New Tools Bolster Mac's World

On the Mac, though, the only speech-recognition option was a program called iListen, which was built on far less sophisticated speech technology from Philips. Seven years ago, I asked iListen’s creator, a former Dragon engineer named Andrew Taylor, why on earth he’d based his Mac program on the Philips software instead of Dragon’s.

The answer, it turns out, was that the Dragon technology would cost too much, and the conditions for using it were too onerous, in Mr. Taylor’s view. He went with the Philips software, but never gave up his dream of bringing Dragon technology to the Mac.

Eventually, the Mac’s popularity rose, new bosses took over at Nuance (the current owner of the Dragon technology) and Mr. Taylor finally landed a deal.

The new program, MacSpeech Dictate ($200 with headset), is a big deal, especially for the thousands of Mac lovers who have been running Windows all these years just so they could use Dragon NaturallySpeaking.

MacSpeech Dictate is fast and accurate, pouring correctly transcribed text into any program where you ordinarily type, as fast as you can speak. When I read a 1,000-word book excerpt, the program transcribed only nine words incorrectly — 99.1 percent accuracy. (I had read the four-minute training script and fed the program a folder full of documents I’d written, which is how you introduce special terminology and names to the program’s dictionary.)

You get a giddy feeling the first time you see Dictate in action; you can’t help contemplating how much more e-mail you’ll be able to plow through in a day, or how your aching hands will no longer have to keep up with your brain when you’re writing.

Dictate can also operate your computer. You can say “Open iMovie” or “Open Calculator,” for example. You can also speak menu commands and button names, and you can select text that you’ve already dictated earlier (“Select ‘five score and six years ago’ ”). At that point, you can delete it, format it or replace the highlighted phrase. You can also run AppleScript programs or open Web sites by voice.

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All you see of the program when you’re using it are two small translucent floating windows (both of which you can hide, if you like). One contains the microphone on/off button. The other, called Available Commands, shows you what commands are available at the moment. Here’s where you discover, for example, the delightful “scratch that” command that deletes your last utterance and the “cap” command that capitalizes the next word you speak.

The program also lets you create voice macros, where you say one thing (“buzz off”) and it types out something different (“I respect your opinion, but I’m afraid we’ll have to agree to disagree on this one”). That’s a huge time-saver for anyone whose work entails repetitive answers or clauses.

So Dictate 1.0 is attractive, simple and Mac-like. It is not, however, as good as NaturallySpeaking 9.0 for Windows ($200). It lacks features like audio playback of what you said, a simple “add word” command, legal and medical versions, and non-English language kits.

It also lacks voice correction.

When NatSpeak makes an error, you just say “Correct ‘ax a moron’ ” (or whatever it typed); and choose from a list of alternate transcriptions. The program not only corrects the error in your document, but also learns from its mistake. Over time, the accuracy edges ever closer to 100 percent.

In Dictate 1.0, however, you have to fix transcription errors by hand. The company intends to add voice correction in a 1.1 update; in the meantime, though, your accuracy won’t improve.

The late beta version I tested has some bugs. The company intends to get these fixed by the 1.0 version’s mid-February release.

Even so, Dictate gets the big things — speed and accuracy — right, which may be enough for a lot of people. This program and the new Mac Office fill big holes in the Macintosh landscape — a landscape that’s looking brighter all the time.

David Pogue is a columnist for the New York Times and contributor to CNBC. He can be emailed at: .

Copyright © 2008 The New York Times

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