11361 I've been a more than casually interested observer and follower of Mac OS dictation software progress in since the mid-1990s, when I developed chronic polyneuritis and began experiencing consequent typing pain. In the early days I experimented with the discrete dictation software that was current at the time and which required you to speak very slowly and distinctly, separating each word. It's an understatement to say that was not very satisfactory, but happily for me, the late ‘90s saw a major ramp up of development activity in continuous speech dictation software, without which I would have been out of business as a professional writer.

On the Mac, there were two competing choices in those days. IBM was first out of the blocks with their ViaVoice application, which was light-years ahead of the old discrete dictation apps, and close behind was the MacSpeech indie startup spearheaded by alumni of the old discrete speech PowerSecretary dictation software development team.

For several years I used both applications, usually whichever had received the latest update. In the early going they had some distinct differences. ViaVoice required you to enter text into its proprietary notepad application and later transfer it to its ultimate destination. The MacSpeech engineers, on the other hand, made “dictate anywhere” capability one of their priorities from the get-go. Another distinction of course was that IBM used its own in–house dictation engine, while the MacSpeech folks licensed a dictation engine from Netherlands–based Philips.

Consequently, while the ViaVoice engine tended to be quicker and more accurate, at least in my experience, it was hard to beat MacSpeech iListen's ability to transcribe spoken words directly into word processing, email, and online chat programs or virtually anywhere else where you wanted to enter text on a computer.

However, with the transition to OS X in the early '00s, a new ViaVoice 3 acquired the ability to dictate directly into a selection of applications, although not as comprehensively as iListen, but that ability combined with ViaVoice's superior accuracy and shorter, quicker, voice training vaulted it into the lead for a short time. Unfortunately, IBM soon thereafter lost interest in consumer personal computer software, around the same time as it was negotiating sale of its PC hardware operations to China's Lenovo. ViaVoice for the Mac was sold off to a third-party software firm and essentially allowed to wither on the vine with no further significant development, leaving the Mac OS dictation field exclusively to MacSpeech, which happily continued with active development of iListen.

IListen performance gradually improved through the middle part of the decade, but another major transition presented itself with Apple’s 2005 announcement that it would be switching from PowerPC to Intel processors, which necessitated another major development upheaval for the MacSpeech folks. With Nuance Communications, Inc.'s Windows-only Dragon NaturallySpeaking application the consensually acknowledged class of the field in personal computer dictation software, and Apple switching to Intel silicon, which NaturallySpeaking was designed to support, it made logical sense for MacSpeech to incorporate the superior NaturallySpeaking dictation engine into its Mac OS software, which they proceeded to do, licensing the NaturallySpeaking technology in 2008. The result was MacSpeech Dictate - an altogether better tool than iListen ever was even at its best. Dictate still wasn't perfect, but it was a real revelation for dictation-using MacOS fans, including this one.

Then last February, the circle was closed, so to speak, when Nuance Communications announced they had acquired MacSpeech, with the stated intention of extending the Dragon NaturallySpeaking family of products to the Mac community as native Mac applications.

That objective has come to fruition with the release of Dragon Dictate for Mac version 2.0, the first major desktop product released for Mac OS X under the Dragon brand-name.

Dragon Dictate for Mac 2.0 is essentially what McaSpeech Dictate 2 would have been, Retaining most of the MacSpeech branded product's looks and functionality, but improving on the accuracy and performance of already impressive MacSpeech Dictate 1.5 - thanks to the new Dragon 11 speech engine, which also powers recently-announced Dragon NaturallySpeaking 11 for the PC.

Other improvements relative to Dictate 1.5 include a more streamlined set-up, a slightly revamped Mac user interface with different icons, and the addition of new voice commands for dictation, editing, navigation and proofreading. Nuance claims Dragon Dictate for Mac also “learns” better than any previous version of Dictate, responds faster to spoken commands, and supports Dragon Voice Shortcuts for searching the web, email and Mac desktop by voice, as well as generally smarter command and control capabilities, and claimed recognition accuracy rate of up to 99 percent out of the box.

