[tparish]

Agreed. A huge disappointment. Wish I could get my money back. Have tried with no success. They did attempt to help and answer my Twitter complaints. Glad for that. But the solution was 2 page set of detailed instructions that I didn't have the time or the desire to plow through.

I've moved it to two different machines, I've tried extended training sessions. I've reloaded it. It's slow, inaccurate and a toture to go back and edit when it's wrong (which is more often then you think).

A I am not going to talk like a slow robot to get to understand me when I can type so much faster in comparison. I speak clearly. It's my job to do that. I'm willing to train it. But I've lost my patience and zest for their promises.

Good speach recognition has been a promise since the 80's. Might work great on the PC from what I've seen but on the Mac, thumbs down.

[wells]

I've used Dictate since it came out and it is no where near as good as Dragon. Absolutely not!
But I do use it. Though it makes a lot of frustrating errors, it is usually better than typing (for me).

[wells]

A disappointment. I use it, but it's been a disappointment.

[montgomery_burns]

Editing by voice is frustrating. It is often easier to just correct a word manually using the keyboard and mouse. Last time I used a MacSpeech product, it used an awkward method of tracking cursor position so if you tried to type on the keyboard, the program would get confused. To really improve the program, you should be able to switch from voice to keyboard at any time without screwing up the program.

[velocipede]

Since a lot of people have taken the time to gripe about this program, I thought I would share my mostly positive experience.
I am translator and I touch-type with reasonable speed. After using Dictate for a few months, however, I cannot imagine not having the option to use it.
It does not work well if I try to say one or two words at a time, but if I speak in full phrases and short sentences it does quit well. I usually review each paragraph after I am done to fix errors caused by the software as well as my own.
It's far from perfect and has plenty of room for improvement, but it saves me time and arm stress. It also changes my routine and, may even improve the quality of my translations.

[JesseBarnum]

Can I record a bunch of audio notes into my iPhone (using the mic built into the headphones and Record or one of the other audio record iPhone apps), transfer the audio files onto my Mac, and then have MacSpeech Dictate process the audio files into text?

[hbissell]

Not directly (ie - there's no "audio import" feature), but you can connect your iPod to real speakers, and hold the Dictate mike near the speakers, and it actually works pretty well (for recordings of your own voice, of course). The biggest problem is that Dictate can sometimes take a while to process some longer or more difficult phrases. When you are dictating cirectly into the computer, you can see when it is tied up on a particular phrase and can give it a little longer before speaking the next phrase. You can't do this with pre-recorded audio, so sometimes the audio keeps talking while Dictate is still thinking. Usually, Dictate can correct itself, but sometimes it starts spouting gibberish, and sometimes it even crashes.

[macHead]

I, too, agree with Speed Racer. I purchased Dicate a year ago for the same full price of the Dragon Naturally Speaking but found it came up way short of the Naturally Speaking performance. I felt I did not get my money's worth but figured, "Just wait a while, it's a new product and they're likely working madly to bring it up to the same feature set as the Naturally Speaking product."

But no. After more than a year Dictate still does not have the same smooth retraining and correcting abilities. When it misinterprets a spoken word or phrase, I still cannot easily retrain it to more reliably recognize the word as I can with Naturally Speaking. Therefore, for my purposes it remains unusable and I'm stuck having to use Bootcamp with the Nuance product.

[TimothyA]

I'm in the same boat as bigcloits, although a different problem. Dictate worked great for a couple of months. i was thrilled with its accuracy and short training period (less than five minutes, as compared with HOURS with other dictation programs). Then after a couple of months, KABLOOEY! It simply stopped working. More specifically, it started crashing every time I tried to launch it. MacSpeech support was worthless. And since the program doesn't work, Dictate is worthless too.

[bigcloits]

It’s great for me to see all of these negative comments about Dictate — so validating! It’s not just me!
I have never had a chip on my shoulder about a Mac application like this before. But I lost so many hours to Dictate in 2008 that it’s just a real pleasure to hear other users expressing serious complaints as well.
Truly, I’ve never had such a bad technical experience with such an important-to-me application before, nor such consistently terrible customer service trying to solve the problems, and then eventually trying and actually failing to get my money back (still can’t believe that).
And it’s all in such stark contrast to the really wonderful products and service provided by other Mac developers, like Panic (Transmit, Coda), Bare Bones (BBEdit), and Omni (OmniFocus, OmniGraffle, etc).

[caduceus]

As a physician, I've tried these programs (both Mac and PC versions) several times over the last 8 or so years. I have given a good solid effort using Dragon 9.5 and now 10 for the last six months. I'm told that Dragon is the "best" of these applications. I've spent money on the Medical Vocabulary, too. I am giving up on it again. It takes me longer to dictate using this software than dictating to digital recorder and having a human transcribe it. It makes the same mistakes over and over, and there is no way of training some words, e.g., it refuses to learn the word "purulent" -- insisting on "hearing" [period] something. If the Mac version is WORSE than the Windows version... uh, move on. I am a huge technology fan, and I really wanted this to work, but we're still not there yet. It really makes you want to scream and pull your hair out... it's so CLOSE to being useful, I keep thinking, "maybe just train if for another week or so..." Don't do it! I am the most unflappable person I know, and it still drives me insane.

[anothersite]

Its not just me either. iListen stunk in comparison to Windows products. Dictate stinks. Dragon in Fusion or Parallels is the way to go.

I also wish VR would get just a little closer, but I have not given up. I still use Dragon in Fusion.

I used to used ViaVoice. I would dictate in ViaVoice and have someone else do delayed correction without worrying about improving my VR profile. It was faster for me than correcting VR myself and cheaper than dictating then paying a transcriptionist for all the work. One would think this system would work in Dragon.

[dbickel]

Are there any issues with using Dragon NaturallySpeaking with Fusion or Parallels to edit MacOS documents? I currently use Dragon Naturally Speaking on a pure Windows system, but I would like to use it on a Mac if feasible.