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EDITOR NOTES
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DESCRIPTION
MacSpeech Dictate - Better Accuracy, Stronger Recognition, Faster Performance.
Welcome to MacSpeech Dictate, the premier speech recognition solution for the Macintosh. Forget about typing; with MacSpeech Dictate you're free to focus on what you have to say. MacSpeech Dictate's accuracy and capabilities make it as fun, productive, and intuitive to use as the Mac itself.
The all-new MacSpeech Dictate provides:
Amazing Accuracy
Right out of the box, MacSpeech Dictate will astonish you with its accuracy. You simply talk and leave the recognition to MacSpeech Dictate.
Minimal Training Required
MacSpeech Dictate provides astounding accuracy and productivity. With just minutes of training, you'll be using MacSpeech Dictate's superior capabilities.
Essential Command Capabilities
Instead of using your mouse to select menu commands or your keyboard to type shortcuts, just speak a command. MacSpeech Dictate executes it for you. What's more, MacSpeech Dictate understands key commands. With the "Press The Key" and "Press The Key Combo" commands, you can enter specific keys and even keyboard modifiers like Command, Option, Shift, and Control. That makes you more productive and MacSpeech Dictate more intuitive. What could be better?
Built Especially For The Mac
Mac users expect only the best from the applications they use on their Macs. MacSpeech Dictate was built from the ground up to ensure the ultimate experience on Mac OS X.
Works With The Apps You Already Have
Microsoft Word, Adobe Photoshop, QuarkXPress, and more. And MacSpeech Dictate works great with Apple's applications as well, including iChat, Mail, iPhoto, and Keynote, among others.
Spelling A World Of Words
MacSpeech Dictate's spelling mode lets you easily spell words, names, and acronyms with either natural language or the International Radio Alphabet. You have complete control over every aspect of your speech recognition input.
Make Your Move
You don't need a keyboard or mouse to move around in your documents. MacSpeech Dictate lets you move your cursor forwards, backwards, and much more with just your voice. It helps make editing your documents a breeze.
Even Greater Recognition
MacSpeech Dictate boasts robust Phrase Training capabilities allowing it to learn as it goes based on your voice input. That means even greater accuracy that more fully integrates into your Macintosh experience.
Document Freedom
MacSpeech Dictate works great with most text documents, even those it didn't create. MacSpeech Dictate can read a document's contents, or a portion of it, that you can then navigate and edit.
Exceptional Online Help
For those times when you need a little assistance, MacSpeech Dictate boasts a complete online, searchable help book. It's convenient to use, easy to understand, and all just a mouse click away.
No Hidden Costs
MacSpeech Dictate includes everything you need to be instantly productive as soon as you start using it, including a high quality headset microphone.
Instructional Videos
The MacSpeech Dictate instructional videos are designed to provide you with easy-to-understand, practical tips and techniques for getting the most from MacSpeech Dictate. Check them out.
WHAT'S NEW
Version 1.5.7:
- Fixed crashes related to processes that did not correctly report themselves via the Accessibility API, these crashes occurred must commonly during caching activities.
REQUIREMENTS
- Mac OS X 10.5.6 or later.
- Internet connection required for product registration.
- MacSpeech-certified noise-cancelling microphone (included with new purchase).
| SCREENSHOT
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| MacSpeech Dictate User Reviews (22 posts) | Write A Review |
 | Oct 6 2009 |
MMUECK Yea, I paid $200 a while back for this and it was just awful - no easy corrections or dictionary expansion capability. It was a buggy, sloppy port of DNS to the Mac. Then they fixed some of those bugs and had the hide to charge some outrageous upgrade price shortly afterwards that truly bent the majority of their user base out of shape. At the very least they should include a big "L" sticker and a tube of lubricant in every box. To the makers of Dictate: How do you take a quality product like DNS, that Mac users have been craving for years, and turn that golden opportunity into something that consistently seems to draw the anger of your users. Way to go...
