Claude's Criminally Bad Electron Mac App Is an Inside Job(daringfireball.net)

12 pointsby GavinAnderegg4 hours ago3 comments

etothet2 hours ago
Hate on the Claude desktop app on macOS all you want (I personally think it’s fine), but I don’t understand how Gruber can think the ChatGPT app is that good. It’s also…fine, but certainly not special IMO, despite being a native app.
wiml3 hours ago
> Windows uses Philips head screws, Linux uses hex screws, and MacOS requires Torx — but a hammer works the same way with all screws. That’s Electron.
Heh.
benoau3 hours ago
Proprietary platform-specific software has had its day. There are performant electron apps, so a better approach would be for AI to entrench the practices that achieve that and focus on high-quality shared/reusable code rather than end up maintaining and testing Win, Mac, Linux, Web and Android variants expressed in different languages/environments. The only plus side there is iOS bans that nature of software entirely so one less platform to support lmao.
- acdhaan hour ago
  It’s not just performance but also quality. There are a ton of things which you get out of a native app which Electron developers who aren’t the VSC team never do. It’s almost always obvious who cared about UX more than portability, but the cost differential usually wins out.
  Theoretically AI could help with this by making it easier to support multiple interfaces for the same backend functionality but it would run into the challenge of measuring good taste. A good Mac app has lots of interactive aspects which you notice while using it, and would have to be non-trivial to express in ways which a bot could measure.