And then there was slack
The nice thing about slack is that it will run about anywhere. The app on my phone magically knows if the app is not running on my laptop and will then and only then send me notifications. But, I'm not suggesting this as a solution for you -- best productivity killer I know is having to pay attention to yet another device while trying to get work done.
Depends on your environment, but I have of one very effective and successful coworker who just flat out refuses to use Slack. The number of companies where that is acceptable is probably limited. Unfortunately.
For what it's worth, since you seem to like IRC clients so much better, Slack has a built-in IRC bridge: https://get.slack.help/hc/en-us/articles/201727913-Connect-t.... It works just fine, in my experience.
https://github.com/wee-slack/wee-slack
I use it extensively for everyday Slack, where I don't care much about inline media and inline formatting. And for a text client, weechat + this plugin handle it pretty gracefully.
Electron would have you write a web app and package it as an app installed to your Applications folder just like any native app. You'll write this code in JS, HTML, CSS and use Electron APIs.
Fluid also would have you write this in JS, HTML, CSS but use Fluid APIs instead. The two compete for the same role in that sense.
Not really, unless you're using most of your RAM or you treat this as a fundamental principle. I've never checked my Slack RAM usage, and I'm sure it's higher than if they built a great native app, but it's also never had any performance problem with Slack or any other application (okay, except for Eclipse, but I stopped using that when Android Studio came out).
> It isn't uncommon for me to need to choose which "essential" apps to turn off to get something done on a maxed-out MBP
And there's the key. You have a very specific use case that is probably extremely rare. I'm a full-time developer and as far as I know I've never been low on RAM on my first generation Retina MBP.
It is truly strange to hear being resource constrained being described as a special case in computing.
We really do need to be more mindful of resource usage. I'd rather write my own lightweight clone of something I want than use an Electron-based hog. There are menubar-only apps that come with an entire Electron dependency.
Further their machines are full of software that runs all the time for no reason including but not limited to multiple redundant antivirus that are trying in vain to scan everything in real time in a vain attempt to prevent the next malware infection from taking hold.
Various services like file system indexing and virus scans run at inconvenient times and render things slower than before.
Laptops are super prevalent because their portability is more important than power. Its not at all unusual to keep using the same machine for 5-8 years as long as it still works.
Real people have bad computers with bad specs and in a massive number of cases the browser is already using a significant portion of the entire computers resources.
It is for this user.
> What would Slack gain by integrating better with my Mac?
Far better resource management, one would hope, for starters. As the article pointed out, when you're measuring your IRC client's memory use in hundreds of megs, there's a problem.
It isn't uncommon for me to need to choose which "essential" apps to turn off to get something done on a maxed-out MBP. So Slack gets turned off, and maybe someone gets annoyed that I don't respond to something, while I run a few VMs in Slack's former memory space.
As far as other things, well, using a platform's capabilities as appropriate is generally considered good form - HCI concerns, and, generally, just people like things to be consistent. I don't know why we're supposed to forget this now.
I personally don't care if Electron goes away or what, but to the extent that I'm forced to run Slack by my cow-orkers' choices, it sure would be nice if it were less of a bucket of ass.