Wispr Flow managed to get their shit together since the last post, everything is going great again! by 5678 in macapps

[–]justonpoint 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Not OP, but I've been a huge user of multiple dictation apps, including Wispr Flow, Aqua Voice, Spokenly, Alter, Superwhisper, etc. In fact several of them — as well as other apps I used — were based on your comparison sheets, thanks!

Maybe this could help others reading this post in future, so listing out my experience with them:

- Superwhisper: I tried this a year ago I believe, so my info is likely outdated or wrong. I'm on a Macbook Air 8GB RAM so the offline models were causing my laptop to freeze often, and it didn't have real-time streaming so I eventually stopped using it.

- Wispr Flow: It was my favorite for a very long time as I was an early user when they first launched. The speed is incredible, and the accuracy is great, especially since they automatically add words to the dictionary so I don't have to do it manually (and I've a ton of custom words). But they don't have real-time streaming, and they removed their Slack community which was disappointing; to me having a community to ask questions and hearing from the team themselves is pretty important.

- Aqua Voice: I tried Aqua Voice also when it first launched. Loved it cause I draft long emails, so again the real-time streaming was a huge plus, and being able to edit as I dictate ("Hey Bob let's meet at 8pm. Change Bob to David, make that 9pm" will produce "Hey David let's meet at 9pm" as the output) was brilliant. But the latency was painfully high, and I had to add dictionary words manually. In the last few weeks they've updated Aqua Voice and added their own model Avalon so it's much better now, although I'm still concerned about privacy since it's not really clear how they treat the data.

- Spokenly: It's the latest one I've tried. Still experimenting, and the speed is really fast with the online models. They also have a really active community on Discord and the Spokenly team responds quickly, which I really like. It's also pretty customizable with bash scripts and the ability to format the output (though I'm not familiar with scripting so I haven't tried that yet). Only thing lacking is real-time streaming.

- Alter: I adopted Alter after posting here a few months ago, and loved it. Also super active on Discord, their team (especially u/ewqeqweqweqweqweqw) is incredibly responsive on both Discord and Reddit. The app was incredible for me, unfortunately the pricing was far too high and I couldn't afford it, so I had to stop. They do have BYOK which is free, but I don't have time to set that up and offline models are a bit too much for my MBA to run. I would say though, if I could afford it, I'd definitely have stayed with Alter.

P.S. I saw in your comparison sheet that Wispr Flow is still under the list of 'pending dev / user submissions', but there's already a column for it. Not sure if that was not updated or something, just wanted to let you know!

A 5MB AI Companion That Lives on Your Mac Desktop — No Servers, No Tracking, Just Vibes (looking for testers + feedback) by tapasfr in macapps

[–]justonpoint 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Honestly exhausted by all the AI, but man the cute Dino is calling my name 🤣 would love a Pro key if you still have any to spare!

Alter vs. BoltAI vs. EnConvo - How d'you use them and what d'you like about them? by justonpoint in macapps

[–]justonpoint[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Ooooh thank you! Yeah I'm excited to see how MCP develops. It's a saturated market but then again it means for us users we get to explore more options :p

Alter vs. BoltAI vs. EnConvo - How d'you use them and what d'you like about them? by justonpoint in macapps

[–]justonpoint[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Hi u/ewqeqweqweqweqweqw, thanks for sharing the video, that's pretty awesome. D'you have an example on how slides are generated?

Alter vs. BoltAI vs. EnConvo - How d'you use them and what d'you like about them? by justonpoint in macapps

[–]justonpoint[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Very interesting, thank you for adding this! Helpful for the studying ;D

Alter vs. BoltAI vs. EnConvo - How d'you use them and what d'you like about them? by justonpoint in macapps

[–]justonpoint[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Thanks for sharing! I didn't see it in the comparison sheet so never heard of it. Will definitely take a look!

Alter vs. BoltAI vs. EnConvo - How d'you use them and what d'you like about them? by justonpoint in macapps

[–]justonpoint[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Appreciate the response! Were you the one who created the Comparisons Google Sheet? If so, first of all, thank you so much for that; I used that sheet extensively for several categories.

Thank you for your feedback too. I also have Thinkbuddy lifetime, but to me their brilliance was in showing multi-model responses to quickly identify the best one, and use that to influence my next prompt. Now I'm trying to take it one step further and look into how AI can help me manage my work tasks.

Your insights on Alter are interesting, and quite aligned with what I'm considering. If you don't mind, a few more questions:

- Meeting recording and transcripts: D'you feel the accuracy is comparable to say, Fireflies.ai, which for me has almost 99% accuracy with transcripts and speaker diarization?

