Nuance has quickly forged their authority on the Dictate brand of voice recognition software for Mac and with their first release Dragon Dictate 2.0 they have done an excellent job. But what now for the Legal and Medical edition still stuck at MacSpeech Dictate version 1.5 and the fairly new offshoot product MacSpeech Scribe currently at version 1.1, all of which are using the older Dragon speech recognition engine and not the new one included with Dragon Dictate.

I have some theories for these products which may or may not be correct so please don’t hold me to them. These are my best guesses and have not been confirmed or denied by Nuance, just my two cents worth.

MacSpeech Scribe in my view can go in ne of two directions. It can either be discontinued and the voice to text functionality built into a later Dragon Dictate update, much like Dragon NaturallySpeaking Premium or Professional for Windows. Or Nuance will embrace this as a separate product and continue to push it as a stand alone offering for transcribing only recorded audio. I have always been torn on MacSpeech Scribe, I have never understood why you would create a separate product for transcription of digitally recorded audio but that maybe because I have been so used to the functionality from the Windows side of the fence. As MacSpeech Scribe is still fairly new I have a feeling Nuance will continue with it and we will likely see a Dragon Scribe product appear in the very near future.

So what about the Medical and Legal version of MacSpeech Dictate, are we going to see an equivalent in Dragon Dictate? My personal view is that we are likely to see a Legal version for Dragon Dictate but maybe not the Medical version. From my understanding the Legal dictionary of terms is fairly standard and so can be quite easily built into a speech recognition dictionary. Wheres Medical with its large number of specialised area of understanding would be an unwieldily dictionary to maintain and build. For the Medical side of things I think we will see a third party put their hand up and claim an exclusive partnership with Nuance to provide and support that medical crowd.

So when can we see what I have theorised about above. Dragon Scribe I would think would be very close, if it is coming, and we would likely see this before the end of the year. Dragon Dictate Legal I would also see on the same time line, especially as we now have Dragon Dictate in the wild adding a more comprehensive legal dictionary can’t be that far behind.

Of course as soon as we get wind of any new voice recognition products from Nuance for the Mac or Windows we will post the info.

The cat is finally out of the bag as Nuance, owners of the MacSpeech brand of voice recognition for Intel Mac, announced the latest version of the Dictate family. Dragon Dictate, formerly known as MacSpeech Dictate, is the new name and with it comes more enhancements and features. In this blog post we will look at:

• What’s New In Dragon Dictate 2.0 for Mac
• What Are Your Upgrade Options From MacSpeech Dictate to Dragon Dictate
• Where Can You Buy The Software In Australia

Dictate Australia has been with MacSpeech Dictate since day one, we are big fans and have loved to see this product grow from strength to strength. Now at version 2.0 the influence of Nuance is clear for all to see as the product lines of their famous NaturallySpeaking brand for Windows and Dictate for Mac merge closer and closer together. We have been beta testing the new Dragon Dictate for a few weeks and love the new look and feel, it feels polished.

I have always been honest and up-front with any customer I have spoken to over the years when asked “…just how good is  MacSpeech Dictate?”. I have lauded the accuracy of the Dragon speech recognition engine on the Mac but you could always feel that there was alot of catching up to do with the feature packed and more mature Windows equivalent. Nuance, since their takeover of MacSpeech earlier this year, are acknowledging the importance of the Mac by showing their dedication and support to the Dictate product and with Dragon Dictate 2.0 we now have a world class speech recognition software for the Apple Mac.

So what’s new in 2.0 other than the new name;

• Dragon 11 Engine – The very latest Dragon speech recognition engine used Dragon NaturallySpeaking 11 for Windows – very fast and accurate voice recognition
• Proof Reading Added – making full use of the Macs text-to-speech functionality Dragon Dictate will now read back to you your transcripts, helping speed up the proof reading process.
• Mouse Grid – My favourite, makes browsing the web easy by zooming into a point on the screen quickly using a mouse grid.
• Mouse Movement – Easily fly your mouse pointer around the screen using just your voice.
• Mouse Click – Again, using your voice you can click, double click and triple click.
• Multiple Audio Sources – Use more than one mic? No longer a problem you can have multiple audio source now for your trained profile.
• Easier Editing – A range of new commands to help edit documents by voice much easier.

