Anthropic's Claude Passes ChatGPT, Now #1, on Apple's 'Top Apps' Chart After Pentagon Controversy (engadget.com) 36
"Anthropic may have lost out on doing business with the US government," reports Engadget, "but it's gained enough popularity to earn the number one spot on the App Store's Top Free Apps leaderboard."
Anthropic's Claude AI assistant had already leaped to the #2 slot on Apple's chart by late Friday," CNBC reported Saturday: The rise in popularity suggests that Anthropic is benefiting from its presence in news headlines, stemming from its refusal to have its models used for mass domestic surveillance or for fully autonomous weapons... OpenAI's ChatGPT sat at No. 1 on the App Store rankings on Saturday, while Google's Gemini was at No. 3... On Jan. 30, [Claude] was ranked No. 131 in the U.S., and it bounced between the top 20 and the top 50 for much of February, according to data from analytics company Sensor Tower... [And Friday night, for 85.3 million followers] pop singer Katy Perry posted a screenshot of Anthropic's Pro subscription for consumers, with a heart superimposed over it.
Sunday Engadget reported Anthropic's "very public spat" with the Pentagon "led to a wave of user support that finally allowed Claude to dethrone OpenAI's ChatGPT on the App Store as the most downloaded free app."
. Friday Anthropic posted "We are deeply grateful to our users, and to the industry peers, policymakers, veterans, and members of the public who have voiced their support in recent days. Thank you. "
Anthropic's Claude AI assistant had already leaped to the #2 slot on Apple's chart by late Friday," CNBC reported Saturday: The rise in popularity suggests that Anthropic is benefiting from its presence in news headlines, stemming from its refusal to have its models used for mass domestic surveillance or for fully autonomous weapons... OpenAI's ChatGPT sat at No. 1 on the App Store rankings on Saturday, while Google's Gemini was at No. 3... On Jan. 30, [Claude] was ranked No. 131 in the U.S., and it bounced between the top 20 and the top 50 for much of February, according to data from analytics company Sensor Tower... [And Friday night, for 85.3 million followers] pop singer Katy Perry posted a screenshot of Anthropic's Pro subscription for consumers, with a heart superimposed over it.
Sunday Engadget reported Anthropic's "very public spat" with the Pentagon "led to a wave of user support that finally allowed Claude to dethrone OpenAI's ChatGPT on the App Store as the most downloaded free app."
. Friday Anthropic posted "We are deeply grateful to our users, and to the industry peers, policymakers, veterans, and members of the public who have voiced their support in recent days. Thank you. "
Re:It's due to XCode 26.3 (Score:5, Funny)
Yep, that's definitely why it's the #2 app (now #1 in the US actually) for the iPhone, for use with XCode.
100%.
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Except, you have to purchase Claude Pro or Enterprise. Before, you could use the website for free without having to use the app.
Now, if you want to use agencic coding with XCode, you might as well download the app as well since you always carry and refer to their phone.
Now, I admit, it was a bit early in the morning when I first responded. Of course XCode isn't the sole reason. People are also reacting to the petty bullshit of the Trump admin appreciate Anthropic's response to the threat. But, people wi
They be dead. (Score:1)
So they'll bleed even more money because tons of free users will make their servers bleed from the back fans.
I wonder how long the whole circular circlejerk economy is allowed to go on until it all burns down.
Re: They be dead. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:They be dead. (Score:5, Informative)
Funny thing is Claude is pretty much the only AI I regularily use for coding, because unlike the other models it produces acceptable results which after review and fixes actually can be used!
Very true (Score:5, Informative)
The other tools are so far behind. I describe Claude Code like a first year graduate student and the others (like Gemini) like a high school student looking for a date. Perplexity is probably the closest to Claude Code capability, but it is a distant second.
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Having Claude is like being in an office where you can walk to the next cube and chitchat with another engineer. Just an hour ago I was having trouble flashing a CYD from an Apple silicon MacBook, and I was frustrated as hell at trying various things Google told me to try. Then I opened a chat session with Claude, told it my problem, pasted an error message, and it got me over the first hump. Then I immediately hit a different hump and Claude explained how to get past that one. I got from "FFS" to "hello wo
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Re:They be dead. (Score:4, Interesting)
Funny thing is Claude is pretty much the only AI I regularly use for coding
Me too, but that doesn't address the OP's concern. I use Claude Code almost daily for multiple side projects. I have the $200 per month max plan, but my ccusage metrics show I use about $1500 in API-equivalent tokens per month. And that is on top of my regular Claude web chat usage, and I run over a hundred deep research sessions per month too. I estimate that is about $500-1000 in additional API-equivalent tokens per month. API use may be profitable for Anthropic, so that doesn't mean they are losing $2000 per month on my subscription, but I bet their losses on my account are at least $1-1.5k monthly. I realize I am an extreme example, but any huge influx of users to any of these providers does mean an increase in their burn rate (not an increase to profits).
