I don't know what happened to the macOS app ecosystem where most tools go with the one time payment model instead of subscription.
It is not sustainable for indie devs and the software suffers as a result.
superwhisper is not expensive (65 a year) given what it provides to the user.
On top of that the base features are free, and require absolutely nothing from you, no sign up or contact information required at all- just download and use.
It completely respects your personal privacy and provides a useful service. Very few tools outside of open source do this.
It's very annoying that everything is going to the monthly subs BS and I can't just pay $5 for 1000 widget bazingas or whatever the credit system is called.
It’s a bit of a strange argument that developers can feed their families _only_ if they sell their software on a subscription basis. Nobody wants to developers to starve. At the same time it is not a _duty_ of users of a software to make sure the developer’s family is fed. It is a business. Developer sells something, and the buyer gets value in return. Subscription is just one way of making the buyer pay more(may be hoping that they forget that they were paying for it amidst 50 other subscriptions).
It is perfectly fine to say “I expect to feed my family with this work. So I want to charge $bigamount”. Then your buyers chose whether your software is worth that or not.
You may also say, “I prefer a recurring income, and don’t want to charge one time. It is my prerogative.”, but arguing that one cannot feed their families any other way is disingenuous.
Another way of looking at it is - software is not very different than ebooks. Imagine if an author of a book says “Books should only be sold as subscription. It’s almost as if my readers don’t want me to feed my family!” If every reader is not continuously paying me $5/month, how can I keep learning and providing little updates to this book, and make errata?! How dare they try to get my knowledge at once when they can be paying me so much more to keep me fed?!
Fair enough! Theres a very generous free tier (both small and base models enabled) that should cover a basic use case.
Justification for charging a subscription is value based:
65 bucks a year is not a lot to spend if it saves you 10+ hours of time typing, and editing your messages. Dictating is joyful and saves me time each day.
superwhisper spells/punctuates better and writes faster than I can with a keyboard.
This alongside the cost to me, 10s of hours each week of my time as the solo developer go into:
• Supporting users with their issues and bugs fixes
• Continuing to update the app with new features (4 major features released this month alone)
• Making sure you have access to the latest features and capabilities as AI advances.
Also, keep in mind, with free / cheap solutions:
"If you are not paying for it, you're the product".
I found this back a decade or more ago when I saw windows 7 had an inbuilt voice recognition.
Before that I had an old copy of dragon on xp or 98 I think but the problem remained.
I want this. >>
I want to say a sentence. The computer would understand and speak it back to me. Yes. Then I would say a sentence. It says a word wrong. Scratch that. I say the whole line again.
It may sound repetive but it "should" work because every dictation software expects user to monitor the screen and fix errors that way. If I am reading the screen, I might as well use a keyboard.
I want this full screen-less voice dictation experience by sitting in a comfy blanket, eyes closed and just letting words flow.
Anything else and I would rather just use the keyboard as I said.
Fair enough, it’s 100% your product to price how you see fit. I do think you’re shooting yourself in the foot a bit, though. But best of luck to you! The free version is great, keep up the good work.
I would make it just use the same hotkey, but held down. So in the default case, tapping option-space would start a normal recording session, tapping again would stop it; holding option-space down would start a PTT session, releasing would end it.
It is not sustainable for indie devs and the software suffers as a result.
superwhisper is not expensive (65 a year) given what it provides to the user.
On top of that the base features are free, and require absolutely nothing from you, no sign up or contact information required at all- just download and use.
It completely respects your personal privacy and provides a useful service. Very few tools outside of open source do this.