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Claude Desktop spawns 1.8 GB Hyper-V VM on every launch, even for chat-only use

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Re: Claude Desktop spawns 1.8 GB Hyper-V VM on every launch, even for chat-only use

#231
post #129
post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which products are outstanding in their categories? Gmail isn't outstanding, search isn't outstanding, maps isn't outstanding. They are all pretty par for the course. Google used to be outstanding... but I'm not sure of a single product they have that is outstanding (def: significantly better than the competition) anymore. On the other hand I rarely use any google products these days, so maybe I'm not the one to be j…

I'm not a fan of Google, and also not attached to Apple or Microsoft, so this isn't me trying to stan for Google, but I'd like to request that you give examples of what competing products are categorically better (and, by what metric(s) you're judging - code quality? stability? robust set of features?) -- for Gmail, Docs/Drive/etc, Google Calendar, Maps, Classroom, YouTube. As far as I can tell, if judged by the mark…

> Gmail, Docs/Drive/etc, Google Calendar

MS is the overwhelming favorite in each of these markets if you only consider paying users.

Re: Claude Desktop spawns 1.8 GB Hyper-V VM on every launch, even for chat-only use

#232
post #227

That sounds like a lot, but your music player probably costs that much in RAM anyway. Seriously, with the current RAM prices we as an industry have to figure out a way to use less of it. Laptops with 4GB of RAM are still common and are going to remain so for the rest of the decade. Spotify using more than 1GB of RAM is obscene.

Well we could start by not building ever gd app with f*cking electron.

Re: Claude Desktop spawns 1.8 GB Hyper-V VM on every launch, even for chat-only use

#233
post #49

Back in the day, personalization / customization was all the rage, as it lets the user feel the control, power and freedom. Now it's the opposite. It's about not letting user to have any control at all. I can't delete some junk apps from my phone and mac, because they are "system" apps. As a non-geek, I can't deal with complexity of the browser and account settings to stop it from what is doing. We are at the mercy o…

These apps are built for normies, not coders

Re: Claude Desktop spawns 1.8 GB Hyper-V VM on every launch, even for chat-only use

#234
post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How are Google products anything but outstanding in their categories? What are you comparing to?

Which products are outstanding in their categories? Gmail isn't outstanding, search isn't outstanding, maps isn't outstanding. They are all pretty par for the course. Google used to be outstanding... but I'm not sure of a single product they have that is outstanding (def: significantly better than the competition) anymore. On the other hand I rarely use any google products these days, so maybe I'm not the one to be j…

I'm no google fanboy, but gmail is a very good web-based email, and google maps is a very good web-based map program. I would say "outstanding" with no reservations.

Re: Claude Desktop spawns 1.8 GB Hyper-V VM on every launch, even for chat-only use

#235

I didn’t get a screenshot of this, but I just found a really pointed example of Anthropics lack of craft / rush to build. If you open Claude on Windows, and click Dispatch (under cowork) to start that up, it will tell you that you need permissions windows doesn’t have. When you click the buttons for those permissions, it has broken links to macOS system preferences. I really encourage someone to try it and post the i…

I don't know where's a good place to post a screenshot, but can confirm I get a dialog saying: > Get an app to open this 'x-apple.systempreferences' link > Your PC doesn't have an app that can open this link. Try looking for a compatible app in the Microsoft Store.

This is just a standard artefact of it being generated by Opus. A human needs to detect this problem and get it to handle the cross platform case.

Re: Claude Desktop spawns 1.8 GB Hyper-V VM on every launch, even for chat-only use

#236
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least in a corporate environment, Claude Desktop is a pretty decent compromise. Preconfigured internally deployed MCP servers and third-party connectors make many of the necessary integrations relatively easy to control. I use Claude Code CLI myself (inside a VM, to isolate it from the host) for >90% of my needs. For the remaining fraction - email scours, cloud drive searches, other third-party connections - the d…

i wonder if they are running the proxy for external network connections in the VM.

The cloud instance certainly runs a full mitm proxy. There are complications for that when dealing with logging, but maybe on the desktop it doesn't log, just running a permissions engine.

Re: Claude Desktop spawns 1.8 GB Hyper-V VM on every launch, even for chat-only use

#237

I run Claude Desktop inside a Hyper-V VM. My VM doesn't have the "Virtual Machine Platform" feature installed at all. The app accepts this and simply disables the Cowork tab. I wonder if there's some other way to block the creation of the VM to force Claude Desktop onto this code path without having to uninstall Hyper-V. That said, Claude (both Desktop and CLI) ships on Windows without any sandboxing support for Code…

The VM causes observability problems, which corporate platform stakeholders are sensitive to. They will eventually figure out a way to provide an ESR/logging interface to the sandboxed code that is distinct from the user level telemetry, then Defender/Crowdstrike etc will just support that.

Re: Claude Desktop spawns 1.8 GB Hyper-V VM on every launch, even for chat-only use

#238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The major differentiating factor that Google has had in every product category is that their products are free and you have to deal with ads (and they monitor your behavior for profiling you and your interests). GMail and Google Maps were revolutionary when they came out, sure, but the vast majority of Google's products now are... fine? at best? And a lot of their "big products" were acquisitions that they absorbed i…

> GMail and Google Maps were revolutionary when they came out, sure, but the vast majority of Google's products now are... fine? at best? Is that... good? I mean take maps -- what more can possibly be done to that product that wouldn't just make it worse? It's done . The fact that's the default choice for mapping and just works is fantastic really. There aren't any competitors doing anything revolutionary either beca…

Maps is far from done. At the very least it's still riddled with usability issues. One bug-bear I have in particular: when I zoom into a very specifically chosen area, search for a Chinese restaurant, and it zooms out to half the state. Maddening. And it's rife with problems like this.

Re: Claude Desktop spawns 1.8 GB Hyper-V VM on every launch, even for chat-only use

#239
post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just don’t think your opinion is shared by most people. Gmail is the most popular email service in the world, people are always telling me how they prefer Google Docs over everything else and their only competition is Microsoft. Yes it’s free but there is no other service that I rather switch to, and I actually pay for additional storage.

We probably talk to different sets of people, as I don't even know anybody who ever used Google Docs.

That's really surprising to me.

Re: Claude Desktop spawns 1.8 GB Hyper-V VM on every launch, even for chat-only use

#240
post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google is historically terrible as a product company (and has succeeded in spite of that) As their technical innovations become less of a moat (we're already there) they won't be able to win on engineering alone (they are no longer winning on engineering alone)

As a person who gets paid to make Chrome (CEF really) do its bidding, I would say Chrome is really as close to an OS as it can get, as in I've found API or service typically an OS or an external tool would provide, that wasn't built into Chrome.

The Chromium source code is used to build ChromeOS so you're spot on.
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