I got really excited earlier in the year when I read all the hype about the new dictate software for the Mac. I had always read how Dragon Naturally Speaking was the ultimate in dictation software, BUT it was only available for windows. I used to use it and found it quite good.

Now, with my left wrist having returned to a sad and sorry state, I have been looking for ways to avoid stressing it. My work paid for me to get a somewhat pricey USB headset (as stipulated by MacSpeech) and I began my relationship with the latest dictation software for the Mac. Which, incidentally, is made by the same people that make Dragon. Here’s the thing. On occasion, when the planets are aligned, I’m not slurring with tiredness and there aren’t too many words like ‘arch’ or ‘considered’ - it is curiously accurate. It seems to be able to deal with words like ’supraspinatus’ and ‘foraminal’ and ‘CT scan’.

What it can’t do is LEARN. You can feed it lots of documents so it adds words to its vocabulary, but you can’t teach it to recognise words that it continually - really, c-o-n-t-i-n-u-a-l-l-y gets wrong. Many, many times I have begun speaking in a well modulated polite tone, but by the end of the paragraph I have transformed into a banshee, screaming TWO THOUSAND AND SIX. TWO THOUSAND AND SIX. YOU FUCKER. Because in my work, I have to mention dates almost more than anything else. And bloody Mac bloody Speech has some kind of glitch with how I say ‘2006′. It types, without fail, the following variations;

• Two thousand Sikhs
• 2000 and Sikhs
• two thousand is sick

And can it type the word ‘considered’? No. It types ‘conceded’. Which is not quite the same thing. It’s a sneaky bloody program too. Just as I’m about to delete it forever, it will suddenly churn out paragraphs of pure and coherent prose, and lull me into a false sense of security. Only to tell me about the two thousand Sikhs a little bit later on. I have really begun to dread those files where the incident has occurred in that year.

The main problem is that I HAVE NO TIME. There is no time for me to remember, during the week, that MacSpeech is really probably not helping my working processes much at all. I only remember when it comes to a work day and I have to sit down and start getting through it. There is then no time to try and deal with it or find an alternative, because I have too much to get done.

Today, again, I was lulled. But the time has come to fight back. I am going to install VMWare (which enables me to put Windows on my Mac in a sort of virtual way), and then install Windows XP and then install Dragon Naturally Speaking - and see if the Dragon and I can’t make friends. Of course, this will all take time, and take up room on my ever dwindling hard drive. I will also have to train Dragon from scratch unless I can find some old speech files from two thousand Sikhs hanging around somewhere. But I’m at the point where I will do it. It is already fairly stressful trying to work from home in a tiny trailer etc. etc. etc. and dodgy software raising my already rising blood pressure is something I can do without.

Why on earth would you rush to release some software that Mac owners have been hanging out for in such a half arsed manner? Who would dream of putting out dictation software that has no ability to LEARN NEW WORDS? Huh? HUH? Goodbye MacSpeech. I gave you a good go. And now I’m going to bid you GOODBYE. Gah.