60-65B in spending on Google Play during the same time period [0].
As such, procurement teams coalesced around purchasing MacBooks because it opened the most doors.
> WSL gives a pretty great Linux dev experience under Windows
It's decent, but the a major blocker for enterprises adopting WSL is it's unsupported by most XDR tools, making it a no-go from a risk/audit perspective.
I can't speak for WSL's developer experience, but the fact that I know L64+ employees at MS using "the Scottish laptop" is telling.
[0] - https://backlinko.com/iphone-vs-android-statistics