MC.62: What's Behind the ChatGPT Desktop Update

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Hey everyone,

OpenAI just rolled out some interesting updates to their ChatGPT desktop apps. It tells a lot about what users are doing with ChatGPT, where OpenAI is going with it, and what we can expect from other players.

First the updates:

1. The Windows version is available to everyone

2. The macOS version can understand your dev tools, starting with VS Code, Xcode, Terminal, and iTerm2

3. For VS Code, they created a dedicated extension (download)

My review: disappointed. Disclaimer, I’m the founder of Alter, another contextual AI-assistant for macOS but in this case I’m not alone:

1. On Xcode, it’s limited to code panes and if the code is too long, it’s truncated.

2. Some bugs: app is super slow to display long answers, can’t read from the Terminal if it’s fullscreen

3. You still have to copy/paste; it can’t write to the apps

I made a quick comparison on Xcode between ChatGPT and Alter on video. Check it out:

The fact they choose to focus on dev tools means that a huge chunk of their users are developers using ChatGPT for coding tasks. This is likely the same with Claude and explains why they launched Artifacts.

What’s surprising is that this space is crowded. You have AI assisted editors like Cursor, Zed and this week’s buzz: Windsurf, from the Codeium team. You also have projects like Devin and OpenHands to create autonomous AI software engineers.

I believe they’re not trying to compete directly with AI coding assistants. Instead they're making it super convenient for coders to stick with ChatGPT, a smart move to keep most of their market share until they launch bigger features.

Also, what I like and share with their vision is that they're not trying to replace your entire workflow. Instead, they're positioning ChatGPT as a helpful sidekick that works alongside your existing tools.

When you think about it, it's less about autonomous coding and more about enhancing productivity as a whole.

As usual, we can expect a prompt answer from Anthropic. They released their desktop app 15 days ago and I’m pretty sure they will come up with something similar soon. Maybe with a salt of Computer Use?

Cheers,

Sam

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