Family Feud: Mac-assed Mac App Edition
Using a Family Feud format, the post argues that big companies like Anthropic, Adobe, and Google fail to build great native Mac apps despite vast resources, often resorting to Electron apps. Only Apple consistently delivers "Mac-assed" software, suggesting an inverse relationship between company size and native Mac app quality.
Background
Jim Nielsen is a designer and developer who blogs about Apple platform culture. "Mac-assed Mac app" is a term coined by John Gruber (Daring Fireball) meaning a native macOS application that feels truly at home on the Mac — using Apple's own frameworks (Swift, AppKit, SwiftUI), respecting Mac interface conventions, and performing well — as opposed to cross-platform wrappers like Electron (which bundle a whole web browser inside the app, often feeling sluggish and un-Mac-like). Anthropic's Claude Desktop and Google's Gemini are AI chatbot apps that shipped as Electron apps, criticized for ignoring Mac-native design despite being built by companies with vast resources. The post also references Adobe's history of unpopular UI decisions and Apple's own occasional missteps (SwiftUI-only apps). The joke structure mimics the game show Family Feud: the audience would rank "Apple" #1 for making great Mac apps, but guesses like Anthropic, Adobe, and Google all get buzzed as wrong answers — because despite their wealth and talent, these giants keep producing cross-platform, non-native apps.