Comments on: MacSpeech Dictate: A year later, do I still use it?

By: Bakari

Bakari — Thu, 25 Nov 2010 21:42:30 +0000

I really appreciate how you show the challenges of dictating your thoughts using this program. I think when most users first see demonstrations of MacSpeech Dictate, they typically see or hear someone reading text into the program. But reading prewritten text, as you demonstrate is a lot more accuracy and speed than dictating your own thoughts.

Instead of trying to write blog entries and articles with this program, I want to try to simply use it for writing personal journal entries as a way to practice how to dictate my thoughts, because essentially that is the biggest challenge in using this program. Learning how to verbally dictate your thoughts is almost a child learning how to write with his hand. Voice dictation is a skill in and of itself.

While I am dictating this post to you using MS, I would say that it is taking about the same amount of time it would to actually type out what I’m saying. The only difference is I don’t have to use my fingers to do the typing, and that is the reason why I want to learn to successfully use the program.

I pretty much type all day as a freelance writer, and sometimes my fingers and hands can get pretty sore, so learning how to use a program like this would be a huge benefit.

Anyway, hope your use of the program has improved. I use it on occasion, but I have yet to practice with enough to master its use.

P.s., I ended writing and editing this post after dictating the first draft. Just goes to show you how much I need to practice.

By: Milind Alvares

Milind Alvares — Sun, 23 May 2010 01:51:13 +0000

Scribe: http://www.macspeech.com/pages.php?pID=181

By: Milind Alvares

Milind Alvares — Sun, 23 May 2010 01:50:37 +0000

MacSpeech has a special app for transcription, called Scribe. I haven’t used it, so I can’t say if it works well.

I doubt you’d be able to use Dictate to transcribe audio files. It won’t work. Besides, Dictate can’t even accept audio input. You’d have to use your line-in port to send the audio to Dictate.

By: mj harden

mj harden — Sun, 23 May 2010 01:33:23 +0000

I have several CDs of classes i teach (i taped the classes). I would like these transcribed (doesn’t have to be perfect and with the use of Hawaiian words, it couldn’t be).

Can i download these CD to iTunes then play them from iTunes and have Dictate transcribe it from iTunes (as the CD plays in iTunes)? Am i making sense?

I’ve asked the Dictate company and they don’t seem to be able to answer me.

Thank you so much. Will you answer me by email or should i look for the answer here somehow?

aloha . . . mj harden

By: Robert Hancock

Robert Hancock — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 21:13:57 +0000

I have been a longtime user of Dictate back from the first versions. I have three basic problems with it even in the 1.5 iteration.
1. Training with non-English words like shinkansen is still very clunky and haphazard.
2. Performance in Word 2008 for Mac is ABYSMAL where it is slow and prone to not accept input.
3. It is not multiprocessor aware, using only one of the four cores in my 3 GHz Quad Mac (8 GB RAM).

When used in other applications like TextEdit, Mail, etc., performance is acceptable.
Despite these nagging irritations and the outdated distribution model of the maker (you must buy physical media and in many countries there are no distributors at all), it does a reasonably good job.