Audio Hijack Is the Mac’s Best Audio Recorder, and So Much More (Sponsor)

Audio Hijack lets you record any audio on your Mac, from individual applications like Safari or Zoom, hardware audio devices like microphones and mixers, or even the audio output of the entire system. If you can hear it, you can record it. Whatever you need to do with audio on your Mac, Audio Hijack can help.

  • Record conversations from Zoom, FaceTime, and other VoIP apps
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To say Audio Hijack is essential to me for my work is an understatement. But my family and I find uses for Audio Hijack all the time. For example, my wife is now in the Disneyland Candlelight Christmas Choir. She wanted to practice but didn’t have any recordings. So we got last year’s concert on YouTube and downloaded the audio with Audio Hijack so now she can practice in the car.

Last week, Rogue Amoeba shipped Audio Hijack 4.3 with a brand-new Transcribe block to turn any spoken audio into text. The Mac’s best audio recording tool now also gives you unlimited transcription, without ongoing charges. Transcribe audio from a mic, an app, or a file. It’s great for video meetings, podcasts, and so much more. Read all about it in the Audio Hijack 4.3 blog post.

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More on Apple and AI

During last week’s earnings call, Tim Cook spoke briefly about Apple and artificial intelligence:

“In terms of generative AI, obviously, we have work going on. I’m not going to get into details about what it is, because as you know, we really don’t do that. But you can bet that we’re investing. We’re investing quite a bit. We’re going to do it responsibly, and it will… you will see product advancements over time where those technologies are at the heart of them.”

This feels to me like round two of the photos-in-the-cloud debate from a few years ago. Google was examining your photos on their cloud servers and then allowing you to search them for pictures of dogs, or mountains, or whatever. Apple explained they wanted to do that on device, which would give you the benefit of having this feature, without putting your photos out there.

I remember seeing Craig Federighi at one of the Live Talk Show events when he quipped something like, “We can buy pictures of mountains. We don’t need yours.”

When Apple gets around to sharing a generative AI product, it will also run locally on your device. (There is a reason for all those machine learning cores they’ve been stacking on their chips.) Again, people will wring their hands that it’s not possible to do on device what’s happening in server farms. Again, I expect we’ll find that what happens on our devices is good enough and 100% more private.

I’ve written on this before, but I sincerely hope Apple aims their AI research at automation and Siri. It could be their Siri moonshot.

Mac Power Users 717: The Apple Notes Deep Dive

While it had humble beginnings, Apple Notes has grown into a true competitor over the years. On this episode of Mac Power Users, Stephen and I explore its history, features, and where Apple should take it next.

This episode of Mac Power Users is sponsored by:

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About the M3 Performance

As the MacBook Pros with M3 are hitting the wild, we are getting more data on their performance. It’s looking like a roughly 20% increase over the M2 generation. The M3 Max chip is clocking about the same speed as the M2 Ultra, which is impressive.

I did not think the succeeding generations of Apple silicon would improve that much year over year. I hope Apple can keep it up.