> Is MacWhisper a $60 GUI for a Python script that just runs the model?

Yes, a large genre of MacOS apps are "Native GUI wrappers around OSS scripts"

A lot of MacOS itself is this.

Which is incredibly value. The OSS script has zero value to someone who doesn't know it exists or doesn't understand how to run it.

There's also a free version that just uses Whisper. I recommend giving it a go, it's a very well constructed GUI wrapper. I use it multiple times a week, and I've run Whisper on my machine in other less convenient ways in the past.