Perplexity's New Mac App Brings Personal Computer to Pro Users

[Bungaree.Chubbins]

See below/attached for LLM's to tell you what it thinks people use them for! Please don't confuse those with Sentient AI which doesn't exist. 😂

In reality, I've used it to respond to people I don't want to take the time to respond to, author letters to the IRS with success to avoid a penalty for under reporting a stock sale by mistake, write LinkedIn recommendations for people I didn't want to take the time to personally write them for (the one's who don't reciprocate), create some silly pictures that got zero laughs, and occasionally strip out poor formatting in Word documents I'm unable to see or understand because I'm not an editor who lives in Word all day.

Not a reason to give a company who sponsors extremist podcasts full access to a device with my data, files, history so it can create additional products and continue funding those who profit from a surveillance state.

I don't think you need Perplexity Personal Computer, Claude Desktop, or OpenClaw for any of that...

LLMs are of limited use to me, though I do muck around with them enough to form opinions I trust. I have Ollama and LM Studio, and muck about with local models. I don't code at the moment, so haven't found anything I want to outsource my thinking for.

 

[teaneedz]

stop with perplexity articles already:

Perplexity AI's growing list of faux pas:

- Ignored robots.txt using stealth crawlers and spoofed user agents to bypass site blocks
- Caught using undisclosed IP addresses to scrape sites that explicitly opted out
- Sued by Dow Jones, NYT, BBC, Reddit, Forbes, Wired, and Japanese publishers for copyright infringement
- Published hallucinated quotes falsely attributed to real news outlets
- Tested sponsored answers blended into search results (since abandoned)
- Amazon sued them over Comet browser secretly masking bot actions as human clicks
- Signed publisher revenue deals without informing the writers whose content they were using

** • Embedded Meta Pixel, Google Ads, and DoubleClick trackers that sent users’ full chat transcripts to Meta and Google for ad targeting – without consent (class action filed March 31, 2026)**

 

[Alex.ne]

Am I missing something? It is available on Pro paid subscription but will not work if I do not pay extra?

 

[TheColtr]

I just don’t trust perplexity. For better or worse I trust Claude. In fact I heavily use Claude on a daily basis for a large majority of my work (marketing and technology tasks). I enjoy it quiete a lot. I don’t think everyone should be forced to use AI, but for those who can use it as a tool to accelerate their workflow I think it’s great!

 

[svish]

Good to know about this. Don't know about privacy and don't think I have a need for this.

 

[teaneedz]

I just don’t trust perplexity. For better or worse I trust Claude. In fact I heavily use Claude on a daily basis for a large majority of my work (marketing and technology tasks). I enjoy it quiete a lot. I don’t think everyone should be forced to use AI, but for those who can use it as a tool to accelerate their workflow I think it’s great!

i want to know why macrumors acts like Perplexity's PR arm? readers here need accurate and reliable information. we place our trust with companies who at least provide a few reasons to trust them. Perplexity's pattern is far from trustworthy. They are full Sith in practice. Gemini is just another adtech play by Google and chatGPT may also be the next Meta adtech play too--sam altman can't be trusted at all. that leaves Anthropic/Claude which at least has walked a talk I can appreciate. Devs rely on claude for a practical reason.

 

[matthew12]

Welp, that's another app to block on the corporate network.

 

[GfPQqmcRKUvP]

I’m still waiting for someone to tell me what actual, real world tasks they use these things for. Answers are always vague. Even though I use Perplexity, I cannot see the point for this, other than burning money.

-Creating web pages based on a few natural-language prompts
-Brainstorming
-Playing devil's advocate
-Writing
-Research
-Cleaning data
-Testing/programming ideas you're interested in but don't have the coding background for
-Helping create, audit, and fix errors in excel files
-Document comparisons
-Etc etc etc

Literally try anything and keep trying it. It's a general purpose technology - the uses are limitless and if your evaluation of its capabilities are even six months old or were based on free models your knowledge is already extremely outdated and irrelevant compared to the models the frontier labs charge for.

