Okay, it’s been a week since I got this thing. My first impressions were good, but they were also influenced by the fact that I was kinda desperate for this software to work. I really can’t type worth for shit at the moment. Even hunting and pecking out a short e-mail is a pain. Ripping out tens of thousands of words of new manuscript or editing hundreds of thousands of words of After America are simply out of the question. If this didn’t work I was pretty much fucked.
With that in mind I was probably a bit too enthusiastic, a bit too forgiving in my early assessment of MacSpeech Dictate. Or rather in my assessment of my own abilities to use it straight out of the box. This is an unusual product in that it really asks a lot of the user. If you’re not willing to do the training, if you’re not willing to understand the parameters of the software, and most importantly if you’re not willing to read the fucking manual then forget it. It’s not a cheap bit of kit and you’ll do your dough cold. If you are willing to invest the time learning how to use MacSpeech (or its Dragon-based Windows equivalents) and training the software to work with you then it could be a really powerful tool.
First question, does it work?
Yes, and it’s awesome. It is freakishly accurate, much more accurate than my own typing. And there is no need, as I mentioned in a previous post, to speak in an American accent, Shatner style. (And yes it recognizes the word ‘Shatner’).
But it’s not Star Trek. It won’t do all these things out of the box. You do need to train it to listen to your voice, and the software needs to train you to speak to it. The more time you spend using MacSpeech, or Dragon, the more accurate it will become. But only if you take the time to update your profile.
Your profile is the software’s understanding of how you speak, and to a lesser extent how you write. Think of it as a super-avatar. It also includes a lot of environmental information, so you might record one profile for dictating in a quiet room and a different profile for a noisy room. When you first start dictating, the program will make errors and just as importantly you will make errors because you’ll probably try to speak to it like a person, not just a bunch of code. If you mumble, cough, slur your speech, whatever, it’ll all be transcribed.
The first couple of days you’ll spend a lot of time pointing and clicking in what’s called the Recognition Window. In this little box you’ll find the programs interpretation of what you just said, and up to 10 alternatives. Option number one is always Dictate’s best guess but if option number six was the right choice you just click on that and it swaps out the copy. If none of the options were accurate you can choose one to edit and use that. After a couple of hours of doing this and of saving your profile as you go, you’ll notice a marked improvement in the program’s ability to understand you. As you get more confident and you relax you’ll also find you’re able to speak much more quickly and conversationally until you do get to the point of that Star Trek moment where you just speak at the computer and the words magically appear on screen.
That’s dictation, it’s not editing. And editing is way more important than composition in terms of whether your finished product is readable. I had real fears that MacSpeech Dictate would be crap at editing, and in one sense it is. If I simply opened up a huge manuscript and tried to edit the thing via voice command I would fail. There is just no way that telling a cursor where to go and what to do is anywhere near as efficient as using a mouse and keyboard. But as all of the reviews and a lot of the documentation that comes with MacSpeech makes clear, you’re in for a terrible hiding if you try to mix keyboard and voice commands. It just won’t work, and you’ll crash the program. As I did at least half a dozen times during one very frustrating hour this week.
Its all down to the cache. MacSpeech/Dragon keeps two things in its mind; what you said and what it wrote. If you fuck up that delicate balance by using your mouse and keyboard instead of your voice you’ll blow the cache apart and overwhelm the program.
That could be a deal killer, because of the unwieldy nature of using voice command to edit. There is however a caveat. The software comes with its own notepad, a very very basic text editor in which you can compose your documents. Again most reviews and the software’s documentation emphasize the ability to use MacSpeech with most of the other bits of software on your computer, with MS Word, with Firefox, whatever. But here is JB’s tip… Don’t Do It.
Yes, MacSpeech Dictate can work with all of these programs, but it probably won’t. It will almost certainly crash within the first few minutes.
The notepad on the other hand is an exceptional environment into which to dictate. It is stable and robust and most important of all it allows you to edit with your mouse. You can just place the cursor wherever you want, define whatever text you want, and dictate right over the top of it. The essence of editing.
Unfortunately for me, I only figured that out after a couple of very frustrating days of constantly crashing the system. It got to the point where I was so pissed off, so depressed and so fucking desperate that I went back and did what I should have done in the first place. I Read The Fucking Manual from start to fucking finish. In doing that I learned of at least half a dozen very basic errors I’d been making over and over again, and I picked up a whole bunch of obscure but powerful pointers for getting the most out of the program. If I hadn’t done that I reckon I’d have thrown it away and there’d have been tears before bedtime.
Bottom line, it works and it can work brilliantly, but whether it does is down to you.