(Version 1.5.5) | |
| [ Reply ] | |
| Sep 28 2009 |
MONDELE Unfortunately, the dictation software market on the Mac seems to have been dominated by exploitative people who see Mac users as an undiscriminating group of rich people, willing and ready to pay exorbitant prices for inferior products. Dragon Naturally Speaking was originally developed on and for the Mac, when the first PowerPCs were coming out. (It also worked with the dedicated sound processors in the AV Macs). I was present at a sales presentation oriented towards Mac VARs, and was extremely interested in adding the product to our lineup. Upon inquiry, we were told that it would be sold for $1500/seat, that we were prohibited from selling it for less, as this would hurt the branding the company was pursuing. Shortly thereafter, the Mac product was discontinued and it was offered on the PC for $100/seat. Now I'm getting offers to by the Windows version of the software for $30 (discounted from a normal price of $100) - or I can by this Mac-licensed version for $200. I'm sorry, Dragon, I use a Mac because of a superior value for my money, not the other way around. I, too, would welcome competition in this area.
(Version 1.5.2) | |
| [ Reply ] | |
| May 14 2009 |
JIMW Very disappointed about the 1.5 upgrade policy. The are charging all previous owners ~$65 (with basic shipping) for this 'upgrade' which in my opinion is mostly an update as much of what it contains are items that should have been in the 1.0 release and bug fixes. However as the only game in town for Mac voice recognition, users that want this technology have no other choice to the best of my knowledge. Tip: If you are buying this product for the first time I recommend you shop around on-line for any microphone enhancements rather than purchasing the upgrades from the Mac Speech web site as the only thing significant Mac Speech seems to offer by purchasing a microphone upgrade through them is convenience. The research I have done on this subject has indicated to me that on some microphone upgrades, substantially better pricing for can be easily found elsewhere. However if you are going to get one of the basic microphones included with their $199 price you are money ahead by getting it included with the package as the discount they offer for no microphone is substantially less than the prevailing cost of the basic microphones they include, along with the loss of any return privileges. For example, the Samson Airline ($350 @ macspeech) can be found for under $250 before the $23 discount for the software alone. My advise is to shop around for microphone enhancements in order to get the best price, then compare it to the MacSpeech upgrade price, taking in consideration the Dictate discount ($23) if you get the the software without the microphone. Another words, be an informed and savvy consumer.
(Version 1.5) | |
| [ 4 Replies - Reply ] | |
Replies:
| May 15 2009 |
DONMOEMU I am also disappointed in the update pricing, and feature set. the previous version was more like a beta than anything else. I sure hope MacSpeech listens to these comments. Very disappointed!
(Version 1.5) | |
| May 21 2009 |
JIMW Update on shipping charges. MacSpeech charges $10.15 for basic shipping. Based on FedEx tracking info, the actual rate, minus any discount that business typically get is $8.55, which amounts to a 19% profit on the shipping charges for MacSpeech. If you assume they get a FedEx discount for quantity shipping, that likely boosts the shipping profit margin to around 25% or more. I suspect that if asked about this they would claim that that covers the cost of packaging and labor to ship. So if the packaging cost is not built into the product then in fact the real cost of the upgrade become around $57.00, not $54.95. Interesting enough the only service to have a higher price that the Fedex Rate Chart is the basic service. The faster services are in fact discounted by MacSpeech from the standard FedEx rates, which probably reflects their FedEx discounts. So the bottom line is that if you want the least expensive method of shipment, MacSpeech charges you extra for choosing it. Mind you, it is not about the ~$2.00 but about principle. It would seem that since they own the market, the have no compunction about squeezing as much out of the customer that they can, even if it involves questionable ethics when doing it. From a short sighted business model there is no logical reason why the shouldn't - so long as there is no competition or anyone calls them to task on these practices. However if I were an investor in their company, and got wind of some competition making itself available, I would strongly consider taking my investments elsewhere - very quickly. For given their attitude towards their customers, as expressed by their upgrade pricing, along with the consistency of bugs, and other issues with released products, should a viable competitor arise and offer a competitive upgrade, I would not be surprised to see their customers embrace the competition and desert MacSpeech like rats leaving a sinking ship.
