Comment by Jaepa | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Jaepa | Hacker News Reader

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There’s two options that comes to mind. One is to get better results by avoiding SEO.

E.g. try using “site:Reddit.com Mac text editor”

The other is to use some GPT based system. I’m not a ChatGPT booster, I do think this type of thing it does excel at. Using your query on ChatGPT 3.5 I got the following result.

Some popular Mac text editors for writing include:

1. *TextEdit*: Comes pre-installed on macOS and offers basic functionality.

2. *Sublime Text*: Known for its speed and extensive customization options.

3. *Visual Studio Code*: A free, open-source code editor that's highly extensible for writing and coding.

4. *Atom*: Another free, open-source text editor with a strong community and numerous plugins.

5. *BBEdit*: A feature-rich text editor for more advanced users.

6. *Ulysses*: A writing app with a clean, distraction-free interface and organization tools.

7. *Scrivener*: Great for long-form writing projects like novels or research papers.

8. *iA Writer*: Known for its minimalistic design and focus mode for distraction-free writing.

The best one for you depends on your specific needs, preferences, and whether you're writing code or prose.

There's a lot of irrelevant stuff in that answer. People often dismiss ChatGPT based on the free 3.5, not realizing that the paid GPT-4 is in a different league. The difference is a lot bigger than suggested by the 0.5 version number increment. Here's a GPT-4 answer:

If you're focused on writing, then you should consider Ulysses or Scrivener. Ulysses offers a streamlined, distraction-free environment that's perfect for writers who want a no-fuss solution. Scrivener is the go-to for those engaged in long-form writing projects like novels or academic papers, thanks to its robust organizational features. If you're a Markdown fan, go for iA Writer. It's clean, offers excellent Markdown support, and is quite speedy. For coders who write, Visual Studio Code isn't just for programming; it's highly customizable and has extensions that can aid in writing prose. Choose based on your specific needs.

I use the free version and your example shows a vast improvement, indeed. 3.5 looks like a summary of Google results, while 4 actually gives a relevant answer. I don't have much insight into the differences between these versions, assumed that the biggest difference is "just" the training corpus.

It's also a much larger model which is slower and more expensive to run, which is why they can't offer it for free. The improvement is not always obvious at first glance but it is massive. I assume they will eventually be able to distill it into a smaller model that they can offer for free. I'm actually surprised that hasn't happened yet, especially given the fast progress in shrinking open source models.

> The other is to use some GPT based system.

Instead of directly using chatgpt, it might be better to use AI-assisted search engines[0][1]. While their generated prompt is often misleading, most of the time the associated search result urls from them are spot-on. With You.com - use search tab, with Phind - there should be a panel to the right of prompt.

[0] - https://you.com [1] - https://phind.com - (programming-oriented results)

I haven't found these to be useful yet. GPT-4 is great at anything that it knows from its training set, but it's not so good yet at incorporating knowledge from the web.

I think the problem is that doing a good job of web search requires multiple rounds of clicking results, reading, recognizing low quality results, revising queries, etc. It's just too expensive and slow to do that with GPT-4 right now.

GPT-4 is likely capable of doing better, but it takes roughly as long as a human would take, and nobody wants to stare at a blank screen waiting for results that long, it's boring.

I like ChatGPT summarizations but this list just confirms OP's frustration. Top 5 results are not text editors for writers (TextEdit is a basic document editor).

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