> “In my opinion, the traditional charm of the Mac isn’t just the desktop; it’s the entire ecosystem of applications that conform to the Macintosh Human Interface Guidelines”

Sadly this barely exists anymore.

Cross-platform Electron apps have replaced native AppKit. Cloud-based apps like Linear, Slack and Figma cater to the lowest common denominator of desktops by shipping their web client in a wrapper.

The last real native Mac app that was truly successful was probably Sketch ten years ago, and Figma ate their lunch.

Meanwhile Apple themselves have given up on the HIG. In the Alan Dye era, it’s been form over function across all the Apple operating systems. Their own apps don’t follow any guidelines and the latest macOS 26 is a UI disaster – probably the most inconsistent Mac release since OS X early betas.

This is why we think something inspired by the HIG needs to be reborn as open source.

I wholeheartedly and sadly agree with you. Seems like the idea of native apps on both macOS and Windows has been losing ground in favor of Electron apps. I understand the challenge of writing applications tailored to each platform and why Electron is so appealing to many companies, but I’d feel better about Electron if it were more conformant to platform HIGs and if it were less resource-intensive, especially now with RAM prices skyrocketing.

I hate how mainstream desktop computing has gone to crap in recent years. Thank goodness for free, open-source software.