Anthropic’s Claude AI Chatbot Now Has a Mac App, But It’s an Electron Turd

Anthropic has released a desktop app for its AI chatbot Claude, available for free on Mac and Windows. However, the app has been met with criticism for its poor design and functionality. Sebastiaan de With described the macOS version as a "clunky" Electron app with a non-standard UI and choppy animations. In contrast, OpenAI's ChatGPT app is considered to be more polished and user-friendly. While Claude may have an edge in terms of chatbot intelligence, ChatGPT's overall experience is superior, with features like web search capabilities. The ChatGPT app also has a dedicated search mode, which Claude lacks. The Claude app's design issues include a lack of autofill support and no standard macOS features. De With suggested that users would be better off saving the web app to their dock rather than using the Electron app. In contrast, the ChatGPT app is a native Mac app that looks and feels like a typical Mac app. The poor design of the Claude app has led to suggestions that Anthropic's engineers should have taken a different approach, such as using SwiftUI or AppKit frameworks.