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by varbhat 203 days ago
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.

3 comments

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-...

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.

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.