this post was submitted on 24 Sep 2023
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WhatsApp is a shithole. Communities, Channels, Payments, Avatars all these destroyed the simple chat app. Meta is aiming for a monopoly here.
Signal and Telegram pretty much useless if you don't have your needful people on the platform.
Thankfully I don't have people I need on WhatsApp, but it took some convincing.
Nowadays I only have dentist and barbershop on WhatsApp, all my folks are on Telegram, including all work communications.
WhatsApp was always lacking features; WhatsApp web can't replace a full featured desktop client which is a must have for me; and its mobile client is inconvenient in every possible way.
WA does have a desktop client. Fuck that though.
Last time I checked it was a 600-800Mb monster that is just a wrapper of the web page
It's worse now, it's an all out react native app, I believe. On windows, it's hideous. Simple things such as sending attachments become a multiple-seconds-long waiting game; by the time I'm able to send a screenshot, my phone link has already transfered the clipboard from my pc to my phone, I have unlocked it and opened WhatsApp and sent the attachment through android instead. This has happened to me more times than I care to count.
There's also this nasty input focus bug, where you sometimes have to tab out of the app entirely and tab back in for it to detect focus on textboxes.
Its like they're intently taking steps back on WhatsApp as a whole, kind of reminiscent of Skype's fall from grace.
WhatsApp actually uses the native UI frameworks of each operating system on all major platforms now, meaning whatever the latest Windows UI framework is called and Swift UI on macOS. Their mobile apps natively use Material on Android and Swift UI on iOS respectively, and always have been.
I actually think it's great. One of the few service-based multi-platform apps that actually has native clients on all platforms as opposed to Electron apps or React "native" or whatever. It does this better than pretty much any other messenger (Telegram, Signal etc. on desktop are all Electron apps or similar).
I'll bail out if (or inevitably when) they add more and more bloat (like channels or this shopping stuff for example).
Fr! only reason why I prefer the webapp over client
It's just not a battle I am willing to fight. Too many people I can't contact without Whatsapp and none of them willing to swap.
Thanks to EU, you'll be able to contact these people on WhatsApp without using WhatsApp.
https://techcrunch.com/2023/09/11/whatsapp-has-started-work-on-cross-platform-messaging-due-to-eu-regulation/
That's great to know!