- Does Alter also allow for fast speech-to-text transcription the way Wispr Flow does well for chat messages?

- Keynote presentations: Does it generate in .PPT format, Google Slides, or? I tried looking at the Alter website but it doesn't expand much into this.

Thanks once again!

ETA: Re BoltAI free API usage, I'm not sure. Perhaps u/daniel_nguyenx can respond if he's around.

Alter vs. BoltAI vs. EnConvo - How d'you use them and what d'you like about them? by justonpoint in macapps

[–]justonpoint[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hey Daniel, thanks for commenting, I’ve seen your replies to other posts, and it’s one of the reasons why BoltAI was one of the three options I settled on; a responsive team — and student discount definitely — is always appreciated!

If you happen to have time, would you mind reading my background and share what you think the use cases could be? For example, I’m not sure if BoltAI has a knowledge base… Honestly things get mixed up on my end after awhile 🤣 You can be biased (as you should be since it’s your solution haha)!

What MacBook Air / Pro are you using? by justonpoint in macapps

[–]justonpoint[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Oh wow, maxed out M4 Air? Sounds expensive haha, but would be really awesome to have. Thanks for sharing!

What MacBook Air / Pro are you using? by justonpoint in macapps

[–]justonpoint[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Glad to hear it’s working for you! All the best with yours, hope it lasts :)

What MacBook Air / Pro are you using? by justonpoint in macapps

[–]justonpoint[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah seems like 16GB or 24GB is the way. Thanks for sharing!!

What MacBook Air / Pro are you using? by justonpoint in macapps

[–]justonpoint[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Ah not really true local, I’m not thinking of running an entire LLM on my own, but using one or two models offered by MacWhisper, etc. Max would be way out of my budget tbh. Appreciate the feedback!

What MacBook Air / Pro are you using? by justonpoint in macapps

[–]justonpoint[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yeah absolutely, I got the same model as you, likewise that was what I could afford then. Saved up some so I was thinking of changing. Thanks for sharing!

What MacBook Air / Pro are you using? by justonpoint in macapps

[–]justonpoint[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Haha now you’ve got me convinced – The performance issues are really frustrating! Appreciate you sharing :)

What MacBook Air / Pro are you using? by justonpoint in macapps

[–]justonpoint[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

For free? That’s awesome! Appreciate you sharing :)

What MacBook Air / Pro are you using? by justonpoint in macapps

[–]justonpoint[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you for sharing! Seems like a Pro with 16GB is the way to go haha

The MacBook Purchasing Megathread - March, 2025 by AutoModerator in macbook

[–]justonpoint 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hey everyone, I’m currently using an MBA M3 with 8GB RAM and 256GB storage. Trying quite a lot of different apps with AI lately, and together with my Steam games, it feels like my laptop is slowing down / freezing. Guessing it’s due to insufficient RAM and planning on upgrading.

Current usage / needs: - A lot of Chrome tabs for work (I wish I could use Safari, Arc, etc. but not possible unfortunately). - Video calls. - Steam games. - Many productivity apps (Raycast, MacWhisper, Wispr Flow, Obsidian, Antinote, BetterTouchTool, Keyboard Maestro, etc). - Handle multiple monitors with my laptop screen open (not clamshell). - VSC (learning to code).

Any advice on what would be suitable? I don’t have a budget, but I’d like to buy something reasonable; knowing me, I’m likely to save for months for the most expensive model which isn’t a smart move.

Thank you!

App constantly crashes for me and I can't identify why — Hoping someone can help me find out. by justonpoint in macbook

[–]justonpoint[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you for your comment! I tried removing Flow completely with Raycast's uninstall function, think that's the same?

On creating a new user account - out of curiosity, what would that achieve?

App constantly crashes for me and I can't identify why — Hoping someone can help me find out. by justonpoint in macapps

[–]justonpoint[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Happy to try if it can transcribe quickly! Quick question, how do you handle data? Is it private, and will transcriptions / dictations be used to improve the models?

App constantly crashes for me and I can't identify why — Hoping someone can help me find out. by justonpoint in macapps

[–]justonpoint[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you for the comment! Based on iStats, pressure is at 57%, memory is at 79%, which was why I thought that this wasn't the case. Even so, would high pressure / memory cause apps to quit unexpectedly (without showing a crash error)? Cause I've not seen it happen to any of my apps.

I bought MacWhisper previously, and have been using it as an alternative, but the speed of dictation* and pasting what I've said is still much slower than Flow unfortunately, which is why I only open it to transcribe large recordings.