Based on my trials I realized that the program is exceptionally accurate, I realized that MacSpeech Dictate was also capable of recognizing a number of familiar and well-known medical and legal terms, regardless of the fact that the program was not programmed to recognize technical or scientific terms; for this more specialized functions MacSpeech has put on the market specialized editions that are capable of recognizing legal and medical Dictate or any other type of enhanced vocabularies.

Mac Speech Dictate functions properly in almost every program, but I discovered that although the program works properly when being applied in one task it had a problem making a smooth transitions from one application of the program to another application of the same program For instance, when dictating into the window of a text editor the program functioned properly, but when I changed to iChat to send an IM to a friend, the program got puzzled during the transition to the iChat window and even got more dysfunctional when I attempted to go back to my text editor.

Editing of text was also not easy. Attempting to check over, revise or amend previous text in not a clear-cut process.  The program would be unable to would not correctly carry out your prompts and commands as dictated or phrased by you. Once faced with this challenges I discovered the best way to go around it would be to do any corrections or editing regularly as you go on or immediately after an error has been detected as opposed to doing the editing at the end. To go straight to the point, the program works more efficiently when you put sufficient breaks in your dictation so as to give the program sufficient time to recognize what you have dictated and for it to convert the speech into text.

There is a Vocabulary Editor which lets you view, correct and upgrade the vocabulary that the program recognizes. Accessing this window reveals to you all the speech that the dictate program has been programmed to recognizes and the additional words the user has added to the original programs database. You can use the vocabulary edition to upgrade you program to recognize dictates that the program is not picking up to well. The success of the vocabulary editor is not guaranteed. I made an attempt to upgrading the program to recognize my name using the vocabulary editor but to no avail.

Due to the fact that the program is not limited to the English language I also tested it effectiveness with another language Spanish and I was impressed that it recognized the vocabulary reasonably well.

On a more technical level I realized that the application or use of the program can be quite complex. There are a number of special phrases that one needs or opt to use while dictating to the program so that the program can “type” grammatically correct texts. This phrases are what the end -user of the program uses to operate the program efficiently. The phrases are designed to perform 3 main tasks/modes which are dictation, spelling, and commands modes.

For example, you will need to know what phrase the program recognizes as an instruction to insert punctuations or to edit a text. There are phrases to choose, erase and to alter text. To clarify specific texts and short forms, you will need to use the international radio alphabet. There are dozens of pages in the program’s manual listing all of these commands and application of the program, but there are no summary sheets that you can print out to have them handy.  Due to the technical direction one is required to take in order to use the program more effectively, the program can be classified as not user friendly and for some using the program can be more stressful and frustration.

In conclusion, MacSpeech Dictate International is a very effective tool for plain dictation. Once one becomes familiar with how to use the program efficiently in dictation, editing and the upgrading then the program can be a very helpful program.
 

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