Dragon Dictate is available to buy now from the MacSpeech Australia website and available in four configurations:

• AU$219.95 – Download only, BYO mic.
• AU$219.95 – Boxed product, BYO mic. **
• AU$249.95 – Boxed product with standard headset and mic. **
• AU$349.95 – Boxed product with wireless bluetooth headset and mic. **

** boxed products available October 2010 in Australia, pre orders being taken now.

There is also good news if you currently own MacSpeech Dictate. Dragon Dictate is available as an upgrade from any version of MacSpeech Dictate. Here are the upgrade options in Australia:

Upgrade to Dragon Dictate for Mac if you have MacSpeech Dictate v1.5 and upwards

You have two upgrade options (your v1.5+ software must be registered before you upgrade):

1. You can upgrade the software only via download (be prepared its a big download, between 1Gb – 2Gb) for only AU$69. If you prefer the boxed upgrade that will be available in October. Click here for the Dragon Dictate Australia upgrade site.
2. You can upgrade the software and pickup a new Plantronics Calisto bluetooth headset for wireless dictation for AU$179. This will be a boxed product and available from October onwards. Pre orders are being taken now. Click here for the Dragon Dictate Australia upgrade site.

Your existing MacSpeech Dictate v1.5 profile(s) can also be upgraded, make sure you back them up first before you upgrade.

Upgrade to Dragon Dictate for Mac if you have MacSpeech Dictate v1.0 to v1.3

You will need to email MacSpeech Sales with your serial number and current version and they will give you upgrade instructions.

The upgrade to version 10.1 is currently only available for Dragon NaturallySpeaking Standard and Preferred versions. The update for Professional users is planned for Early April 2009.

Be warned people, the upgrade is a monster download. Weighing in at 1.37Gb for Preferred users and 1.22Gb for Standard. So you might want to go grab a three course meal out somewhere nice while it is downloading.

The big news in this release is that Dragon NaturallySpeaking v10.1 supports 64bit Windows Vista system.

Other inclusions in this release add support for IE8 and Firefox 3. Also included is enhanced documentation, including a “Commands Quick Reference” sheet, updates to the install guide and the users guide as well as more updates to the help files and tutorials.

This upgrade is not to be confused with the Service Pack SP1 out earlier this year, which primarily focused on documentation updates and bug fixes.

The upgrade can be downloaded from here:

http://www.nuance.com/vista/naturallyspeaking/Dragon10.1/

You will need you licence key ready, if you can find it just run up Dragon and click on Help, your licence key is displayed in the splash screen.

Dragon NaturallySpeaking Service Pack 1

Download the service pack here.

Here is the detail from their SP1 release notes:

Issues resolved in Service Pack 1:

New Features:

* New options are now available for enabling/disabling the following quick formatting commands:
o Delete/Cut [XYZ]
o Copy [XYZ]
* New formatting option “Caps Lock key overrides No Caps/All Caps/Cap commands”. When this option is enabled, text case will be formatted based on the keyboard Caps Lock key.
* When starting Dragon NaturallySpeaking 10 in Tray Icon Only mode, a balloon pop-up will appear above the microphone alerting the user that the DragonBar is hidden.
* When prompted for the Windows Username and Password to schedule Accuracy Tuning or Data Collection, it is now possible to turn off Accuracy Tuning or Data Collection by selecting “Do not display again” on the “Windows Username and Password” dialog.
* If the microphone was on or asleep when starting audio file transcription, the microphone will be in sleep mode when transcription finishes.

