While speech recognition software for the Macintosh has been around for a long time, it is never been the workhorse that Dragon NaturallySpeaking has been for the PC world.
That has all changed today. Announced at this year's MacWorld Expo in San Francisco, Dictate from MacSpeech has been one of the most long-awaited new programs for the Macintosh platform. The first booth I visited at MacWorld in January was the MacSpeech booth. I was handed a wireless microphone and asked to give it a whirl. Having experienced the more cumbersome iListen product, the accuracy and speed of the Dictate product simply floored me.
This past week I received my copy of Dictate. In fact, I am writing this blog using my voice. To be sure, it is making a few minor mistakes. It has had little chance to learn how I talk, or for me to learn how to talk to it. But all in all, its accuracy "out-of-the-box" appears to be better than 98%. And, that is amazing.
MacSpeech Dictate is built on top of the same engine used for Dragon NaturallySpeaking. MacSpeech licensed the technology from Nuance and has done an admirable job of adapting the platform to the Macintosh interface. This first version still lacks some of the more advanced features of Dragon NaturallySpeaking; however, its speed and accuracy -- the two most important features of any speech recognition software -- make this program an almost "must-have" for every Macintosh aficionado.
As many of you know, we are Macintosh experts. I have been using Macintosh computers since the very first Mac plus in 1984. Although I used PCs everyday to provide technical support for our customers, I've always enjoyed the ease, style, and performance of Apple computers.
MacSpeech Dictate now moves the entire Macintosh platform one step closer to equal par with Windows computers in terms of software application availability.
We are now offering MacSpeech Dictate on our website. We are still assembling the product information, documentation, and images shoppers have come to rely upon when visiting our site. One of the things we're most adamant about when adding new products to our offering, is that we know and understand how the products work. We never want to offer products we cannot stand behind or support.
For those of you who already own MacSpeech iListen, there is an upgrade available.
By the way, I am dictating this blog using a wireless USB headset, the Plantronics CS 50. I've used this headset often for Dragon NaturallySpeaking, and was curious how well it would perform with MacSpeech Dictate. Well, as they say, "the proof is in the pudding." I'm having no difficulty at all dictating this piece using the CS 50 headset.
There's still more for me to learn about this program, but if you're considering adding speech recognition to your Macintosh, for free to give me a call, toll-free, at 866-408-1383.
One more thing: MacSpeech Dictate does require the use of one of the new Intel Macs. Like Dragon NaturallySpeaking, MacSpeech Dictate requires a significant amount of processing power. I'm using it on my book Pro, 2.4 GHz Intel.
(Editor Note: I just proofed what I dictated and found 12 errors made by Dictate. Out of 563 words, that equals a 97.87% accuracy.)
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