 

[Jarman74]

Sorry, I am frustrated from having to stare at a Co-pilot icon on Word documents for 10 hours today.

I can ease your pain. Right-click on the Word ribbon and select “Customize the Ribbon…”. In the right panel, under the “Home” tab, select “Assistance” and click the “Remove” button. Click “OK” and the Copilot icon will disappear from the ribbon.

 

[Bungaree.Chubbins]

-Creating web pages based on a few natural-language prompts
-Brainstorming
-Playing devil's advocate
-Writing
-Research
-Cleaning data
-Testing/programming ideas you're interested in but don't have the coding background for
-Helping create, audit, and fix errors in excel files
-Document comparisons
-Etc etc etc

Literally try anything and keep trying it. It's a general purpose technology - the uses are limitless and if your evaluation of its capabilities are even six months old or were based on free models your knowledge is already extremely outdated and irrelevant compared to the models the frontier labs charge for.

In my experience their capabilities are vastly overstated. In my line of work every AI I have tried has given me clearly wrong answers, citing sources that don't exist. Perplexity has helped a bit, the others have just been a waste of time.

 

[FootballIsLife]

I just don’t trust perplexity. For better or worse I trust Claude. In fact I heavily use Claude on a daily basis for a large majority of my work (marketing and technology tasks). I enjoy it quiete a lot. I don’t think everyone should be forced to use AI, but for those who can use it as a tool to accelerate their workflow I think it’s great!

If you use AI do to the majority of your work, it really means that most likely sooner or later, you won’t be necessary. AI eventually won’t increase productivity, it will replace it. However, in the short term, it’s just utter garbage.

 

[lewchenko]

Whoever chose the name for this should be fired. Talk about confusing. "Personal Computer" ala PC has a vastly different meaning for pretty much everyone and this isn't going to change that. Branding fail.

 

[BigQJohnson]

Pro users with a shitton of credits more like it.

I tried this with 20$ worth of credits, burned through them in two simple tasks.

Perplexity Pro is decent, especially when you get it for free or very cheap, but otherwise it's just marketing.

 

[MilaM]

Pro users with a shitton of credits more like it.

I tried this with 20$ worth of credits, burned through them in two simple tasks.

Perplexity Pro is decent, especially when you get it for free or very cheap, but otherwise it's just marketing.

It will be very interesting to see what happens to all these assistants when they start charging real prices. At some point investors will demand a return on the billions (if not trillions) of dollars invested in data centers.

 

[BigQJohnson]

It will be very interesting to see what happens to all these assistants when they start charging real prices. At some point investors will demand a return on the billions (if not trillions) of dollars invested in data centers.

For sure. I got my year of Perp Pro for a grand total of $5. There is no way they can run the service for that. When customers start getting the real price charged, nobody will use it. It's all a giant bubble.

 

[Bungaree.Chubbins]

I only have a few weeks left of my free year of Perplexity Pro. It did grow on me as I found it provided better quality results than Google did. I guess I will find out how limited the free tier is, whether I keep using it, or go back to trying to force search results out of Google again.

 

[everlast3434]

Cool! Here's access to my computer and all of my files! Now what...? /s

 

[buddhistMonkey]

Everything else aside, “Personal Computer” is a wretched name for a product.

 

[jerryjohnson]

I love that it can automate workflows across native apps and the web. Makes me wonder if this could replace a few of my old scripting routines

 

[VulchR]

I don't think I will ever trust an AI sufficiently to hand over my entire file system to them...

Agreed - what could possibly go wrong?

(See https://www.facebook.com/reel/1655305865512209 for instance - Hannah Fry is a professor of the Public Understanding of Mathematics at Cambridge BTW, so, no, I doubt this was any form of "user error".)

"Open the pod bay doors, Claude...

Claude...?"

Hilarious 🤣

 

[SebbsBo]

Perplexity today launched a new Mac app with support for its hybrid local-cloud AI agent Personal Computer, plus it expanded Personal Computer access to Pro and Enterprise users, so it is no longer limited to just Max subscribers. Perplexity describes Personal Computer as a "personal orchestrator" that hybridizes local and server environments for security and productivity.

