Of the 3 models I tried, Grok did the best at making an iOS app I wanted for personal use (a bike computer with specific qualities). (Claude just gave up and did an HTML/CSS implementation but I insisted on native SwiftUI+Metal.) Grok definitely fumbles sometimes, but I have been surprised what it CAN intuit versus me having to micromanage it.

(I am not an iOS developer, so getting something specific that I needed in a few hours/days was really helpful instead of spending months/years learning the language, APIs, etc.) (I am absolutely not "vibe-coding" Caddy btw, just tinkering with it for personal projects.)

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_fizz_buzz_ 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> Claude just gave up and did an HTML/CSS implementation but I insisted on native SwiftUI+Metal.

That sounds very odd and very contrary to my experience. You don’t say which model you actually used, but I never had opus 4.8 (or sonnet for that matter) ignore which language/stack i wanted to use.

	▲	fer 2 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		It never happened to me, but Claude routinely ignores the single line I have in CLAUDE.md, so I wouldn't be entirely surprised.
	▲	InsideOutSanta 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Yeah, that makes no sense. I've never seen any model "just give up" and change to a wholly different stack on its own.

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Schiendelman 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I do a lot of native iOS development using Opus 4.8 (and I used 4.7/4.6 before this). I have a very hard time with this comment, were you using Opus or something else?

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3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

[deleted]

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enraged_camel 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Same. A few months ago I pointed Opus 4.6 at a mid-size Vue app and told it to create the iOS equivalent using SwiftUI, and it nailed it. I broke the process down to phases and reviewed each phase, but within about ten days I had a functioning iOS app that had full feature parity.

	▲	emotenow 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		That's awesome! Did you follow any sort of framework in your phasing? We to migrate our entire app so any tips would be helpful.

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croes 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Let’s face it, there is no best model for something because the input is natural language.

Some models may fit better some users‘ way of prompting.

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embedding-shape 4 hours ago | parent [-]

Yeah, I think this seems more true than "X is better at iOS than Y", the way you prompt seems a lot more important, and some models react differently to the same prompts.

	▲	seff 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		It's almost like there is no replacement for human expertise when we need to make usable products for other humans.

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smt88 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I agree. There’s no chance Grok is better than Claude Code for this. And Claude is never so badly misaligned that it gives up and switches stacks.

	▲	ben_w 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Given how many users there are, I can easily believe it happened to at least one person who would then repeat it as an anecdote.

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wett 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I swear I have read either this exact or a very similar comment before. Same gist about a bike computer iOS app, and one of the models giving up.

As an aside, big thanks for Caddy! Really helped me get my greenfield project off the ground and it simply “just working” out of the box was one less source of errors I had to worry about when onboarding my team.

	▲	mholt 4 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Wonderful, glad it was helpful for you!

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Tiberium 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Was this in Claude Code for Claude? Did you use a weaker model like Haiku? Claude should absolutely not be as bad as you said.

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giancarlostoro 4 hours ago | parent [-]

I tried Claude Code with XCode once, I already use CC exclusively, either in the CLI or with Zed (mostly CLI now), and it was pretty unstable. I wish Apple would QA their products more. It seems to me the best way to use Claude Code for anything is stand-alone.

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jr3592 3 hours ago | parent [-]

if you ask me, there should be an absolute emergency meeting at apple around software quality... its been on a downward slide for almost a decade and its starting to have real impacts.

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giancarlostoro 3 hours ago | parent [-]

I tried the newer iOS Beta and it was driving me nuts, last update fixed it mostly, but this is the last time I ever use Beta anything from Apple.

	▲	ben_w 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I guess I'll be skipping two major releases of iOS (etc.) then, not just iOS 26.

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yottamus 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

As someone also not happy with my bike computer (some truly horrific UI/UX decisions), could you share or explain what you made? I like your web server.

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jiocrag 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

There's no way this is true.