New "Dictate" speech recognition app from MacSpeech

[dolphin842]

So, MacSpeech managed to license the Dragon Naturally Speaking engine for use in their new product, called Dictate. Here's hoping we finally have a serviceable speech recognition app on the Mac!

Anyone planning on getting it? It does cost $199, though (you can usually get a basic version of Dragon for $50...).

 

[Cloudane]

Naturally speaking my arse. I've used these (including Dragon) tons of times over the years, and even after hours and hours of training I usually end up with a page full of gibberish followed by several expletives describing the package and finally ending with "off".

 

[dolphin842]

Well, some people report that the accuracy in the latest Dragon 9 version is actually pretty good (all depends on individual circumstances I suppose). For people with RSI, being able to dictate can be a lifesaver. I was actually considering setting up a Windows partition just to set up and use Dragon, but I shied away after seeing how poorly the software and customer service were implemented. I've heard similar complaints about iListen as well, so we'll see if the new app makes any improvements.

 

[icoffee]

iListen Registered user

As a registered user of iListen, I've tried to achieve comparable accuracy to Dragon Naturally Speaking version 8. Simply put, iListen just never really cut it. Dragon, since version 8, has been wonderful. With both iListen and Dragon, you really have to have a good microphone headset to get decent results, but I've easily achieved 95%+ accuracy with Dragon 8 (and I write technical documents). I've probably trained the program on and off for an hour or so. I've been using Dragon 8 under VMWare and it works very well. If Macspeech played their cards right and this new app, Dictate, works like Dragon, we Mac users are in for a real treat. So far, as Mac speech recognition is lacking, this app is the only program that's kept me from uninstalling fusion.

 

[stormy67]

I would seriously reconsider buying anything from Macspeech.

http://stormythoughts.blogspot.com/2008/01/all-mac-users-considering-buying-from.html

 

[dolphin842]

Hmm... I see MacSpeech can be just as bad. Well, that's just like the cable and cell phone companies: give a company a monopoly and they'll cease to care. So, with Dictate, I suppose we can expect the accuracy to go up, but service and software will likely languish....

 

[notjustjay]

I remember being very impressed with Dragon when I tried it on my PC back in... 1999 or something. So the technology can hopefully only have gotten better since then. However, it was really only impressive if you were dictating by reading something out loud, smoothly and continuously. The training documents I read worked, and it generally worked well when I was reading in articles from a newspaper or magazine. But to dictate something I was writing on my own, where I have to pause and think and rephrase and make corrections, got maddeningly frustrating.

So it's good if you're just reading something in, or if you are capable of impeccably organizing your thoughts into written word, but otherwise, it's not so great.