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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 memory18
- 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?
See which teams inside your own company are using Cocoa (OS X) or 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?
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.
Django
Django is a high-level Python Web framework that encourages rapid development and clean, pragmatic design.
ASP.NET
.NET is a developer platform made up of tools, programming languages, and libraries for building many different types of applications.
Laravel
It is a web application framework with expressive, elegant syntax. It attempts to take the pain out of development by easing common tasks used in the majority of web projects, such as authentication, routing, sessions, and caching.
Android SDK
Android provides a rich application framework that allows you to build innovative apps and games for mobile devices in a Java language environment.