Interesting Idea, hamstrung by need to have phone unlocked and screen ON for local models to process
This is an interesting app, with a lot of upside potential, but it doesn’t seem to understand its audience well.
The downloadable local model, if it’s going to be able to process a recording into a transcription and summary, needs to have the phone unlocked and the *screen on* for the model to process. Stopping or app switching away causes the model to fail with a cryptic error message. Given the marketing’s heavy featuring of the local model option, this is a showstopper of a shortcoming.
In addition, there are several other reasons to be wary of this project:
1. There’s no mechanism to securely delete your Whisper account, either on the App Store pages, or on the developer’s website.
2. 3rd party subscription service Gumroad has an unclear connection to the application. It seems that some methods of activating or purchasing the app trigger an interaction with Gumroad, which is an affiliate sales and marketing organization. That’s unexpected, not welcome, and not clear.
3. It’s not possible to evaluate the “free” trial without signing up for a deferred subscription. Yes, you can cancel at any time, but again, vendor doesn’t seem to understand what users who want local LLM models to use with confidential voice recording want from their app.
Safety: For your own safety, if you simply must evaluate this app, do so with a throwaway disposable email account, either a “Login with Apple” account or a 3rd party like Proton Mail or tutamail.
I genuinely WANT to like this app, but cannot recommend it.
The downloadable local model, if it’s going to be able to process a recording into a transcription and summary, needs to have the phone unlocked and the *screen on* for the model to process. Stopping or app switching away causes the model to fail with a cryptic error message. Given the marketing’s heavy featuring of the local model option, this is a showstopper of a shortcoming.
In addition, there are several other reasons to be wary of this project:
1. There’s no mechanism to securely delete your Whisper account, either on the App Store pages, or on the developer’s website.
2. 3rd party subscription service Gumroad has an unclear connection to the application. It seems that some methods of activating or purchasing the app trigger an interaction with Gumroad, which is an affiliate sales and marketing organization. That’s unexpected, not welcome, and not clear.
3. It’s not possible to evaluate the “free” trial without signing up for a deferred subscription. Yes, you can cancel at any time, but again, vendor doesn’t seem to understand what users who want local LLM models to use with confidential voice recording want from their app.
Safety: For your own safety, if you simply must evaluate this app, do so with a throwaway disposable email account, either a “Login with Apple” account or a 3rd party like Proton Mail or tutamail.
I genuinely WANT to like this app, but cannot recommend it.
Show more
Purchasing Pro
I am already a Pro user. But every time I open Whisper Transcription, it does not show my Pro features for about 10 secs, sometimes even asks me to purchase Pro. Developers should really improve this user experienment.
Couldn't Read Video From YouTube
Ok, go to GPT
Doesn’t Work
Doesn’t transcribe; keeps saying it can’t with every file type. Useless.
Credits?
I just subscribed and the app wants me to buy credits to do my first transcript? What’s this? Unbelievable.
