Why Is ChatGPT for Mac So Good? | Hacker News Reader

Why Is ChatGPT for Mac So Good?

allenpike.com

28 pointsingve20 comments

I don't understand this. This post is saying that ChatGPT is good and is a forerunner because it provides a nice Mac App.

In my opinion, not everything requires a native app. AI Chat assistants are completely fine to be used in the web browser. for most used applications like slack, I do have native application( even slack which is website in a shell is completely usable as a desktop application). What i really don't understand is the benefit of a ChatGPT native application other than native widgets instead of web elements.

The author doesn't go into much detail but does link to this. I don't think this stuff is possible with a web app.

https://help.openai.com/en/articles/10119604-work-with-apps-...

Native apps are much better for everybody except for the lazy and unskilled developer who prefer to use Electron.

Electron is usually a business choice, it’s performant enough at the fraction of the cost. it has very little to do with developers being lazy.

Fairly subjective, but personally I find all apps being within the browser quite constrictive. I'd much rather have my apps unencumbered by browser chrome and unintended keystrokes, persisting their window size/position and all kind of other affordances. Definitely not a fan of the 'browser as the OS' philosophy, as it feels a bit inception.

That said, I'm less and less bothered by an app that's Electron under the hood, but I think that's more to do with the quality bar for native apps slipping over the past few cycles (macOS) and forfeiting their advantage.

It’s not good at all - it looks like the web app , cmd+tabbing to it is sluggish, copy/paste doesn’t work as in native apps, etc

Yeah, annoying that cmd + c doesn’t work on a selection; you must right click then click copy to actually get selected text to the clipboard

Totally agree. I love the option+space combo to open a little chat window over the app your focus is on. The Mac app and the Android app are the only things keeping me using it. If Gemini had decent apps, I'd cancel OpenAI.

My personal experience with it is different. The title doesn't make much sense to me.

Yeah, it's actually quite decent, but I still feel that most of those features are basic UX that really shouldn't be application/vendor tied.

I found Goose (by Block) - https://block.github.io/goose - much better in this regard. Granted it perhaps doesn't have the app tie ins that most other providers do, but I can kinda just ask it to perform tasks in a specific kind of folder and it does, using whatever provider I want.

I got the GLM coding plan earlier, and given its generous rate limits, I found using it to do tedious tasks (like folder organization, which is perhaps my greatest weakness; especially Downloads) was a true addition to my productivity.

I feel there's a lot of scope for applications to focus on task contexts (with/without code agents having a ton of files like AGENTS.md, CRUSH.md, CURSOR.md spammed around) in specific folder bounds with proper user sandboxing.

Is the ChatGPT not Electron based? I ask because I often see something to the effect of "Electron crashed" come up on Mac OS. I feel like I've seen it when launching the MacOS ChatGPT app?

Anyway, generally it is nice on MacOS. If the text (chat) field has focus though I have to click twice for some reason in ChatGPT's responses to get to where I can select/copy text. Odd.

So, sure, it could be better (more native?).

Why is this flagged?

Try and make a new folder and drag a chat into it. Web works, desktop doesn’t. Try to copy paste deep-research json via the copy button they provide. Web copies json, desktop includes attribution links from the ui that breaks json parsing. It’s not easy to make a desktop app worse than the web, especially when you have that much money to spend, but it’s clearly possible

they clearly believe "native is better, electron bad" and are trying really hard to make ChatGPT a case for that.

The problem is, chatgpt for mac isn't better then the web version. I've tried to use it and always go back to the web.

The app version can integrate with other apps. For instance you can have a file open in VSCode and chat about it within the ChatGPT app.

> As just one example: Mac apps can typically be moved by dragging the top corner of the window. Claude supports this too, but not when you have a chat open?

On Windows Claude has a normal, draggable title bar. Zero issues.

I use the Mac app for session related reasons (personal vs work) and I don't see anything particularly good about it. It feels a bit clunkier than the browser, if anything.

It’s good in the sense that it feels like a Mac app. It still has its fair share of bugs and unimplemented features though.

You mean on ads?

TLDR: At the end of the day, the ChatGPT app for Mac is good because they care.

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