Personal Computer is available in the new Mac app, which Perplexity says gives users access to queries, conversations, and dictation. While all Mac users can download the new app, access to Personal Computer still requires a paid subscription.

Personal Computer can access the Mac's file system and native Mac apps to create and execute entire workflows, plus it can access the web. It can see active apps and work across any Mac app, but files are created in a secure sandbox, and its actions are auditable and reversible.

When paired with the Comet browser, Personal Computer can operate web-based tools without the need for direct connectors.

Pressing both Command keys on a Mac activates Personal Computer, and it responds to text or voice commands and displays useful quick actions automatically. Personal Computer can do things like complete each task on a to-do list, sort a messy downloads folder, compare local files against information on the web, and more.

Though it has access to what's on a user's Mac natively, Personal Computer processes intense tasks on Perplexity's servers, so a high-performance Mac isn't needed to run it. Personal Computer works on any Mac with macOS 14 Sonoma or later, though Perplexity says running Personal Computer on a Mac mini creates the best experience because it allows the agent to run continuously.

Perplexity's older Mac app will be deprecated in the coming weeks.

Article Link: Perplexity's New Mac App Brings Personal Computer to Pro Users

I switched to perplexity for the versatility of using many AI’s (Claude, Gemini, chatGPT) using Pro. Seems interesting about computer, but I wouldn’t use it. I like my AI only as a tool, not to do the job for me

 

[GfPQqmcRKUvP]

In my experience their capabilities are vastly overstated. In my line of work every AI I have tried has given me clearly wrong answers, citing sources that don't exist. Perplexity has helped a bit, the others have just been a waste of time.

Honestly you’re probably not using it correctly. AI is not perfect but I can’t imagine a line of work (that’s white collar in nature) where it would be useless.

 

[rosuna]

Anyone compared this to Claude Cowork/Dispatch? Interested to know if there are any benefits?

Personal Computer LLMs are partly on your computer, operating locally, and partly on servers, for complex tasks.

This is exactly what Apple should copy with Apple Intelligence and the new Siri, Siri being a mere interface of Apple's AI system... but for free!

 

[VulchR]

In my experience their capabilities are vastly overstated. In my line of work every AI I have tried has given me clearly wrong answers, citing sources that don't exist. Perplexity has helped a bit, the others have just been a waste of time.

I am a neuroscientist. ChatGPT thinks I work on an abdominal organ. Why? Because somebody who shared my name, but died a century ago, named a part of that organ. I tried correcting this. Did it work? Nope.

 

[TurboDrooler]

Perplexity today launched a new Mac app with support for its hybrid local-cloud AI agent Personal Computer, plus it expanded Personal Computer access to Pro and Enterprise users, so it is no longer limited to just Max subscribers. Perplexity describes Personal Computer as a "personal orchestrator" that hybridizes local and server environments for security and productivity.

Personal Computer is available in the new Mac app, which Perplexity says gives users access to queries, conversations, and dictation. While all Mac users can download the new app, access to Personal Computer still requires a paid subscription.

Personal Computer can access the Mac's file system and native Mac apps to create and execute entire workflows, plus it can access the web. It can see active apps and work across any Mac app, but files are created in a secure sandbox, and its actions are auditable and reversible.

When paired with the Comet browser, Personal Computer can operate web-based tools without the need for direct connectors.

Pressing both Command keys on a Mac activates Personal Computer, and it responds to text or voice commands and displays useful quick actions automatically. Personal Computer can do things like complete each task on a to-do list, sort a messy downloads folder, compare local files against information on the web, and more.

Though it has access to what's on a user's Mac natively, Personal Computer processes intense tasks on Perplexity's servers, so a high-performance Mac isn't needed to run it. Personal Computer works on any Mac with macOS 14 Sonoma or later, though Perplexity says running Personal Computer on a Mac mini creates the best experience because it allows the agent to run continuously.

Perplexity's older Mac app will be deprecated in the coming weeks.

Article Link: Perplexity's New Mac App Brings Personal Computer to Pro Users

No thanks. I have PC at home