There is one final point I’d make though. It feels weird. I am so used to ‘thinking with the tips of my fingers’ that, as lobes pointed out earlier this week, I just wasn’t writing like normal when I used the dictation program. I’m still not, but I am getting past the initial strangeness where I constantly felt as though I was thinking about thinking about dictating the writing. I suspect that will take a bit longer to get used to than simply mastering the mechanics.
Anyway, my apologies. I am not a software reviewer and this entry has been a useful exercise in teaching me that if I ever wanted to be I’d have a lot to learn. There’s so much more I could tell you. Some good, such as its ability to inhale vast slabs of your writing for syntactical analysis which then gets fed into MacSpeech’s memory, allowing it to better understand how you write. And some bad, like its tendency to ‘hear’ your breathing as dictation (mostly a problem when you’re sitting, staring at the screen, saying nothing).
So perhaps I should just throw the floor open to questions.
They’d have been an ocean of tears if it hadn’t of worked out.
Well I’ll be….manuals CAN be useful.
Would ya use it without a broken wing?.
Good question Moko.
It seems a pretty long winded process to get up to speed. I wonder how hard it would be to just teach yourself to type fast and well with one hand. Perhaps need a special keyboard though? Its actually not that hard to train your non-preferred side if you really concentrate. I can play golf lefty, surf goofy and write poorly with my non preferred side. To be honest my handwritings not that flash even on my good side. Its a steep learning curve but not that long to get over it.
How do you speak to it? Through the mic in your computer or with a headset? Maybe get one of those special forces throat mics, be like STar Trek and SWAT rolled into one.
Sniff. Gone, The old days. Nubile young touch typing bunnies.
Give ‘em 15 minutes off every hour to relax those hands of theirs . . . .neck rubs spring to mind. . . recommended by physios . . .
Over . . .just ’cause JB has an unnatural fascination with gadgets.
Just watch what happens when you want your next grape peeled, son . . .
Vista and Windows 7 have built in speech recognition, you just have to turn them on. Training them takes a while, but I found that it was a strong enough feature (and worked well enough) not to want to bother with the expensive alternatives.
Moko, no. I doubt I would’ve had the motivation to stick with it beyond about a day or so. It does require a significant investment of your time to train it up. Without a broken wing, why would I have bothered? The more interesting question is whether I’ll stick with it once my arm is healed. I can’t say for certain right now, but I am impressed with how quickly it is learning. As long as I can get over the hump of feeling awkward about talking rather than just writing, then yes, I probably will stick with it. It could potentially increase my productivity by a huge margin.
Lobes, it is a long-winded process, there’s no avoiding it. But then so would be learning to touch type one handed with your nonpreferred hand. Any alternative to a long-established system is going to involve a steep learning curve and a lot of fuck knuckling around. I wouldn’t do it if I had an alternative, but I don’t. It’s this, or sell the house.
Re. Input devices, it comes with a Plantronics headset in the box. You can upgrade to something way more expensive, but the Plantronics seems to work fine.
Sounds pretty sweet.
How does it spell an exhalation? Different to a frustrated sigh?
If you stick with it post recovery it will free up those Nimble Bunny Fingers for more tanning lotion application, feet / neck massaging & grape peeling duties. You may need another profile that ignores little grunts of pleasure.
How is the exportablitility of the Notepad document? Does your preferred word processing software groove to the imported file? Manuscripts probably leave your desk a minimum formatting anyway -just paragraph breaks & punctuation.
The speech recognition that has been in the various MacOSes since the 90s isn’t too bad for commands and stuff. Not for dictation obviously, and it doesn’t seem to have developed much over the years. I haven’t played with the one in Vista, etc yet.
As for alternatives – single handed “chorded” keyboard replacements do exist and may have a less steep learning curve than what you’ve described with the speech stuff. I work on the assumption that one of those will eventually become a standard and the qwerty keyboard will simply go away. The Twiddler seems to be the best of breed, but I’m sure there are others around.
its gunna be funny reading the next MS ( BOOK), after all, given its Voice activated software, I’m not really sure how your fans are gunna take, to intermittent sections of reading, thats Fergal sharky , a good heart these days, and All I need is a Miracle, song words being in it, as we know you grove to tunes when writing. OH THE horror of it!……
I like the Frogpad more than the Twiddler
As a desktop keyboard replacement, I agree it looks nicer (Twiddler s just the one that sticks in my mind for some reason).
Venturing into the world of wearables, the wrist-mounted FrogPad seems awkward to me. When on foot away from my flying car, I will want a HUD in my glasses, and a keyboard I can operate casually.