Naturally (so to speak) I was eager to try out Dragon Dictate, and now that I have been using it for several days, I can confirm that Nuance has pretty much delivered on its claims.

For upgrading MacSpeech Dictate users, the process is pretty simple. I just stuck the Dragon Dictate application CD in and dragged the application file into the Applications Folder; then followed up with the DragonDictate Data DVD, on which there is an installer that after it did its stuff, the program was able to access my existing voice profile files from MacSpeech Dictate, obviating the need for any further training. If you're used to using MacSpeech Dictate, you can be up and running in a jiffy, and will feel right at home.

For users new to Dictate, it will be necessary to read at least a training story or two in order to create a voice profile (a discrete profile for each user respectively if the program will be used by more than one) in order to achieve the level of voice recognition accuracy desired. As an upgrader, I’ve found accuracy has been outstandingly good with just my old imported profile. In the interest of research for this review, I did check out the voice training module, and veteran MacSpeech users who were getting a bit tired of Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island, will be happy to know that the Dragon Dictate training module for a change incorporates selections from Aesop's Fables and excerpts from HG Wells' classic science fiction novel The Time Machine.

Dictation software has now reached a level of speed, accuracy, sophistication, and convenience, that it presents a very attractive alternative to manual typing even for users who have no issues with repetitive stress or typing pain. Personally, I’ve been able to manage my polyneuritis quite successfully in recent years by careful selection of input devices, but I continue to use Dictate extensively because it’s simply a slick and pleasant method of entering text that is usually faster than manual typing, at least for 50 WPM non-touch typist me.

With Dragon Dictate for Mac, you can also control your Mac by voice commands as an alternative to keyboard and mouse in that context as well, and DragonDictate 2.0 improves on MacSpeech Dictate’s capabilities in that department by supporting a wider range of commands, such as “Reply To This Message” or “Open Microsoft Word” or “Search Google for Italian restaurants,” as well as custom vocabulary and voice commands you can create for yourself in order to automate workflows. Dragon Voice Shortcuts for Search lets you search for information, files and content anywhere on your Mac or on the Web by using single voice commands. For example:

- “Search Google for hula dancing lessons”

- “Search Bing for wedding dress repair”

- “Search Yahoo for gondola rentals”

- “Search Mail for RSVP”

- “Search Mac for history term paper”

Also new to Mac users with Dragon Dictate is a suite of commands designed to simplify document editing, allowing you to select and delete text, insert new text, capitalize text, and so forth. New proofreading commands leverage powerful Text-to-Speech capabilities built into Mac OS X, and a suite of new punctuation commands can initiate actions like:

- “Put Parentheses Around ”

- “Put Brackets Around ”

Enhanced voice navigation capabilities in Dragon Dictate for Mac 2.0 let users control more cursor and mouse actions by voice, with new features including:

- MouseGrid: Placement of the cursor can be accomplished with MouseGrid commands

- Mouse Click: Speak a command, with optional that designate one or more keys such as Command, Option, Shift or Caps Lock

- Mouse Movement: New commands move the mouse pointer by voice

Dragon Dictate users who have multiple microphones, such as a wired and wireless headset, can also now easily switch between microphones within the same voice profile -- a convenient refinement.

It’s suggested that Dictate's dedicated Notepad application will always provide the most optimized results, particularly when executing advanced features, complicated navigation, or massive amounts of editing with your voice. However, for my purposes I've found performance quite satisfactory in my favorite composition and editing application, Tex Edit Plus, which has the advantage of heavy AppleScript customization that I use extensively.

The developers vigorously discourage using hybrid modes of partly dictation and partly keyboarding and/or mousing, maintaining that alternation between speech recognition and keyboard/mouse is "a fantastic way to confuse the software." I've attempted to break myself of the habit, but still find I tend to get impatient and resort to keyboard and mouse for most editing and correction.

Dictate has four modes: Dictation Mode, Command Mode, Spelling Mode, and Sleep Mode. Dictation Mode is self-explanatory but while you're in it you can also issue commands, while in Command Mode the program recognizes and executes only commands and can be considered "Command Only" Mode. A completely new Spelling Mode made its debut with MacSpeech Dictate 1.2, allowing users to spell words, names, or acronyms by using either natural language or the International Radio Alphabet. Sleep Mode simply lets you toggle the microphone and application on and off.

