GoKawiilBack in the summer of last year, I started using Aqua Voice as a replacement for the built-in dictation feature on my Mac. I said then that it showed just how good Mac dictation could be if Apple really tried.
Ever since then, I’ve really wished I could use Aqua Voice on my iPhone, and the company recently granted my wish …
Aqua Voice on the Mac
I’m a huge fan of dictation and voice commands across all my Apple devices, and the company’s built-in voice recognition features have certainly improved significantly over the years. However, the company still lags dramatically behind other speech-recognition models like OpenAI’s Whisper.
I’ve tried pretty much every model out there, and it was occasional 9to5Mac disability advisor Colin Hughes who pointed me toward Aqua Voice. Since dictation models are a necessity rather than a luxury for him, it’s no surprise that he was motivated to find the very best one out there.
I was blown away with just how good Aqua Voice is.
To illustrate the difference between the two, I simultaneously activated Aqua Voice on one Mac and standard Mac dictation on the other, and then read out the opening to Steve Jobs’ famous commencement speech. The Mac version had 17 errors; the Aqua Voice version had just one.
You don’t have to specify punctuation, paragraph breaks, or other formatting. Aqua Voice does it all intelligently and automatically. Ever since installing it, dictation has become my standard way of writing anything on my Mac, including all my 9to5Mac pieces.
Of course, it’s unfair to compare transcription carried out entirely on device with a model reliant on cloud processing. I noted at the time that privacy concerns are the big challenge for a company like this.
Aqua Voice relies on using a server to do the transcription rather than doing it on-device. The company says that it doesn’t store any of the transcribed text unless you use the optional synchronization service between devices. However, that is relying on the promise of a developer, and many people are not prepared to take the chance with sensitive content. Even more so with context awareness, where the app can see what’s on your Mac screen. The complete list of companies I trust to manage the privacy for that is as follows: Apple.
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