(Version 1.5) | |
| May 23 2009 |
JIMW Just got my package today 5/23/09 via FedEx. With basic shipping it took 5 days to California. Upon receiving the package (about the size of a DVD movie) I weighed it out to less than 7 oz. However their web site lists it at 1.5 lbs. USPS Priority Mail (2 day) for this package is under $5. This means that MacSpeech is charging their customers twice as much as it cost them to ship it and using a service that takes twice as long to deliver it. If there is any question about their attitude to customer service, I think this example goes a long way to answer it.
(Version 1.5) | |
| May 23 2009 |
JIMW Just opened the package. The 'manual' consists of 2 pages (1 sheet of paper printed both sides and folded), one page being the front cover. If you want a real printed manual you have to print your own.
(Version 1.5) | |
 | Jun 16 2009 |
BIGCLOITS Dictate is one of the most unstable and generally poorly designed major pieces of software I have ever had the misfortune to be stuck using. Far from being a major improvement over MacSpeech's previous product, iListen, Dictate still feels as twitchy and poorly thought out as iListen ever did, even after a year and a half of development and at least two major updates. The only real improvement is that Dictate is based on a far superior speech recognition engine (and that's not nothing). However, it's a lot less use if the software wrapped around the engine totally sucks. I purchased Dictate shortly after its release in early 2008, and have barely had a day of trouble-free use of the product ever since. Routine hanging and crashing has been the main problem. Due to an egregious Canadian localization bug, for several months I had to choose between a version of Dictate that would literally not launch all, and an older version that merely crashed frequently. When 1.5 was release recently (May 09), I hoped I would finally be able to use Dictate with fewer hassles, but no such luck. Even running on a well-maintained year-old MacBook Pro, Dictate 1.5 (and 1.5.1) is as crashy as ever. Within minutes of using the new version, CPU usage spikes to 98% and stayed there -â not just bringing Dictate to a halt, but the entire machine, and even refusing to force quit. Lovely. Such experiences have been the rule with Dictate from the beginning! For many months I communicated regularly with MacSpeech about my frustrations with their product. I cooperated diligently with a great deal of troubleshooting. I was often treated like I was some kind of problem customer, despite the fact that I have some empathy for the kind of frustrations tech support workers have to cope with and try pretty hard to be nice to them. Some weren't so bad, of course. But despite the professionalism of some individual tech support professionals at MacSpeech, the overall customer service experience was abominable. Ultimately, MacSpeech simply was not willing to stand behind their product in any substantive way. I am a deeply annoyed customer.
(Version 1.5.1) | |
| [ 1 Reply - Reply ] | |
Replies:
| Jun 30 2009 |
SIGIL Sadly, I must agree with BigCloits' review of Macspeech Dictate. It has not even come close to living up to my expectation or the hype it received before it was released. With each upgrade I became less and less hopeful that they would fix the bugs and accuracy issues. Then I get an email with nearly as much hype as the prerelease hype. I became somewhat hopeful. Then I read that I would be charged $50.00, which is a "special" rate for suckers....I mean previous owners. I find it very upsetting that they would charge an upgrade fee for 1.5. This is compounded by the fact that 1.5 seemed to have some serious issues from what I've read online. In the end, I've decided not to to invest anymore money in this product. I have no issues with an upgrade fee for a product, but the product before the upgrade should be useable and somewhat live up to my expectations.
