Why do we still have platform-specific applications in 2015? Any good software engineering environment should set an example and show that we do not need to live by such artificial restrictions.
In my experience cross-platform means "runs just as badly everywhere". They pretty much never feel like native on any platform.
And what's the advantage to the average user? If I'm a Mac user, I'm interested in Application X working just like every other Mac application. Similarly if I'm a Windows user. I'm rarely bothered that Application X works the same on both Windows and Mac.
Those 'artificial' restrictions are as natural as they can get. Different operating systems have different Shells and APIs, even programming languages. Nothing artificial in there.
Because making a cross-platform GUI is quite the pain, unless you jump into web technologies. And even then you still have a lot of obstacles to go through, like SpriteKit is OS X only.
Because there’s no environment that would give you native-like experience on multiple platforms without extra work. And developers have limited resources, even in 2015.
Although it is possible to write everything, right up to the view model (but not the view) in something cross platform and performant, keeping the GUI/view using only those languages/frameworks which result in native feel (both in terms of look and performance).
Sure, writing the GUI properly for each platform still requires more work, but far far less if all but the front end is cross platform.
However, it very rarely seems to be done, even with modern additions and improvements in C++.
I like that approach, but there’s no abundance of such cross-platform stacks either. And then you have to convert parts of the model to fit the views, and sometimes you want to use non-view technologies only available on a certain platform (Keychain, …). While it makes sense and the results are very good, it’s still a very non-trivial work, especially compared to a simple native app.
Just a point of etiquette. Does it really make sense to down-vote a question to oblivion when the question has attracted reasonable responses?
In fact, this question contains by implication another seemingly reasonable question: Given that there exists a universally available cross-platform development API, why, in 2015, is anyone writing anything other than a web application?
