In the end, we'll probably use Dictate again, despite our grumbles. It's amazing how much Dictate is an exercise in training yourself to speak clearly and consistently as much as it is about training the software. You wouldn't want to use it in a communal office or on a train, for example.Īdd to that the fact that it's not particularly efficient in order to speak with the pace and diction that MacSpeech finds comfortable, you'll find yourself slowing down to the point where typing and mousing may indeed be preferable.
Speech is a particularly antisocial method of interacting with a computer. There's a long-winded spelling mode for awkward words, but actively deleting mistakes usually means either using your mouse or re-speaking a huge chunk of text.Īs with any form of speech recognition, there are the logistical implications to think of too. Getting around errors while only using your voice isn't even that easy. You can speak a whole paragraph and have to wait a couple of seconds before being allowed to edit any errors. Why is there no context-friendly support for dialogue boxes? While we're picking holes, and this really is digging deep, the way MacSpeech ponderously deliberates before delivering your words to the screen can be irritating.
Mild inconsistencies slip in every now and then: why do "File Close", "File New" and "File Open" work, whereas "File Save" is replaced with "Save This Document"? We repeatedly found the program resolutely refusing to leave its slumber despite our numerous protestations.Īnd, of course, as with all speech recognition technology there are always going to be occasional misinterpretations that sneak in from time to time, especially if you don't speak slowly.ĭetaching yourself from mouse and keyboard controls really can take some time, particularly given Dictate's slightly eccentric list of navigation commands. Secondly, we had issues with Dictate's ability to go to sleep and wake up at our command. It doesn't work as it should (it renders keyboard input in reverse, meaning it's almost impossible to make any edits by hand) and if the dictation engine crashes, your document goes down with it. Hopefully that will be fixed by a future update.Īlso, we didn't like Dictate's built-in text editor.
After that it crashes a lot – as in, about once every half hour. During those three weeks we applied the most recent software update, which affected its stability.
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