(Version 1.5.2) | |
| May 15 2009 |
NEIL_M Bought this in Jan '09 - it is far from perfect, revved upto version 1.3, still not perfect. Then all herald 1.5 arrives promising what the last one did - but for real this time? and....by the way... Upgrade costs £49 in the UK - not including shipping. | |
| [ Reply ] | |
| Oct 7 2009 |
BETO BOTON I was one of MacSpeech customers who "upgraded" from iListen to Dictate. I continue to use iListen since Dictate is not a mature product. Unfortunately the only concern MacSpeech peole have with the product is to charge more and more from customers, providing meaningless and insignificant updates. The fault is not in using Dragon's engine at all. It's implementation for OS X is limited, demanding on resources, and not user friendly. Sorry guys, do not what you want, but what your customers need! Current evaluation: Poor & Greedy.
(Version 1.5.5) | |
| [ Reply ] | |
| Oct 4 2009 |
RRNOWELL Since virtually everyone acknowledges that the Dragon engine is the best and MacSpeech has licensed it and since Dragon Dictate is acknowledged to be the premier product, has anyone tried using Dragon Dictate running under WinXP and Parallels or VM Fusion? Perhaps it would be better to take this route as the owners of MacSpeech seem to be bilking out of cash customers with an inferior product. I sure wish Apple would spin off a subsidiary to compete with MacSpeech and clear out the dross as this hurts Apple's product by limiting the application software available on the Mac and having a poor vendor that is leaving a bad taste in the mouths of Apple's customers.
(Version 1.5.2) | |
| [ 1 Reply - Reply ] | |
Replies:
| Oct 29 2009 |
GIORGIOM I am using Dragon Naturally Speaking 10 on a Parallels VM running Windows 7 on a macbook. I did have to buy a USB microphone, which was kind of annoying, but it works perfectly well. Windows 7 in general works like a charm, including the beta of Office 2010. I'm very happy with the overall experience.
(Version 1.5.5) | |
| May 28 2009 |
SLOB That's what I like about macUpdate. I really want a program like this, got disappointed with IBM ViaVoice years ago and waited - and having been tipped off by these comments will keep waiting for some other developer to put out a fair deal, including the upgrades. I do appreciate software development and have spent quite a bit over the years, but these especially larger outfits so blatantly creaming the buyers I've had more than enough of. Thanks guys, and thanks to the honest working developers out there too.
(Version 1.5.1) | |
| [ 1 Reply - Reply ] | |
Replies:
| May 28 2009 |
MISHA Good points, but unfortunately in the speech recognition space I don't think we're going to see any compelling or superior offerings any time soon. MacSpeech is (I believe, last I checked) already licensing what is considered the best recognition technology.
(Version 1.5.1) | |
| May 14 2009 |
HMURCHISON From their website "MacSpeech, Inc. today announced the immediate availability of MacSpeech Dictate 1.5, the exciting first upgrade to the premier speech recognition solution for the Macintosh, now introducing a new Vocabulary Editor, new English profile options, enhanced accuracy and much more. MacSpeech Dictate 1.5 requires Mac OS X 10.5.6 or higher and is available today for US$199 as a new purchase, or US$54.95 for current owners of MacSpeech Dictate. The previous Vocab editor was NOT up to snuff. This is great news they're also claiming that accuracy has improved %20. It may be time for me to jump in provided to Vocab editor is solid. I can't overstate how critical it is to manage your custom vocab properly.
(Version 1.5) | |
| [ Reply ] | |
| Nov 18 2009 |
MONTY LEE I've been using 1.3 for a while and it has worked very well on a Macbook (circa 2007). I finally upgraded to 1.5 and have had nothing but problems. The program continually crashes or just quits working. I've tried my old Macbook, and even my MacPro (2 x 3 GHz Quad-Core Xeon with 14 GB RAM). Last weekend I finally upgraded to Snow Leopard by installing a NEW hard drive and doing a fresh install of SL and letting Apple migrate needed files. I then installed Dictate and have the same problems. So it isn't my computer or OS (10.6.2). I've been trying to contact both Sales and Tech Support now for a month and no one replies. I even sent a tweet but still no response. There is NO SUPPORT. Even Sales doesn't care. I wouldn't buy from this company ever again, and cannot recommend Dictate 1.5.
(Version 1.5.7) | |
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