What a great review. I’m sold. The spirit is strong, but all flesh is weak and time eventually takes – well, everything. I love my profession. The only way I am going to “retire” is feet first. What you describe, John, will allow me to be productive and effective long after my fingers lose their keyboard dexterity.
NBob, usually as ‘the’ or ‘a’.
And the pad exports perfectly, probably because it’s SO basic. Not even itals or margin controls. That stuff can easy be tweaked in Word though, even one handed.
In time management though I suspect at the end you would be in front especially for those with poor to average keyboard skills. The amount of continual time spent correcting typos, grammar and the general typing rate in cumulative , I think would be far less than even a week of aggregate hrs traing the software. Unless you are a typing wizard, with really good accuracy
John, you could fly me to Australia and dictate it to me while I transcribe it.
Just kidding. I want to see Australia but I don’t want to leave my teaching career behind.
I suspect it is probably too expensive to hire someone to dictate the project to. Correct?
Respects,
Murph
On the Outer Marches
As a “code monkey” it really ticks me off when I’m referred to as a code monkey. Anyway, this monkey has coded lots of programs for control centers that use voice recognition like Microsoft voice servers to control devices. For example, taking voice commands and lighting up signs along motorways/freeways; voice commands to select cameras and monitors in the control room and pan, tilt, zoom, record video, playback and the like; voice commands to pull up maps, change the lats and longs of centerpoints, drill down, drill out, and so on.
Thereafter comes the implementation, which always seems to fail. Operators always get frustrated with speaking commands and talking to a computer. Invariably their frustration level rises not because of the responsiveness of the software, but because “it doesn’t feel right” to them. They always abandon the software and go back to the tactile and use a joystick to control the devices or a keyboard for input or keyboard shortcuts for controls.
Consequently implementation always starts out (1) with wild enthusiasm at the novelty; then (2) awkwardness at what the operators call “like talking to myself in an empty room”; then finally (3) a return to using hand controls.
I know some people take to the software like a fish to water; certainly some authors like to dictate: Sidney Sheldon is one I know of, although he dictated to his secretary and not a machine. Others never seem to get over the tactile linkage to controlling output. Probably it is just a matter of rewiring the brain, but that takes time. I’m sure there is a million-dollar research project in there someplace.
Good luck.
Training the software would be less than the the other, I fkd that up in the delivery.
I hope that my arms never fall off.
I type somewhere between 70-80wpm and my brain works differently and better when it travels via my fingertips.
When I’m talking, words tend to come out backwards and sometimes I hunt for the right word, whereas if I’m typing its just there, on command. Most of my girlfriends started going through the same sort of memory issues with spoken language when we hit the 40mark so I suspect it’s hormonal or something to do with the female brain. Not that I think I’ve ever had a particularly female brain, having been raised by a male (gosh, does it show?)
Anyway. There’s definitely some different wiring going on between the sexes so I would be interested to see if there’s studies out there that say that this is something males adapt to better.
Re: your arm, seriously, get some acupuncture. When they sliced up my foot they severed the nerves to the lateral and underside of the foot and said I’d never get the feeling back. I got acupuncture on it ASAP and my specialist was shocked at how well it recovered. It didn’t restore the nerves fully, but I have the kind of sensation you get after you’ve been to the dentist and the numbing sensation is wearing off.
Weird, but better than nowt.
Quokka. We will adapt better hanfemales. The talking to ourselves bit is somthing that we are used to
When I first began working as an attorney all letters and documents were produced via dictation. I would dictate onto a cassette tape, which would in turn be put in an envelope, which would then be picked up by an office courier and delivered to a secretary who would then put it in a special foot-pedal controlled tape player and then transcribe the tape, printing out the draft, which would be delivered to me for my hand written revisions.
I was the very first attorney in my office to bypass the firm secretaries by using my own computer (a little, boxy Apple Mackintosh with attached dot matrix printer) to type my own letters, briefs and documents. The main partner called me into his office to explain that typing was considered secretarial work and that clients didn’t like seeing attorneys doing it.
What an abysmal lack of vision. To make a long story very short, I worked faster with better results bypassing the dictation system. Slowly more and more attorneys began doing what I was doing.
Now, after all these years, I must learn how to dictate again. If it extends my usefulness as an advocate and advisor, then I am all for it.
Yeah, I can see the value in it for dictating letters and a shit….and if if you’re a fraction flight challenged at the mo with the wing, but you’ve gotta proof read it all anyway and to do that you’ve gotta sit in front of the screen anyway.
It might be a good thing for one of the near final drafts just to see how it flows?. You’re reading the script anyway and you’ll pick stuff that doesn’t quite sit right reading it out loud. As from a readers POV.
