One of the controversial problem is WeChat’s abnormal memory consumption, that often makes the App on Mac or IOS crash.
It’s been many years that WeChat can never solve this problem, neither there’s any explanation on the Internet. From critic standpoint, I think this might also be a product design problem as well.
This phenomenon reminds me of Steam. Steam’s UI is very performance-consuming. Someone points out the secret behind:
Steam jams your PC — make you buy better PC — enable you access more advanced (expensive) games — make Steam thrive & richer.
So if it is true that WeChat is playing the same approach, why? Here are some theories i am considering -
- By paralysing Mac / PC experience pushes users to rely more on mobile’s experience, where users are more easily to stick to WeChat via plentiful scenarios like mini-program, live board-cast & official accounts.
- By jamming mobile phones pushes users to buy more advanced smartphones, with which users can better access WeChat’s services and are more easily to stick to WeChat. For example, some old smartphones may not fully support mini-programs which are very important to WeChat’s blueprint.
In short, they are strategies to occupy and claim Internet traffic. Besides, there might be a few reasons.
- From organization structure perspective, WeChat’s always mainstreaming “product thinking” as its internal style. Therefore WeChat may devote most of the resources into product design, while development can only get a little.
- Also, since WeChat wants to keep focusing on “product thinking”, it will somehow “try to prevent” development from being perfect : Imagining WeChat is perfectly performant and people are all talking about WeChat getting a top develop team — this might change WeChat’s organisation and its internal style, that might make WeChat less competitive at product design and at the market.
