MacSpeech Dictate | 
 enlarge | From: MacSpeech, Inc.
Category: Software
List Price: $199.99
Buy New: $160.49
You Save: $39.50 (20%)
New (14) Used (1) from $160.00
Avg. Customer Rating:  44 reviews
Sales Rank: 52
Format: Cd-rom
Platform: Mac Os X Intel
ESRB: Mature
Media: CD-ROM
Operating System: Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger
Shipping Weight (lbs): 3
Dimensions (in): 7.8 x 5.9 x 2.5
MPN: MSDICTATE
Model: MACSPEECH DICTATE
UPC: 806709380876
EAN: 0806709380876
ASIN: B0014KJ6EQ
Release Date: February 15, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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| Features:
| • | Amazing Accuracy | | • | Dictate anywhere you can type | | • | Minimal Training Required | | • | Works With The Apps You Already Have | | • | Comes With Everything You Need, Including Headphones |
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
You'll feel like you have your very own typist with MacSpeech Dictate. It's extremely accurate and it adapts to your voice. It only takes five minutes or less of training, so you can get started fast. You can dictate text into any application that supports text entry from the keyboard, even Windows apps running in a virtual environment such as Parallels or Fusion, and also applications like Microsoft Word, Adobe Photoshop, QuarkXPress, iChat, Mail, iPhoto, Keynote, etc. You can even use it to surf the web, or use it for basic menu commands like print, cut, copy, paste, etc.
Internet Ready - Surf the web with your voice Built especially for the Mac Uses the renowned Dragon NaturallySpeaking speech recognition engine Requires Mac OS X 10.4.11 or higher, including Mac OS X 10.5, and requires Intel-based Macintosh hardware
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| Customer Reviews: Read 39 more reviews...
 Mediocre. May 15, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
I spent a fair amount of time getting this trained and working to get this to work. I could not get to the point that it will be useful to me. I dictate every day with a transciption service, and this is not even close to being able to replace it. It was fun to play around with, though. It doesn't seem like it will be anymore than a toy, though. I found that I had to talk so slowly and deliberately - and it still made mistakes - that it wasn't worth the time.
Not QUITE Ready For prime Time May 12, 2008
No problems with installation or set up. After brief initial training I was pleased to find accuracy that is notably better than I get with Dragon in Windows. However, MacSpeech is missing one of Dragon's most essential functions. It has no commands similar to "Correct That" or "Spell That" in Dragon. There is no way to correct recognition errors except to say the word again or type it in manually. You cannot train the program to correct common recognition errors. There is no way to teach it new words like proper names, technical terms, acronyms, abbreviations etc. This makes MacSpeech far less useful.
Similarly, there is no utility like Dragon's "Add Word" or "Train Word." You can give MacSpeech a list of your documents to analyze for vocabulary and phrasing but you cannot add a new word at a time.
The user manual I downloaded says that these features will come in a future version. Of course, no idea when. For now, MacSpeech is better than my terrible typing on my MacBook but will not be fully useful until these features arrive. With them, I will probably give the product four or five stars.
 Works for me thus far May 12, 2008
Though it's not flawless, it does get the job done pretty well. Suffering from severe carpal in my right hand, it's helped relieve the stress on my hand by allowing me to come up with 1st drafts for articles fairly easily. It has its quirks including on typing "he" when I say "I" sometimes, but overall I have to say I'm satisfied with it.
I however do wish that it would immediately jump to an edit point immediately, rather than having to scan through the entire paragraph to get to the point where I want to edit a word. It's a big time waster and I just insert the cursor using my mouse, which kind of defeats the point of the software.
 Not "Best In Show" but rather "Not Yet Ready For Prime Time May 12, 2008
"DICTATE" by MacSpeech is a tragedy! It's a tragedy for the normal user, but even moreso for the neurologically handicapped patients to whom it offered the opportunity to communicate more normally.
If you were to bundle the potentially best voice dictation application for Mac that's on the market (and probably the best on the horizon) with one of the worst customer service group you can imagine, and heat that mix with the total absence of documentation on the disc or third-party, you'd know why so many reviewers are complaining that they've been defrauded.
It's hard to assign some number of stars to an application with which you're having such a love/hate relationship. Imagine buying Mac OSX Leopard or Microsoft Office with a technical support group that knows even less than you do and no users' manuals. That'd give you a great OS or application, but it would take weeks to discover and implement one small fraction of what it's designed to do. That is why I'd put off buying DICTATE by MacSpeech until they have a product to sell. Then, I'd rush to buy it.
Works quite well for me. May 11, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
It is the first dictation software that I've used that saves me time. It does work really quite well if you have it set up properly. I suspect, that if you are giving the software score of one out of five -- it is definite evidence that it is not set up properly. I have certainly been able to dictate this paragraph with only one or two corrections. And that is an order of magnitude better than my typing skills.
Like a number of the other reviewers, I have used iListen in the past. I was never able to put it to practical use.
Good luck, Richard Piper.
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