Another feature is Phrase Training, which helps you increase accuracy by letting you train your voice profile as you proceed. While most of the speech recognition industry refers to this feature as "correction" which is accurate in the sense that it can indeed be used to correct text in your documents, this descriptor in some respects misses the point because ongoing training also helps refine Dictate's ability to recognize what you intended to say. With Phrase Training you're not stuck with the level of accuracy from your initial voice training until you take the time to read more training stories, and you don't have to specifically train the recognition engine from a document or selection. Instead, you can train a phrase immediately when you see it was misrecognized. Then the next time you dictate that phrase or word in the phrase, Dragon Dictate is more likely to recognize it accurately.

The way to proceed with this is when you notice that the program's transcription has misinterpreted a word, for example substituting the word "cause" when you intended to say "pause," while in Dictation Mode say "select the word cause." Confirm that the word has been correctly selected, then say "pause" and check to ensure that the word actually has been changed to "pause." That's all there is to it.

Spelling Mode and Phrase Training work much the same way. You pause between navigation or spelling/correction instructions and general dictation in order to allow the program to distinguish between the two.

With Phrase Training, you speak the phrase you want to train, then open the recognition window, which will display several possibilities from among which you can select the correct phrase using its respective button, or say "edit one" "spelling mode" [ pause ] and spell out your words. Note that sometimes it can take two or more attempts before Dictate learns to properly recognize a particular phrase.

For users with a physical handicap involving disability that renders even small amounts of typing difficult, the Command and Spelling modes would be a priceless help.

However, for just about any user, Dictate's voice transcription capability is a dream realized, and it's so amazingly accurate that not a whole lot of correction is necessary anyway, although in my experience it does usually require a bit.

If you need some walk-through of Dictate’s capabilities, there are both online Help and a User manual in PDF format to assist.

Suffice to say, love this program, and Dragon Dictate 2.0 is the best iteration of dictation software I’ve used yet, although it’s still not perfect. I wish there was a way to hide the floater control palette (which is a lot prettier than the old one in iListen) when it's not in use other than closing the program. Working on a 13.3" MacBook screen, one cherishes every square millimeter of desktop real estate.

The program still takes a relatively long time to start up, which I suppose is somewhat inevitable when it has to load a voice profile and dictionaries before you can get underway, a process limited by hard drive speed. A 7200 rpm hard drive would probably speed things up noticeably. However, once it’s running, even on my 2.0 GHz Core 2 Duo MacBook with 4 GB of RAM, a relatively modest spec. power-wise these days, Dictate is satisfyingly responsive, with one notable exception being some sluggishness responding to keyboard input in the Notepad.

Since version 1.3, Dictate will work with any document, including ones that were not created with Dictate, and its "Cache Document" command allows the program to read a document's contents in order to navigate the document, and to enter and edit text.

The microphone status indicators provide a quick visual cue of whether the microphone is "on" or "off" by quickly looking at either the new Menu Bar status menulet, or the new microphone status badge on the Dragon Dictate Dock icon.

The Plantronics mic headset that comes bundled with Dictate haas proved excellent, equal to or better than any mics I ever used with iListen. it's light, adjustable, attractive looking, and it has a conveniently long cord. The mic does require a USB dongle, which does use up another precious USB port.

Dragon Dictate requires an Intel-based Mac, Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard or greater, 3GB of available hard drive space, 2GB of RAM recommended and an Internet connection for product registration. The software comes complete with a bundles, Nuance-approved USB microphone headset that I’ve found an excellent performer, lightweight and comfortable to wear for long sessions.

Dragon Dictate for Mac 2.0 sells for $199.99 through Nuance’s Website and third-party resellers. Existing MacSpeech Dictate customers and Dragon NaturallySpeaking customers can upgrade to Dragon Dictate for Mac starting at $49.99 and $99.99 respectively for a limited time.

For more information, visit:
http://www.nuance.com


Disclosure note: Nuance is an advertiser on Applelinks.com. Editorial and business departments are separate entities.

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