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Cocoa (OS X) vs Electron: What are the differences?
Introduction:
Cocoa (OS X) and Electron are two popular frameworks used for building desktop applications. While Cocoa is specifically designed for developing applications on Mac OS X, Electron is a cross-platform framework that allows building desktop applications using web technologies. In this article, we will explore the key differences between Cocoa and Electron.
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Development Platform:
- Cocoa: Developed by Apple, Cocoa is tightly integrated with Mac OS X and can only be used for building applications on this operating system.
- Electron: Electron is a cross-platform framework that can be used to build desktop applications for multiple operating systems, including Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux.
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Programming Language:
- Cocoa: Cocoa development primarily uses Objective-C or the newer Swift programming language.
- Electron: Electron development is done using web technologies such as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.
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UI Components:
- Cocoa: Cocoa provides a set of native UI components that are optimized for Mac OS X, allowing developers to create applications with a native look and feel.
- Electron: Electron uses web-based UI components and libraries, which may not have the same level of integration with the operating system.
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Native Features:
- Cocoa: Being a framework specifically designed for Mac OS X, Cocoa allows developers to easily access and utilize the native features and functionalities of the operating system, such as Touch Bar and macOS notifications.
- Electron: Electron provides limited access to native features and requires bridge technologies or additional modules to access specific OS functionalities.
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Application Performance:
- Cocoa: Cocoa applications are known for their high performance as they are optimized for the Mac OS X environment.
- Electron: Electron applications run in a web browser-like environment, which can result in slightly lower performance compared to native Cocoa applications.
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Application Size:
- Cocoa: Cocoa applications tend to have smaller file sizes as they do not have a requirement for packaging a full web browser environment.
- Electron: Electron applications have larger file sizes as they include a bundled version of Chromium, the open-source browser engine used by Electron.
In summary, Cocoa is a Mac OS X-specific framework with a focus on native integration and performance, while Electron is a cross-platform framework that allows web developers to build desktop applications but sacrifices platform-specific optimizations and performance for wider compatibility.
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Learn MorePros of Cocoa (OS X)
Pros of Electron
Pros of Cocoa (OS X)
- Great community3
- IOS2
- Backed by apple1
Pros of Electron
- Easy to make rich cross platform desktop applications69
- Open source53
- Great looking apps such as Slack and Visual Studio Code14
- Because it's cross platform8
- Use Node.js in the Main Process4
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Cons of Cocoa (OS X)
Cons of Electron
Cons of Cocoa (OS X)
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Cons of Electron
- Uses a lot of memory19
- User experience never as good as a native app8
- No proper documentation4
- Does not native4
- Each app needs to install a new chromium + nodejs1
- Wrong reference for dom inspection1
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What is Cocoa (OS X)?
Much of Cocoa is implemented in Objective-C, an object-oriented language that is compiled to run at incredible speed, yet employs a truly dynamic runtime making it uniquely flexible. Because Objective-C is a superset of C, it is easy to mix C and even C++ into your Cocoa applications.
What is Electron?
With Electron, creating a desktop application for your company or idea is easy. Initially developed for GitHub's Atom editor, Electron has since been used to create applications by companies like Microsoft, Facebook, Slack, and Docker. The Electron framework lets you write cross-platform desktop applications using JavaScript, HTML and CSS. It is based on io.js and Chromium and is used in the Atom editor.
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What companies use Cocoa (OS X)?
What companies use Electron?
What companies use Cocoa (OS X)?
What companies use Electron?
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What tools integrate with Cocoa (OS X)?
What tools integrate with Electron?
What tools integrate with Cocoa (OS X)?
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What are some alternatives to Cocoa (OS X) and Electron?
JavaScript
JavaScript is most known as the scripting language for Web pages, but used in many non-browser environments as well such as node.js or Apache CouchDB. It is a prototype-based, multi-paradigm scripting language that is dynamic,and supports object-oriented, imperative, and functional programming styles.
Python
Python is a general purpose programming language created by Guido Van Rossum. Python is most praised for its elegant syntax and readable code, if you are just beginning your programming career python suits you best.
Node.js
Node.js uses an event-driven, non-blocking I/O model that makes it lightweight and efficient, perfect for data-intensive real-time applications that run across distributed devices.
HTML5
HTML5 is a core technology markup language of the Internet used for structuring and presenting content for the World Wide Web. As of October 2014 this is the final and complete fifth revision of the HTML standard of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). The previous version, HTML 4, was standardised in 1997.
PHP
Fast, flexible and pragmatic, PHP powers everything from your blog to the most popular websites in the world.