Accuracy Tuning and Scheduler:

* Scheduled tasks for Accuracy Tuning or Data Collection cannot be run when Dragon is running. The Accuracy Center no longer states the task completed successfully if it could not be started.
* The message “You need to increase the size of the acoustic archives” is no longer displayed when saving a user profile that does not have a full acoustic archive.
* When upgrading user profiles from a previous version that contain large amounts of training data, some training data may not be used, resulting in decreased accuracy in version 10. Upgrading the user profile after installing Service Pack 1 will use all training data available.
* Improved correction handling so actual corrections will not be discarded. The result is faster improvements to dictation accuracy when making corrections.
* Automatic adaptation of user profiles created without training will no longer appear when transcribing a sound file.

Application Support:

* Improved interaction with HTML based windows when running as a Windows Restricted User. This includes Internet Explorer as well editing/creating HTML messages in Microsoft Outlook.
* The “Page Down” command now functions properly in Microsoft Outlook 2007.

Commands:

* When using Mozilla Firefox with the “Require click to select HTML hyperlinks” option turned on, it is now possible to say the “(number)” as well as the original “Choose (number)” command to select a specific link.
* It is now possible to create commands that use abbreviations and expanded form without causing recognition as text (i.e. Mr. or Mister, Dr. or Doctor).
* “Clear delimiting characters” command properly removes fields entered into a table in Microsoft Word.
* In the Spanish version, the commands “ditar selección” and “ditar todos” have been fixed. They are now “editar selección” and “editar todos”.
* In the German version, using the command “verbinde das” to compound two words will no longer remove the capitalization.

Correction:

* Improved correction suggestions based on the context of the word or phrase being selected.
* Correction menu and spell dialog now include non-formatted suggestions.
* Extra spacing is no longer left after cutting or deleting a word or phrase.
* Corrections will no longer be marked with a green asterisk in the vocabulary editor.

Dictation:

* When dictating large amounts of text into an application a message will appear stating that “Dragon has reached the maximum amount of speech data that can be saved.” This message will no longer appear multiple times per application session.
* When dictating in Spell Mode, spaces are no longer entered.
* Dictating any punctuation in the middle of a line of text will no longer delete existing text before or after the insertion point.

Automatic Text Formatting:

* When dictating a custom phrase at the beginning of a paragraph, the entire phrase will no longer be capitalized.
* Improved number formatting.
* Word Properties will now preserve the number of spaces specified in the written form or alternate written form.
* Dictating a comma into existing text will no longer insert a space.
* Improved formatting of the word degree(s).
* Improved formatting of “Mister” and “Doctor”, including the appropriate abbreviations.
* Improved formatting of dates when “dates as spoken” option is selected.
* When dictating times in the Spanish version, “las/la” will no longer be removed during formatting.
* When dictating a number after a comma in the German or Dutch versions, the comma will no longer be shifted to the right, connecting to the number.
* Improved handling of Dutch Zip Codes in the Dutch version.
* Using a colon in the Dutch version no longer inserts a space before or capitalizes the word after.

Miscellaneous:

* It is now possible to change word properties for words with special properties.
* The product’s serial number is now displayed in the Help > About Dragon…
* A warning message will now be displayed indicating that dictation in EMR applications is not supported in non-Medical editions.
* Improved handling of Results box tracking and anchoring.
* Improved handling of speech data when changing dictated words using the keyboard.
* It is now possible to upgrade version 9 user profile with an Austrian Legal Vocabulary to version 10.

Data Distribution Tool (nsadmin):

* Customized word properties are no longer lost when distributing vocabularies using the Data Distribution tool.
* Distributing commands that use list variables to systems that already have the same command, will now overwrite the existing command. A duplicate command will not be created.
* It is not possible to distribute a version 10.0 vocabulary using the Data Distribution Tool after installing Service Pack 1. An error that the vocabulary is corrupted will be displayed. The vocabulary must be exported from a Service Pack 1 installation before distributing.