software Archives - MacSparky

BBEdit 15 is Here

David Sparks — Fri, 12 Jan 2024 09:00:00 +0000

The folks at Bare Bones Software just announced a big upgrade to their ubiquitous text editor, BBEdit. It’s got too many features to mention, but here are a few that jumped at me:

A new AI-driven document type called ChatGPT Worksheets, which lets you interact with ChatGPT as you put your words on the page.
Minimap, a palette gives you a nice overview of the document you’re working on, making it easy to see its structure.
Expandable Cheat Sheets to reference bits of text that you use often or don’t remember how to type.
A new UI for Text Factories, a long-standing and unique feature of BBEdit.

You can read more about the new features and get upgrade pricing if you have an older version of the app.

I’ve seen BBEdit grow for the last few decades and it’s nice to see it’s still going strong in 2024.

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The Vision Pro Software Question

David Sparks — Wed, 10 Jan 2024 09:00:00 +0000

One of the bigger questions around the looming release of the Vision Pro is software. Specifically, will there be any, and will it be any good? We don’t know yet. We’ve seen some offerings from Apple and some limited offerings from third parties, but now that we have a shipping date on the hardware, announcements are starting to roll out. The Omni Group announced OmniPlan will be on the new hardware. I suspect they’ll be announcing more. This is where the companies that adopted SwiftUI will get their payoff.

But it’s too early to tell whether a healthy software stack will be available to us on Day One. The device could be focused on enterprise-style software, given its cost. But I could equally see a lot of the better developers getting apps on it despite its small initial adoption so that they can have their flag planted. We’ll see.

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MacWhisper 3.0

David Sparks — Thu, 22 Jun 2023 17:00:00 +0000

MacWhisper, the app that uses an AI Large Language Model to create transcripts, just got its third major update. Improvements include:

New full transcript mode
Podcast mode, which can transcribe a podcast by adding the audio files for each host.
System App transcription. Record and transcribe your zoom meetings or any other audio source on your Mac
Faster speed (up to 40%).

I can’t help but feel that we are at an inflection point with voice to text and it is getting a lot easier to use and implement. MacWhisper is part of this wave.

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