…and while you’re proof reading a near end draft you could record it and FINALLY do audio books!. See, two birds, one stone, and no flying necessary. ;o)
JB how about an update about this filing in for Spencer thing on the ABC? Just for the benefit of those of us who aren’t on facebook and twitter etc.
Will it be podcast so that the OS burgers can listen in?
What is an OS burger?
You, as in ‘overseas’.
Q, I’ll be talking to the producers sometime this morning. When I have my briefing I’ll put a note here. I have no idea whether it’s podcast. It should be but, you know, the ABC.
Robin Masters on Magnum would have loved it. He dictated all his books onto tape which I can only assume Higgins typed up later for him.
As opposed to a OSS Burger.
Whom we may not talk abbout for operational security reasons.
I may have already said to much.
WTF?
You are collaborating with the seperatist imperialist running dog Earls on the glorious peoples wireless?
Good Dog man, guilt by association! You’ll be branded a counter-revolutionary, then where will you be? It’s a slippery slope JB and we, I mean They in the politburo frown upon this kind of fratenisation with the enemy.
Or is it an insidious infiltraion excercise? aah nudge nudge wink wink say no more.
Hope you are calling in the comely favours of miss NatV, she’ll sort that bounder in no time.
Unless gooshy Brisbane romance novels are her Kryptonite in which case the whole plan may disintigrate.
Yup.
We are particularly fond of watching the ABC TV saturday night weather fuckups.
Whoever is in charge of that weather chart has serious problems. This weekend they put up the little symbol for ‘Thundery Rain’ beside all of Sunday’s forecasts.
Of course it was a lie.
Someone in there just likes to mess with our heads.
PNB I’ll try to find a link to the website so you can get in some practice listening in.
Auntie Q.
Go back through the archives on Media watch. About 6 months ago they did a story on the introduction of a whizzo piece of software being rolled out across all ABC metro newsrooms. It was supposed to reduce the number of people required in Master Controll Room when news bulletins are aired. To sugest it has had Teething Issues would be an understatement of galactic proportions. There used to be DA’s (Directors Assistants) part of whose job was to make sure the supers (the little text graphic identifying the talking head) was factually correct and appropriatly timed. The DA also made sure that the weather charts were all done correctly and flipped through at the appropriate timing.
The software now seems to be getting it right a lot less frequently than the human. This might be A; because of software glitches or user error or B; someone making a point that theyd prefer a human DA than a inanimate piece of software, as the are far less satisfying to kick in the @rse when things go pear shaped.
http://blogs.abc.net.au/queensland/612_breakfast/index.html
PNB dunno what the time difference is in Davis, but the show starts 5amish our time, I think.
Above is a link to the ABC breakfast show.
Up in the left hand corner there’s a ‘how to listen’ thingy. If you click on it, there will be an option for streaming online.
Aha.
Curious that the worst offences happen on a saturday night, though.
Perhaps the software has a habit of nipping down to the pub at noon.
Whatever, Birmingham…. Orin! Yeah, you, Orin! I’m talking to you, Orin. WHAT IS THE BEST NOTEBOOK TO PURCHASE? PLEASE!! Imagine it’s for a US federal employee that must research, gather, and send information to over 160 countries in the world. It must be secure and have high storage for visuals as well as documents. Think of something below $1200, Orin.
J.
Hmm. I’m reminded of advice I read from another author on how to write; among other things the author suggests “turn off all the doo-dads in your text editor”. Turn off auto-spell correct, turn off highlighting, turn off grammar checking, turn off everything that might distract you from the process of getting words from brain into text file.
*After* you’ve had your burst of putting your thoughts into words, you go back and fix capitalization, spelling, quoting, bolding, grammar, and any other problems. That becomes drudgery you have to do, entirely separate from the crucial creative process of formulating the dialog and plot.
It sounds like this software is ideally suited to that process – blather away until you have 4 or 5k words in the notepad buffer, and when you run down, transfer from Notepad to OOo. A burst of a couple of hours of creative work, then several hours of drudgery, rinse and repeat until you have a finished novel.
SJS, I recommend the Corporate Express Steno Book, 6″ x 9″, green tint and Gregg rule. Staples sells them at $1.59 each.
should have pimped out for the full Borg upgrade.
Lenovo IdeaPad Y730 – 40532JU? But, not in orange. Too easy a target…
J.
Once your wing’s healed, I can fully imagine you still using it while having a bath, preparing dinner or knitting.
Question: does speaking to the computer increase or decrease your urge to create podcasts?