When you have made that choice is it still possible to use 'browse the web' or 'talk to a PDF' like functionality? If so, what would be the best way to do it?
My app (BoltAI) does support web search (via Google Search) and web browsing (built-in) but not chat w/ PDF functionality.
I built another app[0] specifically for that use case.
So I guess if you need an all-in-one kind of functionality then ChatGPT could be a better choice.
[0]: https://pdfpals.com
> Is my data protected? Absolutely. BoltAI operates locally on your device, and no user input or prompts are stored or sent to us.
While the explanation might be true, as far as I understand it, you can’t assert that users’ data is “absolutely” protected, because it fundamentally depends on OpenAI to keep your users’ data safe too, which you can’t control.
I would guess most of your audience would understand this anyway, but I would be careful as potentially someone could sue you in case OpenAI had a data breach or something.
[0]: https://web.archive.org/web/20230522013022/https://boltai.ap...
[1]: https://web.archive.org/web/20230711214004/https://mindmac.a...
Secondly, all requests are sent directly to OpenAI servers. There is absolutely no middle/proxy server.
There is however a proxy server for Claude but this was due to a technical difficulty and user can host their own proxy server instead.
If you are looking for an alternative of the app for the ChatGPT - I would suggest https://www.typingmind.com I have been using it since it was released. It is also available with Setapp subscription, which gives you some free usage of the OpenAI with Setapp embedded API key.
> A perpetual fallback license is a license that allows you to use a specific version of software without an active subscription for it. The license also includes all bugfix updates, more specifically in X.Y.Z version all Z releases are included.
After 1 year, you can continue to use the app without having to upgrade. You won't receive new features, but will continue to receive bug fixes for the features released previously.
So I can argue it's not "subscription".
Plus, renewal cost 50% less, so it's not $40-$80 a year, but only $20-$40 a year after the first year.
And lastly, the app fetch model lists from OpenAI API so there is no need to "support new models".
I believe this is a sustainable pricing model for an indie developer like me. And I believe it's fair for everyone.
[0]: https://sales.jetbrains.com/hc/en-gb/articles/207240845-What...
As an Indie developer myself I do not support subscription based licensing (or your version of license) for B2C products. You can offer B2B subscription based licensing, but B2C should always be perpetual licenses. Sure it is ok to ask for the upgrade to new version, which has significant features.
And to clarify, we are talking about the product that does not have any outgoing server spending.
That is my opinion.
No, I am not. The "technical" part here is the "fallback" in "perpetual fallback license".
Appreciate your opinion and I'm sure many think the same way.
But selling perpetual licenses just won't work for me. It's not sustainable, especially for this kind of app.
I don’t see a reason for an indie developer to charge subscription, if there is no server cost. New versions should just make the app interesting for more users, so the income should be flowing constantly every month.
Anyway, I just personally don’t support subscription based apps and never will.
That's interesting. Why do you say that? And where can we access the model from?
If you use API Key then you can change the model parameter. Here is the list of models that OpenAI support: https://platform.openai.com/docs/models/gpt-4-and-gpt-4-turb...
Too bad it’s considered legacy model and will be deprecated next year.
If you want to use GPTs or to generate images with Dall-E then ChatGPT Plus is a no brainer I guess.
But if your focus is on GPT-4 then I highly recommend to use an API instead.
There are multiple pros of using an API Key:
- You pay for your usages. I've been using API Key exclusively and most of the time, it cost me around $5-$10 a month
- Your data is not used for training. This is important for a privacy-minded user like me. Though you can disable this in ChatGPT (but you will lose chat history)
- No message limit. Though there are rate limits to prevent abuse but generally, you do not have the message limit like the ChatGPT
- You can choose previous GPT models. In my experience, `gpt-4-0314` was the peak gpt-4 model.
Depends on the applications, you can also get these:
- Access to multiple AI services: OpenAI, Azure or OpenRouter
- Build custom AI workflows
- Voice search & text-to-speech etc.
- Deeper integrations with other apps & services
There are also a few cons:
- No GPTs support yet
- If you use Dall E a lot then ChatGPT plus is more affordable. Generating images using Dall E API can be quite expensive
Edit: Some tips when using an API Key:
- You pay for tokens used (basically how long your question & AI's answers). The price per chat message is not expensive, but usually you will need to send the whole conversation to OpenAI, which makes it expensive. Make sure to pick an app that allows you to limit the chat context.
- Don't use GPT-4 for tasks that doesn't require deeper reasoning capabilities. I find that GPT-3.5 turbo is still very good at simple tasks like: grammar fixes, improve your writing, translations ...
- Use different system prompts for different tasks: for example, I have a special prompt for coding tasks, and a different system prompt for writing tasks. It usually give a much better result.
Shameless plug: I've been building a native ChatGPT app for Mac called BoltAI[0], give it a try
[0]: https://boltai.com