Dragon Dictate Editor's Review

Take control of your Mac with this awesome voice utility.

I've been a big supporter of, "you talk, it types" for over 10 years. I remember using IBM's ViaVoice on my Windows XP powered PC back in 1997. While it was, at times, wonderful to be able to give my arthritic hands a break from the amount of typing I do, its performance issues often prevented the creative process from really flowing the way it should have. Writers write. However, it's not always easy to do when you have to....speak....very...slowly, and very...exactingly. All that's changed now; and thanks to Dragon Dictate for Mac, I've got my MacBook Pro turning cartwheels.

I type between 65-70 words per minute on average.  However, I talk about a mile a minute...or at least my grandmother used to say so.  With Dragon Dictate for Mac, I can input text just by speaking – up to three times faster than typing – using only my voice. With Dragon Dictate I or any user can produce reports, e-mail, articles, books, research notes, online content, and more with an astonishing level of accuracy. You’ll get more done faster and with less stress and more success. While it does require a bit of vocal training, it takes just minutes; and it has an astounding recognition accuracy rate of up to 99% right out of the box.

If you're a productivity junky, like me, then you're going to love this application. With it, you can control your Mac in a relaxed, hands-free manner without being tied to your keyboard. Instead of using your mouse, you can just speak commands to launch and control applications. You can move the cursor or click anywhere on your screen simply by using your voice. You can tell your Mac what to do, like “Reply To This Message” or “Open Microsoft Word” or “Jump To Google” to work faster and smarter. Create voice commands that automate complex workflows on your Mac.

Pro’s: You talk it types, complete control of your computer

Con’s: System intensive. Requires some heavy hardware to keep your Mac running at an acceptable level of performance

Conclusion: Dragon Dictate for Mac was built to give users the experience they expect from their favorite Mac apps. It provides an intuitive, easy-to-use interface that dramatically boosts your productivity. What’s more, Dragon Dictate for Mac works with your favorite Apple applications, including Mail, iChat, iCal, TextEdit, Pages, and Safari. 

You'll need to insure that you have a powerful enough Mac to push this app, however. The biggest issue with this app was system performance and what my Mac was doing with other processor cores and available RAM.  You'll also find that you need a specialized microphone in order to get the best performance from the app. Please don't think that you're going to be able to use the microphone that may be built into your Mac and get really great voice to text recognition. It just isn't going to happen.  A standard gaming headset should do very well.