"Are you talking to your little computer again?!" comes the sniggering question from my wife.
My little computer is the Mac Mini I've recently purchased. And yes, I'm talking to it all the time. It may seem weird, but I think it's amazing. I'm now convinced voice is the future of how we'll all interact with our computers.
Let me explain how I’m using voice and some further thoughts.
What I've been doing with voice
I'm using voice ~80% of the time when I'm sitting at my desk using my Mac Mini at home. This is wild to me.
So, what am I actually using voice for?
Replying to pretty much every email, Slack, and Discord message
Prompting Cursor
Making notes in Bear, adding comments on docs.
Creating Linear/ Github tickets
I’ve also been using voice to write this blog.
Most computers are not fast enough yet
I actually tried voice out a couple of months ago on my old Mac Pro (the last Intel). It was rubbish. A really bad experience with the latency being too slow. The voice to text took too long. I just thought voice was not there yet and didn’t get it at all.
Then I treated myself at the start of this month to a new Mac Mini with the M4 chip. The difference is night and day. What once took noticeable seconds to go from speech to text now happens almost instantly. It feels like voice recognition is finally fast enough to match the speed of thought.
At first I tried Superwhisper, which is a lovely product and well worth a try, but more recently the real change changer product for me has been Wispr Flow.
The beauty of it is the one button press on the keyboard, and then the speech to text dictation underneath is incredible. There's something magical about how Wispr Flow automatically copies the transcript and pastes it into any text box I'm active on. I can see the text before doing anything with it and change it if needed. It’s amazing.
For me, It feels very freeing to just talk rather than type and an interaction with a computer I’ve never experienced before.
Why does talking to my computer feel so good?
I've been thinking a lot about why I like talking to my computer so much.
I'm a very fast thinker. I can think as I talk. Sometimes I am a "talk thinker" and will process things as I'm speaking. Ideas come to me in real time during conversation. Maybe I just don’t listen well enough, but that’s always been the way my brain works.
I imagine there are some people that are "writer thinkers" and voice might not be as revolutionary for them.
I’m also slightly dyslexic, not cripplingly so, but I have to think to spell some words and my typing is not world-class because of that. Voice is a big unlock for my own speed.
I'm so much faster at talking than typing, probably around 5x faster. This speed difference is pretty life changing for me.
But it's not just raw speed, what’s been interesting is how I’ve found voice has enabled me to context switch rapidly. I can jump from answering emails using my voice, back to prompting Cursor a bit more with my voice, then make some quick notes with my voice. This might sound like hell for some people, but I like it when I’m in a certain flow or mood.
The ability to capture speak at the speed of thought makes a massive difference in how I work.
Vibe Writing
I do a day a week as a Venture Partner at Entrepreneur First, and a founder there called Bruno is spending a lot of time thinking about writing tools and AI. He mentioned a term I'd never heard before: "vibe writing." Vibe coding has been the buzzword of March 2025, but "vibe writing" I'd never heard.
This concept of "vibe writing" perfectly describes what happens when you use voice to compose text. Rather than the deliberate, structured approach of typing, editing as you go, voice enables a continuous flow of consciousness, which I then edit afterwards. What I am doing here is vibe writing. I'm using my voice to write this blog post, creating a different rhythm and cadence to getting my ideas out before editing the post.
It feels unusual at first, but really fun and productive after a while.
Things I'm not sure about yet
Which leads to a couple of problems or issues that I've run into.
I'm way too scared to use voice in an open plan office. I spend at least a day a week in someone else's office, and I haven't had the confidence yet to talk to my computer there because I think they would think I'm completely mad. I've spoken to a few people who whisper to their computer (Not a pun on the OpenAI voice model, they actual whisper quietly), which I think is quite funny, but I haven't got the confidence to do that yet.
The big realisation is that most people in the world, even most people I spend time with during my average week, do not have a computer that I think is good enough to get the value out of voice yet. So we're really, really early, but it does feel like this is going to be the future.
Another thing I've got annoyed at is when I'm doing certain types of work, I like listening to music. If you're using voice, it interrupts your music to turn on the microphone. I don't know how to listen to music as well as use voice. I guess I need some speakers but then I’m not sure how good these tools are with background noise.
One of the other observations I had the other week was that after a day of talking to my computer all day I could hardly speak by the end of it. It was like being in a day of meetings. I have one day a week where I have back-to-back meetings pretty much the whole day, and I felt the same exhaustion because I'd spent the whole day talking.
Oh, and my wife thinks I am going mad as I mentioned earlier, but I can deal with that.
Wrapping up
My voice is getting tired now, so I'm going to sign off. I'm genuinely excited about voice as this new interface to interact with our computers. It feels very natural and intuitive and weirdly makes sitting at a desk talking instead of typing feel kind of odd.
I'm incredibly optimistic about where voice interfaces could go. I think we’re going to see voice enabled features in lots of products soon and start seeing voice first products. I’m really excited about that space.
Voice feels like the obvious evolution for computers. Only now is it starting to be good and useable and I suspect in the future will be one of those obvious things “Of course you talk to a computer, why would you type!” Talking is the most natural way for humans to communicate with machines.