Review by Michael McKee

I have my Macbook set up to run Windows through VMware’s Fusion. There are three programs that I use that don’t work as well on a Mac as they do on Windows. Since I’ve retired, I really don’t have a need for Quickbooks or Microsoft Office anymore. There are simpler Mac apps that will handle my personal needs just fine. The final holdout is Dragon Naturally Speaking.

When Dragon bought the existing Mac dictation program and incorporated its voice recognition into it I was thrilled and went out and bought the first Dragon Dictate. I was immediately disappointed. Oh, the actual accuracy was good enough but the features for editing document simply didn’t come near to matching the Windows program.

Now, at version 4, Dragon Dictate has come closer, but unfortunately it’s just not up to Naturally Speaking. Accuracy, when speaking through an entire section is excellent, actually better than my typing. That’s the good news. The problem is that Dictate has a tendency to insert random extra spaces and isn’t terribly smart at guessing when sentences are complete if the dictation is interrupted. I also have problems with Dictate not selecting prior words to correct. It’s not consistently wrong, which is even more frustrating as errors are not predictable.

OTH, using Dragon Dictate for system control works well, though that functionality is built in pretty well into OS X. I wish that I could replace Dragon Naturally Speaking on Windows for Dragon Dictate. Maybe next version.