MacSpeech Dictate Updated To Version 1.5
Posted on 14 May 2009, at 7:43 pm, by Dan Cohen
I use speech recognition quite a bit. I need to. I do a lot of writing and never learned how to touch type. Add to that the fact that I destroyed my wrist a number of years ago and — voice recognition is a godsend.
Unfortunately, just a few years ago even the best voice recognition was slow and inaccurate. Over the past few years however, the speed has improved significantly and the accuracy gets better and better. Yes, it isn’t perfect, and if I don’t take the time to carefully go through any mistakes that might have crept in… well you might say I have embarrassed myself more than once. But overall, the speed and accuracy are quite good. For Windows users, Dragon NaturallySpeaking is excellent. I have version 10 on my netbook, and it runs quite well. Mac users haven’t been quite as lucky. For years the applications that were available lagged behind. Fortunately last year MacSpeech Dictate was released. Built on the Dragon NaturallySpeaking version 9 engine, it was a huge leap forward. Not as good as Dragon, but quite good.
Earlier today I received notice that MacSpeech Dictate version 1.5 has just been released. It was a case of good news… bad news.
The bad news was this – even though I bought the application just a year ago the company was going to charge me $55 plus shipping to upgrade to the new version. Even though it wasn’t an upgrade to version 2.0, it was still a for-fee upgrade and a relatively significant fee at that.
The good news is this – The new version is apparently fantastic. I just got off the phone with a customer service representative. When I asked, “Will this update brings MacSpeech more in line with Dragon as far as speed and accuracy?” She replied, “absolutely — the first version of MacSpeech Dictate was based on Dragon NaturallySpeaking version 9; this new version is built on 10 and should be just as good.” When I asked if it was a download she replied, “No, it is physical media because this thing is a beast… they rewrote almost the entire thing to make it much much better.”
So what we expect from the new version –
Improved accuracy of up to 20%. The company claims that the accuracy rate is now 99%.
A new ability to recognize 13 distinct English dialectic variations, so that anyone who doesn’t speak normally (that is northeastern) was totally understood.
A new vocabulary editor allows you to train individual words and add them as proper names.
In other words, the degree of control that the user has has improved significantly.
Finally, the new software is apparently far faster and is not optimized for use with Microsoft Word and Apple’s text edit. (Why Pages isn’t included is beyond me.)
So how good is MacSpeech Dictate?
This is how good — this entire post was written using the current version of MacSpeech Dictate and I have not touch the keyboard once. Yes, I have been more accurate than usual since I was committed to not touching the keyboard, and the fact is that I was able to type this entire post (minus final formatting) – and even capitalize the words along the way – using nothing but my voice, while sitting back in my chair and in about 3 1/2 feet from my iMac. I’m not even using a headset, and the accuracy is excellent. If the current version is this good then I can only imagine that the new version is going to be awesome. I’ll know for sure this coming Monday, because that’s when the upgrade will be delivered.
The full version is $199, and the upgrade is $54.95 plus shipping
For more information you can visit the MacSpeech website.
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