That's kind of like saying that a BMW M5 is just a version of a Ford Fiesta. Both will get you there, but the comfort and enjoyment will be somewhat different.

Ford Fiesta? That might be selling the web app a bit short.

You're right. I'm not that good at metaphors and that one doesn't do the web app justice. My point was that while the two solutions are more or less functionally equivalent, they do differ significantly in ease-of-use and overall comfort.

I'm very, very happy that GitHub is doing this — but I also have high expectations and I do expect the app to improve significantly.

I don't buy that. If thier web app is rubbish, surely the time would be better spent on making thier web app great.

But thier web app is great.

What's the big deal about a desktop client that wraps a great website?

That doesn't mean the M5 is a huge deal. It's a nice, enjoyable ride, but it's not a huge deal.

Well, their web app tracks the history and changes of your repo hosted there. It means you see them only after you perform a push.

On the announcement they say: > But those things are only great after you've pushed your code to GitHub.

With the desktop app you can manage your local repository before pushing changes to github

Git is tracking the changes and history, not GitHub.

Ah, that's what I missed. So it's technically possible to have all of the niceties of GitHub without having to use GitHub?

Absolutely correct: GitHub just put a GUI on top on that, although it is a very neat one.

This is huge, because for many people, the current interface to git is the command line, which is too much for people who want GUIs. Yes, there are other GUIs out there, but those are not controlled by GitHub. In this case, they did something very similar to what Google did with Chrome; they wanted to provide a consistent and predictable end-to-end solution for users so they built their own desktop app.

It also does not hurt that the app defaults to use GitHub, though it does seem like you can use remotes that are not GitHub (see repository -> Settings).

The free GUI app might be a good competitor to the not-free OS X clients already out there, and also help rope people into hosting on Github.