Dragon Dictate for Mac 3

Speech recognition is one of those rare categories of software where the Mac has been playing catch-up for many years. Mac wielding dictators rejoiced when MacSpeech Dictate began using the Dragon engine and made huge strides toward reliable speech recognition on the Mac. A few years later, Nuance, the parent company that owns the Dragon speech recognition engine acquired MacSpeech Dictate and things got even better. Since then, there have been a series of releases of Dragon Dictate for the Mac by Nuance. This product has been chasing the tail of Dragon NaturallySpeaking, the more mature Windows PC dictation product. With each succeeding release of Dragon Dictate for Mac, the gap between the two narrows.

I am a frequent dictator and after using the latest release, Dragon Dictate 3 for the Mac for a week, I can report there is much to like about this newest release. The engine is more accurate and faster. This newest version can also transcribe dictation made with a recording device, like your iPhone. The tutorial is also better, helping new users get familiar with the idea of talking to their computers. One feature, that actually appeared in later updates to version 2, is the ability to use your iPhone with Dragon’s Microphone application as a wireless dictation microphone. The link is over WiFi (not Bluetooth) and the resulting dictation is very accurate. I’ve done many laps around my office talking into my iPhone this way.

I’m a busy guy and the ability to create text by simply speaking to my Mac is one of my secrets. This latest version is much closer to the PC version than its predecessor and I find it extraordinarily useful.

One area where Dragon Dictate still needs to catch up to its PC counterpart is application integration. I think the engineers at Nuance are still struggling to fully integrate speech recognition and control to the Mac operating system. I’ve seen some people make it dance but it is hardly intuitive and still needs work. My favorite workflow for this application is to simply open the Dragon Notepad from the application and start talking. Dictating straight into Dragon’s notepad puts the application in its element and gives you the best chance for the most accurate recognition. From there, I can copy and paste the text to Byword, Apple Mail, Scrivener, or whatever else suits my fancy.

In the past I have recommended Dragon Express, the $50 variant in the app store. Unfortunately, Nuance has yet to update that application for Mountain Lion. if you’re going to dictate in Mountain Lion, you’ll need this newest version of Dragon Dictate. I remember spending $200 on this software thinking about how much money that was. However, with a little discipline, you’ll find that you recover it very quickly with the increased productivity that comes from talking to your Mac.

Cleartones Organic

I wrote about these last year. There is a new set of quality ring tones at Clear Tones and I’ve already installed them. I love my R2D2 ringtone on the weekends but when I’m at the day job, it’s Clear Tones for me.

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FotoMagico 4

There is a nice update to my favorite slideshow program for the Mac. Every time I put one of these together for a friend’s wedding, I make the paid photographer look really bad.

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Sponsor: O’Reilly Titles on Inkling


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For years, those who’ve wanted to teach themselves programming have been caught between the trusted content found in books and the ease of use with online materials. Now, O’Reilly Media and Inkling have teamed up to reimagine the world’s most trusted technological resources for iPad, iPhone, and the web.

From embedded coding sandboxes to notes with web links, syntax highlighting, and more, books in the Animal series, Missing Manual series, and others are amplified with Inkling-only features not found in any other e-book version. Copy-and-paste bits of code as you go on your laptop, or drill down into the logic behind the syntax when reading on your iPad or iPhone.

Budding developers and tech enthusiasts alike now have some of the world’s best tech resources right at their fingertips. Watch a video that shows how it all works, and shop for books.

Sponsorship by The Syndicate.

Maps at Night

I used the Maps app through much of the beta and never had any problems. I used it to drive from Orange County to San Diego and Los Angeles several times. It didn’t route me any different than my prior driving app, Motion X.

In truth, I just don’t think I’m much of a Maps power user. I put in an address and I go there. I don’t do much more and, as a result, didn’t bump into a lot of Maps’ sins. I’m not denying that the app has troubles. It does.

My biggest gripe with the Maps app is driving at night. It displays the driving directions in the full screen with a brightly colored background. I use a window mount and the Maps app plays hell on my night vision. It feels like a safety hazard for me and I stopped using it when driving at night. I complained about this on a recent MPU episode and listener Mike wrote in with a great temporary fix.

Go in the Settings app and tap on the Accessibility screen. Then tap the Triple-click Home button and select Invert Colors. Now tripple tapping the home screen inverts your iPhone colors, which makes the maps nice and dark at night. I recognize this isn’t a long term solution and Apple should fix this properly but for now, it works.


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iTunes Screencasts from the Cutting Room Floor

At one point during development of the 60 Tips book, I had a chapter on iTunes tips but I was never really happy with it. When Apple announced they were re-jiggering iTunes last month, it gave me the excuse I needed to pull the iTunes chapter from the book. I did, however, have some screencasts already completed. I’m not sure if they’ll still be relevant when the new iTunes ships but here they are anyway.



New Field Guide: 60 Mountain Lion Tips



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I’m pleased to announce the newest MacSparky Field Guide is for sale: 60 Mountain Lion Tips. This is the first Field Guide I have co-authored and who could possibly be better for this collaboration than Brett Terpstra?  Brett and I, along with Merlin Mann, gave a session at Macworld earlier this year talking about some of our favorite Mac tips. This book took the idea and ran with it. 

The book includes 60 tips carefully selected by Brett and Me. Chapters include Mountain Lion, Mail, Spotlight, Terminal, and Third Party Apps. Most of the tips have a screencast showing you exactly how Brett or I pull off these magic tricks on our Macs. There are 53 screencasts and over 1.5 hours of video. The book is over 650 MB.

Brett and I included a range of tips ranging from basic to advanced. Our goal is for anyone to pick this up and have a black belt in Mac-nerdery by the end. The book is $7 and you can get it in the iBookstore for your iPad or a PDF version if you are iPad-less or iBookstore-less. The iBookstore version was created in iBooks Author and includes all of the whiz-bang interactivity that comes with it. It was a lot of fun creating this book. I’m quite proud of it and I hope you dig it.

You can check out the book’s website at 60tips.com or buy it below.



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