The trouble with this is most users only use one platform and so don't care. They just see the app as badly implemented as it does not match other apps on the platform.
What kind of users/apps are these? I'm genuinely curious about this, actually. I have a couple of apps with 100K+ installs, and I talk to people who are actual users from time to time. I have never ever heard the claim that they don't like UI because it doesn't feel native. Like ever. But I can imagine that in some niches/demographics/app types it might be different. Can you share some evidence or explain how you built the understanding that users dislike non-native UIs?
I've built apps with pretty high retention rate so even if they're annoyed, it doesn't seem like they really stop using them. Mostly though, based on user feedback we collected, not once have I heard anything about UI complaints. It really feels like this is a common refrain on HN about what HNers think happens in theory versus what actually happens in reality wrt user preferences.
Note, this has nothing to do with your app or this specific discussed GUI, but this is something I have noticed over time...
I think that what is commonly seen by devs as complaining and being overly concerned with details that don't matter is instead a some of the time advocacy for doing things the right way for the sake of it. It is totally possible to build things that meet the bare minimum requirements for user retention and for people to not complain, but that doesn't mean that it is optimal. You can build Soviet style housing blocks that people live in that are completely functional and that no one will have any problem with, but the quality of life is degraded as opposed to what could have been built.
It can be tough seeing through the grumpy nerd 'I want it my way because my way is best' and finding what is actually 'this is a good thing that we should be doing, and if we did there would be a marked improvement for everyone', but I would not forsake one due to the other.
It's more than there is no evidence of an issue, so why pretend that there is? The "right" way is entirely subjective, unless you can give me some objective criteria for what it should be.
The issue in this case is pretty plainly that the application does not subscribe to the conventions of its host UI. I'm sure there is no objective reason why we need to conform to any convention, except that there is one.
Then that is subjective too and not really worth caring about, because it comes down to a matter of taste. You like platform conventions, but most people we surveyed simply don't care, the fallacy of vocal minorities and all.
Perhaps so, as different cultures have different tastes anyway. That you don't like Soviet styles is no indication of whether people in the Union did or didn't like them.
Not all non-native-looking apps are badly implemented, but a huge number of apps that use cross-platform frameworks do so primarily as a means to cut costs because the goal is to make development as cheap as possible, and that shows in other aspects of these apps too. This creates an association between cheap/lazy apps and cross platform UI frameworks.
It’s kind of like the difference between VS Code and MS Teams. Same company, same underlying technology (Electron), but Code is good while Teams is awful because MS invests so much more in Code. Even so, Teams-type apps are what tends to come to mind when people think of Electron apps because those are so much more common.
You could not be further from the truth regarding the size of the Teams vs VS Code teams. Teams has multiple times more developers, it's not a problem of funding that makes it suck.
