We can kind of see how this happened.
There are multiple platforms and nobody wants to write a separate app for each one. So now you need a framework to make apps multi-platform.
Microsoft has resources but no incentive to do this. They have the most market share. Before Electron existed, people would just write native apps for Windows and nothing else, locking people into Microsoft.
Apple has resources, they have the right incentive because they don't have dominant market share on desktop, but they're obsessed with native look and feel. Cross platform frameworks are antithetical to that, so they don't do it.
That leaves the Linux people. So we get Qt. Finally something that works. Except that this is the opposite of what the Linux people are good at. It's not "do one thing do it well," it's reimplementing the equivalent of an entire operating system's APIs on at least three different operating systems. That's a lot of work, it's hard to do right and easy to get wrong, and they don't have a mountain of cash behind them. So it works but it's full of sharp edges.
Enter Electron. Browsers had to deal with the same multi-platform nonsense but Google does have a mountain of cash so it's easier to use. Winner, efficiency be damned.
What might have worked if anybody there thought of it would be for Apple to port their native APIs to Windows (because it has the most market share) and Linux (because it's a fellow Unix-like so that should be pretty easy). Then you could easily compile native macOS applications for other platforms but they would still be native on macOS. That solves their problem because now everybody is going to target their native API, and if they run less well on Windows, that's fine as long as they run at least as well as Electron does. Big win for them because now that becomes the target and they're the only ones with true native applications.
But is modern Apple smart enough to do that?
There are multiple platforms and nobody wants to write a separate app for each one. So now you need a framework to make apps multi-platform.
Microsoft has resources but no incentive to do this. They have the most market share. Before Electron existed, people would just write native apps for Windows and nothing else, locking people into Microsoft.
Apple has resources, they have the right incentive because they don't have dominant market share on desktop, but they're obsessed with native look and feel. Cross platform frameworks are antithetical to that, so they don't do it.
That leaves the Linux people. So we get Qt. Finally something that works. Except that this is the opposite of what the Linux people are good at. It's not "do one thing do it well," it's reimplementing the equivalent of an entire operating system's APIs on at least three different operating systems. That's a lot of work, it's hard to do right and easy to get wrong, and they don't have a mountain of cash behind them. So it works but it's full of sharp edges.
Enter Electron. Browsers had to deal with the same multi-platform nonsense but Google does have a mountain of cash so it's easier to use. Winner, efficiency be damned.
What might have worked if anybody there thought of it would be for Apple to port their native APIs to Windows (because it has the most market share) and Linux (because it's a fellow Unix-like so that should be pretty easy). Then you could easily compile native macOS applications for other platforms but they would still be native on macOS. That solves their problem because now everybody is going to target their native API, and if they run less well on Windows, that's fine as long as they run at least as well as Electron does. Big win for them because now that becomes the target and they're the only ones with true native applications.
But is modern Apple smart enough to do that?