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.
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.
> I don’t understand how Gruber can think the ChatGPT app is that good. It’s also…fine,
It's not that ChatGPT is so good; it follows macOS design principles and functionality that have existed for decades. Claude Desktop sometimes does and sometimes doesn’t which can be a frustrating user experience.
It's the Mac version of OpenAI's Codex app where you see the night and day difference between the two.
I think it’s incredibly poor form for somebody with the reach and clout of Jon Gruber to be naming and shaming an individual engineer like this. At the very least he could have tried to get the other guy’s side.
I'm one of the project maintainers for Electron (not felixrieseberg) and the level of spitefulness in this post and some of Gruber's other recent articles about Electron is really starting to bother me.
It's fine for Gruber to dislike software, even to passionately hate it I guess. But this article is borderline conspiracy theory stuff singling out one (very friendly and easy-going!) engineer as the source of all his problems. Can anyone take his claim seriously that one person is the reason the entire industry, from indies to the biggest tech companies, has been building web-based/cross-platform desktop apps for the past 15 years?
What's sad is that Gruber and Felix would get along great in real life. I know Gruber doesn't see it this way, but Felix is a knowledgeable Mac developer who has spent a career building successful Mac apps and Mac development tools. As fellow Mac devs, the two of them would be able to get into the weeds about AppKit and Objective-C and the pros and cons of different frameworks and APIs, App Store sandboxing, and so on.
Frankly, Gruber needs to chill about this topic and get some perspective. Electron is not an evil plot to destroy everything that is good and pure about the Mac. It's a completely free and independent open source project maintained by a diverse group of developers, often on a volunteer basis outside of our jobs. We have no ill will toward apps that aren't made in Electron, we use other frameworks and tools ourselves. We love desktop apps and supporting the ecosystem, that's what drives us in the first place, and this antagonism is completely one-sided.
If Electron is successful it's because it's doing a good job at filling a niche for desktop apps that the platform vendors mostly continue to ignore. It helps that Electron gets regular updates with bug fixes and features, including new macOS integrations, and we provide free support for developers and extensive documentation. Trying to shame people just because they work on the framework or use it to build apps is not going to make alternatives any more appealing.
As a fellow Electron maintainer, I want to say that Felix is a great engineer and an incredibly kind person. He is not an evil mastermind as portrayed in the article. We should be thankful for his contributions to the world of computing.
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[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 45.4 ms ] threadHeh.
It's not that ChatGPT is so good; it follows macOS design principles and functionality that have existed for decades. Claude Desktop sometimes does and sometimes doesn’t which can be a frustrating user experience.
It's the Mac version of OpenAI's Codex app where you see the night and day difference between the two.
It's fine for Gruber to dislike software, even to passionately hate it I guess. But this article is borderline conspiracy theory stuff singling out one (very friendly and easy-going!) engineer as the source of all his problems. Can anyone take his claim seriously that one person is the reason the entire industry, from indies to the biggest tech companies, has been building web-based/cross-platform desktop apps for the past 15 years?
What's sad is that Gruber and Felix would get along great in real life. I know Gruber doesn't see it this way, but Felix is a knowledgeable Mac developer who has spent a career building successful Mac apps and Mac development tools. As fellow Mac devs, the two of them would be able to get into the weeds about AppKit and Objective-C and the pros and cons of different frameworks and APIs, App Store sandboxing, and so on.
Frankly, Gruber needs to chill about this topic and get some perspective. Electron is not an evil plot to destroy everything that is good and pure about the Mac. It's a completely free and independent open source project maintained by a diverse group of developers, often on a volunteer basis outside of our jobs. We have no ill will toward apps that aren't made in Electron, we use other frameworks and tools ourselves. We love desktop apps and supporting the ecosystem, that's what drives us in the first place, and this antagonism is completely one-sided.
If Electron is successful it's because it's doing a good job at filling a niche for desktop apps that the platform vendors mostly continue to ignore. It helps that Electron gets regular updates with bug fixes and features, including new macOS integrations, and we provide free support for developers and extensive documentation. Trying to shame people just because they work on the framework or use it to build apps is not going to make alternatives any more appealing.