Dragon Dictate & Dragon for the Mac

♫ It doesn’t have to be like this
All we need to do is make sure we keep talking…♫

Lyrics and music by: David Gilmour, Richard Wright and Polly Samson, recorded by Pink Floyd.

Garry’s last post inspired me to write about using dictation on both PCs and Macs. I have been a long-standing fan of voice recognition and the latest versions are even much better than earlier versions. While there is voice recognition built into the Windows operating system, I haven’t seen it used in practice. Rather, I have found that people use DragonDictate for the PC, currently at version 13; or on the Mac, you can use either Dragon for the Mac, Version 4 or use the Dictation & Speech capabilities built into Yosemite. The best thing about the latest version of dictation in Yosemite is that you can download a file and use dictation what are you are on or off-line. This is a significant advantage over prior versions. It’s a matter fact that this column was “written”, if you can call it that, using Yosemite’s dictation capabilities. Another improvement in dictation in Yosemite is that you can use continuous dictation. Prior versions meant that you could only dictate up to the size of the buffer.

It is amazing how easy it is to use and I am referring to both Dragon Dictate for the PC as well as Dictation in Yosemite. I work on both platforms and use voice recognition on both.

Garry noted that he does most of his work either on an iPad or Microsoft Surface and barely touches his keyboard. I have to say my experience is much the same (except that I prefer laptops over tablets) and I agree that I am much faster using voice recognition than I am typing. Furthermore, voice recognition never misspells; but it could substitute a synonym or possibly a word recognized in error, in which case you still have to proofread your work. But it is literally amazing to to talk to your computer and see your text appear, correctly transcribed and formatted, on the screen.

Now DragonDictate for the PC is much more fully developed then Dictation for the Mac that is part of the OS. However, if all you need is dictation plus some formatting, then dictation for the Mac maybe just fine. I have written extensive papers for conferences using just dictation for the Mac. Why don’t I use DragonDictate for the Mac? Unfortunately, the versions of Dragon that I have, namely versions 2 and 3, are incompatible with Yosemite. I may upgrade but for the moment I’m happy with Dictation in Yosemite.

PC users would be delighted with all the additional commands that you get with Dragon for the PC. You can literally browse the web, save your work, apply detailed formatting and do much more  by voice commands.

When it comes to interfacing with your computer it doesn’t have to come to just using a keyboard.  All we have to do is make sure we keep talking…

-David J. Bilinsky, Vancouver.