Perplexity Launches Native macOS App for AI-Powered Search

[Northgrove]

I for one think this and Perplexity looks great! Often much faster than Google to get through the web cruft that game their search algorithm and they never seem to do anything about.

This can't be compared to local models like Llama 3.1 because they don't search the web, which is Perplexity's key feature... Best comparisons are OpenAI ChatGPT + Web Search or something like Microsoft Copilot.

Of those, Perplexity has an edge because it allows you to get to various models for those $20 than the respective above services which cost $20 _each_ to not have rate limited use. I think it's a decent deal. Of course they use your data, but so does watching YouTube or Netflix, or browsing Macrumors.

 

[canadianreader]

Oof...
View attachment 2441145

Pass.

The question is why Apple is letting these apps collect this much data. For example collecting financial info is absurd since we pay Apple and not these devs. All this "privacy card" tells is we have no privacy.

 

[cube4ever]

For news search, nothing beats littleberg.com — Perplexity just shows old stuff (besides stealing traffic from publishers).

 

[turbineseaplane]

The question is why Apple is letting these apps collect this much data. For example collecting financial info is absurd since we pay Apple and not these devs. All this "privacy card" tells is we have no privacy.

Yes, agreed
I keep getting told Apple is protecting us ... why allow this sort of thing to be collecting all of this information -- at all?

 

[ProbablyDylan]

Perplexity is probably the shadiest of the AI companies. No thanks.

 

[nostradumbass]

DuckDuckGo for search. Free.

Wikipedia for subject references. Free.

Ollama for local LLM stuff. Free.

ComfyUI to generate pics of dogs eating spaghetti. Free.

 

[turbineseaplane]

DuckDuckGo for search. Free.

I have to say, I'm a paying Kagi search user and LOVE IT

 

[Mother Nature]

Mine

Browsers are way way more complex than they used to. Sometimes you just want to use a service, for those, having a dedicated app will help them avoid opening a browser and having it consume more resources.

 

[Kottu]

I use Perplexity and ChatGpt often. I do find that few calculations which I asked resulted wrong. Apple pages showed wrong result today. So, I don’t understand how come these complex AI tools can’t even handle some simple tasks? Even a 13 year old casio can give correct answer.

 

[mrothroc]

I am definitely a perplexity user, and it has been my default for web search instead of google for a little while now. I received a year-long pro subscription for free from a LinkedIn promotion.

However, lately I've been using this more and more:

Msty - Using AI Models made Simple and Easy

AI beyond just plain chat. Private, Offline, Split chats, Branching, Concurrent chats, Web Search, RAG, Prompts Library, Vapor Mode, and more. Perfect LM Studio, Jan AI, and Perplexity alternative. Use models from Open AI, Deepseek, Claude, Ollama, and HuggingFace in a unified interface.

msty.app

That lets you do real time web searches with whatever model you want, including local. It also allows you to add your own documents as sources. Personally, I use API keys with the big providers since the terms of service on those say "no training" with your data. This all does take a little technical knowhow to set up, though. Not as easy as just opening a web page.

I'm not sure how it does the real time search, but it's working great. I am not affiliated with this company in any way, just a happy user.

 

[nostradumbass]

I am definitely a perplexity user, and it has been my default for web search instead of google for a little while now. I received a year-long pro subscription for free from a LinkedIn promotion.

However, lately I've been using this more and more:

Msty - Using AI Models made Simple and Easy

AI beyond just plain chat. Private, Offline, Split chats, Branching, Concurrent chats, Web Search, RAG, Prompts Library, Vapor Mode, and more. Perfect LM Studio, Jan AI, and Perplexity alternative. Use models from Open AI, Deepseek, Claude, Ollama, and HuggingFace in a unified interface.

msty.app

That lets you do real time web searches with whatever model you want, including local. It also allows you to add your own documents as sources. Personally, I use API keys with the big providers since the terms of service on those say "no training" with your data. This all does take a little technical knowhow to set up, though. Not as easy as just opening a web page.

I'm not sure how it does the real time search, but it's working great. I am not affiliated with this company in any way, just a happy user.

Where's company info page? Where's the support page? Discord? Nah. How is the data handled by the app?

OpenWebui should be your only Ollama/Llama/etc front end if you want transparency and extendibility.

GitHub - open-webui/open-webui: User-friendly AI Interface (Supports Ollama, OpenAI API, ...)

User-friendly AI Interface (Supports Ollama, OpenAI API, ...) - open-webui/open-webui

github.com

 

[NewOldStock]

"A key feature of the desktop app is its threaded conversation capability, allowing users to ask follow-up questions while maintaining context from previous queries. The app also includes a library feature that archives past searches and discoveries, as well as a number of custom shortcuts for quickly accessing features."

openai dot com does this anyway so this is just a new Pretty interface and calling it new but its still using openai

 

[Jeeve Stubbs]

Perplexed City.

 

[BrightDarkSky]

Can't be any worse than Google, which these days is just a showcase for adverts.

Stop assuming. There are plenty of stories about this rip-off company trying to rip off the entire internet's content and sell it to you.

This is a perfect app for people who don't pay attention. It's not a search engine. It's a scrape everybody else's content and have you pay them to put it in a few paragraphs.

Don't be one of those silly people be an informed person. Can't be any worse? You obviously have no idea what you're talking about.

This fake product service is a pure rip-off so go ahead and use it if it can be any worse.

Everyone else, this whole company is a sham. They could have a Mac app hell they can have a walking Macintosh who cares the company is still a sham.

But yeah feel free to try it because it's not any worse LOL. They are trying to get any kind of suckers money before they get sued out of Oblivion or anybody realizes that this is essentially a fake product.

 

[BrightDarkSky]

"A key feature of the desktop app is its threaded conversation capability, allowing users to ask follow-up questions while maintaining context from previous queries. The app also includes a library feature that archives past searches and discoveries, as well as a number of custom shortcuts for quickly accessing features."

openai dot com does this anyway so this is just a new Pretty interface and calling it new but its still using openai

It's not using openai.

Google is your friend, plenty of stories about this company. PS they are a sham