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5 MacSpeech DictateChapter 1 — Introduction
What Is MacSpeech Dictate?
Welcome! You are about to use your voice in a new way —
to replace your keyboard! With MacSpeech Dictate, what
you say will appear on the screen, in virtually any Macintosh
application. The technology that allows this amazing feat is
called TalkAnywhere™, and it translates speech to text and
characters almost anywhere you would normally type.
In addition to dictating, MacSpeech Dictate can be used as a
“third hand” to control your Mac without using the mouse or
keyboard. Speaking to your computer is faster and can help
you accomplish tasks more easily than constantly moving
your hands from keyboard to mouse.
MacSpeech Dictate, MacSpeech’s flagship dictation product,
is speaker dependent speech recognition software, based on a
proprietary implementation of the Dragon NaturallySpeaking
engine from Nuance Communications, Inc. What does
speaker dependent mean? Simply that in order to obtain its
extraordinary accuracy, MacSpeech Dictate must be trained
to recognize your unique speech patterns. Training sessions
are stored in a profile along with other things such as the type
of microphone you are using and the amount of background
noise. MacSpeech Dictate can handle multiple profiles, so
others in your family or workgroup can use it, too (as long as
they use it on the same computer).
Who Should Use MacSpeech Dictate?
MacSpeech Dictate works well for many different people. If you
are a typical Mac user, MacSpeech Dictate will speed up your
work when creating documents such as memos, reports, and
e-mails. Creative Professionals will love MacSpeech Dictate’s
ability to control the Mac interface, effectively allowing them
to use their voice as a “third hand.” MacSpeech Dictate can
help overcome mobility problems that make using a keyboard
difficult or impossible. Finally, those who have little or no
typing skills will benefit from MacSpeech Dictate’s ability to
free them from the “hunt and peck” method of typing.
No matter what type of user you are, you need to spend a little
time teaching MacSpeech Dictate the unique qualities of your
voice so the program can understand you better. As you use
MacSpeech Dictate it learns how your voice sounds and how
you pronounce things. The more you use the program, the
better it will become at recognizing your speech.
Will MacSpeech Dictate Replace My
Mouse And Keyboard?
Probably not totally. Speech is a useful addition to the way you
work with your computer, but it isn’t a panacea. Some tasks
will still be more efficiently performed using your mouse or
keyboard. While using MacSpeech Dictate, you will discover
what combination of speech, mouse, and keyboard use is
appropriate for your tasks.
Who Is MacSpeech?
MacSpeech is a Mac-only company, with software develop-
ers who have been creating speech recognition software for
many years. In fact, our founder and senior engineers were
key members of the team that produced some of the first
speech recognition products for Macintosh, including Voice
Navigator and PowerSecretary from Articulate Systems.
The software we produce is exclusively for use by Macintosh
users who are interested in one or more benefits provided by
speech recognition. Being Mac-only means we don’t have
our hands and creativity tied by a corporate requirement to
maintain a common code-base across computer platforms.
Since we are uniquely Macintosh-based, we can take
advantage of all Macintosh has to offer.
The MacSpeech goal is speech everywhere on the M acintosh,
for every user.
MacSpeech Dictate System
Requirements
In order to use MacSpeech Dictate, you must have the follow-
ing minimum system requirements:
• MacOSXversion10.4.11(“Tiger”)or10.5.x
(“Leopard”)
• 1GB(ormore)RAM.
• AMacthatshippedwithanIntelprocessor.
• 2GBoffreeharddrivespace.
• AMacSpeech-certiedUSBnoise-cancelingmi-
crophone is strongly recommended.
Speech recognition takes a lot of horsepower. In order to
decipher what you’re saying, your Mac needs to perform
thousands of calculations every second. Slow machines just
can’t keep up with the demand. So if you ever needed a
reason for buying that new top-of-the line computer with gobs
of RAM, now you have one.
Chapter 1: Introduion