Dragon Dictate For Mac 3

Tradition dictates that all dictation software reviews are dictated using the application itself, which is just what we doing here [sic]. Although the copy will be edited to fit before you read it in the magazine, we’ll keep it as close as possible to the raw results and note any corrections we had to make.

Nuance claims that Dragon Dictate for Mac 3 is 15% more accurate than version two, and that’s noticeable in use. You can still change the emphasis between recognition speed and accuracy, but even with that emphasis set almost entirely in favour of speed, the results are very convincing indeed, as you can see.

Dragon Dictate For Mac 3

The training process takes around five minutes and builds a sound profile that combines the acoustic characteristics of your chosen input device and your own particular voice. This is improved as you continue to use the product and correct any mistakes or misrecognized words during your regular dictation.

The built-in dictionary knows all about accurate capitalisation of brand names such as iPhone, iPad and iPod, and it isn’t necessary to pause when you want to use acronyms like IBM, IT V and HSBC. There’s some irony, then, that it insists on leaving out the space between the words Dragon and Dictate in its own name [corrected here for style].

It knows that OS X has an X on the end [despite being pronounced ‘ten’] and it knows the difference between similar words that are used in different contexts. For example, without touching the keyboard, I can accurately dictate that I know where to buy something to wear this evening. I could use it to tell you whether the weather will be fine, and it knows that while you ‘read’ a book, you would find ‘reeds’ growing in a pond. It also knows where and when to use apostrophes correctly. All of this is very impressive and means you can quite happily dictate long tracts of text without having to keep to [too] close an eye on the screen.

THERE ARE BUILT-IN commands for searching Google, Bing, Yahoo [Dragon joins many a competent subeditor in refusing to write ‘Yahoo!’] and Spotlight, and you can even control the mouse so long as you are patient. A mouse grid command overlays the screen with a 3 × 3 grid. You tell Dragon Dictate which square to click in, and it does, further sub-dividing that square. Carry on like this until you’ve isolated the point on the screen that you wanted, and drag and it will cricket for you [um, that is, click it for you].

We were testing Dragon Dictate for Mac 3 Mobile, which not only includes a bundled headset microphone that plugs into your USB port and is automatically recognized by OS X, but also a small Phillips voice recorder [actually made by Philips, the Dutch electronics company, not Phillips, the originator of the crosshead screw]. This can be set to record MP3s, which Dragon Dictate can transcribe as though you are speaking them live. The process is simple: pick Transcribe from the menus, point it at the audio file, and watch as the words appear on screen, usually in faster than real-time. The first time you use it, it will ask you to confirm that it has accurately recognised your recorded words, and your original audio file is used as the training method for this input type.

Version 3 is appreciably faster than the previous release, and it supports [a] wider range of applications

Obviously, you can’t correct any mistakes that it makes in transcribing your file as it works through it the way you can when dictating live, when you can literally tell dictate [by which we meant Dictate] how to step back and make an amendment still without touching the key board or mouse. You might therefore have to spend a little more time polishing it up once the transcription has been processed.

Version 3 is appreciably faster than the previous release, and it supports [a] wider range of applications, thanks to its Express Editor that you dictate into text fields for which it would otherwise not have full text control. It’s most likely that this would be of use to those with motor or visual impairment for whom dictation software is an assistive product that helps them use a Mac.

Do you need Dragon Dictate when OS X now has dictation built in? Perhaps not if you find dictation [that is, Dictation] always works well for you and you always have an internet connection available, without which it doesn’t work. Dragon is more trainable, and therefore likely to be more accurate in the long term, and it lets you correct mistakes easily by voice without resorting to the keyboard. Ironically, it also lets you control your Mac by voice, for example opening applications by name, in ways that OS X doesn’t.

Dragon Dictate for Mac 2 was already very good, and remains so. It may be a little slower than this update, but if you’ve been using it for some months or years – you’ll probably find that it has reached a level of accuracy that isn’t far off what version 3 provides out of the box. In that case, the £80 upgrade fee starts to look a little steep, and unless you need to access applications that version two can’t address directly, you may do better to stick with what you’ve already got.

But this release is extremely impressive and worth the admittedly steep asking price if you don’t already have Dragon Dictate.

Information Ratings: 4/5 Price: $129