Until recently, the options available for dictation software on Mac OS X were severely lacking. The most popular option was a product called iListen by MacSpeech which was based on the Philips speech recognition engine. Although this product worked, it had severe limitations, crashed frequently, and behaved in general more like a Mac OS 9 application than it should have.
Introduced at MacWorld 2008, the new MacSpeech Dictate which is based on the popular Windows Dragon software offers a far improved speech recognition experience for Mac users. The training is quick, the recognition is accurate and fast, and it even works with the built-in microphone on computers such as the MacBook Pro (which the author is using to dictate this review). This is a huge advantage as it enables the user to quickly dictate a paragraph here or there with a single mouse click and no need to get out a separate microphone.
Although the product still has a few rough edges and is currently missing the ability to correct dictated text via voice, it represents a huge step forward and easily integrates into your everyday workflow. Note that an Intel Mac is required for this software to work - it will not function on PowerPC (G3, G4, G5) Macs. Next time you don't feel like typing out a lengthy e-mail, why not launch Dictate instead and use your voice?
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