The limits
A product that does not say what it cannot do makes you find out halfway through the night before the exam. So here is the list, and it gets updated when something drops off it.
Where it runs
- Only on Macs with Apple Silicon -M1 or later- and macOS 13 or newer. It does not run on an Intel Mac.
- There is no Windows version. It is the biggest request on the list and it is not a matter of translating the window: the model that explains runs against Apple's GPU. On the home page you can leave your email to be told when it lands.
- There is no phone app. Listening on your phone to what was already generated on the Mac is on what is next.
- It takes about 10 GB of disk for the model that explains, plus the audio of the documents you open.
What it can read
- PDFs and decks -.pptx, .ppt, .key, .odp-. Not a .docx, not yet.
- The PDF needs a text layer. A scanned one has to go through OCR first.
- It does not interpret images, diagrams or charts: it marks them as a figure and tells you to look at them. The model is a text model.
- It explains in Spanish and English. Portuguese is not there yet.
What cannot be taken out yet
The audio and the script stay inside the app: there is no way yet to download the narration as a file or the script as notes to print. Both are requested and can be voted for on what is next.
One licence, one device
The licence is for one Mac. It includes every update to version 1 and does not expire, but it is not a per-person licence across all their machines. The terms are in the terms and conditions.
And it can be wrong
The explanation is written by a language model running on your machine. On summary and full it stays with what the slide says, and the code verifies that nothing was left unexplained; but verifying that everything is there is not verifying that it is right. If the voice and the slide disagree, the slide wins.
Extended is the only level that adds examples and context from outside the slide, and it says so: that is where you read with one eye more open.