That said, none of these losses will matter in the long run. All that matters is whether they can start replacing human labor. $1 trillion in AI spending is nothing if AI can do 10% of white collar work. That would represent $2-3 trillion in value every year. The fact we have only seen about $1.2 trillion in AI investment over the past 5 years shows investors aren't that confident AI can replace that many jobs. If they were, they would be investing 5 times as much.
I am a pretty big proponent of Anthropic's models, and I lead a $80+ billion dollar company's AI platform strategy pod within our corporate strategy department. Winning over someone like me has a significant impact on Anthropic's ability to win more lucrative corporate deals. My company can afford to spend $100 per day on a continuously running agent as long as it can replace a human employee ($35k/yr vs $50-$150k/yr).
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When I see posts about how crappy AI is, it's not usually from people who are actually using it to get real work done.
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The thing that varies wildly is the skill using it, and most importantly, the existing system you are trying to apply it to. It generally just magnifies your tech stack... in every way. So tech debt explodes. Lack of testing makes things 1000x worse. Lack of documentation, ditto.
I think too many are rushing in and giving it big stuff, without building a solid foundation. Really it should be used for helping build that foundation. Focus on small things (add tests to JUST this module area, and add the documen
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When I see posts about how crappy AI is, it's not usually from people who are actually using it to get real work done.
This is the tough paradox when people claim AI is useful or useless. Almost no one who thinks AI is useless has spend a few hundred hours to learn how to use it, or at least spent that time over six months ago when the models weren't as capable. I basically feel anyone who hasn't used AI for at least 100 hours in the past 3 months (~8 hours per week) has no idea how capable AI is right now, and that will also be true 3 months from now.
The situation for professionals is similar to how it is for companies. Ev
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THis is true. You also get a better understanding for AI's limitations, familiarity of where to be skeptical, and a feel for when a context is losing its mind. I like to put it this way: nobody who can't outthink an AI should be using an AI for anything important.
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So they'll bleed even more money because tons of free users will make their servers bleed from the back fans.
I wonder how long the whole circular circlejerk economy is allowed to go on until it all burns down.
Maybe, but that's also what people said about both Google and Facebook. The cost of delivering the service will go down over time. The cost of customer acquisition will go up as incumbent players solidify their positions. A loss leader now is arguably well worth it for the future. Add to that the fact that the vast majority of the investments being made are going into hardware that is increasingly hard to come by and the risk to investors is less than they first appear, while the upside is potentially huge.
The ads write themselves. (Score:3)
No, seriously, they write themselves - AI is increasingly taking over the advertising industry.
Re: People hate the current administration (Score:2)
Ironic that Claude is killing people in Iran as we speak.
Streisand wants a cut (Score:2)
By comparison, it's #8 in Free Apps on iPad (US) (Score:2)
Trust is gone (Score:3)
The threats were enough to make everyone suspect that anyone not banned was now part of the US governments control.
Europe is working hard to dump US software and services to ensure digital sovereignty . That will encourage the rest of the world to follow.
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But at the moment the alternative is China. I haven't heard much about Mistral recently.
As far as I am concerned, to be secure the AI needs to be able to run offline, in a computer that's always been offline, and has had all the software installed from CDROMs.
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The risks of the US embedding backdoors/malware/kill switches etc is just too great
The EU is moving to Linux and other open source software so that they can be in control of their digital sovereignty . This is going to impact ALL US software, cloud, AI, etc etc etc.
The money tree this trust created allowed the USA to invest more than other countries, so they got ahead. That money tree has been severely pruned, so there will be less $$ to spend. T
Grateful to our users (Score:2)
We are deeply grateful to our users, and to the industry peers, policymakers, veterans, and members of the public who have voiced their support in recent days. Thank you
Cool... cool. So can you up those usage limits on Pro yet? Not that I mind taking a 4 hour break in the middle of the work day but my managers kinda do.
Katy Perry endorsement (Score:3)
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whoopdedo! (Score:2)
So what?
Claude has more personality and flexibility (Score:2)
I am an early ChatGPT (paid) user, where I've watched the models evolve over time (devolve?) -- at one point recently, it started ordering me around like a dominatrix (LOL). People complained about that, now it is very condescending at times and it reminds me of a frenemy circumstance. Other times, with certain (legitimate) topics I get a HAL response like "I'm sorry, Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that." or some other advisory you didn't ask for.
Basically, the current ChatGPT model has become a Vulcan bitch